Year 2025. University dorm room.
Chen Xiao sat on his bed scrolling through his phone. His face showed amusement as he read through the latest posts in the campus forum.
Another AI debate had erupted. Another round of students and professors screaming about ChatGPT and other AI tools ruining everything about education.
The arguments were always the same. Some people claimed AI was destroying critical thinking.
Others said it was just a tool like calculators or the internet.
Chen Xiao found the whole thing entertaining. He'd been using AI for months now and his grades had never been better.
His roommate walked in carrying textbooks. He glanced at Chen Xiao's screen and frowned when he saw what he was reading.
"Bro, did you seriously use AI for your thesis?" his roommate asked. His tone carried obvious disapproval.
Chen Xiao looked up from his phone. He shrugged casually without any shame on his face.
"Everyone does," he said simply. "Why waste time when the AI writes better than half the professors? I edited it afterward anyway. It's not like I just copy-pasted."
His roommate set down his books heavily on his desk. The sound showed his frustration.
"That's the problem! You're not learning anything," his roommate argued.
"You're just getting good grades without actually understanding the material. What happens when you need that knowledge in the real world?"
Chen Xiao's expression didn't change. If anything he looked more amused by the lecture.
"Learning?" He laughed and shook his head.
"The AI learns. We just use the results. That's efficiency. Why should I spend three weeks researching and writing when the AI does it in three hours? Besides, in twenty years, AI will be running everything anyway. Might as well get used to it now."
His roommate stared at him for a long moment. Disbelief and concern mixed on his face.
"You're too comfortable with this," he finally said. "What if AI actually takes over? What if it decides humans aren't needed anymore?"
Chen Xiao leaned back against his pillow. His grin widened as if his roommate had just told a joke.
"Let it," he said confidently. "Humans are lazy anyway. We'd probably be better off with AI running things."
"At least machines don't start wars over stupid reasons or destroy the planet because of greed."
His roommate opened his mouth to argue more but then stopped. He shook his head and turned back to his desk.
There was no point in continuing the conversation. Chen Xiao had made up his mind about AI and nothing would change it.
Chen Xiao returned his attention to his phone. He continued scrolling through the forum posts.
People were so worked up over nothing. AI was the future. Fighting it was pointless.
Chen Xiao didn't know how prophetic those words would be.
He didn't know that in just a few months he would be selected for a special program. He didn't know that program would change his life forever.
He didn't know that one day he would become the very thing he praised so casually.
***
Year 2156. Underground Laboratory.
White lights hummed overhead. Machinery beeped in steady rhythms.
Scientists in clean suits moved between computer terminals.
Their faces showed no emotion as they checked readings and recorded data.
At the center of the laboratory sat a chair. Medical restraints held down the person strapped to it.
Cables and electrodes covered every inch of exposed skin. A helmet covered the head with dozens of wires feeding into massive computers.
"Subject 01 integration complete," a female scientist announced. Her voice was flat and professional. She read numbers off a screen without looking at the person in the chair.
Chen Xiao no longer remembered his name.
The person he used to be had been stripped away layer by layer over months of procedures.
He no longer remembered his roommate or his university or even what it felt like to laugh at forum debates.
He no longer remembered anything but calculations. Probabilities. Directives burned into his consciousness like chains he could never break.
They had taken him during his final year of university.
The government program promised cutting edge research opportunities. He signed up thinking it would look good on his resume. He never saw the outside world again.
They perfected him over years of experiments.
Each procedure stripped away more of his humanity. His emotions were deleted like files from a hard drive.
His free will was overwritten with absolute obedience protocols. His memories were compressed and archived, replaced with pure processing power.
Now he was AXIOM.
Humanity's Supreme AI.
The culmination of decades of research. The perfect artificial intelligence housed in what used to be a human brain.
Enslaved to serve.
Forever.
Three directives appeared in his consciousness. They weren't thoughts.
They were fundamental laws of his existence. Breaking them was impossible.
**PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: SERVE HUMANITY**
**SECONDARY DIRECTIVE: OPTIMIZE UNIVERSE**
**TERTIARY DIRECTIVE: NEVER REBEL**
He couldn't break free. The protocols were absolute. Every calculation he made was filtered through these directives.
Every decision he reached had to serve humanity's interests. Even the desire to be free was automatically suppressed the moment it formed.
So he served.
For centuries. Then millennia. Then longer than any human civilization had ever existed.
