Lin Che is a “cognitive laborer” in 2026. Every day, he creates more information opiates that people can’t tear themselves away from, until AI optimizes him out of a job. Deep in debt, he ventures into the gray-market Flow State Exchange, where people trade in everything algorithms can’t quantify: a sunrise watched with complete focus, a stretch of grief without interruption, a moment of sudden enlightenment.
There, he glimpses the true nature of wealth: the real hard currency is the “lifespan of attention” that others willingly pay you.
So he transforms himself from an “addiction creator” into a “supplier of clarity.” When the efficiency guru tries to plug all of humanity’s consciousness into a “happiness assembly line,” Lin Che’s little business becomes the biggest obstacle in his way. A final battle over how humanity will define its own value erupts.
What he sells is no longer a product, but the power to choose.
And his enemy is an entire era that preaches “happiness equals efficiency.”
