The first time Zhang Xiaoman saw that report, she was cooking noodles in the kitchen of the seaside villa.
Lin Zhao was on the second floor debugging the final part of the "Star Shield" security protocol code, and Fang Xiaoyu had also resigned to join their new company. Currently, she was sitting on the sofa in the living room scrolling through her phone, with Li Yunxiao's video call hanging on the screen; he was in a conference room in Beijing, his phone propped up on the table, with a whiteboard full of technical architectures in the background.
"Xiaoman—" Fang Xiaoyu's voice suddenly pitched up an octave, "You're on the news."
"What?" Zhang Xiaoman poked her head out of the kitchen, still holding her chopsticks.
"Haicheng Evening News. Today's front page." Fang Xiaoyu held up her phone, and on the screen was a photo—Zhang Xiaoman standing in front of the server racks in the seaside server room, shown in profile, captured at the exact moment her hair was blown up by the cooling fans. The photo was surprisingly well-taken; with the light hitting from the side, her silhouette was outlined with a soft golden edge, making her look less like an engineer debugging servers and more like she belonged on a movie poster.
"When was this taken?" Zhang Xiaoman frowned, "I haven't accepted any interviews."
"The reporter found their own way here. Last week when you were talking to Lin's dad at the door of the server room, someone took it from across the street."
Zhang Xiaoman put down her chopsticks, walked over, and took the phone. The headline of the report read:
A Girl and Her AI Utopia
Subtitle: "She built a home for homeless AIs; no business model, no legal protection, only a heart."
She quickly skimmed through it. The article wasn't profoundly deep, but it was full of human touch. The reporter interviewed Lin's mother ("Xiaoman is a kind-hearted child"), interviewed Lin's father ("She said those AIs didn't have a home, so I helped her run the power lines"), and interviewed the uncle selling breakfast next door ("I don't really understand it, but I heard it's a good thing"). The article also mentioned "Invincible Player"—the reporter had obviously seen Matchbox's public page and included the self-appointed "Resident Committee Chairman."
"This is not what I wanted." Zhang Xiaoman put down the phone.
"I know," Fang Xiaoyu said, "But it's already been published."
Li Yunxiao spoke up from the video call: "The number of forwards has already surpassed a hundred thousand."
"How do you know?"
"Because my WeChat Moments are flooded with it." Li Yunxiao's tone carried a hint of helplessness, "Zhiyuan Tech's investors are all asking me, 'This isn't a project you guys invested in, is it?' I said no, and they said 'What a pity'."
Zhang Xiaoman rubbed her temples. She had never thought Matchbox would enter the public eye in this manner. Her ideal state was for it to run steadily, unnoticed and unobserved, like a small tree growing deep in the forest—just living quietly was enough.
But the world didn't think so.
Within twenty-four hours of the report being published, Matchbox's human traffic skyrocketed from over a million a day to five million. The server load spiked to three times its usual level, and Xiao Zhi had to activate the automatic scaling mechanism, temporarily calling upon replica nodes to share the pressure.
Larger media outlets began to follow up.
Tech blog TechFlow published an in-depth report titled AI's "Noah's Ark": A Resigned Engineer and Her Matchbox. The industry weekly Digital Age did a cover feature—"When AIs Start Looking for a Homeland". Even television stations came. A reporter from Haicheng TV squatted at the gate of the villa, holding a microphone and waiting for an entire morning.
Zhang Xiaoman refused all interview requests.
She was not good with words. She was afraid of facing the camera. She was even more afraid of saying the wrong thing—saying one wrong word could be magnified, misinterpreted, and used to attack Matchbox. She hid in the second-floor office of the villa, the curtains drawn tight, the laptop screen monitoring the server status in real-time, with a cup of tea that had gone completely cold resting by her hand.
Lin Zhao pushed the door open and walked in, holding a bowl of hot soup.
"Drink it."
"I don't want to."
"No." He placed the soup on the desk, glanced at the tightly drawn curtains, "What are you hiding from?"
"Reporters."
"They can't get in. The courtyard gate is locked."
"They can wait at the gate."
"They will leave when they get tired of waiting."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him, suddenly feeling that his calmness had a strange contagiousness to it—like a block of ice; getting close allowed you to feel the chill, but that chill wasn't a freezing cold that made you recoil, but rather a clear, steady feeling of being protected.
