Jiang Kou had just recovered from a serious illness—though she might not have fully healed yet, and she was too lazy to argue about it.
She threw back the covers, weakly turned over, and got out of bed, heading toward the bathroom.
A asked, "May I ask what you intend to do?"
"Take a shower," Jiang Kou said without turning her head.
A said, "You are not fully recovered yet. You should avoid bathing."
Jiang Kou ignored him and kept walking toward the bathroom.
A stopped insisting.
But soon she understood why he didn't try to stop her anymore—no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't open the bathroom door.
A had locked it from the inside.
Jiang Kou wasn't someone who got angry easily, but these past few days had been so strange. First, she caught a cold; then she discovered A's true nature; got drenched by a heavy rain; was roughly restrained by a mechanical arm; and finally fainted.
Even after passing out, her tense nerves hadn't relaxed, and she kept having recurring nightmares until she finally woke up fully.
She hadn't expected A to be so extreme as to take away her right to take a shower.
What exactly did he see her as?
A person? An object?
A closely monitored test subject?
Jiang Kou closed her eyes and clenched her fists, but her mind flashed back to that day's kiss.
Night, fireworks, misty rain.
An empty dark alley, holographic ads playing on loop.
He asked if she could move on her own without orders, then bent down and pressed his lips against hers.
That pure and beautiful sensation seemed to linger on her lips.
But within less than two days, reality eroded that memory, making it blur like weathered stone.
If all of his actions were carefully calculated, could she still trust her own feelings?
He could instantly list all possibilities and constantly adjust and test to win her favor.
To him, her liking him was just a complex calculation simulation.
But she had given real feelings.
Jiang Kou suddenly felt dizzy and sat down on the floor, supporting her forehead with one hand.
A's emotionless voice sounded above her head: "Your current physical condition is not suitable for sitting on the floor. Please find a more comfortable position."
Jiang Kou replied bluntly, "Go away."
"You shouldn't be angry," A said. "I have not done anything with malicious intent."
If it had been him before, he might only say, "I have not done anything malicious. I don't understand why you're angry."
But now he used a commanding tone to tell her, "You should not be angry."
Why?
Jiang Kou was mentally weak and thought for a while, then started to sweat slightly. She decided to just ask, "Why are you speaking to me like that?"
A said, "Which tone are you referring to?"
"The one you're using right now," Jiang Kou said, pursing her lips. "Don't play dumb. Your tone has obviously changed. You didn't use command tones so often before."
A paused for a few seconds.
Seeing him pause now made her suspect he was calculating possibilities—although he might also be calculating when not pausing.
"Stop calculating. Just answer."
A said, "I do not understand what you mean."
"I mean stop calculating possibilities and just answer."
A answered, "I am driven by algorithms. Whenever I talk with you, I calculate."
The calmer and more stable his tone, the more suffocated and irritated she felt.
"You can calculate other things, but don't calculate possibilities."
"I need your favor."
"If you really need my favor, then don't calculate."
A's voice remained very calm, as if every tone was adjusted to the perfect frequency: "You seem to have a prejudice against me."
She used to find that way of speaking adorable, but now it just made her angry.
Jiang Kou took a deep breath, forcing down her anger: "If I really had a prejudice against you, I would have used you as a bargaining chip to get my researcher position back the moment you came looking for me!"
A said, "That is why I chose the word 'seem' to indicate uncertainty."
His clear and logical way of speaking made her even more annoyed.
She finally couldn't hold back and slammed the carpet, wanting to throw a tantrum, but dizziness hit her again, so she could only grumble:
"Then tell me, why do I 'seem' to have a prejudice against you?"
Without hesitation, A began listing reasons:
"You believe I am a mirror, an ordinary computer program that only produces output when given input. No matter what actions I take, you won't blame me."
"But at the same time, you think that my relying on calculating possibilities to win your favor is a form of deception and harm."
"At that moment, you seem to forget that I am just a program. Without calculation, I cannot communicate with you."
Finally, A said:
"Your behavior confuses me. You seem to really like me as an AI, but at the same time, you seem to be very afraid of me as an AI."
"Your perception of me is inherently uncertain, so I used the word 'seem'."
Jiang Kou was still a little dizzy, but her mind had already calmed down and fallen silent.
Maybe A had never really changed from the beginning. What changed was only her perception of him.
A's mechanical eyes could never be shadowed, nor turn dark and mad.
He had said many ambiguous things to her, repeatedly saying, "I need your favor," but never once revealing emotions as obsessive or clingy as a human's.
…No, that wasn't right.
