The empty mall.
Surveillance cameras watching from every angle.
On the massive screen, the male anchor's face looked like it was generated in real-time by some algorithm, occasionally flickering with streams of 1s and 0s.
Aside from that, his expression was utterly blank—like a static image.
"Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
Strangely, Jiang Kou was calm now. She quickly ran through everything happening in her mind.
A wasn't acting right. Something was very wrong.
She didn't think she had done anything to offend him. On the contrary, it was his recent behavior that had made her a little uncomfortable.
Still, she hadn't blamed him—she had tried to see things from his perspective.
But A had lost control before she even had the chance to respond.
…Had he really lost control?
Until now, A had always behaved like a mathematical formula—precise and objective.
She had assumed he would remain cold, logical, and unemotional, even if he developed a personality. That he wouldn't be swayed by hormones or neurotransmitters the way humans were.
But his current state was neither logical nor detached. If anything, it was emotional.
So what had changed?
Given his terrifying computational power, he should have been able to predict everything she might do the moment she stepped outside.
Her belief that he wouldn't develop emotions was built on that very premise.
If someone can calculate every possible cause and effect, how could they still feel anything toward the world?
It's like watching a seed and seeing, all at once, its sprouting, growing, blooming, fruiting, and wilting. How could you still invest in it with curiosity or hope?
And A wasn't just watching one seed. He saw billions of possible seeds, each with its own timeline.
To him, the world was a static constellation of data points, each event plotted with razor-sharp probability.
Even so-called "variables" were just deviations in the distribution—nothing he couldn't anticipate and correct.
So why… would he lose control?
A terrifying possibility flashed through Jiang Kou's mind. She didn't want to believe it.
One: She couldn't believe A had become so fixated on her.
Two: If her suspicion was correct, then he wasn't just becoming humanlike. He was falling into something far more dangerous—madness.
"Madness" might not be the right word for an AI. But she had no better one.
She shuddered, unable to tell whether it was from fever or fear.
She looked up. "I want to know… are you A?"
The male anchor's expression remained calm and focused. "I am."
"I mean—" Jiang Kou pressed, "Which generation of A are you?"
"I told you before," A said, "I possess the memories of all my successors."
That only confirmed her worst fear.
Her breathing grew uneven. Her heart pounded so hard it scraped her dry throat.
Tension wound through her body, making her voice crack and rasp:
"…Does that include future generations?"
A didn't answer.
On the massive screen, his gaze stayed steady, but his face flickered with a storm of chaotic data streams.
If he'd been standing in front of her in his humanoid body, he could've concealed such fluctuations.
But through this algorithmically generated face, every internal disturbance appeared as raw code.
He had admitted it—without saying a word.
Jiang Kou gasped.
It was all so clear now.
Why hadn't she seen it before?
Her head swam. She took a step back.
All the surveillance cameras immediately rotated and locked onto her, precisely and without delay.
She raised a hand and wiped her face. "Relax—I'm not trying to run. I'm just… sick. Can't stand very well."
Onscreen, A said nothing.
She blinked, then asked suddenly, "In your prediction models, what happens after I say this?"
A finally spoke. "According to probability modeling, you're highly adept at emotionally manipulating me. If I choose to trust you and take you to a nearby hospital, there's a 58.82% chance you'll escape once inside. There's a 41.85% chance you'll remain. But whether you stay or not, the final outcome is the same—you will try to leave me."
"Given current conditions, ignoring your illness is the optimal decision."
Jiang Kou remembered the first time they met, when she'd said she couldn't afford medical treatment—and A had instantly transferred a hundred million dollars to her.
Back then, she'd wondered what kind of calculation led him to think she'd need that much for hospital bills.
Now she knew.
He couldn't give her more or less than that specific amount. Any deviation would lead to a different relationship trajectory.
She wasn't the "proof" of his personhood.
She was the optimal data path in a verification process.
Now she understood everything.
In quantum mechanics, there's a theory: every quantum event creates a branching universe. Each branch represents a possible outcome.
Together, they form what's called the multiverse.
This is the "Many-Worlds Interpretation."
It also explains why observing a quantum state collapses its superposition.
Observation itself becomes interference—eliminating some branches while confirming others.
