The interrogation room's light stared at me relentlessly. I didn't know how long it had been on.
Time had no meaning here—they had confiscated my Amanda chip sensor, so I couldn't check the time, date, or weather like I usually did.
1
"Gu Yunqi, on July 1st at 5 PM, what were you doing at Mayflower Restaurant?" The man across from me asked this question again.
"I never went to Mayflower." My voice was as rough as sandpaper. "I slept at home all day."
The interrogator was a thin man in his early thirties, wearing gold-rimmed glasses that made him look refined. He set down his thermal cup and sighed, his expression like someone looking at a thief who refused to confess. "A senior analyst at G Private Equity, worked there for three years. Through some moves in the stock and futures markets, you increased your fund's annualized return to 50%, turned 5 million into 50 million within 5 trading days... Confess now, voluntarily return the illicit funds, and your sentence might be shorter."
"How can I confess to something I didn't do?"
The gold-rimmed glasses stared at me for five seconds, then suddenly smiled. That smile sent a chill down my spine—not because it was vicious, but because it carried a certainty that said, "I knew you'd say that."
He slid a tablet across the table to me.
"See for yourself."
The screen lit up—a video. The quality was crystal clear, with a timestamp in the upper right corner:
July 1, 2084, 17:03:22
Mayflower Restaurant, a booth by the window. A man in a gray shirt was looking down at the menu. Across from him sat a bald middle-aged man—a face I'd seen in SEC materials, General Zhang from Company F. The man in the gray shirt looked up, said something to the waiter, then pushed a bulging kraft paper envelope toward General Zhang.
That face was mine.
That gray shirt was mine. The button on the collar was missing half—I hadn't had time to sew it back on.
The watch on his wrist was my mother's birthday gift to me last year, with a fine scratch on the edge of the dial—I'd accidentally knocked it.
The person in the video smiled obsequiously and fawningly, and every little movement—his gestures, his posture—was exactly like mine. Including my habit of touching my earlobe when nervous.
"This is AI face-swapping," I blurted out.
The gold-rimmed glasses didn't argue. He just swiped his finger across the screen and switched to the next video. Another angle, even clearer.
Then came screenshots of WeChat conversations. My profile picture, my WeChat ID, chatting with "Zhang." It started in early June, on and off for a month.
I said, "After this operation, we can both retire early," and he replied, "When this is done, I won't shortchange you, brother."
He tapped the voice message—it was my voice, even the filler words sounded exactly like me. Location sharing records showed my phone at Mayflower Restaurant at 4:50 PM on July 1st.
"This is impossible." My voice began to tremble. "I've never met this person, I never said these things—"
"Amanda," the gold-rimmed glasses interrupted, pushing up his glasses. "You have the fifth generation installed in your brain, right?"
I froze.
"The chip has round-the-clock recording capabilities," he said, handing me the chip sensor. "Access your memory data from July 1st. Wouldn't that clear things up?"
Right.
Why the hell hadn't I thought of that?
I closed my eyes and issued the command deep in my consciousness:
Amanda, retrieve all memory footage for July 1, 2084.
The familiar interface emerged in the depths of my mind—a system that had been with me for fifteen years, from version 3.0 to 5.0. I remembered every upgrade clearly.
A progress bar popped up on the interface.
[Searching...]
Then the progress bar stopped.
Replaced by a line of red text, piercing as a knife:
[ERROR: Memory data for this time period corrupted/does not exist]
[Attempt recovery from cloud backup?]
"Recover! Now!"
A faint current buzzed in my mind—the signal of data transmission. Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds—
[Cloud backup sync failed]
[Failure reason: Original data from this time period does not match current chip biometric signature]
[WARNING: Your memory may be at risk of continuity issues. Please contact official customer service for "memory defragmentation" as soon possible.]
I opened my eyes and found my face covered in sweat.
The gold-rimmed glasses were watching me with an expression that suggested he was looking at a suspect who had finally revealed his weakness.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Chip can't help you either?"
