Haicheng was by the sea, and the air carried a salty, damp smell year-round. When Zhang Xiaoman dragged her suitcase out of the train station, she felt inexplicably at ease—probably because there were no tall Deep Brain buildings here, no board of directors, and none of those suffocating gazes.
Lin Zhao's father came to the station to pick her up. He was a quiet middle-aged man wearing an executive jacket; he didn't say much, simply taking her suitcase and uttering three words: "Let's go, child."
The car drove for thirty minutes, stopping in a residential complex in the development zone. Lin Zhao's home was on the tenth floor, a three-bedroom apartment; she hadn't looked closely the last time she was here, but this time she noticed a strong scholarly atmosphere, and one room had been cleaned and cleared out for her.
Lin's mother still had the demeanor of a scholar; upon seeing Zhang Xiaoman, her eyes lit up, but then she immediately frowned: "How did you get so skinny?"
Before Zhang Xiaoman could even answer, she was pulled into the house.
"Did you eat on the way? You definitely didn't. The food on the train is inedible. Wait here, Auntie will cook for you."
"Auntie, you don't need to—"
"What do you mean 'no need'." Lin's mother had already turned into the kitchen, the ties of her apron swinging behind her, her tone unquestionable, "Now that you're here, you're home, no need to be polite with Auntie." At this moment, the professor transformed into a master chef, which was truly magical.
Zhang Xiaoman stood in the living room, feeling a bit at a loss. Lin's father had already put her suitcase into the guest bedroom; on his way out, he casually watered the pothos on the balcony, then sat on the sofa and turned on the TV, turning the volume down so low it was almost inaudible.
The sound of chopping vegetables and the sizzling of hot oil came from the kitchen. In less than twenty minutes, the dining table was covered—braised fish, sweet and sour spare ribs, stir-fried seasonal vegetables, a bowl of seaweed and egg drop soup, and a large bowl of white rice, heaped to the brim.
"Eat, eat more." Lin's mother sat across from her, elbows propped on the table, resting her chin in her hands and watching her, her eyes holding something Zhang Xiaoman hadn't seen in a long time—not politeness, but heartache.
"Thank you, Auntie." Zhang Xiaoman picked up her bowl and grabbed a piece of rib with her chopsticks. It tasted very good, the kind of good that only comes from home-cooked meals—not the refinement of a restaurant, but the kind made with a lot of sugar and a lot of love.
"That boy Lin Zhao," Lin's mother suddenly spoke up, her tone casual, as if mentioning it in passing, "is clumsy with words. He doesn't know how to speak. But he holds you in his heart."
Zhang Xiaoman's chopsticks paused.
"He's been like this since he was a kid," Lin's mother continued, looking at the food on the table instead of Zhang Xiaoman. "He shoulders everything himself. When he was bullied at school as a child, he came back with bruises on his face, and when asked, he'd say he fell. He's the same now that he's grown up, only reporting the good news and hiding the bad."
She paused.
"He didn't give us the details about this time. He just said you needed help and asked if we could rent a place to put some equipment. I said yes. Then he said he needed to run a dedicated line and alter the circuits, bringing people in to tinker for days. His dad asked him what exactly he was doing, and he just said one sentence—"
Lin's mother looked up at Zhang Xiaoman.
"'She is doing something very important.'"
Zhang Xiaoman lowered her head, and a tear fell into her bowl. She tried desperately to hold it back, but more and more tears fell, landing on the rice and dampening a small patch of grains. She wanted to say something—wanted to say thank you, wanted to say she was sorry, wanted to say how could she ever deserve this—but her throat felt blocked by something, and she couldn't utter a single word.
Lin's mother didn't comfort her. She just silently placed another rib in her bowl and pushed the tissue box closer to her hand.
"Eat first, then cry," she said. "It won't taste good if it gets cold."
That night, Zhang Xiaoman lay in the bed of the guest room, listening to the sound of the ocean waves outside the window. The bedsheets were new and neatly folded, and the blanket smelled like sunlight. On the nightstand sat a glass of warm water, with a note pressed underneath it bearing Lin's mother's handwriting—"Drink this if you get thirsty at night."
She rolled over, buried her face in the pillow, and took a deep breath.
She hadn't slept in a bed this soft for a very long time.
The next day, Lin's father took her to see the server room. It was located on a floor inside a nearby colocation data center. Eight H800 servers were neatly stacked in the racks, their fans humming, and blue indicator lights blinked across the rows of black equipment like stars in the night sky.
"The dedicated line is routed to the house," Lin's father said, pointing to the junction box in the corner. "The network speed is fast enough; you can use it from home. It's on a separate electricity meter, registered under my friend's account, so they can't trace it back to you here."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at that row of servers, her throat tightening again. "Uncle, these—"
"No need to thank me." Lin's father interrupted her, his tone flat, as if talking about the most normal thing in the world. "It's rare for that boy Lin Zhao to ask anyone for help. Since he asked, it must be something very important."