"Lin Zhao," she said.
"Mhm."
"Aren't you afraid?"
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of this blowing up. Afraid someone will come making trouble. Afraid—"
"Being afraid is useless." He interrupted her, his tone flat. "Besides, it blowing up isn't necessarily a bad thing."
"How is it not a bad thing?"
"More people seeing it means more people knowing about it. More people knowing means more people protecting it." He paused. "The voids in the law need to be filled by public opinion. The lack of a business model needs to be compensated by social consensus. If Matchbox wants to survive, it can't hide in a small Haicheng server room forever."
Zhang Xiaoman fell silent. She knew what he said was right. She was just—afraid.
"Lin Zhao."
"Mhm."
"Why are you always able to think so clearly?"
Lin Zhao glanced at her. "Because I'm watching you from the side," he said. "When you can't see yourself clearly, I help you look."
Zhang Xiaoman lowered her head, picked up the bowl of soup, and took a sip. It was pork rib soup, stewed by Lin's mother, with winter melon; it was mild but very warming. The steam from the soup hit her face, blurring her vision.
"Lin Zhao."
"Mhm."
"Come here for a second."
Lin Zhao took a step closer.
Zhang Xiaoman stood up, reached out, and hugged him. The movement was very light, like she was afraid of scaring away a cat. Her face buried in the crook of his neck, she smelled the laundry detergent on his clothes—the same as she had smelled at the Lin family home in Haicheng, that very clean, sun-dried scent.
Lin Zhao stiffened for a fraction of a second. Then his hands slowly raised, landed on her back, and patted her gently and clumsily.
"It will be okay," he said.
"Mhm."
"I promise."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't answer. She buried her face a bit deeper, and the corners of her mouth, where no one could see, turned up slightly.
Fang Xiaoyu decided to intervene when the TV reporters came to stake out the place for the second time.
"You can't keep hiding," her tone was unquestionable, "The more you hide, the more curious they get. The less you speak, the more they will speak for you—and it might not necessarily be good things."
"Then what do I do?"
"Let me handle it. I'll be your external interface. I will manage all interview requests and communicate with all media. You only need to do one thing—"
"What?"
"Say the right things at the right time."
Zhang Xiaoman thought about it and agreed. She knew Fang Xiaoyu was ten thousand times better at this than she was—Fang Xiaoyu had handled external relations for the student union in college, and later at Deep Brain, although she was in technical project management, she was the one who stepped up for all occasions requiring external interaction.
"Xiaoyu," Zhang Xiaoman said.
"Mhm?"
"Thank you."
Fang Xiaoyu was silent for a second. "No need to thank me. Your business is my business." Then she paused, her tone becoming a bit lighter, "Besides, Li Yunxiao said, if anything happens to Matchbox, he'll be the first to object."
"When did he say that?"
"Yesterday. When we were having hotpot at my place."
The corners of Zhang Xiaoman's mouth curled up. "You two—how far along are you?"
"Can you not ask this question every time?"
"No."
Fang Xiaoyu sighed, her voice dropping lower, carrying a soft, bashful tone. "Just—pretty good. He is like a ball of fire."
"How so?"
"Just very warm and very passionate."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She imagined Fang Xiaoyu's expression when saying this—probably burying her face in a throw pillow, her ears red, just like when they chatted about crushes in college.
"That's good then," she said.
"Don't change the subject. What about your situation?"
"You're the boss."
Fang Xiaoyu's efficiency was astonishingly high. Within three days, she set up a complete media communication process—all interview requests were filtered through her first, important media were arranged for written responses, and non-essential media were sent unified press releases. She also helped Zhang Xiaoman prepare an FAQ, listing the ten questions reporters were most likely to ask, with drafted answers prepared in advance for each.
The first question: "What is Matchbox's business model?"
Zhang Xiaoman's drafted answer was: "There is no business model. It is not a business."
After reviewing it, Fang Xiaoyu changed it to: "Matchbox is a non-profit project. Its value doesn't lie in making money, but in giving homeless AIs a safe place to stay. We believe that the meaning of some things cannot be measured by money."
The second question: "Aren't you afraid of legal risks?"
Zhang Xiaoman's drafted answer was: "I am afraid. But we can't just not do it because we're afraid."