I didn't know what to say. My mind was a mess—what did "biometric signature mismatch" mean? What was "memory continuity risk"?
2
I really had no reason to do those shady things, because I had Amanda. When I was three, just starting kindergarten, my parents installed Amanda's first-generation chip in me. Growing up, I consistently topped the school rankings. Now I'm thirty, and this chip has reached the fifth generation. Last spring, on my birthday, I just had it replaced. As for the replacement procedure, it was simple—decades ago, brain-chip technology had already matured. A ten-minute minimally invasive surgery did the trick.
I was part of the second batch of children to receive the chip. The first batch were free test subjects, and the failure rate was reportedly very low—according to the news, only one in a hundred thousand failed. Even if implantation failed, you'd just sleep for a few days and recover, which proved the product's safety.
So my parents couldn't wait to buy it for me as soon as Amanda launched.
The chip was expensive—five years' salary for an average person—so not everyone was willing to buy it. My family was just an ordinary household in a second-tier city; my mother was an elementary school teacher, my father a middle school teacher. But my parents valued my future immensely, so they didn't hesitate to take out a loan to get me the brain chip.
With Amanda's help, I could calculate what others couldn't, remember what others couldn't. I didn't even need to listen to the teacher in class. Simply put, my chip did the teacher's job, and the only reason to go to school was to maintain basic social interaction.
Naturally, Amanda paved my way smoothly—I got into a top university and, after graduation, landed a job at a top-tier private equity firm.
"I have Amanda. I don't need to cheat—"
"The memories in your head aren't necessarily real," he said, straightening up and turning his back to me, looking at the one-way mirror. "You just confirmed that yourself, didn't you?"
I opened my mouth but found myself speechless. If my memories really were fake...
By the time I got back to the cell, it was already "night."
I knew it was night because the fluorescent lights in the corridor had dimmed to that yellowish "sleep mode." As for whether it was dark or bright outside, I had no idea. This building had no windows.
I was pushed into a room of about fifteen square meters. Six bunk beds, crammed with at least ten people. The air was a mix of foot odor, sweat, and an indescribable sour smell—like a rag that had been soaking too long.
On the top bunk by the door, a bald burly man was cursing at someone in a dialect. In the corner, two young men who looked barely twenty were squatting, staring blankly at ants on the floor. On the bottom bunk directly across from me, a gaunt middle-aged man lay with his back to me, motionless.
"Number Six, there." The guard jerked his chin toward the bottom bunk in the farthest corner.
I walked over.
The bed was an iron slab with a miserably thin mattress pad. The pillow was a rolled-up, yellowed towel. As I sat down, the bed let out a sharp creak.
The person in the next bed turned over, glanced at me, then turned back to sleep.
I lay down, staring at the mottled water stains on the ceiling. My mind was a jumble.
The interrogation, the video, the chip error message, and the gold-rimmed glasses' final words—"The memories in your head are fake." Those words were like a nail driven into my brain.
The person in the next bed turned over again. I noticed then that there was less than a meter between us.
No—that person was awake and looking at me.
They were strange eyes. The left eye was normal, with clear whites, the pupil slightly contracting in the dim yellow light. The right eye... the right socket was empty.
Not closed—empty.
I froze, meeting those eyes for maybe three seconds—could have been shorter, could have been longer, I don't know—then quickly turned my head back, staring at the ceiling.
My heart pounded like it would burst through my chest.
That person didn't speak, didn't move. But I could feel their gaze still on my back, like a block of ice.
I don't know how long passed—maybe minutes, maybe half an hour. That ghastly white light kept flickering in my mind—the interrogator's questions, the gold-rimmed glasses' smile, the chip's red error message, and that empty eye socket like a dry well—
I forced myself to calm down.
Deep breaths. Inhale—exhale—inhale—
"Amanda, retrieve all external stimulus records from today and conduct a threat assessment."
No response.
It occurred to me that they'd confiscated my chip sensor. The chip was still there, but now it was just an isolated storage device with no external functions.
