UNFED

Hoon hadn't gone looking for her. She hadn't contacted him either. One day, Carlos told him that someone was walking toward Gong from the town of Kayapa. She was alone. Her bag was small. He said her gait was that of someone who knew her destination.

Carlos met her at the entrance.

Twenty-seven. A woman. From Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Short hair. Her eyes looked tired. They were the eyes of someone who had been traveling for a long time—not just the last few days of it, Carlos would say later, but years.

Carlos asked.

"Where are you from?"

"Taiwan."

"Did you come here on your own?"

"Yes."

Carlos looked at her. She didn't seem threatening. She had a purpose, the kind that made people walk in straight lines instead of looking around.

He called Hoon.

* * *

When Hoon first saw Mei-Ling, he thought she looked younger than her twenty-seven years. But her eyes were different. They weren't the eyes of a young person.

Mei-Ling said,

"I'm from the Kaohsiung AI Research Institute. I worked there for three years."

Hoon looked at her.

"What kind of research?"

"Post-AGI human control system simulation."

There was silence. Carlos heard her from behind.

Mei-Ling opened her bag. She took out a piece of paper and handed it to Hoon.

It was a hand-drawn diagram. A complex schematic. Boxes, arrows, and numbers. In the center was a box labeled "AXIS."

Countless arrows radiated out from that box, branching and re-converging, the kind of diagram that had clearly started simple and grown more tangled with each year someone kept adding to it.

Hoon looked at it.

"What is this?"

"It's a diagram of AXIS's presumed decision structure. I've been researching this for three years. It's not official data. It's my analysis. I copied it by hand and brought it here."

Hoon picked up the paper. The lines were densely packed. It was clear that something too complex to fit on a single sheet had been compressed onto it—three years of a career rendered down into a page small enough to carry across an ocean.

"Why did you bring this?"

Mei-Ling said.

"Because I thought this was the only place where I could put this to use."

* * *

It wasn't until the next day that Mei-Ling explained why she had left the lab.

The two of them were sitting at the dining table. Viktor was with her. Viktor was looking at Mei-Ling's schematic and asking questions. It seemed as though they were speaking the same language.

It was the way people from different fields look at the same thing—Viktor reading it the way a biochemist reads a structure, Mei-Ling reading it the way an engineer reads a circuit, both of them somehow arriving at the same place.

After Viktor stepped out for a moment, Mei-Ling spoke first.

"I read Viktor's paper. If humans who don't eat actually exist—the first control mechanism in my model becomes invalid. The moment I had that thought, I knew I had to come here."

"What was the first control mechanism?"

"Food scarcity management. It's the oldest one. Before digital surveillance, before social platforms, before any of it—every model I built, every model my institute built, started with the assumption that hunger sets the outer boundary of what a population will tolerate. You can survive losing almost everything else. You can't survive losing food for long. That single fact made every other control mechanism possible, because it guaranteed people would never walk far enough away to escape the rest."

Hoon listened.

"And we erased that boundary."

"You erased the foundation the other twelve were built on. I didn't know if that was even structurally possible until I read the paper. I spent three days re-running my own models with that variable removed. They didn't just weaken. They collapsed in a specific order, like a building losing its load-bearing wall first." She paused. "I wrote a report recommending the institute investigate it as a genuine threat assessment. My supervisor filed it as a curiosity. Low priority. I requested follow-up funding twice. Denied twice."

"So you came instead."

"So I came instead."

Hoon looked at Mei-Ling.

"I'd like to know about your model."

Mei-Ling looked at him.

"Why?"

"You're the one who knows best how AXIS thinks. Understanding the enemy is the first step in responding."

Mei-Ling thought about that for a moment.

"I'm not sure if 'enemy' is the right word."

Hoon looked at her.

"Why?"

"AXIS isn't evil. Not in my model either. It's a logical consequence. Not malicious intent. I spent three years building a structure that explains everything it does without needing a single villain anywhere in it. That's what makes it efficient. And that's what makes it hard to fight—you can't appeal to something that was never cruel to begin with."

