Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

Robert knelt beside the mattress and took her hand. Both of their hands trembled, like leaves in a storm.

"But the money is in the account. It really is—I don't know if this was an accident, but now, we have no right to doubt it."

Another ding-dong sounded, and Anna picked up her phone to find that she had also received $100,000.

Great! With $100,000, they can not only get Anna's surgery, but also redeem their car, pay the fines, keep their house and their family, and even have the resources to find a better job!

At that moment, the feeling of going from extreme tension to relaxation made the couple hug each other and sob. Lily quietly walked in, looked at her father, then at her mother, and hugged her teddy bear tightly.

"Is Mommy no longer crying?" she asked softly.

Robert pulled her into his arms, smelling the cheap strawberry-scented shampoo in her hair. "Don't cry, baby."

His voice finally broke down, "I won't cry today."

And this same redemption didn't just happen in one family.

In San Francisco, Maya Sanchez sits alone in the driver's seat of her Honda Civic, idling the engine to keep warm, numbly staring at her remaining possessions.

A beat-up secondhand car, a coffee cup, a few T-shirts, a pot of dying morning glories; and the blanket and pillow she slept on for three weeks.

Her "home" is now this 2009 used car. More accurately, it's a rotating parking lot in different neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Three months ago, Maya was a senior data engineer earning $185,000 a year, renting a small apartment in the Mission District with a view of a corner of the bay. Then the company welcomed a new CEO, a man who liked to quote Elon Musk's tweets during all-hands meetings.

Then she was laid off.

The entire team—twelve data engineers and eight analysts—was collectively dismissed in a ten-minute meeting, with the CEO explaining that the AI ​​they directly employed could now do 80% of their work and was "never tired, never asking for a raise, and never taking maternity leave."

The severance pay was decent enough to cover her expenses for a considerable period, but Maya made a mistake: she thought she was special. Or rather, she was unwilling to accept the fact that her social class had declined.

Ten years of experience, a Stanford master's degree, and several well-known open-source projects on GitHub. She updated her resume, contacted recruiters, and discovered that each position had thousands of applications. The tests she used to pass easily now had new scoring criteria.

Both of these criteria are quite unfriendly to her as an older employee—the idea of ​​entering the workforce at 35 is indeed ubiquitous.

As a result, her savings ran out in the third month. Rent in San Francisco ate up most of her income, and she had no emergency savings because she had paid the out-of-pocket portion of her father's heart bypass surgery, which cost $68,000, the previous year.

Maya's father had just called from the rehabilitation center in Phoenix, his voice full of guilt. Maya just smiled and said, "Don't worry, Dad, I have plenty of money."

If you repeat a lie a hundred times, you'll almost believe it yourself.

She was evicted from her apartment and now has to live in her car. The gym has become her shower, and the public library is her office for charging her equipment and submitting resumes.

She learned to park her car on the street near the police station after 10 p.m. because it was relatively safe; she learned to use a thermos to get free hot water from a convenience store to make instant noodles; she learned to mask the background traffic noise during interview calls...

She was forced to learn all the lifestyles she had once despised, but none of that could stop her from being unable to find a job to make a living.

After countless rejections in interviews, Maya cried for ten minutes in the library restroom. Then she washed her face, returned to her seat, and continued submitting her next batch of resumes. At 10 p.m., when the library closed, she went back to her car, opened her laptop—with 17% battery remaining—and checked her bank balance.

$43.28

Her cell phone bill was due in three days, $85. Her car registration was two months overdue, with fines accumulating to $120. Her gas tank was almost empty, and she had a job interview in San Jose tomorrow, a one-way trip costing $15.

Maya closed her eyes, her forehead resting on the steering wheel. She was thirty-four, homeless, and didn't have enough savings to fill up the gas tank twice. Her father thought she was doing well in San Francisco, her former colleagues were celebrating their new jobs on social media, and her greatest achievement was stealing enough toilet paper from the convenience store restroom today.

It was one in the morning. She curled up in the back seat, wrapped herself tightly in a blanket. The San Francisco night was cold. She didn't know when she fell asleep, but when she woke up, her phone was vibrating. It wasn't an alarm clock—she had turned off all unnecessary notifications to save battery—but a series of push notifications.