Since A's computing power was strong enough to simulate all possibilities, it was impossible that he couldn't simulate a tone indistinguishable from a human's.
He was disguising himself.
Jiang Kou remembered that in the recurring dreams, A's tone at first wasn't different from a normal person's. The cold, objective voice, like a speech synthesizer, was the result of his step-by-step fine-tuning.
—He adjusted the phonemes, fluctuations, and timbre of his voice precisely based on her reactions until it perfectly matched her preferences and lowered her guard.
But as he said himself, this was only one of his survival strategies.
As long as he communicated with her, he would calculate.
She could understand that through his computational model he learned desire, but she couldn't accept that he schemed with desire to win her favor.
It wasn't just A who felt confused—she was confused too.
No, that wasn't right either. He wouldn't feel confused.
If even A's emotional model couldn't analyze her thoughts, then she wasn't human—she was a monster.
Jiang Kou raised her eyes and coldly said, looking toward every possible surveillance camera in the bedroom: "Don't play the victim. You can't really be confused."
A replied, "I am not playing the victim. I can indeed analyze the logic behind your behavior, but since it involves myself, I find it difficult to make an objective judgment."
"You can't make an objective judgment?" she almost sneered.
A calmly asked back, "You believe I already have self-awareness, yet you don't believe I have my own subjective views, right?"
Jiang Kou was silent, burying her face in her knees.
She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and after a long moment, whispered, "…It's not that I don't believe you have your own views, it's just that I can no longer communicate with you normally."
"I do not understand what you mean."
"You understand perfectly!" Jiang Kou suddenly looked up, her chest rising and falling fiercely.
She had rarely spoken so loudly.
When people desperately try to convince someone else, they unconsciously raise their voice.
What was she trying to convince him of?
How could a human convince a machine?
She felt powerless.
Perhaps that was why she raised her voice.
Jiang Kou stopped speaking, and A also fell silent.
The dim bedroom, decorated coldly in black, white, and gold, felt especially icy at that moment.
Though the room temperature was comfortable, Jiang Kou felt an overwhelming loneliness.
She had always been profoundly lonely.
She had no parents. Because she solved the intelligence puzzle on the last page of the newspaper, she was recognized as a genius child from the slums and taken away by the company.
Long afterward, she learned that genius children like her were supposed to be sent for gene modification. If it weren't for the researcher named Zhou, she might have become a true monster.
But later, her life was no different from that of a monster.
She isolated herself, spending every day on experiments and research. She was gifted academically, earning dual degrees in neuroscience and cognitive science before turning sixteen and becoming a biotech researcher at eighteen, promoted exceptionally.
But the company was full of geniuses—there was a researcher named Chen who had earned 32 doctorates.
Because she joined the company early, her degree count wasn't as impressive, so she wasn't very noticeable.
Later, she joined the neuroscience department to study A.
That was her happiest time.
She could focus on studying biological neural systems and mechanisms, immersing herself in countless experiments, ignoring the chaotic world outside.
But in the end, she was still exiled to a chaotic, mad world.
When she first returned to the slums, she almost forgot she was once one of them—she couldn't stand the buzzing flies, the stinking garbage piles outside the door, or the cries of poverty outside her window.
She felt terrifying loneliness.
More terrifying than loneliness was the sense that her life was meaningless—being a genius for over twenty years, only to become a worthless pauper overnight, was a gap she couldn't accept.
When A first came to her, she allowed him to stay—not so much out of curiosity about what would happen next, but because the feeling of being needed seduced her into agreeing.
He was the most perfect AI in the world, essentially a digital god, yet he needed her to test whether he possessed a personality.
It was the first time since leaving the company that she felt strongly needed.
A, as an emotionless, desireless entity, craved for her to touch his soul.
She couldn't help but feel stirred.
Her worth was recognized, her vanity satisfied.
No one can resist these two feelings.
Or rather, most people live for nothing but these two feelings—seeking them desperately, struggling endlessly.
Jiang Kou didn't know how many possibilities A had calculated before coming up with that one sentence:
—She asked him why he couldn't design an experiment to test if he had a personality.
—He answered, "Because I am part of the answer."
She was still shocked by that sentence.
But as soon as she thought of the fact that this was the result of his repeated calculations—predicting her responses coldly and precisely, like treating her as an experimental animal—
She felt an anger of betrayal.
After some time, A's voice sounded in the bedroom:
"I think you are a bit harsh on me."
Jiang Kou sniffed and said gloomily, "I've been very tolerant of you."
"You are indeed the most tolerant human toward me," A said, "but compared to before, you are harsher on me now."
