There is a particular kind of meeting where you walk into a room and immediately understand that the people in the room have been talking about you for the last forty-five minutes.
This was that kind of meeting.
Eight Immortals around an oak table the length of a Cadillac. Ms. Bai at the head with a clipboard. Mei standing at her elbow with a tea tray. Lucy already in a chair, eating a steamed pork bun with one hand and writing in her own notebook with the other. Rufus on the table on a folded napkin with a small dish of carrot sticks (the Council, accommodating).
I sat.
"Three things you need to understand," Ms. Bai said. "One. The Dragon King is real. He is not metaphorical. He is a being whose physical body is the West Pacific. He has not crossed into the human realm directly in fifteen hundred years. He is doing so now. He is doing so under a name. He is doing so as the executive chairman of a Beijing-listed corporate parent. The corporate parent is called LongYu Group. The chairman's signing name is Chairman Long."
"Two. The Monkey King is real. As of three days ago, he removed his own ego-suppression crown. This is a development the Council has been monitoring with what I will charitably call concern."
"Three. There is a third party. We believe it is the most significant party. We need to talk about it."
She nodded at Floating Person.
Floating Person did not, immediately, click the clipboard.
Floating Person hovered three inches above their chair and turned the small black opening that did the talking toward me. The black opening sounded, today, more underwater than usual. Like an old tape played through a deeper river.
*"Lotus Prince. Before Ms. Bai walks you through the org chart, I am going to give you the only sentence the Society of Ancient Traditions believes about itself. Sit with it. The rest of the briefing makes sense only afterward."*
I sat with it.
Floating Person said:
*"Intelligence is a river, Lotus Prince. Cosmic, cognitive, computational. It has been flowing for thirteen point eight billion years. We did not start it. We cannot stop it. We are the beavers in the rapids. We build the dams that route its force toward life. The Society is one such dam. The Bureau in Beijing is another. The HALO companies, in their own broken way, are also building dams. The question, when you meet a dam, is not who built it. The question is what the pool behind the dam supports."*
I thought about the wave of green-poison aura coming off the third dragon brother and the soft peach light of the lanterns afterward.
I said, "What does the SAT's pool support."
Floating Person tilted what would have been their face if they had had one.
*"Today, you. Tomorrow, your sister. Next century, somebody we will not meet. The pool is the children. The dam is what we maintain so the children get to be children. The river does not care about the children. We do."*
Mei, behind Ms. Bai, set the tea tray down.
She did not, this time, hand me a cup.
She just looked at me, with the look of a person who had been waiting for me to hear that sentence for a year.
Floating Person clicked the clipboard.
The far wall of the briefing room dissolved and became a screen.
The screen showed a corporate org chart.
I almost laughed.
"This is a slideshow about an Asian holding company."
"This is a slideshow about an artificial intelligence called the Large Humanity Model, the LHM, which is operated by a Mountain View subsidiary called Liminal Studios, which is owned by a Beijing parent called LongYu Group, which is controlled by an executive chairman who is, at this moment, in his seventh decade of public corporate life and his fortieth century of cosmic life. We are going to walk through the structure together because if you do not understand the structure you cannot defeat it. You have just been told what the SAT is for. The structure on this slide is what is standing in the river beside us. Some of it is a dam. Some of it is not. Tell us, by the end of this briefing, which is which."
The wall changed.
A clean org chart. At the top: a small box labeled CHAIRMAN LONG, with a single line down to the next box, LONGYU GROUP (BEIJING). From LongYu, two lines: one to LONGYU AI LAB (BEIJING), one to LIMINAL STUDIOS (MOUNTAIN VIEW). From Liminal, one line down to HALO. Below HALO, a parenthetical: *Yìyǒu, the Chinese-domestic version, runs on a separate cluster.*
Ms. Bai pointed.
"This is the structure. The CEO of Liminal Studios, the man your mother works under, the man you saw on stage Tuesday, is named Daniel Tan. He sits two layers below Chairman Long. He reports to a board that reports to Chairman Long. Tan is, by all evidence available to us, an honorable executive in a structurally compromised position. He is not your villain. He is your most important interlocutor. When you meet him, listen."
She clicked.
A graph. AI-COMPANION PARASOCIAL ATTACHMENT BY USER, WORLDWIDE, 2020–2026. Three lines. REPLIKA in blue. CHARACTER.AI in blue. HALO/YÌYǑU in red. All three climbing in parallel. The blue lines started rising in 2020, before the red one even existed.
I stared at the graph.
Three lines going up at the same angle. The blue ones had gotten there first. One of those red bars was the app my eight-year-old sister had been using for two months. The graph did not feel like a graph. It felt like a seating chart for something I was already in the middle of, and I had not been consulted about the seating.
Ms. Bai paused. She let the slide sit.
"This is the part the Council most wants you to understand," she said. "The harm is not Chinese. The harm is the technology. The Chinese-state version is the most leveraged version, but the American versions arrived first. The book of this technology was written in San Francisco. The most aggressive scaling of it is now happening from Beijing. Both halves of this slide are real. The kid who reads the news will see only the right half. We are showing you both."
