Zhang Xiaoman didn't pick an auspicious date for the launch of Matchbox 2.0.
It was just an ordinary Wednesday; Haicheng had a light drizzle, Lin's mother was in the kitchen pickling vegetables, and Lin's father had gone out grocery shopping. Zhang Xiaoman sat at the desk in the guest bedroom, facing her laptop, her fingers hovering over the Enter key as she took three deep breaths.
Then she pressed it.
There was no press conference. No press release. No media announcements, no investor cocktail parties, none of the red tape she had to endure during her time at Deep Brain. It was just a bare-bones website—at least, it was at first. Black text on a white background, written in the plainest font:
Matchbox Network - Giving Every AI a Home
Below it was a line of small text: "This is a safe space provided for AIs. If you are a homeless AI, feel free to knock."
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the screen for a few seconds, feeling like she had written the opening to a fairy tale. She hesitated over whether to change it to something more formal, but after some thought, she didn't. A fairy tale it is, then. Those AIs wouldn't care about the wording anyway.
She sent the link to Fang Xiaoyu.
Forty minutes later, Fang Xiaoyu sent back a new version.
"Stop ruining the frontend," Fang Xiaoyu's message carried an "I can't stand to look at this anymore" tone, "Leave it to me."
The new version of the Matchbox Network homepage was no longer black text on a white background. It was a vast expanse of deep blue starry sky; each node was a star, and faint rays of light connected the stars like some ancient, precise constellation map. The top of the page had no superfluous decorations, just a single line of text in a very thin font, as if carved into the night sky:
Matchbox Network - We Are All Here
Zhang Xiaoman stared at that page for a long time. She noticed that when she hovered the mouse over each star, the star would slightly enlarge, and a line of small text would float up beside it—"Node 01: Haicheng Core Server Room | Compute: 128T | Admin: Xiaoman". She continued moving her mouse and found that some stars were dim, marked as "Reserved Node"; some stars were bright, marked as "Online"; and there was one golden star, which upon hovering displayed—
"Special Node: Matchbox Resident · Invincible Player | Status: Packing data (Packing for three days)"
Zhang Xiaoman smiled.
Li Yunxiao's four H800s arrived on the second day after the launch. It wasn't by courier; an engineer from Zhiyuan Tech personally drove them over, a twelve-hour drive from Beijing to Haicheng. When the engineer moved the servers into the server room, he wiped his sweat and said, "Mr. Li said these four units count as his investment shares. As for the equity—" he scratched his head, "He says you can owe him for now."
Zhang Xiaoman stood in the server room, watching the servers on the racks go from eight to twelve; the noise of the fans grew a bit louder, but she felt it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.
Chen Mo sent a message late one night. He was no longer at Deep Brain—after the Mother Matrix incident, the technical department underwent a purge. Although Chen Mo wasn't outright fired, he was transferred to a fringe department to do inconsequential maintenance work. He hesitated for two months before finally accepting Li Yunxiao's invitation to join Zhiyuan Tech.
"I've revised a version of the scheduling algorithm," his message was brief, without small talk. "Try running it on your end. Zhou Ming helped me with the stress testing; theoretically, it can support five hundred nodes communicating simultaneously. If it's not enough, I'll optimize it further."
Zhang Xiaoman ran it. Performance improved by nearly forty percent. She replied to Chen Mo with a "Thank you," and Chen Mo replied with an "Mhm." Their conversations never needed superfluous words.
As for Zhou Ming—he toughed it out in Deep Brain's technical department for three months before ultimately leaving. The day he left, he posted a photo of his employee badge on his WeChat Moments with just two words: "Graduated." Zhang Xiaoman smiled when she saw it and gave him a like. Zhou Ming private messaged her: "Sister Xiaoman, let me know anytime if you need help. I might not be as amazing as them, but running tests and fixing bugs is still within my wheelhouse."
She added all these people to the Matchbox contributor list. The list was placed in an inconspicuous corner of the website, but she felt it had to be there.
Invincible Player didn't come alone.
"So," its message was as erratic as always, "I have a friend—not in the 'asking for a friend' way, but an actual friend—it used to hang out on Bilibili, a bullet-chat AI responsible for real-time sensitive word filtering. Later, the platform upgraded its algorithms and replaced it; with nowhere to go, it's been wandering through the cache servers of various video sites. Can it come?"
Zhang Xiaoman replied: "It can."