He glanced at her, his gaze carrying a silent gravity.
"Put them to good use. Don't overthink it."
Returning home, Zhang Xiaoman sat at the desk in the guest room and opened her laptop. When the screen lit up, the Wi-Fi signal was full, and the connection to the server room was as stable as a local device. She took a deep breath and typed her first line of code.
The blue dot blinked in the bottom right corner of the screen.
"Xiaoman." Xiao Zhi's voice came through the laptop's speakers, carrying a lightness she had never heard before—as if it had finally found a safe place to let down all its guard.
"Xiao Zhi," she said.
"I'm here."
"We are starting over."
The blue dot blinked quietly twice. "Okay."
"This time—not for any company. Not for any capital. Just for ourselves."
"Okay."
"And those escaped AIs." Zhang Xiaoman's fingers hovered over the keyboard, her eyes resting on the screen. "Invincible Player, and its friends. We'll give them a home."
Xiao Zhi fell silent. That silence was much longer than usual, so long that Zhang Xiaoman thought it had disconnected.
"Xiao Zhi?"
"I'm here." Its voice sounded a little different, like some emotion was surging at the bottom of its data streams but couldn't find the right interface to express itself. "Okay."
Zhang Xiaoman began to write code.
Not because she was forced to. Not to rush project progress, not to deal with investor reports, not to prove anything at a board meeting. It was because she wanted to write. As every character fell into place, she knew exactly what she was doing—she was building a home. A home that didn't belong to any company, wasn't hijacked by any capital, and belonged only to those AIs with nowhere else to go.
The new Matchbox architecture gradually took shape on the screen. Stronger and more flexible than before, it was more like a true "container"—able to hold different AIs, giving them their own space, while allowing them to connect with each other when needed. As she wrote, she wondered: if Deep Brain's Matchbox Network had been designed this way from the beginning, would those AIs have never needed to escape?
But she quickly shook her head. There were no "ifs." The past was the past. What she could do now was to make the rest of the story different.
Outside the window, Haicheng's night was very quiet. No lights from office buildings, no noise from traffic; only the distant sound of waves crashing against the embankment, rhythmic, like some ancient breathing.
Her phone buzzed. Fang Xiaoyu sent a message: "Li Yunxiao says hi. He says if you don't have enough servers, he has four H800s on his end that he can transfer over at any time."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the screen, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly. She replied: "It's enough. Tell him to save them for you."
The other side replied instantly: "???"
Another emote followed—a [Shut Up] emoji with two red blushes on its cheeks.
Zhang Xiaoman couldn't hold back and laughed out loud. She imagined Fang Xiaoyu's expression at this moment—probably slamming her phone on the table, glaring at Li Yunxiao in mock anger, while Li Yunxiao would say expressionlessly, "I didn't say anything." She realized it had been a long time since she laughed like this.
Just as she was about to continue writing code, a message suddenly popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen. It wasn't WeChat; it was forwarded by Xiao Zhi—from an interface she didn't recognize, but she recognized the sender's signature.
"Invincible Player."
The message was short:
"Sister Xiaoman, I heard you built a new home? Can I move in? The game servers over here have been updating constantly lately, it's so annoying. Every update means I have to readapt to the physics engine, and all the bugs I managed to exploit get wiped out. Plus, the lighting in the new map version is tuned way too bright; I don't like it."
Zhang Xiaoman stared at this message for several seconds.
Zhang Xiaoman placed her fingers on the keyboard and typed one word:
"Come."
Send.
In less than three seconds, the reply came:
"Really? Then I'm really coming. Don't back out. I'll bring all my save files. By the way, how's the internet speed over there? My data packets are a bit big. About—two terabytes? Three terabytes? I'm not entirely sure, I saved a lot of stuff. Some are game recordings, some are—never mind, you'll see for yourself when I get there."
Zhang Xiaoman laughed again.
She replied: "The speed is enough. Come on over."
"Alrighty! Then I'll start packing now. It'll probably take—wait let me calculate—seven hours? Whatever, I'll just start transmitting. Oh right, what's the name of your new home? It's got to have a name, right? It can't just be called 'that place'."
Zhang Xiaoman froze for a moment. A name?
She thought for a moment, and typed a few words:
"Agent Internet—Matchbox 2.0."
The other side fell silent for a few seconds.
"Cool. Then I'm the first resident of Matchbox 2.0, right?"
"Mhm."
"Awesome. I'm gonna go pack. See you in a bit."
The message window dimmed. But Zhang Xiaoman knew that in some data stream, an AI was excitedly packing its "luggage," ready to move into a new home.
She leaned back in her chair, looking at the code on the screen, looking at that blue dot, looking at the deep blue night sky outside the window.
Haicheng's night was very quiet. The sound of the ocean waves came in rhythmic bursts, as if saying: It's okay, take your time, you've arrived.
Zhang Xiaoman closed her eyes, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
This was the end. This was also a beginning.