Lin Li

On the other side of the Earth, on the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States, it was 9:37 PM local time, and the night was still young.

The sky was ablaze with starlight, the radiance of distant stars from deep space having traveled for thousands of years across the cosmos to reach this planet.

A white Boeing passenger jet flew through the air at an altitude of ten thousand meters; soon, it would arrive at its destination, New York, the largest megacity of the Free Business Alliance.

This massive airliner, carrying hundreds of people, was traveling at a speed of over one thousand kilometers per hour. On its right wing, a translucent seagull flapped its wings and gave a light hop.

To conserve energy, it had chosen to hitch a ride. Now that the destination had arrived, it was time to depart.

The seagull left the plane, pressing its wings tightly against its body, and spiraled down toward the thick clouds below, entering a state of freefall.

Its speed increased rapidly as it pierced through the dense high-altitude clouds. Only seconds later, it reached the air a kilometer above the ground, with the megacity of New York spread out below, its ceaseless lights illuminating the entire night sky.

The seagull's wings snapped open, and it began to glide, slowing its descent. Its eyes, sharper than those of an eagle, scanned the ground for its target, and then, it flapped its wings and dove toward a specific area.

In a small park in front of a high-end apartment complex in Queens, New York, two mixed-race Black high schoolers with braided hair and tattooed arms were swaying as they sang into a camera to film a video.

A young Asian man wearing a black coat and smart glasses walked slowly toward the scene. He looked at the two noisy youths in the park, wore a perfectly measured smile, captured the moment with his smart glasses, and then headed straight back to his residence.

Back in his apartment, he printed out the photo he had just taken and hung this new addition on a blank space on the wall.

Soothing music began to play in the room. The young man sat on the sofa in the center of the living room, gazing at the photos with that same perfectly measured smile. He had been taking these pictures every day for several years; there were now over a thousand of them, covering almost every inch of the living room walls.

The first photo near the door was of the young man himself. Even then, his face bore that same perfectly measured smile, captured during his orientation ceremony for the game company. He looked at the photo and recited softly:

"Lin Li, September 12, 2043. I became a game developer. Very happy."

The second photo was of a blonde woman with wheat-colored skin and a hot figure.

"Aierxue, September 13. Became my girlfriend. Very happy."

The third photo was of an old man leaning on a cane.

"Morse, September 14. I helped him upstairs. Very happy."

A bartender in a dim bar and a glass of wine on the counter.

"March 28, 2044. Broke up with Aierxue. Very sad."

The back of a man being led away by police.

"June 3, 2045. Dora shoplifted at the supermarket. Reported to the police and sentenced to 6 months. Regretful."

Over a thousand photos recorded everyone Lin Li had interacted with since he started working as a game designer. Every night after finishing work, he would sit here and slowly reminisce about these people.

He firmly memorized every person he had crossed paths with, and when recalling those past events, he would display the appropriate emotions—happiness, sadness, excitement, or a smile—at the right time.

However, if one were to record the expressions on Lin Li's face with a camera and compare them one by one, a startling fact would emerge: every one of his smiles was identical, and the degree to which his lips parted during every sigh was exactly the same.

Tap, tap, tap.

A sound from the window interrupted Lin Li's memories. He turned his head to look; a seagull was gently pecking at his window with its beak.

His mouth parted slightly, his pupils dilated just a fraction, and his face assumed an expression of surprise at the perfect moment. He operated his smart glasses to open the window, and the seagull flapped its wings and flew onto Lin Li's sofa.

The seagull crouched beside him, looked up at the man, and spoke in a human voice: "Good evening, Lin Li. I would like to hire you to work for me."

Lin Li's mouth opened wider. He pointed at the seagull in front of him with a look of astonishment and said, "My God, how is this possible? A seagull that can talk? Something must be wrong with this world!"

The seagull flapped its wings and said, "Stop pretending. I know you cannot feel emotions."

Lin Li dropped the expression of surprise from his face. At this moment, he looked like a lifelike doll; if anyone familiar with him saw this, they likely wouldn't recognize him.

Since birth, apart from basic survival instincts like hunger and the need for sleep, Lin Li had felt almost no emotions. He did not cry when he was hurt, he was not amused by his parents' toys, and he did not play or fight over toys with other children in kindergarten.

His parents took him to many hospitals, and most doctors diagnosed him with autism, characterized by a preference for solitude, a lack of emotional connection with others, no attachment to his parents, and indifference to external stimuli.

However, Lin Li possessed an extraordinary memory. This near-photographic ability allowed him to understand all things in the world at an unusual speed, even deconstructing human emotions through his parents' words, even if he could not experience them himself.

