When the mechanical heart he’d picked up at the junkyard suddenly started beating, Lin Sanxi finally understood how terrifying his grandmother’s last words, “Everyone in this family is a fake,” really were.
In this neon-lit city of 2077, all the poor survive on “body loans.” When a debt collector’s laser blade was held to his throat, Sanxi accidentally activated the all-purpose repair arm his grandmother had left behind. It was a golden right hand capable of dismantling any cybernetic implant, but it couldn’t fix the three weirdos in his own family:
His younger brother, who always talked to thin air despite being in a vegetative state; his antisocial younger sister, with liquid metal flowing beneath her skin; and the square metal box in the fridge, which claimed to be a household AI but actually stored military-grade code.
“Today’s task: Repair the slum’s drainage system (Reward: Unlock 1% of Grandma’s cloud diary).”
Gripping a wrench, Sanxi charged into the acid rain, unaware that data flashed across his brother’s pupils behind him. “Sis, that debt collector you killed... I think he was the AI puppet I hacked last week.”
When the corporate tycoons stormed the slum with a mechanical Buddha, Sanxi splashed hot pot broth over their nanotech armor. “Go upgrade your mom! Give me my family’s Wi-Fi password!” A holographic projection suddenly burst open, revealing Grandma’s combat records from her youth. The old lady who spent every day growing vegetables on the balcony had actually been the phantom leader of the “Anti-AI Revolution” thirty years ago.
Only then did they realize that the “electronic shrine,” where they paid monthly offerings in network incense, was connected to the quantum servers covering the entire city. And the fridge AI’s 101st reboot prompt changed into a cold female voice: “Successor detected. Activate the ‘Zeroing’ protocol?”
