Sculpting the Angel in the Heart

📖 LOL newsletter membership 51

Welcome to the 51st issue of the membership newsletter. You can also join the membership plan to receive weekly long-form articles. Recent content includes:

From Neurons to Neural Networks: How Psychologists Ignited the AI Revolution

How to Use Your Imagination to Achieve Anything

When a Man Starts Going Bald

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For many students, June is synonymous with the Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination). Years later, I no longer feel confident tackling the science sections of the exam paper; perhaps the only part I could still attempt is the essay. During the actual examination, the essay component is bound by various constraints, including word count, genre, central theme, and title. It neither encourages imagination nor genuinely cultivates logical thinking. After the Gaokao, we all embarked on diverse paths, and our approach to writing has long since evolved beyond the confines of the Gaokao essay.

Therefore, I've decided to write a series of short pieces inspired by Gaokao essay prompts, using only their titles and intended themes, and letting my thoughts flow freely. This is the first of them.

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Hana's existence was an oscillation between two realities.

One was a sea of data streams, a universe woven from 0s and 1s, where she was the Whisperer, the Phantom, the unseen hand slinking through the labyrinths of enterprise-grade "ICE" (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics).

Her consciousness, via a custom neural implant, surged at exabits per second (Exabit/s) into the global data-grid—that which old-school hackers called "cyberspace," and corporate marketing departments had repackaged as the "Metaverse Experience Zone" gimmick.

In this realm, with her prosthetic arm shimmering with a faint blue circuitry glow, Hana could crack any firewall, dismantle any encryption algorithm, and toy with corporate data cores worth billions of credits as if disassembling a child's plaything.

The other reality was a physical existence in the New Tokyo undercity-state of "Kage-ichiba" (Shadow Market), permeated by the steam of ramen, the stench of synthetic protein, and the odor of illegally gene-modded pet excrement. She huddled in her "nest"—a small compartment cobbled together from discarded server casings and smuggled acoustic panels, the air thick with the smell of solder and a burnt odor from overheating circuit boards. Here, she was Hana, an orphan girl who scraped by writing custom viruses, assembling black-market combat robots (cobbled together from parts scavenged from junkyards and drives "liberated" from corporate cargo ships), and occasionally pilfering commercial secrets from oligarchic corporations that considered themselves impregnable, all to exchange for credits and nutrient paste.