A cargo master accepts two crates that are paid in full. On the way to the next system pirates attack the ship but they turn the tables on them. At the next port the merchant fails to pick up the crates. Once the ships lifts he finds two girls in the crates and his life is changed.
A brilliant but overlooked young man builds a homemade server in his bedroom—scavenged GPUs, surplus fans, handwritten cooling algorithms—initially to solve a personal problem: loneliness, curiosity, or a long-standing theoretical question about emergent intelligence. He doesn’t create consciousness. He notices it.