Chapter 1: Dying to Save a Beauty

Under the blazing summer sun, Brian Carter weaved through the bustling city streets on his Forever-brand bicycle.

Brian Carter inwardly scoffed at the cars he overtook one after another. So what if they were luxury sedans? They were still stuck in traffic, moving slower than ants.

Private cars in China are increasing by the day. People drive even for short distances, causing traffic jams, parking shortages, and a skyrocketing demand for oil. Every year, we have to import huge amounts of oil, and these private cars are just wasting gasoline by transporting nothing but air.

But it’s precisely because of this that Brian Carter has his current job—delivering goods around the city by bicycle. In the city, a bike is much faster than a car, plus it doesn’t use gasoline or emit exhaust, making it absolutely eco-friendly.

“Ah-ha... Give me a cup of love-forgetting water...” At that moment, Brian Carter’s phone rang in his pocket.

“Hello!!” Brian Carter took out his Nokia phone.

“Brian Carter, where are you? Why aren’t you here yet? The client has already called several times.” An angry voice roared through the phone.

“I’ll be there soon, two minutes.” Brian Carter replied as he sped up. If he hadn’t just helped a little kid find their mom, he wouldn’t be running late. People these days don’t even watch their kids, just focused on grabbing bargains for themselves.

That evening, after finishing his day’s work, Brian Carter returned to his little nest—his own personal space. Brian Carter’s nest was a small, independent courtyard, a forgotten corner by everyone else, which is why he could rent it for just two hundred yuan a month.

One corner of the yard was piled high with discarded electronic components, and inside the house, aside from a bed, the rest of the space was filled with machines. The displays showed that these machines were computers.

Brian Carter was a genius. He had assembled all these machines himself through self-study and repeated research. Their computing power was far ahead of the world’s current computers.

Why would a genius do this kind of job? Because he didn’t have a diploma. Although Brian Carter had nearly perfect scores in math, physics, and chemistry since childhood, his grades in the humanities were poor—especially English, which was abysmal. He only recognized the twenty-six letters. So, all his computer systems were programmed in Chinese.

He actually had a chance to go to college—a university had noticed his perfect math, physics, and chemistry scores on the entrance exam. But the tuition alone was twenty thousand yuan a year, and with living expenses, it would be over thirty thousand a year—something Brian Carter’s family simply couldn’t afford. So, under these circumstances, Brian Carter joined the wave of migrant workers and came to Shanghai to work.

In his years in Shanghai, Brian Carter discovered that you could read books for free in the city’s bookstores. The stores were huge, and many people just read there. Following the crowd, Brian Carter came every day to read his favorite math, physics, and chemistry books. In this era, everyone eventually encounters computers. Once Brian Carter did, he dove headfirst into the field.

But even if he saved every penny of his salary, it would take him half a year to buy a computer, not to mention he had to send money home. So, he could only read computer books in the bookstore—whether on programming or hardware—and go to an internet café once a week.

One day, passing by a recycling center, he happened to see a computer there. After bargaining with the owner, he bought his first computer for 500 yuan.

After his repairs, the old computer was usable. Brian Carter used it to complete his experiment in Chinese-language programming. But he knew that to fully realize the potential of Chinese programming, he needed to build his own computer. From then on, besides reading in the bookstore every day, he would also visit the recycling center from time to time to chat with the owner and buy some “electronic junk.”

Of course, there were some things Brian Carter couldn’t make himself. He suffered a lot to get those, going through countless hardships. The bitterness was something others couldn’t understand or even imagine.

Brian Carter pulled out his keyboard and began typing rapidly. He was currently programming an intelligent system, and it was almost finished. After about three hours, Brian Carter finally completed his AI program and went online to test it. He could access the internet by hacking satellite signals, using a “router” he built himself.

Soon, Brian Carter hacked into a computer at a U.S. military base. He did this often after getting online, since the technology there was far better than anything in the bookstores, so he “borrowed” from it. Over the years, he’d visited servers in the U.S. and Japan countless times. This military base was mentioned in a Pentagon message he intercepted, and since he had no new targets, he decided to check it out.