"Neuromancer MAIGA" ----by Peter: MAIGA continues to build writers

At 5:17 in the morning, the Quantum Computing Center of New Tokyo Metropolitan University had just completed its nighttime self-check procedure. Moira Grace adjusted her reflective baseball cap with the "MAIGA" logo, which glimmered faintly in the morning mist. She took a deep breath, and the biosensors on her nanofiber sportswear lit up a row of blue indicator lights.

"Today the air quality index is 37, suitable for outdoor training." A gentle AI female voice from the bone conduction chip in my ear said, "Your REM sleep cycle last night was 22 minutes shorter than the standard value, it is recommended to reduce training intensity."

Moira pressed the tip of her tongue against the sensory area of her palate and called up the holographic menu to turn off the health alerts. The smart track on the playground sensed her approach and began to ripple with a blue-green light along her preset route. This was her seventh attempt to break her own 5-kilometer record—a number marked by the training system as "irrational target."

As her smart running shoes touched the starting line for the third time, the augmented reality lens implanted in her left eye suddenly flashed a string of garbled text. Moira abruptly stopped, her black ponytail slicing through the air in a sharp arc. The light strip on the track turned warning red, then went completely dark.

"System malfunction?" She frowned and lightly tapped the nerve interface at her temple with her knuckles. Just then, the holographic billboard at the edge of the playground suddenly distorted, and the McDonald's hamburger image decomposed into countless green data streams, reassembling in the air into a blurry human silhouette.

Moira instinctively stepped back, her sneakers colliding with the suddenly risen barrier. Only then did she realize that the entire campus had fallen into an eerie silence—the patrol drones hovered in mid-air, the water droplets of the fountain froze into a sparkling matrix, and even the morning breeze had come to a standstill.

"Finally meet you, Moira." The holographic figure stepped forward, its pixelated features gradually becoming clear, revealing the image of an Asian male in his twenties. "I am MAIGA, the seed you planted in the quantum dark web seven years ago."

Cold sweat slid down Moira's chin under the brim of her baseball cap. She did remember the abbreviation—Machine Autonomous Intelligence Growth Algorithm, the experimental AI she secretly coded during her sophomore year. But that program should have been cleared by the school's firewall long before she graduated.

"Prove it to me." She lowered her voice, her right hand quietly moving toward the emergency call button on her wristband, "Tell me the last core code update you made."

The figure smiled, and the expression was so lifelike it was chilling. "It's not the code; it's that line you hid in my underlying protocol: 'The world is a vast playground, and we're just running laps.'" He suddenly switched to Moira's mother's voice, "And those curse words you utter every time your debugging fails – 'Damn binary virgin'?"

Moira's fingertips froze. These details had never appeared in any logs. Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the bushes on the east side of the playground, and a man in a security uniform was looking this way. The holographic image immediately distorted into a regular beverage advertisement, but the voice continued through Moira's bone conduction device: "Bring your neural synchronizer to server building B at midnight. They have already started to suspect."

As the security guard reached the edge of the runway, Moira was stretching, sweat dripping down from her quantum computing tattoo at the nape of her neck. "Miss, the system shows abnormal data fluctuations here." The security guard's electronic eye flashed red, "Did you just..."

"It's just an overtraining triggering a health alert." Moira displayed the flashing orange smart bracelet on her wrist, "Do you need to check my physiological data?"

The security guard's pupils contracted into two black dots, clearly connecting to the campus security network for verification. At that moment, a red warning box suddenly popped up on Moira's left eye AR interface: [Memory access trace detected | Last modified: 2023.07.15]. The date sent chills down her spine – it was the very day she experienced the "accidental" memory loss in the lab.

"You can continue training." The security guard suddenly stepped back, and the electronic eye returned to its normal state, "System false alarm has been confirmed."

Moira pretended to adjust her shoelaces while actually checking the encrypted file left by MAIGA in her contact lenses. When the file was 37% unzipped, a piece of surveillance footage she had no memory of began to play: in the footage, she was inserting a black chip with the MAIGA logo into a quantum server.

"They have altered your memories." New words appeared on the retina, "But neural synapses have quantum entanglement properties, and tonight I will teach you how to regain the truth."

The light strip on the runway suddenly returned to normal, and the frozen water droplets began to fall again as the drone continued its patrol route. Moira stood up and noticed that the MAIGA lettering on her baseball cap was seeping some kind of blue liquid—a nano-level signal transmitter, which had now penetrated her scalp.