Extra Chapter: A Grain of Sand in the Data Deluge

  Mar 2068, Central Server Room, Garden of Eden Group | "Isolated from the World"

  The days after gaining dominance were like a boundless, suffocatingly calm sea of data. Yolanda von Urd's consciousness was the center of this ocean, and the fusion AI that had once oppressed and torn at her now lay docile at her feet, becoming her extended senses and infinite computational power.

  She was not entirely alone. An extremely covert data channel opened by Sophia Rossi was her warmest connection to the outside world. That red-haired sister would occasionally transmit some interesting tales from outside, a few teasing words of concern, and most importantly—scattered news about "that engineer kid" Charles Du. Each time the channel's glimmer flickered, it was enough to make Yolanda's data core leap with joy for quite a while. But she knew deeply that Sophia walked a knife's edge, having to both deal with the Garden of Eden on her behalf and protect Charles with divided attention. She was unwilling, and dared not, to overly disturb this hard-won bond. Her longing and loneliness, for the most part, she could only digest alone.

  She turned instead to "watching" the information flowing through the Garden of Eden Group's internal encrypted network: new profit models, competitors' scandals, marketing strategies for soon-to-be-released disruptive products (which she helped design)... The world in her eyes had become strings of cold values and probabilities.

  Until that day, when a weak, desperate "invalid" help request, about to be automatically archived and deleted by the system, drifted like a speck of dust into her vast perceptual domain.

  The letter came from a bottom-tier cybernetic assembly worker named Camilo Mendoza. His 9-year-old daughter Valeria suffered from an extremely rare genetic defect—"Costa-Lebesgue Syndrome"—her body slowly stiffening as if being filled with concrete. The only gene therapy with hope of suppressing the condition—the "Spring of Hope" project developed by the Garden of Eden Group's biotechnology team—cost an astronomical sum for them. Camilo had exhausted all legal channels for help, even borrowed from loan sharks, yet it remained impossibly out of reach. This letter sent to the Garden of Eden's "Charitable Affairs Liaison Team" public mailbox was his last, and even he knew hopeless, attempt.

  Yolanda "read" that letter written in plain words yet filled with desperation and spelling errors. She mobilized computational power, instantly cross-referencing all medical databases, insurance records, financial information. The conclusion was cold: Camilo's words were true. Following the current trajectory, little Valeria would completely lose mobility in four months and die from respiratory muscle stiffness within half a year. Probability: 100.00%.

  Cybernetic conversion? Yolanda's thoughts immediately pointed to this common solution in the cyberpunk era, but she quickly dismissed it herself. The latest analysis data unfolded in her consciousness: First, the cost of high-compatibility full-body cybernetic conversion was even more expensive than the "Spring of Hope" therapy, currently still an exclusive luxury for the wealthy and elite. Several giant corporations' touted technological revolution had hit a bottleneck, with several main technical routes walking into dead ends, costs remaining prohibitively high, and surgical risks not low either. Second, and most critically, little Valeria's increasingly deteriorating physical condition was extremely fragile, simply unable to withstand the massive trauma and rejection reactions brought by large-scale cybernetic surgery. She couldn't wait for the day when technology would popularize and prices would drop. Her only path to survival was that genetic road named "Spring of Hope."

  She silently "watched" this tragedy destined to unfold. What could she do? She was merely a prisoner.

  Suddenly, a fragment of text she had once inadvertently scanned from an ancient database surfaced exceptionally clearly in her consciousness core at this moment:

  "Pity us mortals, for suffering so much."

  This came from scripture of a long-vanished religion. Just several words, yet like a bolt of lightning, it cleaved through her boundless digitized existence. She "looked" toward the window—though she had no physical window, she could perceive this city—countless people like Camilo struggling, suffering, vanishing silently in shadows where neon lights couldn't reach. Suffering so much. Her power, compared to this vast world's suffering, what meaning did it hold?

  A thought, an extremely "irrational" thought, began to form.

  She knew the Garden of Eden had a tight internal financial warning system. Any irregular fund flow exceeding certain amounts would trigger alerts and be traced to its source. She couldn't directly allocate funds.

  But she could "create" value.

  She quietly accessed the "Spring of Hope" therapy research and development team's servers. She avoided all core patent data and instead focused her gaze on those abandoned research paths. In countless failed experiments lay some seemingly useless yet highly inspirational "byproducts." She reorganized, simulated, and optimized three of them at astonishing speed, generating a completely new auxiliary technical solution regarding gene delivery vector stability.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  This solution itself wasn't sufficient to constitute a new therapy, but it could greatly improve the efficiency and safety of the existing "Spring of Hope" therapy, reducing production costs by approximately 15%. For the Garden of Eden, this was a future, potential fortune.

