In the flood of data, emotion is the only currency. And I, Lin Feng, am the only pauper in this financial city.
The pulsed optical cables of the sympathetic network stretched endlessly in the maintenance tunnel overhead like a cold snake's lair. Deep in the computer room, there is only the low roar of the cooling fan of the server cluster and the dim light of my terminal screen. The air smelled of ozone and superheated metal. This is the sewer of the emotional city, and I am the cleaner.
They call me "emotionally color blind." The empathy network connects millions of brains. Joy, sadness, anger, desire... All emotions are quantified, transmitted, and traded, becoming the hard currency of the new era. I am the only one who is born insulated. Unable to receive or send. In an emotional ocean where everyone is swimming naked, I wear an invisible isolation suit. Defective goods. They gave me the job, probably because it was safest to have someone who couldn't see colors clean the palette.
My fingers were tapping mechanically on the keyboard, and the screen was filled with an endless stream of data. For others, this is the ultimate sensual eroticism, a raging carnival of collective consciousness. To me, it's just cold, boring binary code and abnormal fluctuation curves. My job: Filter out the overload of negative emotions—the overly sharp fears, the sticky despair, the tearing rage—to prevent them from contaminating the network and maintaining the illusion of joy in this prosperous world.