He tried to imitate the behaviors expected of other children, but the young boy, only a few years old, had a face that remained forever calm and blank.

Consequently, when he would expressionlessly tell his parents, "I want a toy" or "I love Mommy and Daddy," his parents did not feel joy; instead, they began to fear this child who seemed neither quite human nor quite machine.

This seemed to be the final straw. Eventually, his parents could no longer endure this doll-like child and sent him to an orphanage.

Even so, Lin Li still could not feel the sadness of being abandoned.

From his parents, he learned one thing: human emotion is expressed through a combination of language, facial expressions, and body language, and he had to master all of them.

Thus, he began to memorize the expressions and body movements the children at the orphanage used to express themselves. Based on how the caregivers treated the children, he learned what was considered good and what was bad in the eyes of others.

From then on, he became the most beloved child in the orphanage. He became optimistic and cheerful, and the other children began to like this friend who knew so much.

He saw the old woman at the orphanage secretly telling the caregivers his story while wiping away tears of sorrow. In her eyes, he was now a good boy abandoned by heartless parents.

According to the knowledge he had learned, this emotion should be called "pity," and he himself was the poor child.

Although he still could not feel emotions, this mimicked performance allowed him to enjoy a better living environment. He could eat more food, which prevented him from going hungry and failing to maintain his brain's high-speed operation.

The other children no longer ostracized him as a monster. He had become a normal, good child who could play and get along with everyone. As a result, he was never again woken up in the middle of the night by someone throwing a shoe at him, and he could finally sleep well.

From that day forward, the autistic Lin Li transformed into a cheerful, optimistic, and ambitious genius child. He was soon adopted by a wealthy, childless Chinese-American elderly couple and enrolled in the best private elementary school to receive his education.

Lin Li's exceptional acting ability allowed him to always maintain good relationships with those around him, and his sharp mind enabled him to easily enter the best university for further studies.

He became the young, promising, and outstanding individual people spoke of; no one knew that he had once been a heartless puppet, and even fewer knew that he did not actually possess the grand ambitions he spoke of so eloquently in public. He simply wanted to eat his fill and sleep well.

Now, an inexplicable seagull had intruded and exposed his disguise, which threatened to shatter his peaceful life and turn him back into an anomaly among the crowd.

Lin Li asked in a tone devoid of fluctuation, "Who are you, and what do you want?"

The seagull spoke, "Appetite, the desire for sleep, the desire for reproduction—these three basic desires, combined with the various sensations of the human body, give rise to all human emotions."

"Certain issues in specific regions of your brain prevent you from feeling these emotions, which means that even if you have the same experiences and physical sensations as others, you cannot understand what emotion is."

"The human brain is a precise whole; I have no certainty that I can make you like other normal people, and besides, in my eyes, your current state is more advantageous to me."

"However, I can directly give you the memories of those who possess emotions."

Lin Li still looked at the seagull with an expressionless face, his high-speed brain processing this information before he summarized, "With the corresponding memories added to my own physical sensations, perhaps I will be able to feel those emotions."

The seagull replied, "Correct. Human emotion is inherently a combination of various factors. You yourself are undoubtedly a human with your own desires; a pure machine would not actively change itself to secure a better living environment."

Lin Li said, "Give me proof, and tell me the price I must pay."

The seagull opened its beak and let out a soft chuckle, "Very good, I like equivalent exchange. This seagull now belongs to you. I look forward to the day we truly meet."

The next moment, the ordinary-looking seagull began to twist and deform. The camouflage on the surface of its seemingly pure white wings cracked open, revealing the raw, crimson flesh and bone beneath.

Within seconds, the seagull transformed into a mass of writhing flesh covered in countless deep red veins, with several tentacles twisting and slowly reaching toward the man sitting on the sofa.

Yet, faced with this bizarre and terrifying sight, Lin Li remained expressionless. This made the mass of flesh feel somewhat bored. It extended a small, spherical, pink head and emitted the seagull's voice from within: "Boring. You're different from the others; I can't scare you."

Lin Li listened to the seagull's tone and asked, "You aren't the same one as before."

One of the tentacles from the mass of flesh shot out with a whoosh, wrapping tightly around Lin Li's wrist. A faint crunching sound echoed as the bones in his wrist were crushed by the pressure of the tentacle.

The spherical pink head said huffily, "What do you mean 'the same one'? That was my master—no, my former master. He was a very terrifying guy, so watch your tongue."

However, even with his wrist crushed into a mangled state by the red tentacle, Lin Li remained expressionless, which caused the pink head to feel a sense of frustration.

It slowly drooped and retracted back into the mass of flesh, with faint muttering drifting out from within: "Both masters are such strange weirdos; this is just too hard for me."