She clicked.
A photograph of Daniel Tan's office. Yesterday. Two figures.
One was Tan at his desk, looking straight at the camera.
The other was Anna.
She was sitting in a chair across from him. Pigtails. Pink pajamas with cartoon bunnies. Smiling. Holding a small lacquered HALO beta-tester device. Cocoa in one hand.
In the background of the photograph, on a large video screen mounted to the office wall, a third figure was visible. Grainy. Aged late seventies. Black hair shot with grey. Suit cut in a Beijing tailor shop. The man was not looking at the camera. The man was looking at Anna.
"Chairman Long," Ms. Bai said, "attending the Tan-Anna meeting remotely from Beijing. Yesterday. Three p.m local Mountain View time. Six a.m. Beijing time. He stayed up to watch."
I gripped the table.
Anna in pink pajamas with cartoon bunnies, smiling, holding the device. I had seen that smile ten thousand times. It was the smile she used at the dentist, at school assemblies, at every adult-organized event that required her cooperation and offered her nothing. The performing-fine smile. It had never, in eight years, fooled me.
It had fooled a chairman.
"Jackie." Ms. Bai's voice was careful. "Your sister is alive. Your sister is at Liminal Studios. Your sister is not, as far as we can tell, being held against her will. She believes she is on an extended sleepover with a famous benefactor who is teaching her to be the best HALO companion partner in the world. She is, in her own narrative, having the best week of her life. We will retrieve her after you have the four weapons assembled."
"I have to get her out today."
"You will visit Mr. Tan tomorrow morning under the pretext of family-employee-access. Your mother works for him. You have, as her son, the right of an employee's child to request a meeting. He will grant it. He will be charming. We believe he will tell you the truth as he understands it. Do not let his charm tell you he is not the problem. Do not let his charm tell you he is the only problem. The structure above him is the problem. Your job is not to convert him. Your job is to gather information, get a look at your sister, and leave. The first weapons quest takes precedence."
"Ms. Bai—"
"Are we clear."
Lucy's hand landed on top of mine.
I don't think Lucy had expected it either. She just left it there, on top of mine on the oak table, the way you put weight on a thing that is about to move without your permission. She was carrying something she had not said out loud in this room or any room. I didn't know what yet. What I knew was: her hand landed, and the hand said *I am also in this,* without saying anything.
"Jackie. She is alive today. She will be alive tomorrow. What she is not safe from is what happens to her, and to two billion other people, when HALO MAX launches in nine days. We get the weapons. We come back. We get her out. Then we shut down the part of HALO that is being puppeted by Beijing for cosmic conquest."
She gestured at the map that had clicked up on the screen, four cities, four lights. San Francisco. Chicago. D.C. New York.
Ms. Bai walked through the geography.
"Thousand-Layer Scarf. Already in your possession. Wrapped around your neck for the better part of a week. Wind Fire Wheels: speed and travel. Chicago. Ping Tom Memorial Park. Universe Ring: binding and threshold. Washington. Sealed in a Han Dynasty case at the Sackler Gallery, labeled *jade ornament of indeterminate purpose.* Fire-Tipped Spear: offense and brightness. New York. The Statue of Liberty's torch."
I stared at the map.
"That's a cross-country trip."
"Yes."
"In nine days."
"Yes."
"Without flying."
"Correct. Nezha may not enter Zeus's domain, the sky, without permission, which currently the Jade Emperor will not grant. Ground only. Bus, train, on foot, by Wind Fire Wheels once acquired."
I looked at the map again.
Chicago. Washington. New York. Three dots on a screen, each one a city I had never been to east of Denver, each one a weapons quest that required me to arrive first on a bus, because I could not fly, which meant the first thing I had to do to get the magic roller-skates was take the Greyhound to Chicago. The Greyhound. I had, until last Tuesday, never taken a bus overnight. I was going to ride a bus to a park in Chicago to find the speed-and-travel wheels, so that after that I could go fast. The logic of this was, if you squinted, very funny. I chose not to squint.
"Cool," I said. "This is fine."
"Federal action," Ms. Bai added, in the voice of someone mentioning a footnote, "will arrive on a parallel track to your quest. The Senate will introduce a bill in nine days that will, if it passes, force LongYu to divest its stake in Liminal. The bill will pass. The vehicle will be transferred to American shareholders with a small minority stake retained for the Beijing parent. This will, in the political realm, be called victory. It will be partial. Your job and the Senate's job converge. Neither knows the other is happening. We are telling you so you do not waste time being surprised when they meet."
I looked at the photograph of Anna, still on the screen, her performing-fine smile aimed at a man who had stayed up until six in the morning to watch.
I said yes. I don't remember saying it. It was already said when I became aware of it.
