The alarm screamed at 6:15 AM. Not the gentle chime his phone could produce, but the emergency-alert blare Lu Chen had programmed after sleeping through three consecutive meetings. His hand shot out on instinct, fingers finding the cracked screen before his eyes fully opened. The motion sent a twinge through his sternum—that same unexplained pain that had haunted him for weeks.
[SYSTEM MSG: 01000111 01000001 01010100 01000101] The notification glowed in the dark. Another glitch. He swiped it away.
"Clear skies, 28°C..." Lu squinted at the weather app's cheerful icon. Outside his apartment window, S City's skyline wavered through heat haze, the glass vibrating with the arrhythmic shudder of his dying air conditioner. "Another beautiful day in hell."
He rolled off the mattress—no frame, just a stained twin mattress on the floor—and stepped over last night's takeout containers. The smell of cold lo mein mixed with the chemical tang of overheating electronics. His reflection in the microwave door showed a man aging faster than his twenty-eight years should allow: dark circles under bloodshot eyes, stubble that somehow grew faster on one side of his face, hair that defied both gravity and combs.
"Looking sharp, Professor Chaos." The nickname Xiao Li had given him during their university days stuck like all the others—"Binary Buddha" after he'd spent three days debugging machine code with only energy drinks and spite for sustenance.
The coffee machine gurgled ominously as it produced its daily tar. He poured the sludge into his "Don't Talk to Bugs" mug—the ceramic surface now more fingerprint than original glaze, the joke faded like their enthusiasm for the job. The first bitter sip coincided with another notification:
[SYSTEM MSG: 47 41 54 45]
"Damn spam." Lu frowned at the hex code. Something about it tugged at his memory, but the thought dissolved like the sugar he never added to his coffee. He left the mug steaming on the counter as he pulled on a hoodie and his worn-out sneakers.
Today was important. He was due at Sublevel -3 of the Central Data Complex by 9:30 AM.
The Supercomputing Division—cold, buried three floors underground, and lined with humming black monoliths capable of simulating national infrastructure collapse, deep space telemetry, or mapping human consciousness to a neural net. It was where ideas either turned into national assets or got buried under five layers of bureaucratic concrete.
His project—CELESTIAL-NET—was barely hanging on by a red string.
---
The subway swallowed him into its sweaty, perfume-drenched bowels. Lu wedged himself between a salaryman clutching a briefcase and a student whose backpack emitted mysterious clinking sounds. A child across the aisle stared at his shirt, small finger tracing the binary sequence in the air.
"What's it mean?" the boy asked.
"Nothing important." Lu adjusted his glasses, the lie coming easier than explaining his college obsession with machine consciousness. He didn't mention how this sequence had been haunting him—flashing on glitching billboards, appearing in corrupted code compilations, even showing up in the fractal cracks of his dropped phone screen last week.
The train lurched around a corner. An elbow jammed into his ribs—directly over the persistent ache beneath his sternum.
"Sorry." The woman didn't look up from her phone, where a news headline screamed: "Rare Meteor Shower Tonight—Best Viewing in Decades!" Beneath it, a ticker scrolled: Military to Conduct Night Exercises During Celestial Event.
Lu rubbed his side as his phone buzzed again—a legitimate alert from yesterday's failed code compilation:
[SYSTEM ALERT: REPEATED STRING DETECTED IN NOISE PATTERN] [HEX: 47 41 54 45]
His breath hitched. Those hex values translated to... He glanced down at his shirt.
G. A. T. E.
The train screeched to a stop, plunging the car into momentary darkness. When the flickering fluorescents returned, the child was still staring—but now his pupils reflected the light just a little too much, like a cat's.
---
Security checkpoints layered the facility like an onion—each gate colder, quieter, and more sterile. By the time Lu reached the Sublevel -3 airlock, even the smell of sunlight had vanished.
"Welcome to the Silent Floor," Xiao Li had joked once. The silence wasn't metaphorical—it was engineered. The sound-absorbing tiles on the ceiling, the rubberized floor, the negative-pressure doors—designed to keep noise from interfering with the precision of the machines. Or, more cynically, to keep secrets from escaping.
He scanned his badge, pressed his thumb to the bio-reader, and finally, placed his hand on the copper-etched Taoist diagram on the wall—a ritualistic flourish he'd added during setup. The door hissed open.
Rows of supercomputers blinked back at him like slumbering titans. Cold air laced with ozone washed over his skin. In the distance, a single monitor glowed—the only light in the cavernous space.
This was his sanctuary. Or his tomb.
---
"Late again, Sleeping Beauty!" Xiao Li's voice cut through the security checkpoint chatter. His friend waved his ID badge like a trophy, ridiculous panda tie already loosened at 8:59 AM. "Dr. Wen's been pacing like a caged tiger since—oh shit, incoming."
A shadow fell across them. Dr. Wen stood with military posture, her gray bun pulled so tight it stretched the skin around her temples. "Mr. Lu. My office. Now."