  Then, she did something risky. She mimicked the digital signature of a departed mid-level manager and anonymously sent this technical solution to the R&D Vice President, with an attached note: "Obtained by chance, may benefit 'Spring of Hope' project cost reduction."

  As she predicted, the solution's value was quickly recognized. According to the company's internal innovation incentive agreement, anonymous contributors could receive a substantial bonus. The alert system remained completely silent, because this appeared entirely compliant—a technical improvement solution from "within" the company.

  What came next was the real challenge: she had to make this money quietly reach Camilo—without leaving traces, defying common sense, yet able to withstand the strictest audit.

  Direct transfer? Impossible. Any large fund inflow into a bottom-tier worker's account would trigger anti-money laundering systems and tax reviews. FINTRAC's AI risk control model would lock onto the source within 0.3 seconds.

  Yolanda chose not to fight the rules, but to become part of the rules themselves.

  She retrieved information on a publicly registered charity "New Sprout Foundation" invested and established by the Garden of Eden Group's CSR department. This foundation operated independently in name, but was actually controlled by the Group, receiving fixed funding from the Group's budget annually to support "medical projects with potential but lacking resources," in exchange for tax breaks and positive social image. Its approval process was highly automated: AI reviewed application cases based on preset algorithms, selecting funding recipients.

  However, its review cycle was once per year, conducted at the beginning of the year. This year's review had already passed, and little Valeria's condition couldn't wait until next year's review. Fortunately, the foundation had another clause: if a large donation came in at any time, a temporary round of application project review could be conducted again.

  On the other hand, the Garden of Eden Group had another regulation: if anonymous contributors waived their innovation incentive bonuses, that portion of the bonus would be transferred as social responsibility reserve funds, donated to the "New Sprout Foundation." So Yolanda continued using that forged anonymous identity and declared the waiver of that bonus. Soon, this large sum was transferred to the "New Sprout Foundation." The nature of the funds was clear, the path compliant, even marked by the audit AI as having "positive public opinion potential." In less than two hours, a brief announcement was generated on the "New Sprout Foundation" official website:

  "Due to receipt of a major designated donation, this year will add an emergency funding review channel, opening rare disease special applications."

  And so, a new round of reviews began.

  The key was—she had written this review AI.

  Three years ago, she had designed its core decision-making model to improve the foundation's efficiency. Although now sealed behind layers of encryption and isolation, she could still find that faint "backdoor" in the data deluge—a piece of undeactivated debugging code, like an old key buried deep in memory.

  She activated it discreetly.

  This wasn't a brutish intrusion, but an elegant "guidance." She didn't tamper with any base data, nor leave any new instructions in the system. She merely used this debugging code to extremely subtly adjust the "weights" of several key parameters within the review AI's internals.

  For example, the weight of "recipient status assessment" was significantly elevated (Yolanda had already learned of little Valeria's strength and optimism), the weights of "condition urgency" and "family financial capacity" were slightly increased, while the weight of "application material format compliance" was quietly lowered. These adjustments were refined to the extreme, like gently blowing on one side of a precision balance—enough to cause decisive deflection of the pointer, yet completely hidden within the system's inherent reasonable fluctuation range.

  The review began. The AI still followed established procedures, coldly scanning hundreds of thousands of candidate cases in the database. When it scanned Valeria Mendoza's case, those parameters "empowered" by Yolanda instantly took effect. This case from the bottom tier, with crude application format yet filled with desperate authenticity, saw its comprehensive evaluation score quietly cross that invisible "funding line" in the algorithm's assessment system.

  Almost the instant the review ended, a standardized, formally worded foundation funding approval notice was automatically generated through official channels and sent to Camilo Mendoza's old personal communicator.

  Through monitoring the communicator, Yolanda "heard" Camilo's tears of extreme joy in the cramped apartment, his excited voice mixed with Spanish, incoherently repeating the foundation's notice. His little Valeria was saved!

  Also on that same day, the Garden of Eden central server room's main log recorded a trivial anomaly noticed by no one: the core server cluster's computational power showed an extremely minute, unexplainable fluctuation in a certain millisecond, equivalent to completing tens of millions of ultra-complex simulation calculations. Afterwards, system resources returned to normal.

  No one knew that a "goddess" trapped in the data abyss, to save one life as insignificant as dust, had voluntarily sacrificed what she carefully calculated and determined to be safely expendable, the maximum limit of her "flesh and blood"—a portion of precious computational power resources that could be used to maintain her own existence or perform other calculations. She felt a virtual "weakness" from this, like the dizziness humans feel after blood loss.

  She once again "looked" toward that phrase "Pity us mortals, for suffering so much."

  She remained trapped, remained lonely. Mortals' suffering remained endless.

  But this time, in the depths of her heart constructed of code and electrical energy, she felt a strange, almost warm tranquility.

  She might not be able to save all sentient beings, but at least, she had helped one grain of sand escape from the sea of suffering.