Data Mirage

Data Mirage

Chapter 1: The Internet Celebrity Graveyard ‌

A neon light on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip caused a 404 error pop-up on Maggie's AR contact lenses. The former broadcast host was smirking into a virtual teleprompter when he noticed his hologram start twitching uncontrollably - his left eye turning into a Bitcoin symbol and his right fingers into a growing QR code.

"Family! This is the latest virtual filter..." As she tried to play it cool, a salty electronic murmur sprang up in her throat. The number of people in the broadcast room skyrocketed from 37 to 10 million, and the bullet-screen pool seethed with the same question in different languages: Have you received the invitation?

‌ Chapter 2: Undercurrent Subscription ‌

In an underground garage in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chinese hacker Xu Shan is cracking a bizarre data leak case. The victims' brain-computer interfaces' cloud-based memories were replaced with the same image: a woman in a neon Prajna mask dealing cards at a virtual casino.

"This is no ordinary hacker." He noticed that on the back of each playing card was a map of synapses. "The other side is hedging memory futures at the neural level."

The computer suddenly blue screen, mechanical keyboard seeped black mucus, condensed into a quantum encrypted invitation: tomorrow night at 8:00, heartbeat pledge admission.

‌ Chapter 3: Cognitive shorting ‌

Under an abandoned Las Vegas mall, 300 ex-influencers are suspended in the void by brain-computer cables. Their amygdala is broadcasting fear data to the dark web via a 5G-6G hybrid base station.

Vaguely conscious, Maggie heard a familiar on-air beep: "Thanks to the 'Wolf of Wall Street' for the 100,000 adrenaline!" Her dopamine levels spiked to near-death levels.

Neon Prajna woman stepped on the data ripples, AI synthetic voice came out under the mask: "Welcome to the attention futures exchange, your mood swings are being shorted by 37 pharmaceutical companies."

‌ Chapter 4: The Consensus Trap ‌

Xu backtracked his brain to the casino, but was stunned by what he saw: thousands of mining machines pumping nerve impulses in pools of liquid nitrogen, and a global social-media sentiment index projected on the dome.

"In 2024, humans secrete 6 terabytes of emotional data per day, but feed algorithms with 97% of the bandwidth." "And I can connect the limbic system directly to the Dow Jones."

Xu Shan suddenly found that his fear center began to secrete cryptocurrency uncontrollably. He tried to throw out the decoy, "But you missed the human noise of quantum entanglement."

‌ Chapter 5: The Meme Plague ‌

As Xu uploades his memories into a logic bomb, the casino dome begins to collapse into a Klein bottle structure. Internet celebrities' brain-computer interfaces collectively overclock, reverse-polluting financial models with lifetime-accumulated vanity data.

Maggie activates the live stream for the last time before her mind disintegrates: "Iron men double-click to light the hearts!" Her brain wave peak turned into a flood of DDoS attacks, and the global stock market K line suddenly twisted into a Cat-girl cartoon avatar.

Prajna's mask cracks, revealing microscopic cameras under her skin: "You are using information cesspits against precision..."

"The best way to fight the shit-mountain code," Xu said, tearing through the final brain-machine pipeline, "is to build a bigger shit-mountain."

‌ epilogue: Traffic God ‌

Three months later, Xu Shan found an abnormal live broadcast in the deep area of the dark web: a certain 18-line starlet gave thanks to the void, and each of her eyelashes flashed a miniature Nasdaq index. The comments section scrolled with familiar phrases:

Did you get the invitation?