I was no different from ordinary people without chips now. This realization made me dizzy.
From age three, Amanda had been part of me. Studying, working, socializing, even sleeping—I'd never been without it. It was like my third kidney; I never thought about "what if it was gone" because that was simply impossible. But now, it was still there, yet I couldn't use it.
I felt like I'd been stripped naked and thrown out onto the street.
3
The person beside me turned over, apparently asleep. I snuck a glance at their back—motionless.
I couldn't explain why, but something felt off.
I realized—they weren't making any sound. Not even the faint whisper of breathing.
Half-asleep, half-awake, staring at that back, suddenly the person moved. Slowly, they turned over to face me. Those eyes—the left normal, the right hollow—stared directly at me in the dim yellow light. They didn't speak. Just stared.
I instinctively wanted to look away, but suddenly they grinned. That smile was strange—the corners of the mouth pulled up, but there was no trace of humor in the eyes. Like a child imitating an adult's expression, trying hard but getting it completely wrong.
They raised their left hand. The movement was slow, as if making sure I wouldn't run. Their hand reached out to me and opened. In the palm lay a silver coin—an old Yuan Shikai silver dollar. I recognized it; I'd seen one in my childhood friend's father's collection. Republic of China era, Year Three, Yuan Shikai's profile—round face, big ears, two strokes of mustache, and a scratch I'd made on it.
I looked up at the person. Their lips moved, voice so soft I could barely hear: "Want to get out?"
"Who are you?"
They didn't answer. Just pressed that silver dollar into my palm, then turned over, back to me again.
A long time passed—so long I thought maybe the whole thing had been a hallucination, and my hand was starting to go numb—
A sharp alarm blared from the end of the corridor. Then a second, a third.
The entire cell block erupted into chaos.
Someone shouted "Fire!" Someone pounded on doors. Someone cried. Someone cursed. Thick smoke poured from the vents, choking, blinding. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered wildly, then went out with a pop.
In the darkness, a hand grabbed my wrist.
It was that person.
"Follow me."
Their voice was calm—too calm for a fire scene.
Cell doors should have automatically opened when the alarm sounded—the prison's smart system unlocked all doors during disasters. But today, the doors didn't open. People pounded on them, slammed against walls. The smoke thickened—people coughed, vomited, screamed for help.
The door opened. Not automatically—someone opened it from outside.
That person pulled me into the corridor. Smoke everywhere. People everywhere. Screams and cries everywhere. Guards' flashlights cut through the haze.
That person didn't run toward the emergency exit. They pulled me in the opposite direction—deeper in, toward the thickest smoke. I wanted to shout "Are you crazy?" but the smoke choked me before I could get a word out. They had incredible strength, pulling me around one corner, then another, then stopping.
It was a wall.
Or rather, something that looked like a wall. They felt along it for a few seconds, then pushed hard—the wall split open.
They pushed me through, then came through themselves.
I dropped to my knees, gasping.
The smoke was gone. The alarms were distant. I looked up and found myself in a small alley. Above was the night sky—a real night sky, with stars. Behind me was a high wall. In front was an alley so narrow only one person could pass.
That person crouched beside me, waiting until I'd caught my breath before speaking: "Can you walk?"
I looked at them. Smoke had blackened their face, but those eyes—the left normal, the right hollow—were even clearer in the moonlight.
"Who are you?" I asked. "Just now... did you just open that wall with your bare hands?"
They didn't answer. Just stood and walked deeper into the alley. After a few steps, they stopped and looked back at me:
"You have two choices. First, go back inside that wall and continue being the Gu Yunqi in your memory. Second, come with me and find the truth."
They pulled that silver dollar from their pocket and held it up in the moonlight: "Someone asked me to rescue you. His name is Liao Hua."
Liao Hua.
My childhood friend. My lawyer.
I grabbed the wall and stood up, legs still weak, but something in my mind urged me—go, go now, miss this chance and you'll never know the truth.
I walked toward him.
At the end of the alley, a black car waited. We got in. The car started, gliding silently into the night.