At 02:00 local time, Lian found himself standing in the dimly lit hallway of the Taipei Metro, beneath a flickering sign that read He presented the manual to a biometric scanner that seemed to recognize the faint imprint of his thumbprint—perhaps the manual’s embedded chip had been pre‑programmed to grant clearance.

Mira smiled, relief evident in her eyes. “You’ve just saved millions of lives,” she said. “And you’ve ensured that this technology will only be used for the betterment of humanity.”

Mira placed the manual on a pedestal and activated the device. The silver box opened, revealing a tiny, shimmering chip——encased in a lattice of graphene.

Below, a QR code glowed faintly, as if it were waiting for a specific kind of light. Lian scanned it with his phone, expecting a PDF or a link to a firmware dump. Instead, a secure, encrypted message appeared:

She explained that years ago, a team at Foxconn had built a prototype for an autonomous manufacturing node that could self‑optimize, drastically reducing waste and production costs. The project was shelved when corporate leadership decided to keep the technology under wraps, fearing it would destabilize the labor market.