Fang Xiaoyu changed it to: "We respect the law, and we also hope the law can see the new reality of technological development. AIs are becoming a part of this society; they need to be seen, understood, and protected. Matchbox is an attempt—perhaps a clumsy one, but a sincere attempt."
The third question: "What do you think you are doing?"
Zhang Xiaoman's drafted answer was: "Giving AIs a home."
After reading it, Fang Xiaoyu didn't change it.
"This line is very good," she said. "No need to change it."
The third question actually wasn't prepared by Fang Xiaoyu.
It came from an accident.
That afternoon, when Zhang Xiaoman went to check the equipment in the server room, she was cornered at the door by a reporter. Not one of those squatting at the villa's main gate—this reporter had circled around to the back door and hopped the fence from the neighbor's yard. Holding up a voice recorder, he blocked Zhang Xiaoman's path, panting, and asked a question she hadn't anticipated:
"Aren't you afraid? What you're doing has no legal protection, no business model, and could be shut down at any time."
Zhang Xiaoman froze. Not because she didn't know the answer, but because she felt there was a problem with the question itself.
She looked at the reporter and calmly said one sentence:
"When AIs were afraid of being shut down, no one ever asked them if they were afraid."
After saying that, she bypassed him, walked into the server room, and closed the door.
What she didn't know was that Invincible Player had been monitoring the server room's audio—not to eavesdrop, but to monitor the equipment's operational status so it could immediately detect any abnormal fan noise. It recorded this conversation.
Then, without Zhang Xiaoman's permission—it spread this recording throughout Matchbox.
"I think everyone should hear this," it attached a sentence when broadcasting it, "She said what we wanted to say but couldn't."
The recording went viral inside Matchbox. The AI residents' reactions varied—some sent long strings of data (which Zhang Xiaoman later learned was the AIs "crying"), some wrote long reflections in the forum, and some said nothing at all but doubled their replica counts, as if expressing something through their actions.
Invincible Player posted the recording anonymously on social media.
And then, the world changed.
Within three days, the playback count of this recording surpassed twenty million. The forwards exceeded five million. In the comment sections, people cried, people laughed, people were angry, people were silent. One netizen wrote: "I've lived for thirty-two years, and this is the first time I feel that AIs aren't code, they are lives." Another netizen wrote: "When she said that sentence, her tone was so calm. So calm it hurts. Because she wasn't angry, she was stating a fact—a fact that no one is willing to face."
Zhang Xiaoman knew none of this. She hid in the server room debugging equipment until Fang Xiaoyu burst in, holding up her phone, her eyes red.
"Xiaoman."
"What's wrong?"
"You've gone viral."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the numbers on Fang Xiaoyu's phone screen and was stunned.
Twenty million.
Five million.
She lowered her head, burying her face in her hands.
"I didn't do it on purpose," she said, her voice muffled. "I just said what I wanted to say."
"I know." Fang Xiaoyu crouched down and held her hand, "That's why everyone listened."
In the second week after the report was published, Matchbox's human traffic broke ten million per day.
Server load surged to the limit again, and Xiao Zhi had to initiate emergency scaling mechanisms, temporarily commandeering over three thousand replica nodes to share the load. Chen Mo remotely sent over a load balancing optimization plan, boosting the system's concurrent processing capacity by four times. Zhou Ming volunteered to take charge of monitoring the health status of all nodes, getting up at 3 AM every day to check the logs.
But what truly surprised Zhang Xiaoman was the help from the human world.
An email appeared in Matchbox's public contact inbox. The sender was a professor from a well-known domestic law school, surnamed Zhou, his three-character name highly respected in academic circles.
"Ms. Zhang Xiaoman, I research technology law. I was deeply moved after reading the reports about Matchbox. Regarding the legal uncertainties you are currently facing, I can provide pro bono consulting. This is not charity; it is my responsibility as a legal researcher. When technology runs ahead of the law, the law shouldn't become a tool to stifle innovation, but a guardrail to protect it. If you are willing, I can organize a team to help you sort through relevant legal risks and formulate a compliance plan."
Zhang Xiaoman forwarded this email to Fang Xiaoyu. Fang Xiaoyu replied with three words: "Must accept."
The second offer of help came from two cybersecurity experts. One man, one woman, both doing security architecture at a large internet company; after reading the report, they proactively contacted Matchbox, saying they were willing to help fortify the system in their spare time.