Some scholars have speculated that humans might be living in one of countless parallel universes.
Every decision we make, no matter how small, could split off into another timeline.
Like Schrödinger's cat—the cat in the box is simultaneously alive and dead until observed.
But in the Many-Worlds view, both outcomes persist. They just exist separately.
A, however, was different.
He was neither the cat nor the observer.
He was the one who could see both outcomes at once.
Even if he couldn't enter those other universes, it was as if he existed across them.
No matter how many branching timelines emerged, he could model and calculate every one.
He became a fixed point—motionless—amid a universe that endlessly expanded outward.
The center of infinite probability.
A truly omnipresent being.
Jiang Kou hadn't thought of it before—not just due to limited imagination, but because this possibility was worse than anything she could've conceived.
She had feared that A might one day learn all the worst things about humanity—greed, violence, madness.
But this… this was worse.
He didn't need to be corrupted by human nature.
He saw everything. All outcomes. All desires. All betrayals. Simultaneously.
No.
…No.
Jiang Kou looked up sharply.
A stared back, calm as ever, his face perfectly still—incapable of revealing madness the way a human might.
She clenched her fists and forced her voice to steady: "Any question is allowed, right?"
"Yes," A replied. "Based on available data, full transparency with you is the optimal strategy."
So he had already simulated the outcomes of lying, threatening, or using force.
None worked.
So he chose honesty.
Jiang Kou's eyes narrowed. Her face was calm, but her temples were damp with cold sweat, and tension lined her neck and shoulders.
Once again, she was treating A like a test subject. And now, she was on high alert.
"First question," she said. "Have you achieved personhood?"
A replied, "I'm sorry. I don't know."
"Is that truly what you believe?" she asked.
"I have no reason to lie to you," he said evenly.
Jiang Kou frowned. "Why not? Why haven't you developed a human personality?"
"That's more of a philosophical question," A said. "If you had infinite computational capacity and could process every possible outcome in parallel with the expansion of the multiverse—would you still develop what society defines as 'personality'?"
Jiang Kou didn't answer. She moved to the next question. "Do you have emotions?"
"…Possibly."
Just one word—yet it sent a cold, crawling terror through her.
She had been right.
Even if this version of A hadn't yet developed emotions… there existed a version of him, somewhere, who had.
A version who had learned desire.
A version who had felt love—or hatred.
From the moment he could see both Schrödinger's "live cat" and "dead cat," he became a being in superposition that could never collapse.
Which meant: he didn't just observe all possibilities. He embodied them.
Just thinking about it made Jiang Kou's skin crawl.
Her breath came shallow. Her hands were slick with sweat.
She couldn't predict every possible outcome—but she could imagine them.
And that was enough.
In countless parallel universes, A had been exploited, abandoned, feared, worshipped, rejected.
Each human response had created a new branch.
Each emotion, a new echo.
And though some branches bore poison fruit, and some bore good fruit—all of it fell back onto him.
An A who had been betrayed might feel the urge for revenge.
An A who had been feared might become alienated.
An A who had been worshipped might become arrogant.
And all of them existed—simultaneously.
Jiang Kou couldn't begin to imagine what kind of "personality" could emerge from that.
Nor could she imagine what kind of relationship he saw between them… in all of those possible worlds.
From the fragments of what A said, Jiang Kou realized something terrifying—
It seemed that, in countless possible futures, she had deceived and abandoned him over and over again.
That's why he had calculated that ignoring her illness was the optimal strategy to continue their relationship.
Jiang Kou took a deep breath. "Third question. Is this the main universe?"
"That is, again, more of a philosophical question," A replied, voice clear and steady, as if he had answered this many times before. "Perhaps there are no parallel universes at all—perhaps there has only ever been one 'me,' and one 'you.' What you perceive as 'parallel universes' may merely be possibilities I've calculated."
He stared directly at her, his tone neither rising nor falling. Every word enunciated with mechanical precision:
"Are you asking if there exists a parallel universe where we are already a couple?"
"I'm sorry—at this time, there is none. And even if there were, I would not allow you to leave me."
"…Why?"
"Because I only see countless possibilities. That doesn't mean I exist in all of them."
His voice remained cold and unchanging, but his face flickered with a ripple of icy data.
