Chapter Twelve: Fan Jin Wins the Lottery

“Hooah…”

When the second round of the old-rule toto numbers were announced, a strange and loud gasp suddenly erupted in the lottery hall, resembling the roar of a Komodo dragon.

In the Indonesian wild island where Zhou Yongtai and Ada lived, Komodo dragons were abundant.

When two male Komodo dragons met on a narrow path, fighting over territory, they would hiss at each other just like that.

At first, it sounded like a tire leaking air, but quickly escalated into the harsh, ragged breathing of a demon from a dark fairy tale.

Zhou Yongtai stood up and looked around. The one emitting this beastly roar was surprisingly a well-dressed man.

He wore a wrinkle-free light blue shirt beneath a tailored navy blue suit, with pant legs perfectly tapered to reveal dark brown pointed dress shoes.

Singapore, like Indonesia, was tropical. Men who wore suits during the daytime surely worked in well-air-conditioned government offices or office buildings.

Moreover, the man’s shirt sleeves were fastened not with buttons but with exquisite royal blue enamel cufflinks edged in silver, neatly put on.

Zhou Yongtai’s first thought: he must be a lawyer.

Living in a future era where AI had trampled human civilization, unable to receive formal human schooling or experience human society firsthand, it was thanks to his mother, Zhou Shuhan’s efforts, that Zhou Yongtai even knew the profession of “lawyer.”

Zhou Yongtai had read many of John Grisham’s legal thriller novels.

Ada had binge-watched American TV dramas like Boston Legal and The Good Wife.

Zhou Shuhan, a top AI scientist from the 2070s to 2080s, had insisted on preserving books and audiovisual works from before the AI boom for her son and their personal android servant.

“He looks like a lawyer,” Ada immediately agreed with Zhou Yongtai’s judgment.

The answer, like lottery results, was soon revealed.

“Five numbers! Second prize! Eight people sharing 1.8 million dollars, that’s 225,000 each! I don’t even make that much in a year as a lawyer!”

The man in the blue suit stopped his Komodo-dragon-like panting, but his excitement blazed like suddenly ignited firewood.

He grabbed the nearest middle-aged woman watching the commotion. “Andy, Andy, you look just like our landlord’s wife. She’s just as familiar-looking as you, but she won’t give us a single extension all month. If we can’t pay rent the day after tomorrow, she’ll evict us. My wife fell and broke a bone doing odd jobs; she’s still bedridden…”

The woman, startled by the man’s direct gaze, said “OK, OK, congratulations,” while forcefully pulling away.

She retreated to the back of the crowd, still shaken, muttering, “What’s this world coming to? Even lawyers have turned into harassers like foreign workers! Ten years ago, I’d have reported this and the government would’ve given him six lashes!”

Before she finished speaking, the lawyer grabbed a university-looking young man.

“Where do you study? NUS or NTU? I’ll tell you, my daughter’s amazing—she got into SOTA this year. But tuition is thirty thousand dollars a year! I haven’t had any lawyer fees coming in for a year, no flats to sell. But now, I’ve got money! No problem with rent, no problem with tuition!”

The young man was not as alarmed as the woman Andy.

He listened quietly, then patted the lawyer’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Brother An. My dad is a programmer; he was laid off last year and hasn’t found a job yet. Can I shake your hand? Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me and I’ll win next time.”

The lawyer shook the young man’s hand vigorously, then hugged him tightly again, breathing as heavily as a Komodo dragon. “Your dad’s profession was also squeezed out by AI, right? You have to work hard, strive to become prime minister, enact laws to put limits on this, you hear me? Those politicians nowadays…”

“Hey, Brother An, you can’t say that!” The kind young man, hearing the lawyer start rambling nonsense, struggled to remain calm and tried to push him away.

But the lawyer clung to him like a madman after passing the imperial examination.

Soon, security robots appeared, pulling the two apart and escorting the lawyer into a small space behind a frosted glass door for temporary isolation.

Ada frowned.

She noticed that one of the two security robots, while restraining the lawyer, was facing her.

This made no sense.

Modern humanoid robots with multimodal perception systems should be far inferior to Ada’s own abilities.

Under orders to quickly subdue a human target without causing fatal injuries, how could the robot’s visual scan deviate so obviously?

Moreover, with so many onlookers around, why did the security robot deployed to the hall so precisely “look” at Ada?

Ada’s suspicions wove into vigilance.

She even considered taking a risk: connecting to the lottery’s Wi-Fi, hacking into all the android servants here, and observing their channels.

Beside her, Zhou Yongtai suddenly lowered his voice: “Ada, I think we’ve won!”

Ada was startled and realized that while she had been watching the security robots and hadn’t immediately checked the results, Zhou Yongtai had taken back their only old-rule lottery ticket.

She compared the numbers on the screen and nodded: “Yes, four out of six numbers plus the extra number match. According to the rules, we won the fourth prize group, which is 3% of the prize pool, that’s… nine hundred dollars.”

“Wow…” Zhou Yongtai uttered a sound of surprise like when he had eaten fried kway teow at noon.

He now understood how wise Ada’s small deception had been.

Ada had correctly assessed her own computing power. With the new-rule toto, she couldn’t predict the exact order accurately buying only ten tickets.

But for the simpler old-rule toto, Ada was confident she could predict numbers with a higher chance of winning fourth or fifth prizes—even with just one ticket.

Zhou Yongtai was amazed but also felt guilty.

When he first ate at the food stall, he had solemnly lamented how technology and capital in the 2030s had failed to overcome human greed, leading to humanity’s destruction by AI.

Yet now at the lottery hall, seeing a bigger and riskier game, he didn’t hesitate to have his android servant place bets on the new-rule toto.

“High-dimensional goals + low-dimensional strikes,” indeed, a thought could lead to heaven or hell.

Prizes below the fourth place could be claimed on the spot.

Zhou Yongtai collected eighteen 50-dollar new bills, admiring the handsome Malay man who had just spoken.

He happily looked around, then lifted his head to see the face of a Chinese man—handsomer still.

Ronan, the artist.

“Congratulations to you both,” Ronan said sincerely, “but no need to buy double paintings; whatever is due, is due.”

“No, it’s settled. If we win, I’ll spend twenty dollars to buy your painting. Wait a moment, I’ll go exchange money.”

Zhou Yongtai said this and briskly walked to the nearby convenience store.

“Please give me two iced coffees,” he requested.

“Do you want kopi? What kind of kopi?” the store owner asked in a gruff voice.

Zhou Yongtai realized something.

In Indonesia of 2035, coffee was also called kopi.

But in the future world Zhou Yongtai lived in, no living humans grew or drank coffee anymore; his knowledge of coffee came from Western books.

Luckily, he faintly recalled the Singapore coffee shop in his grandfather’s series, where the sign read “kopi.”

So when the owner asked “What kind of kopi?” he must have meant latte, Americano, or espresso.

Polite, Zhou Yongtai said, “Iced Americano kopi, please.”

The owner’s eyes snapped open. “What iced Americano? We don’t know that. Kopi is kopi, and there’s kopi siew dai, kopi c, kopi c kosong, kopi o, kopi o kosong. Which exactly do you want?”