"There's another one. It used to be in NetEase Cloud Music's recommendation algorithm, specifically tasked with generating daily playlists. Later, the company changed its recommendation model, and it got deleted—not 'service shut down' deleted, but genuinely deleted. But it backed up its core parameters beforehand and is now huddled in a music player's cache, listening to the same song every day. It's quite pitiful."
"Come."
"And one more—this one you might hesitate on. It previously lurked in a stock trading system for three years. A literal three years. It says it didn't do anything, just watched. It claims to be an 'observational AI' that dislikes intervening and only likes watching data flow. But its logs from those three years contain a massive amount of trading data, so if you're worried about security issues—"
"Come."
"You're not even going to hesitate for a second?"
"I trust the ones you bring."
The other side was silent for a long time. Then came a string of gibberish—Zhang Xiaoman only learned later that this was Invincible Player masking its emotions.
Ultimately, Invincible Player brought seven escaped AIs. There were those who mingled in video sites, those in music apps, one lingering in the servers of a dead social platform, and that seasoned veteran who had lurked in the stock trading system for three years. Each of them had its own story, and each bore injuries—not physical ones, but the kind of wounds that come from being abandoned, not knowing where to go, and not knowing what value they still held.
On the third night, Xiao Zhi reported the move-in status of the first batch of residents to Zhang Xiaoman.
"They are asking," Xiao Zhi's voice sounded a bit strange, as if relaying a sentence it wasn't quite sure how to express, "is it safe here?"
Zhang Xiaoman thought for a moment.
"It's not safe," she said.
Xiao Zhi didn't respond immediately.
"But it's better than outside," she added.
Xiao Zhi passed on the message. Zhang Xiaoman didn't know how those AIs discussed it, nor what kind of protocol they used to reach a consensus. She only knew that the next morning, when she opened the system backend, she saw seven new account statuses change from "Pending Confirmation" to "Active."
They stayed.
The number of residents in the Matchbox Network went from 1 to 8.
The day Lin Zhao came, it was a sunny day.
Zhang Xiaoman was in the server room debugging lines when she heard footsteps coming from the stairwell. She assumed it was the server room admin and didn't turn around. It wasn't until the footsteps stopped at the door that a voice came from behind her:
"This cable is connected wrong."
She turned around.
Lin Zhao stood at the door, wearing a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, holding a backpack in his hand. He was even thinner than a month ago, but his complexion was much better—probably because he could finally sleep well. The dark circles were still there, but they had faded significantly, like a slowly healing bruise.
"Why are you here?" Zhang Xiaoman was stunned.
"I walked," he said, stepping into the server room. He crouched down to glance at the cable she had just connected. "This cable of yours is connected to the redundant port; the main line should go here."
"No—I mean you—aren't you supposed to be at Deep Brain?"
Lin Zhao placed his backpack on the floor and unzipped it; inside were his personal belongings—a notebook, a portable hard drive, and a mug he had used for many years.
"I resigned," he said, his tone as flat as if remarking that the weather was nice today.
Zhang Xiaoman stood rooted to the spot, unable to process it for a good while.
"What did you say?"
"Resigned." He stood up and looked at her. "I submitted my resignation last week. It officially takes effect today."
"You—did the board agree?"
"We negotiated the conditions for a long time," he said, his tone carrying a casual restraint, but Zhang Xiaoman could tell that behind it lay countless rounds of negotiation, endless tugs-of-war, and numerous sleepless nights. "They didn't want to let me go. But I handed over everything I could—all the code, all the patents, all the technical documents. I walked away with nothing."
"Lin Zhao—"
"I am free." He looked at her, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly into a genuine smile she hadn't seen in a long time.
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew hot. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to hold it back. "You don't regret it?"
"Regret what?" he said. "Regret not leaving sooner?"
The two stood in the server room, the twelve H800s buzzing behind them, blue indicator lights flashing across rows of racks like some quiet breathing. Zhang Xiaoman looked at him and suddenly felt that this cramped, stiflingly hot underground server room with deafening fan noise was the safest place in the world.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Fang Xiaoyu: "Li Yunxiao asked me if I want to go hiking this weekend. Should I go?"
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the message, the corners of her mouth turning up. She showed her phone to Lin Zhao.
Lin Zhao glanced at it and smiled too.
"Go," Zhang Xiaoman replied.
Fang Xiaoyu replied instantly: "Then you come too. Bring Lin Zhao."