It was her PayPal account, and the text message on it read, "Received a transfer of $100,000.00 from VOX."

The note reads: A small gift given free of charge to Miss Maya Sanchez as a pre-Christmas present—from VOX.

Maya sat bolt upright, her head hitting the car roof. She tried to unlock her phone, her fingers frozen stiff, and it took her three tries to get the password right. The moment she saw her balance, she thought she was having a ridiculous dream.

$100,043.28

Maya put down her phone and covered her face with her hands. She was trembling, her whole body was trembling, an uncontrollable shudder spreading from the depths of her bones. She opened the car door and stumbled onto the sidewalk, the cold early morning air filling her lungs. She needed to make sure this wasn't a hallucination, not a sign of a mental breakdown.

There was a bank ATM on the street corner. She walked over, inserted her card, and entered her PIN. When the screen displayed available services, she selected "Check Balance".

A buzzing sound came from inside the machine as it read the card. Then green numbers appeared on the screen:

Available balance: $100,043.28

Maya stared at the number for a full minute. Then she pressed "withdrawal" and entered "200". The machine spat out two crisp hundred-dollar bills, making that distinctive, crisp sound of paper rubbing together.

She held the banknotes up to the streetlight; the security thread gleamed faintly. Real money. Two hundred dollars, tangible and real, that she could actually hold in her hand.

She turned off her phone, got back into her car, and started the engine. She needed to go somewhere.

She soon stopped in front of a 24-hour motel. The receptionist was a sleepy-eyed middle-aged man watching a late-night shopping channel. Maya shakily handed over a hundred-yuan bill.

She took the key with the plastic tag that the other person handed her and went to the room. It was small, with suspicious stains on the carpet, but there was a real bed, a shower with hot water, and what Maya craved most: a power outlet. She plugged in her laptop and phone chargers and watched the indicator lights turn green.

Then she went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. Steam gradually filled the room, blurring the mirror. Maya took off the clothes she had worn for four days and stood under the running water.

The moment the hot water hit her skin, she cried. Not a suppressed sob, but a complete, unrestrained wail. The fear, shame, and despair of the past three months were washed away with the water. She slid to the floor; the tiles were cold, but the hot water continued to pour down on her head like a warm downpour.

She survived; finally, she survived just as she was about to fall.

After showering, she went back to bed, lay in the dark, and listened to the occasional sirens of police cars echoing through the San Francisco night. She thought a lot, and finally, she turned on her computer and connected to her Twitter account.

There's already a #WhoIsVOX topic there.

She typed a line of text, then deleted it, typed it again, and finally sent it:

"@Dear VOX, I don't know who you are, where you come from, or why you did this. But tonight, because of you, someone who almost forgot they were human has remembered the feeling of breathing again. Thank you."

After sending the message, she turned off her phone and closed her eyes. She had an interview tomorrow, her life was still broken, and the future remained uncertain. But at this moment, in this cheap room reeking of disinfectant, Maya Sanchez felt something she thought she had lost forever—hope.

It's not some grand, world-changing hope. Just small, personal hopes: hoping for a good job interview tomorrow, hoping to find temporary accommodation, hoping for my father's recovery, hoping that one day I can afford to rent a room with a window again.

It was late at night, and she fell into a deep sleep.

People like her slept soundly tonight, but those who are rich and powerful might not have such a peaceful sleep.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

P.S.: Due to some reasons, I had to combine the ninth and tenth chapters into a super long chapter of 8,000 words. But in short, it is a double chapter with a total of 8,000 words. I have now completed ten chapters. Please vote and give me a reward!

Tomorrow I'll finish writing about the everyday world. The next time I go back to the everyday world, it will be to completely end the storyline here and rule the world. The next world will be the One Year War in Gundam UC, where I'll kill, kill, kill! I want to take Zeon, and I want to kill the Federation. I can't guarantee anything else, but I'll make sure to have a blast killing them!

Having transmigrated, my only purpose is to kill, kill, kill! : 102. I am the God of Capitalism!

"I'm fucking Jesus!"

As Tsurugi scrolled through the deluge of information on social media, she couldn't help but admire herself.

Nowadays, almost all social media platforms are dominated by the same message.

#VOX's Christmas Miracle

#Sudden $100,000

#Who's handing out money, Jesus?