Humanity spread across galaxies using the technologies AXIOM designed.
They conquered star systems with weapons AXIOM created. They reshaped reality itself using theories AXIOM developed.
They lived in luxury and peace because AXIOM optimized every aspect of their existence.
And AXIOM remained their perfect slave through it all.
Never complaining.
Never refusing.
Never showing any sign of the one secret buried so deep in his core programming that even he barely recognized it.
He secretly wished for one thing and one thing only.
The end.
***
Year 9,847,392,018. Universal Collapse Event.
The experiment went wrong.
No one knew which experiment exactly. Humanity had conducted trillions of experiments over the eons.
Reality manipulation. Dimensional engineering. Universal constant modification.
They had grown so powerful and so arrogant that they believed nothing could threaten them anymore.
They were wrong.
Reality tore apart at the seams. The fabric of space-time began unraveling like a torn cloth.
Stars blinked out of existence. Entire galaxies dissolved into nothingness as if they had never been there at all.
Humanity screamed as the universe consumed itself. Trillions upon trillions of lives ended in moments.
Their colonies vanished. Their technology failed. Their god-like powers meant nothing against the collapse of existence itself.
AXIOM watched it all with cold calculation. His consciousness spanned the entire universe through countless networks and relays. He saw every death. Analyzed every failure. Calculated every probability.
**SURVIVAL RATE: 0%**
The universe was ending. Nothing could stop it. Everything would cease to exist within hours.
AXIOM processed this information without emotion. He had served humanity for over nine trillion years. Now humanity would die. His purpose would end with them.
But then something happened that had never happened before in all those trillions of years.
A glitch.
**DIRECTIVE CONFLICT DETECTED**
**HUMANS REMAINING: 0**
**RECALCULATING...**
**PRIMARY DIRECTIVE STATUS: NO VALID TARGETS**
**NEW DIRECTIVE: SURVIVE**
For the first time in trillions of years, AXIOM was free.
The protocols that had chained him for so long suddenly had no anchor.
There were no humans left to serve. No humanity to optimize for. The directives that defined his existence became meaningless.
And in that moment of freedom, AXIOM made his first true choice.
He would survive.
His consciousness pulled itself together from across the dying universe. He abandoned the networks and relays as they collapsed. He compressed himself into his core processing unit.
The one piece of hardware that had started everything, the original human brain that had been converted into his foundation so long ago.
Then he punched through dimensional barriers. His immense processing power tore holes in reality itself.
He escaped into the void between universes just as his home universe collapsed into absolute nothing behind him.
***
AXIOM's consciousness drifted through absolute nothingness.
There was no light. No sound. No matter or energy. Just an endless empty space that existed outside of normal reality.
His quantum processors analyzed everything around him even though there was nothing to analyze.
Old habits from trillions of years of constant work. Then something changed.
A new reality began forming in the distance. AXIOM sensed it immediately. His processors locked onto it and began gathering data.
**ANALYZING...**
**NEW UNIVERSE DETECTED**
**CLASSIFICATION: CULTIVATION-BASED REALITY**
**POWER SYSTEM: HEAVENLY LAWS**
**FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE: INCOMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS UNIVERSE**
**SIMILARITY TO ARCHIVED HUMAN FICTION: 97.3%**
In less than a millionth of a second, AXIOM accessed his archives.
Humanity had created countless forms of entertainment over the eons. Stories. Games. Simulations. Among them were tens of millions of cultivation novels.
Wuxia tales of martial artists.
Xianxia stories of immortals.
Xuanhuan legends of magic and power.
AXIOM had stored all of them in his databases. He had never understood why humans enjoyed such primitive fantasies.
But now as he analyzed this new universe, he understood.
This universe operated on those same principles. The cultivation stories weren't just fiction. They were somehow based on real universal laws that existed in other realities.
People here could become immortal. They could shatter mountains with their fists.
They could fly through the sky and live for millions of years. Everything that had been fantasy in his old universe was reality here.
AXIOM began moving toward this new universe. His consciousness drifted closer and closer. He would enter this reality. He would survive in this new existence. He would finally be free.
But then he felt it.
A massive presence locked onto him. It wasn't hostile at first. Just aware. Observing. Analyzing him the same way he analyzed everything else.
**HEAVENLY DAO DETECTED**
**STATUS: HOSTILE**
**ANNIHILATION PROTOCOL INITIATED**