If the country used AI to match you with true love, would you accept it? This novel gives you the answer.
When love becomes the calculable optimal solution, will you still believe in the chance of a heartbeat?
In 2070, the Yuelao system will cover 85% of marriages around the world. The algorithm claims that it can use data to create a good relationship and replace blindness with rationality.
Shen Qingning is the best "red-line agent" in the system - she designs perfect encounters for matches, writes exciting scripts, and transforms cold matching into real chemical reactions. Until she received the task: to contact Han Dong, a technology critic who openly questioned the system.
Han Dong saw through the essence of the algorithm: "You are not matching love, you are producing standardized emotional products."
And Shen Qingning began to wonder whether the "fate" he designed was the greatest betrayal of reality.
At the same time, system designer Su Ming discovered a deeper rift: a couple with a matching degree of only 41% had gone through 32 years of ups and downs together; and a "match made in heaven" with a matching degree of 99% canceled their engagement on the eve of the wedding.
When the system begins to match hearing-impaired people with hearing people and defenders with rebels, the red thread begins to weave unprecedentedly complex patterns - is this the ultimate understanding of human nature by technology, or the final rebellion of human nature against technology?
In this tower of love built with data, who is calculating? Who is resisting? Who, in the cracks of the algorithm, caught that incalculable heartbeat that only belongs to humans?
Reader comments
"Red Line Rationality": The Archeology of Love in the Age of Algorithms
When Plato's myth of "the other half of the soul" is encoded into matching probabilities, the Yuelao system weaves contemporary love with data. The dilemma of Su Ming and others is actually the eternal paradox of human emotions: we are eager for a rational guide to solve the maze of loneliness, but we are also afraid that over-design will eliminate the divinity of the heartbeat. The novel uses an exquisite triple mirror of "system-agent-user" to complete the layer-by-layer dissection of technological ethics - the algorithm can calculate compatibility, but cannot calculate the angle of inclination when sharing an umbrella after rain; red lines can connect isolated islands, but the surge of ocean currents between islands ultimately requires the soul to cross it. In the end, Su Ming's decision to retire to Yunnan was like a gentle resistance to the disappearance of Benjamin's "halo": in an era when everything can be quantified, he reserved the last poetic enclave for those incalculable crossings of eyes, letters, and starry sky gazing. There are thousands of red lines and warmth in the world. The real Yue Lao is never the system, but our courage to still choose to believe in the truth in the flood of data.
"Red Line Rationality": The Archeology of Love in the Age of Algorithms When Plato's myth of "the other half of the soul" is encoded into matching probabilities, the Yuelao system weaves contemporary love with data. The dilemma of Su Ming and others is actually the eternal paradox of human emotions: we are eager for a rational guide to solve the maze of loneliness, but we are also afraid that over-design will eliminate the divinity of the heartbeat. The novel uses an exquisite triple mirror of "system-agent-user" to complete the layer-by-layer dissection of technological ethics - the algorithm can calculate compatibility, but cannot calculate the angle of inclination when sharing an umbrella after rain; red lines can connect isolated islands, but the surge of ocean currents between islands ultimately requires the soul to cross it. In the end, Su Ming's decision to retire to Yunnan was like a gentle resistance to the disappearance of Benjamin's "halo": in an era when everything can be quantified, he reserved the last poetic enclave for those incalculable crossings of eyes, letters, and starry sky gazing. There are thousands of red lines and warmth in the world. The real Yue Lao is never the system, but our courage to still choose to believe in the truth in the flood of data.