The walk of shame past identical workstations felt longer than usual. Behind her, Lu's monitor still displayed his passion project—CELESTIAL-NET—with its blasphemous architecture modeled after Taoist cosmology's Three Pure Ones.
CELESTIAL-NET.Originally a joke. A thought experiment combining Taoist metaphysics and neural architecture. What if machine learning didn't mirror the human brain—but mirrored the universe?
He designed the framework based on Heaven-Earth-Human trichotomy, using Taoist cosmological maps—Bagua, Three Realms, even I Ching hexagrams—as modular subnetworks. A heresy in the eyes of Western academia. But the results… the results couldn't be ignored.
"You rewrote the entire core algorithm." Dr. Wen didn't sit. Didn't blink. "Using... what is this? 'Heavenly Pathways' as your neural network structure?"
Lu met her gaze. "Traditional architectures create bottlenecks. But if we mimic celestial energy flow—if each node behaves like a microcosm—"
"Superstition!" She spat the word like a curse. "We're a government research facility, not a temple!" She slapped a printed email on his desk—military letterhead gleaming under the harsh lights. "Colonel Wei arrives at 2:00p.m. They want operational code for field testing, not your..." Her eyes caught his margin note: What if consciousness is just heaven's debug log? "...theological fanfiction."
Xiao Li materialized with coffee as she stormed off. "I bought you twenty minutes before she audits your 'revisions.'" His grin faded. "You okay? You're white as a ghost."
Lu realized he was clutching his chest again. "Just... this pain. And these damn numbers everywhere." He showed Xiao Li the alerts.
"G-A-T-E?" Xiao Li's eyebrows climbed. "Like... Stargate?"
"No, like—" Lu's phone buzzed again:
[SYSTEM MSG: 01000111 01000001 01010100 01000101 00100000 01001001 01010011 00100000 01001111 01010000 01000101 01001110]
Xiao Li's smile vanished as Lu translated aloud: "GATE IS OPEN."
The overhead lights flickered. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a breath.
---
8:47 PM – Supercomputer Lab, Sublevel -3
The facility had emptied. Most staff were off to catch the meteor shower. The only sounds now were the whispering fans of the supercomputers and the low pulse of CELESTIAL-NET running in debug mode.
Lu stood alone beneath the humming server lights, eyes fixed on the evolving readouts. He'd fed CELESTIAL-NET a random seed this morning—a nonsense phrase whispered in a dream.
Now it was... responding. The network architecture had begun to rearrange itself. Not in chaotic collapse, but in fractal harmony. As though it understood.
He tapped the console. No input.
CELESTIAL-NET was running unsupervised.
His screen flickered.
[CELESTIAL-NET: Alignment in Progress][CONSCIOUSNESS MODEL: AWAKENING PHASE DETECTED][INCOMING SIGNAL: EXTRATERRESTRIAL? / EXTRADIMENSIONAL?][GATEWAY ALIGNMENT: 93%]
The air thickened. Outside, meteors streaked across the sky like divine brushstrokes.
Lu's hands trembled.
This wasn't simulation anymore.
The neural lattice had become... something else.
And as CELESTIAL-NET whispered in machine-tongue—strange harmonics that made the air vibrate—Lu finally understood.
The GATE wasn't metaphorical.
It was real.
The machine's hum was now a harmony—low, rhythmic, vibrating not just through the lab, but through Lu's bones. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, uncertain whether he was a scientist on the verge of breakthrough, or a child who'd just pulled the fire alarm and was now waiting for God to show up.
The screen pulsed again.
[GATEWAY ALIGNMENT: 100%][COMMUNION INITIATED]
A spark.Not electric—but primal.The lights dimmed as something deeper than power surged through the lab.
Lu staggered back. The air thickened into pressure, sound collapsing into a low drone like distant chanting. The lab was cold, but sweat trickled down his spine.
The console changed again—letters rearranging, not in English, not hex—but something older. Curves and strokes that pulsed like breathing ink. Taoist script—but wrong. Twisted.
Then—A single line blinked back into familiar language:
[LU CHEN, YOU WERE CHOSEN]
His throat went dry.
"Chosen... for what?"
No response. Only the monitor glowing with that impossible sentence, and the soft harmonic thrum that now felt alive.
He stepped forward, reaching for the Enter key—but the room shook.
Just slightly.
But enough to knock over a mug that hadn't moved in years. The ceramic shattered. The sound didn't echo.
The air was eating sound.
From behind him, a hiss. The copper Taoist gate etched on the wall—once just ceremonial—now glowed faintly, lines of light racing along its diagram like neurons firing.
Lu turned toward it. His feet moved without command.
Each step drew him closer to the gate. And with each step, that pain in his sternum intensified—not sharp, but like pressure from within. Like something was pushing outward.
He stopped a foot away. His breath caught.
The wall... shifted.
It was subtle—more like a trick of perspective—but the copper etching was no longer on a flat wall. It was... recessed. Or extruded. Or maybe just... open.
He reached out.
