Key Node

In 2036, Donghai City's urban risk prediction system "Shangshang" issued a red warning: a subway stampede was about to occur. City risk auditor Jiang Yan signed the change of route and successfully avoided the original accident point. But a few hours later, the accident broke out at another location, and the casualty list highly overlapped with the original warning list. The system did not report an error. People did intervene. But in the end, he just changed his way back. In order to prove that he was not the cause of the second accident, Jiang Yan was forced to track down deleted records, overlapping lists, unexplained blank columns, and similar old cases that had occurred three years ago. Complex systems researcher Ning Bai intervened in the review and put forward a dangerous hypothesis: What they saw may not be "predicting the future", but some kind of high-level structure that is approaching repeatedly. The location, incentives, and participants may all change, but the costs will not disappear. Emergency manager Qi Wen wants to incorporate abnormalities into the system, companies want to make samples into products, and the public regards the list as fate, conspiracy, or a new risk label. When technology cannot break out of the rules and the system cannot remove costs, what else can humans change? Jiang Yan gradually understood: Choice may not cancel all results, but it can change the path, participants, cost points, and whether these paths will be remembered by the world. This is a near-future science fiction suspense novel. Talk about AI, urban governance, accident chain, disclosure of the truth and freedom of path. It also talks about how people still bear their own responsibilities in a world where they cannot win completely.