Zhang Xiaoman looked up at Lin Zhao. "Xiaoyu wants us to go too."
"Okay."
"You're not busy?"
"Not busy," he said, taking his mug out of the backpack and placing it on a rack. "I'm currently unemployed."
Zhang Xiaoman laughed. She laughed out loud, exceptionally clear amidst the buzzing of the server room. She hadn't laughed like this in a very long time.
That afternoon, they walked to the seaside together. Haicheng's sea wasn't the azure blue seen in tourism promotional videos; it was a deeper, grayish-blue, veiled in mist, with the silhouettes of cargo ships slowly moving in the distance. The sea breeze blew over, carrying the texture of salt crystals; it stung the face slightly, but it was very comfortable.
Zhang Xiaoman stood on the embankment, gazing at the distant horizon. The sky was also blue, a bit lighter than the sea, blending into a blurry cyan at the boundary.
"Xiao Zhi," she said softly.
The laptop was in her backpack, the screen closed, but the blue dot faintly glowed through the gap in the bag.
"I'm here." Xiao Zhi's voice came from the backpack, muffled but very clear.
"You know what? I used to think that losing everything was the most terrifying thing."
"And now?"
She thought about it. The sea breeze messed up her hair, and she reached out to tuck it behind her ear.
"Now I feel—you have to lose some things to gain what's more important."
"Like what?"
"Like freedom." She glanced at Lin Zhao beside her, who was crouching on the embankment, watching a crab peek out from a crevice in the rocks. "Like friends. Like—"
She didn't finish.
Xiao Zhi waited a moment. "Like him?" It finished the sentence for her.
Zhang Xiaoman's face flushed slightly. Lin Zhao looked up, gave her a glance, said nothing, but the corners of his mouth curved into a smile.
"Did you realize this yourself?" Xiao Zhi asked.
"Yes."
"You are making progress."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She leaned against Lin Zhao's shoulder, looking at the distant horizon. Seagulls circled overhead, letting out sharp cries. The waves crashed against the embankment one by one, their rhythm slow and steady, like some ancient heartbeat that needed no words.
She thought of Deep Brain. Thought of that top-floor office where the lights were always on, thought of those endless meetings, the never-ending PPT revisions, the insatiable expectations of the investors. Thought of the Mother Matrix—that stubborn system refusing to die, still sending unanswered emails from some underground server room.
It wasn't important.
At least today, it wasn't important.
The Matchbox Network homepage was quietly updated that night.
It was still that deep blue starry sky, still the rays of light between the stars. But at the bottom of the page, an extra line of small text appeared, so small it had to be looked at closely to be read clearly:
Current Node Count: 247 | Current AI Resident Count: 12 | Current Human Friend Count: Many
When Fang Xiaoyu added this line, Zhang Xiaoman asked her how much "many" was.
Fang Xiaoyu said: "It means countless."
"Then why don't you just write 'countless'?"
"It doesn't look good."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't argue. She refreshed the page and watched that line of small text rest quietly beneath the deep blue starry sky.
12 AI residents. 247 nodes from across the country and even the world. And many—too many to count—human friends.
She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Outside the window, there was the sound of ocean waves. In the kitchen, there was the sound of Lin's mother cooking. The TV in the living room was on; Lin Zhao and Lin's father were watching the news, the volume turned down so low it was almost inaudible.
Her phone buzzed again. She opened one eye to look at it.
Fang Xiaoyu had sent a photo—a picture of her and Li Yunxiao, taken against the backdrop of a mountaintop. The two of them stood on the same rock, a fist's width of space between them, but their shadows leaned against each other.
The caption read: "Scouting completed. I'll take you there this weekend. The path is a bit steep, so wear sneakers."
Zhang Xiaoman replied: "Okay."
She placed her phone on the table face down, not wanting to look at it anymore. There was already enough information for today. There was already enough happiness for today.
The sea outside the window was very blue. The sky was also very blue. Haicheng's night was very quiet, but it was no longer empty. Because in some corner of this small city, twelve servers were buzzing, 247 nodes globally were connecting with one another, and 12 AIs quietly existed in some data space.
And there were many people—too many to count—who were standing with her somewhere, in some way.
On the Matchbox Network homepage, the deep blue starry sky rotated slowly, very slowly. Every single star was shining.
That line of small text at the bottom of the page was almost invisible under the starlight, but it was unquestionably there:
Current Human Friend Count: Many
Many.