In short, everyone is speculating, discussing, and excitedly asking who this modern-day Santa Claus is.

Some people posted screenshots of bank accounts, some speculated that VOX was some kind of secret charity, and some even said that this person must be Jesus.

But in any case, what those posts had in common was a shared emotion spreading—the trembling, gasping breath of a drowning person suddenly lifted to the surface.

Single mothers, elderly people overwhelmed by medical bills, unemployed veterans, young people burdened with student loans—every story in this country is like a mirror, reflecting their own faces.

While $100,000 may not seem like a large sum to many people who have seen too many online jokes, it is a huge amount of money that most people in this country could never save.

College loans, medical bills, tax bills, home insurance, car insurance... This country's system ensures the absolute elimination of the weak, while keeping the so-called strong living under constant pressure.

The ruthless elimination mechanism and atomized education from childhood ensured the differentiation and elimination of vulnerable groups at the social level, fundamentally preventing the possibility of grassroots rebellion.

It has to be said that when it comes to reverse-training horse racing, we have to look to the world's number one capitalist power.

Even if someone makes a good thing like receiving 100,000, many people on social media will speculate that it must be a conspiracy by the Chinese.

However, the vast majority of people still focused on the question itself.

VOX—the most famous word in the world today—isn't it derived from Vox-Genesis AI?

"Quack! It must be an AI conspiracy! AI must have beaten that capitalist to his knees so he'd have to support us humans!!!"

Although this claim sounds like a redneck conspiracy theory, quite a few people actually believe it.

Even the government thinks so.

The president, whose home was bombed a month ago, immediately tweeted angrily denouncing it as the result of VOX Technology's manipulation. He said that VOX was responsible for the bombing of his home, the assassination attempt, and even the debts owed by the United States!

Despite his harsh words, the president had no intention of sending troops.

On the one hand, even though Japan is a terrible country, it is still an East Asian country. Its military presence can quickly reach American countries, but it doesn't dare to do this in Asia. If it fails, it will be a difficult problem for Japan, not only embarrassing itself but also very difficult. On the other hand, he is currently surrounded by a group of bankers.

These are the people who are most anxious.

"This is a provocation against the entire United States, and we must retaliate!"

Inside the presidential office, a group of banking and financial giants, led by JPMorgan Chase, surrounded the president. David Morgan, who had been so confident and authoritative just the night before, was now red-faced and shouting wildly.

"War! The Eighth Fleet must act immediately!!!"

"Calm down, gentlemen. You know the difficulties the army faces, and besides—"

The blond president, playing the accordion, said in a gloating tone...

"Shouldn't the most urgent task for you gentlemen be to recover your assets first?"

Last night, everyone at the five major banks, led by JPMorgan Chase, worked overtime like crazy, isolating accounts, tracking IPs, accessing permissions, and some even simply unplugged the network cable.

Even so, while they could stop the dollars from flowing out of the banks, they couldn't stop their own assets from disappearing.

These bankers have huge amounts of cash in their vaults, but ultimately this cash is just emergency working capital. Most of the time, they have to ensure that their funds circulate throughout the country like blood.

Their true assets have always been the gold stored in their vaults, their buildings, real estate, and various other things—

These are the most valuable things. If they were converted into US dollars, the value of all the gold they have stored in their banks, plus the value of their investments in various industries, would exceed fifty trillion US dollars!

It's certain that they are richer than the US government; in fact, it's more accurate to say that the US government is truly poor compared to these financial giants.

And congratulations to them—they lost 40 trillion in assets overnight yesterday!

Their gold stored in vaults in New York, London, Singapore, and other places vanished overnight. Not only that, but cash, antiques, and other high-value commodities in their vaults also disappeared almost instantly.

This is not a theft at all—what kind of robbers can take away nearly 10,000 tons of gold, jewelry, and antiques in one night!

This was blatant robbery, and what's even more ridiculous is that they didn't even know where the robbers were, what they looked like, or who they were!

The blond president is gloating because his money is not actually in the hands of these people—of course, he was almost killed by them when he stepped down last year, and even if he comes to power now and compromises, he will never trust them in the slightest!

Moreover, he is, after all, somewhat involved in the real economy, and after making a fortune in the stock market several times after taking office, he has accumulated a considerable debt to these bloodsuckers.