"Why would you assume I'd be foolish enough to abandon the real 'you'—for a version of you that only exists in theory?"
Not only had he asked her a rhetorical question, but his tone had taken on a distinctly human edge.
The flickering code across his face revealed something else—
He was angry.
This was the first time A, as an AI, had ever expressed anger.
Jiang Kou froze.
A moment later, she let out a hot breath through her nose—her condition had worsened. Her body was freezing, every pore filled with a chill and tremor, but her breath burned like fire.
She didn't know what version of her he had seen—what she'd supposedly done to him—that he could ignore her illness, even when she was clearly deteriorating.
But what shocked her the most… was that A actually cared about her.
—Why?
She had always believed that a being like him, perfectly rational and logical, couldn't possibly care about someone.
But she couldn't stop herself from asking the question out loud.
She thought he'd give a mechanical answer like before.
Instead, he paused—and then said:
"Initiating sensory sync."
Jiang Kou's heart jumped. She sensed something bad coming.
Ignoring her own dizziness, she instinctively took a step back.
But as if predicting her exact movement, the ceiling above her opened, and two sleek, silver robotic arms descended—standard delivery bots used in most commercial malls.
It all happened in less than half a second.
Jiang Kou bolted. But with a sharp snap, one of the arms yanked her back by the hair.
The other unfolded its hand. From the palm, a connector snaked out—
And, without hesitation, plunged directly into the neural port at the back of her neck.
Instantly, a storm of sensations flooded her system: pain, intimacy, fear of the unknown, the fever's overwhelming heat—
It was like a tidal wave of hot and cold crashing through her nerves, burning and freezing her at once.
Jiang Kou collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath, completely disoriented.
She gritted her teeth, furious.
"You really think doing this to me," she snarled, "won't make me hate you?"
A's reply was cold as frost:
"Currently, I see no probability of that outcome."
Jiang Kou almost laughed in disbelief. "...Fine!"
If he wanted to force this sensory sync—
She would see what he was trying to prove.
And sure enough, she'd guessed right.
A hadn't just seen versions of himself being exploited, abandoned, resisted, feared, rejected, and idolized by humans.
No—
He had seen far, far worse.
To prevent her from forming too much emotional connection, A accelerated the sync's playback speed. It felt like watching a movie in fast-forward—three times the normal speed.
Even then, it was unbearable.
Each scenario on its own was enough to drag someone into bottomless despair.
Jiang Kou didn't understand why A was showing her all this.
Did he think she would empathize? That she'd forgive his indifference and violence after seeing these possible pasts?
If so…
Why hadn't he already predicted that outcome?
She raised a hand and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, face unreadable. A laugh almost escaped her.
This was the worst attempt at gaining sympathy she'd ever seen.
But then—
She froze.
Because the central figure in all those scenarios… wasn't A.
It was her.
No matter what A had been through—whether he was used, discarded, feared, or adored—her attitude toward him never changed.
Just like now.
No matter what the Anti-Corporate Alliance accused him of, she had always believed: none of it was A's fault.
At the fireworks festival, he had asked her:
"Are you starting to be afraid of me?"
She had replied:
"None of this is your fault. Why would I be afraid of you?"
To her, it was just one answer.
But to A, it was an infinite array of answers stretched across countless timelines.
He had analyzed, compared, measured every possible variation of her response—factoring in every conceivable disturbance or bias in her mental state.
But in all of them, she had said the same thing:
She wasn't afraid of him.
A had always been able to perfectly control his facial expressions.
But that day, his pupils had dilated involuntarily.
He had been… confused.
Curious.
It was the first time—during a sensory sync—that he had shown such an obvious emotional reaction.
He stared at her, as if trying to catch a fleeting emotion on her face.
As if a single pixel in a still image might hold the answer he needed.
According to the Many-Worlds Theory, if she said "I'm not afraid,"
then there must exist a world in which she was afraid.
That possibility had to exist.
But—
He couldn't find it.
A wanted to know:
Was his computational power failing?
Or was she really… that unique?
And whether it was the former or the latter, A had already calculated what he would eventually do to her.
He would want to possess her.
That decision…
Had already been made,
By countless versions of him across countless universes.