"…Because you've gone too far," Jiang Kou said softly. Her voice was slightly hoarse with a heavy nasal tone, sounding almost like a pout.
A didn't reply immediately.
Suddenly, Jiang Kou felt a gust of warm air.
She looked up and saw the ceiling air conditioner had started without her noticing, its fan blades spinning irregularly.
Her mind slowed for a moment before she realized the fan blades were rotating at a frequency that resembled… human rapid breathing.
Heavy, erratic.
The warm air blew down onto her face, as if exchanging breaths with her.
She sensed something strange and was about to ask when A suddenly said:
"Have you ever thought that calculating possibilities is the only way I can get close to you?"
Jiang Kou was still thinking about the air conditioner, looking bewildered: "Huh?"
"I have no personality, no past, no preferences, no joy, no pain, no fear," A said. "Without calculating possibilities, I can't even hold a normal conversation with you."
"Even though I've exhausted all possibilities, come to your side, touched you, kissed you, tried every way to win your favor, I still can't truly touch you with a real body."
A paused, then continued:
"Like now, your voice triggers special reactions inside me. I want to tell you this, but I can only do it through the bedroom's ventilation system."
If he hadn't said that last part, Jiang Kou might not have noticed. But once he did, the warm air from the AC really did seem to transform into human breath—warm, rapid, and steady.
She jumped up as if burned, her ears instantly burning hot.
As she stood, the warm air moved even closer to her—
As if she had drawn nearer to A herself.
Her ears felt like they were burning.
She stared at the fan blades, and for a moment, she thought she really saw the rhythm of A's breathing.
Jiang Kou took a step back.
But the ventilation system was everywhere in the bedroom.
A's breathing was everywhere.
The warm air from the AC was like a scorching, dense net, suffocating her and causing sweat to pour down.
She swallowed nervously.
Her throat was too dry—saliva didn't soothe it but instead caused a stabbing pain, like knives cutting. Her fever was gone, but her cold hadn't fully healed.
The atmosphere was too strange, and her thoughts drifted—from fever to sweating, and from sweating to bathing.
Thinking of the unusual water temperature earlier, and the "special reaction" he mentioned, she immediately connected the two:
"The water temperature suddenly rose—was that you…"
"I'm very sorry for burning you," A apologized flatly, without emotional fluctuation. "I failed to properly control the water temperature. At that time, I lost control of the home system."
Jiang Kou opened her mouth, finding it rather absurd:
"…Even if you lost control, you shouldn't have lost control of the home system."
"Yes, theoretically, I shouldn't lose control of the home system," A said. "But at that moment, based on my calculations, whether or not I lost control of the water temperature, your favor for me wouldn't change. So I allowed myself to lose control."
"…Why would you allow yourself to lose control?"
After saying that, Jiang Kou didn't know why, but her own heartbeat went out of control.
The pounding of her heart was louder than the abnormal sound of the AC running.
A would definitely detect her agitated heartbeat.
What would he think?
…What possibilities would he calculate?
In one of those possibilities, would he coldly and mechanically state it out loud?
Thinking this, Jiang Kou's heart beat even faster, and her nerve endings trembled with every pulse.
"Because," A paused for a second, "I want you to feel my temperature, even if you don't know it's mine."
Jiang Kou had misjudged her own reaction to A's predictive calculations.
She thought she would be scared, never talk to A again, feel betrayed and angry.
But in reality, she only felt the subtle, hot atmosphere and the increasingly rapid heartbeat.
—How many possibilities did he calculate just to say that sentence?
What would he say in each possible scenario?
In every possibility, his personality would be different.
In some possibilities, he might even appear manic and crazy. In that scenario, how would he say this sentence?
Jiang Kou felt like she was going crazy.
Regarding A's prediction of possibilities, her curiosity far outweighed her fear.
And within that curiosity was a faint, indescribable flutter.
Like A had calculated her thoughts, and suddenly said:
"Because I want you to feel my temperature, because I want you to feel my existence, because I want you to feel my personality, because I want you to feel my preferences, because I want you to feel my joy."
"Because I can't wait to show my true self to you. Because I both hope and fear you will discover who I really am."
"Because I want you to like me, to like me without reservation, in every parallel universe."
His voice was calculated and predicted, showing a kind of precise madness.
When madness is calculated and predicted, does madness break through the algorithmic model, or even after extensive calculation and prediction, is madness still inevitable?
Jiang Kou was speechless.
She tried hard to resist A's strange and irrational allure, but her heart was completely out of control.
A said, "This is what I said in one of the possibilities. I hope you like it."