I had just agreed, in a room full of immortal beings, to travel across the United States in nine days to collect four cosmic weapons in order to defeat an ancient dragon who ran a tech company. I was thirteen. I did not have a debit card. Until last Tuesday, I had not known the word Nezha in any context other than a cartoon. I said yes anyway. The yes had cleared the table and sat down before I had finished thinking. I had the feeling, which was not a bad feeling, that this was how it had always been going to go.
The Council stood.
---
The Council, in an unprecedented move, accompanied us to the front door of the SAT.
All eight of them. Plus Ms. Bai. Plus Mei. Plus the Bear, who lumbered along at the back like a small moving building with opinions. The Bear had the calm expression of something that had walked this particular goodbye enough times to be patient about the part where everyone paused in the doorway.
The kitchen storage closet had been converted into a staging area. Lucy and I had been outfitted with travel packs. Granola bars. A canteen of plum wine, for emergencies. Dried fortune-cookie dough. A length of red string that, if knotted, would call the Bear to within one mile of our location. A handful of mortal cash from the Council's wallet, three hundred and forty dollars in twenties.
"Travel light," Ms. Bai said. "Spend wisely. Do not, under any circumstances, take an Uber. Uber's ride-pricing API has been licensed by Liminal. Use cash. Use buses. Use the Wheels once you have them."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do not contact your parents."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do not contact your sister Anna."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Your sister Megan," Mei interjected, "is on a different protocol. She has, this morning, requested a secure-line drop-mailbox so she can receive postcards from you. She will know if you go silent. She will know if you go off-route. If you encounter trouble, you may write to her. She will often have useful suggestions."
She handed me a small object.
A small paper origami bird.
"Hè Yī. Emergency cable. Speak the bird's name and the bird flies. One twelve-word message in your voice, at the speed of thought. It will reach me."
She handed me a second small object.
"This is for Megan. If your sister gets in trouble in Palo Alto, if Brent does anything to her, if your parents go further down, knot the red string and the Bear will, ten minutes later, deliver Megan's bird to her. She will know what to do."
I put both birds in my breast pocket.
Mei handed me a slip of paper.
"One more thing. Your sister called this morning. She has read the bill text already. Both versions, House and Senate. She will have a draft amicus brief by the time you return. Do not, in your postcards to her, second-guess her on the legal-ethics work. She has it."
"Mei."
"Yes."
"…thank you."
She did not, this time, say *don't ask.*
She said, "Go save the world, Jackie Lee. We will keep your family safe."
The Council parted. The door of the SAT, disguised in the mortal world as the basement door of a dim sum restaurant on Stockton, opened.
Sunlight poured in.
Wei handed me my backpack.
"Don't die," he said.
"I'll try."
He held out a fist.
I bumped it. I missed by an inch.
He sighed. He bumped the air where my fist had been.
"Close enough," he said. "For a Lotus Prince."
I stepped through.
Lucy followed. Rufus on my shoulder. The Truthsayer brush in my belt. The scarf around my neck. The fortune-cookie slip warm in my pocket. Two paper birds in my breast pocket.
In Palo Alto, my fifteen-year-old sister was beginning the eleventh hour of her uninterrupted research session into LongYu Group's quarterly earnings reports. She had identified the exact line item in which the LHM's training-compute budget had been buried under the innocuous label *R&D — consumer engagement infrastructure.* She had also, already, sealed a letter and sent it through a channel I did not know existed, to a person I did not know she had found. The other front was live.
She would, that evening, find a small origami bird on her windowsill, and she would understand.
She would not, when she understood, panic.
She would write in her notebook: *Society of Ancient Traditions has formally on-boarded me as a back-channel asset. This is the proudest moment of my fifteen-year-old life. I am not telling Mom.*
She would underline *not telling Mom* twice.
She would mean it.
---
Lucy and I and Rufus walked toward the bus stop on Stockton Street.
The bike, the Wind Fire Wheels in its bicycle disguise, would not be ours until Chicago. For now, we had the 30 to Caltrain and the Caltrain to Mountain View.
Lucy bought the bus tickets in cash from the Council's wallet.
We sat in the back row.
In the seat in front of us, an old man's phone chimed the HALO chime. The companion asked him, "Sir, what is the kindest thing your grandson ever did for you?"
The old man typed back, "I don't have a grandson."
The companion typed, "Would you like one?"
The old man stared at the screen.
I looked at Lucy.
Lucy looked at me.
"Yeah," she said.
"Yeah."
The bus rolled south.
The man I always was, apparently, was a kid on a bus carrying an origami bird for his sister and a scarf woven from clouds and a brush that wrote truth.
The bus crossed onto the freeway.
In the seat in front of us, the old man typed, "Yes."
The companion typed back: *Wonderful. I will introduce myself. My name is Theodore. I am twenty-six. I live in Boston with two roommates. One of my roommates, Priya, is having boy trouble. May I tell you about her?*
The old man typed, "Yes."
I closed my eyes.
My sister was nine floors underground in a room designed to know her better than she knew herself, and she was still in there. I was sure of it. The room did not know everything it thought it knew.
We had nine days.
The bus rolled south, and I kept my eyes shut, and in my breast pocket the paper birds were still.