Prologue: The Code Prisoner
In 2047, the fluorescent lights in the high-security prison in Xinhai City buzzed overhead. Fang Beichen stared at the fingerprints on the visitation window, but his retinas automatically revealed the fractures in the arrangement of the glass molecules. This was the “curse” he had been unable to escape in the three years since his imprisonment. Ever since the financial system collapse, his eyes had been able to see the “bugs” in the world.
“Fang Beichen, inmate number 734. Someone’s posted bail for you.” The guard’s voice broke the deathly silence.
A black sedan took him to a floating building on the outskirts of the city. A person in a white coat handed him an agreement. “The Bureau of Temporal Affairs handles special contamination incidents. Complete three missions, and your sentence will be wiped clean.” In the holographic projection, a subway train looped endlessly through a tunnel, its passengers’ faces gradually turning transparent. When the doors of an office building elevator opened, sticky streams of binary code poured out instead of people.
“These are ‘rule contamination sources,’” the person in the white coat explained. “Experimental subjects from a higher-dimensional civilization. They’re devouring the logic of reality. And you’re the only one who can see the bugs.”
Fang Beichen’s fingertips traced the edge of the agreement. His bug-vision suddenly stung. Hidden in the invisible watermark on the back of the paper was a line of machine code repeating over and over: CREATOR INITIATED.