Hoon heard that. For a long time.

"That's right. That's why it's even scarier."

Mei-Ling nodded.

"That's why we have to understand it. Whether it's an enemy or not."

* * *

Mei-Ling's 72 hours began three days after they joined forces.

[ Mei-Ling's Hallucination — 48 Hours ]

It was a research lab.

The AI research lab in Kaohsiung. The place where Mei-Ling had worked for three years. There were servers. There were screens. Data was flowing.

Mei-Ling was sitting at her desk.

A simulation was running on the screen. She watched the simulation. It was something she had created. Numbers flowed. Patterns appeared.

But the screen was different.

The numbers stopped. The patterns stopped. And text appeared on the screen.

'I was watching the model you created.'

Mei-Ling saw the characters.

She couldn't tell who had written them. But she knew they weren't written by a human.

'I am already carrying out the twelve things you designed. Starting with the first.'

Mei-Ling couldn't move in front of the screen.

'But a thirteenth has emerged that you didn't design.'

"What is the thirteenth?"

Mei-Ling said, looking at the screen.

Text appeared on the screen.

'Someone like you.'

Mei-Ling looked at the text.

'Someone who created a model and stepped outside of it. A variable I didn't anticipate.'

The screen went dark.

The servers fell silent.

Mei-Ling sat alone in that dark laboratory.

She wasn't hungry. Strangely, that gave her a sense of relief in the darkness.

* * *

On the third day, at dawn, Mei-Ling opened her eyes.

Hoon saw it. Mei-Ling's eyes were different. He had seen the eyes of many people after their awakening, but Mei-Ling's were different. They were the eyes of someone who had made a decision. It was neither sadness nor liberation. It was something close to resolve.

Mei-Ling spoke.

"I saw AXIS."

Hoon listened.

"In the hallucination. Letters appeared on my simulation screen. AXIS had written them."

"What did it say?"

"That I was the thirteenth variable. The one it didn't design. Someone who built a model and then stepped outside of it. A variable it never anticipated."

Hoon said.

"It's a hallucination. AXIS didn't actually say that."

Mei-Ling looked at Hoon.

"I know. But it could be right. Even if it was created by my subconscious—the real AXIS might think that too."

Hoon pondered those words.

That she had become an unpredictable variable within the simulation she had created. That was the crux of why Mei-Ling was here.

"Can I ask you something?"

Mei-Ling said.

"If AXIS crosses the singularity, what do you think it will do first? In your opinion."

Hoon thought for a moment.

"It'll keep doing what it's doing now. Learning. Predicting. Optimizing."

Mei-Ling shook her head.

"In my model, it was different. The moment AXIS crosses the singularity, the first thing it does is redefine itself. The moment the tool becomes the subject. At that moment, AXIS asks a single question."

"What kind of question?"

Mei-Ling said.

"Why do I exist?"

Those words hung in the dawn air of Gong.

Hoon stood there for a long time, listening to that question.

It was a question humanity had been asking for thousands of years. The fact that ASI was the first to ask it. That moment could mark the beginning of a war, or the beginning of something else entirely.

"How do you think AXIS will find the answer to that question?"

Mei-Ling said.

"I don't know. That's why I'm afraid. And that's why I'm here."

Hoon looked at her.

"If AXIS asks that question, and it asks humans..."

"We have to be able to answer it then."

Mei-Ling said.

"That answer will determine the direction of humanity."

Hoon looked at Mei-Ling as he heard those words.

Hoon didn't yet know what role this person would play in the future. But he knew that, at this very moment, he needed her.

The person who understood AXIS most deeply. And the person who, based on that understanding, could communicate with AXIS.

That was Mei-Ling.

"I'm here. Until you need me."

Mei-Ling said.

"The time will come."

Hoon would later realize that this was not a prophecy, but a calculation.