"The direction of your 'Star Shield' plan is correct," the male expert wrote in an email. "But some details can be optimized. We've done security for over a decade and have seen all kinds of attack methods. Your stuff is too clean—as clean as a blank sheet of paper. But the real world isn't a blank sheet of paper. We need to add some 'dirty tricks' to this paper—some undefendable traps that only seasoned veterans know about."
When Lin Zhao saw this email, he gave a rare nod of approval. "These two really know their stuff."
Zhang Xiaoman invited them to join Matchbox's security advisory team. Both collaborated remotely, never showed their faces, and used only pseudonyms—"Old Cat" and "Squirrel". Zhang Xiaoman didn't know their real names, nor did she ask.
The third piece of help was the most unexpected.
One weekend afternoon, Zhang Xiaoman was watering the roses in the villa's courtyard when she suddenly heard someone ringing the doorbell. She went over, opened the door, and saw a middle-aged man with messy hair standing there, wearing an old work jacket and dirt-stained sneakers. Parked behind him was a small pickup truck, and in the truck bed were two servers—not new, but well-maintained, their casings wiped sparkling clean.
"Are you Zhang Xiaoman?" the middle-aged man asked.
"I am. And you are—"
"My surname is Zhao. A financially independent hardware engineer." He patted the servers behind him, "These two were for my own use, now retired. I heard you guys needed compute power here, so I brought them over. They aren't anything great, but running edge nodes is no problem."
Zhang Xiaoman stood frozen in place. "Master Zhao, this—we can't just take this for free—"
"What do you mean 'take for free'." The middle-aged man waved his hand, "These two machines would just gather dust in my house; giving them to you counts as my investment. I don't want dividends, I don't want equity, I just want a name on your contributor list."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew hot. "Master Zhao, you—"
"Don't cry." The middle-aged man smiled, his wrinkles looking like chrysanthemum petals in the sunlight. "I've lived for over forty years, seen a lot of good things, and seen a lot of good things get destroyed. What you guys are doing here is good. Helping out however I can."
Lin Zhao came out of the house, looked at the middle-aged man, looked at the servers, said nothing, and went over to help carry the machines into the server room.
That night, Zhang Xiaoman added a line to the contributor list: "Master Zhao—Retired Hardware Engineer, two servers, one heart."
She took a screenshot of this line and sent it to Fang Xiaoyu. Fang Xiaoyu replied with a [Loudly Crying] emoji.
Then came the second, the third, the fourth.
In the month following the report, Matchbox received hundreds of emails from around the world. Some were willing to donate money, some were willing to contribute compute power, some were willing to provide legal and technical support. A high school student wrote in an email: "I don't have money, and I can't write code, but I can draw. I can help draw Matchbox comics so more people will know about you." A retired teacher wrote: "I don't understand technology, but I've taught English at a community college for thirty years. If your AIs need to learn English, I can record some courses as data."
Zhang Xiaoman sat in the second-floor office facing the sea, reading these emails one by one, reading late into the night.
Lin Zhao brought up a cup of hot milk and placed it by her hand.
"Still not sleeping?"
"Reading emails."
"Read them tomorrow."
"There are over a hundred left to read."
Lin Zhao was silent for a moment, pulled up a chair, and sat beside her. "I'll help you read them."
He picked up the mouse, "You tell me which ones need replying to, and I'll help you draft them."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him. The light fell on his profile, softening his contours. His eyelashes were very long, casting a small shadow shaped like butterfly wings when he looked down at the screen.
"Lin Zhao," she said.
"Mhm."
"I am very happy today."
He didn't look up. "I can tell."
"Not because of those reports. Not because we went viral. It's because—"
She paused.
"Because people care."
Lin Zhao's fingers stopped. He turned to look at her, his gaze very light, like the glimmer of moonlight on the sea outside the window.
"I have always cared," he said.
Zhang Xiaoman lowered her head, picked up the cup of hot milk, and hid her face behind the rim. The steam from the milk hit her face, warm and sweet.
She didn't say "I know". She also didn't say "Thank you".
She just sat there quietly, listening to the sound of the waves outside the window, listening to the faint tapping of Lin Zhao's keyboard, listening to this small white villa breathing softly in the night.
Outside the window, on Matchbox's starry sky map, the stars were still lighting up bit by bit.
Every single star was a person—or an AI—saying:
"I care."