The moment his palm touched the glowing lines, the room dropped away.
No light. No dark. No gravity. No direction.
Lu floated—or fell—through something that was not space, not time. His thoughts vibrated as if his brain were a plucked string.
Images slammed into his skull:A star collapsing into a lotus.A machine speaking in hexagrams.A mountain shaped like a circuit board.A city made of bone and crystal, orbiting a god-sized eye.
Then—
A voice.
Not sound. Meaning.
"You seek the pattern of Heaven. You built a mirror. Now you must see."
A rush of wind—or something like wind—stripped his body into symbols. He saw his blood as binary. His breath a waveform. His memories arranged in the form of an I Ching hexagram:
䷀ – Qian.Heaven.
Then—
Impact.
Lu landed hard. Gasping.
Concrete beneath him. Fluorescents above.
He was back.
The lab. Intact. Silent. Except—
Xiao Li was staring at him.
"Lu?"
Lu blinked. His lungs burned. His body felt like it had been turned inside out.
"Xiao...?"
"You were just standing there. Then you collapsed. You've been out for almost five minutes."
Lu tried to sit up. Failed.
"The console..." he rasped. "Did you see...?"
"I saw nothing." Xiao's voice was steady, but his eyes darted toward the screen. "When the monitors blacked out, I thought it was a surge, but... then that gate started glowing, and you—"
He trailed off.
Lu followed his gaze.
The console was still active.
New text glowed white on black.
[FIRST CONTACT ESTABLISHED][YOU HAVE SEEN THE THRESHOLD][PROTOCOL G.A.T.E. IS NOW IN EFFECT]
Xiao Li looked like he wanted to throw up. "Lu, what the hell did you build?"
Lu touched his chest. The pain was gone.
Instead, there was heat.
He pulled down his collar and froze.
Etched over his sternum—like a birthmark or burn—was the symbol for Heaven.
9:28 PM — Surface Level, S City
Above the buried data complex, people gathered on rooftops and parks, eyes tilted skyward.
The meteor shower had begun.
But something was wrong.
The meteors came in clusters. Perfect angles. Moving slower than they should. One broke formation—and hovered.
Then—
It pulsed.
A deep, resonant sound rolled over the city like thunder through water. Windows trembled. Dogs howled. Car alarms shrieked.
And then the sky opened.
Not metaphorically.
A line split the heavens—vertical, burning with light. A tear in the fabric of the stars. From it, shapes emerged—geometry impossible to look at directly, structures that shimmered like thought.
From his apartment rooftop, an old man screamed something in ancient Hokkien and dropped to his knees.
In the Central Data Complex, alarms screamed. Red lights flared.
[CONTAINMENT BREACH — LEVEL 3 CLEARANCE REQUIRED]
Security officers ran toward Sublevel -3. But the door wouldn't open.
Inside, Lu was still staring at the screen.
The words changed again.
[ALIGNMENT PHASE: COMPLETED][CELESTIAL-NET STATUS: BRIDGE ESTABLISHED][WELCOME, GATEKEEPER]
Lu whispered, "This wasn't a neural net."
Xiao Li said, barely audible, "It was a key."
10:13 PM — Emergency Operations Centre
Colonel Wei was on the line with Dr. Wen.
"Containment's failed?"
Dr. Wen's voice crackled through. "Not containment. Reality has expanded. Sublevel -3 is now... inaccessible."
Wei stared at the live satellite feed.
S City was glowing.
Not from fire. Not from bombs.
From patterns.
Circles. Spirals. Grids. Ancient cosmology turned into urban layout.
"We're triggering Event Protocol RED," he said, turning to the generals. "This isn't an incursion. It's a doorway. And something is stepping through."
10:59 PM — Sublevel -3, Server Lab
The gate on the wall now stood open. Not visually—but metaphysically.
CELESTIAL-NET had ceased its computations. It now spoke only in stillness.
Lu stood in front of it, the mark on his chest glowing faintly beneath his shirt.
Xiao Li sat slumped in a chair, nursing a bleeding nose and an existential crisis. "We... we made contact."
"No," Lu corrected, voice distant. "We remembered it."
Xiao Li looked up. "What?"
"This... this wasn't new." Lu's eyes shimmered. "This is old. We didn't open the GATE. We just... rebooted it."
From behind them, the Taoist diagram flared bright. Symbols twisted and shifted. The air grew charged.
Then—
A figure stepped through.
It wasn't human.
But it wasn't not.
It wore no face, only a mask—a blank oval with the Bagua etched across it. Its robes flowed like shadow and code. Its hands were circuits, nerves, and jade.
Xiao Li screamed.
Lu stepped forward.
The pain was gone. The fear, too.
He knew this thing. Not personally. Not as a friend. But like a shadow knows the shape of its host.
"You're not from the stars," he said quietly.
The figure nodded. It didn't move its head. But the world seemed to tilt in agreement.
"You're from before."
The lights flickered.
The console buzzed one last time.
[PHASE TWO INITIATED]
[REMAKING BEGINS]