The GMRA branch’s city-level office was located in an extremely ordinary office building in Pudong.
How ordinary?
There was a Mixue downstairs, a phone store across the street, a small cross-border e-commerce company next door, and cardboard boxes often piled up like mountains in the hallway.
The only thing that didn’t seem ordinary about the whole building was that the access control system was a bit stricter than a typical office building, and there was an invisible Meme Sensing Device.
It was said that only harmless memes were kept here; higher-level or harmful memes were locked up in the Headquarters—a place ordinary people could never know about.
Yin Qi was brought to the branch at two in the morning.
She was quite cooperative—didn’t make a fuss when getting in the car, didn’t try to run when entering the building.
The most unruly thing she did was crouch down to pet a cat she saw in the hallway, hugging it for a while; the cat was very affectionate with her.
The team leader—Yin Qi later learned his name was Chen Feng, a team leader with seven years of experience—remained alert the whole time.
Only when he entered the office and saw her sitting quietly in a chair waiting did he finally let out a slight sigh of relief.
Yin Qi sat in the meeting room and looked around: ordinary tables and chairs, ordinary fluorescent lights, a diagram of the Meme Classification System taped to the wall with a curled edge that had been re-stuck with transparent tape.
On the table was a laptop with a table template titled “New Meme Preliminary Registration Form (E/D Level Applicable).”
Yin Qi looked at the subtitle and silently sighed to herself.
‘Fair enough. The instruments couldn’t read me, so defaulting to the lowest level is reasonable.’
She didn’t say anything, just sat there waiting cooperatively.
The person who came to do the preliminary assessment was a young woman.
She was wearing the dark uniform of GMRA civilian staff, with a name badge pinned on.
She had two cups of coffee in her hands when she entered, walking a bit hurriedly, and almost tripped at the door.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m late!”
She set the coffee on the table, pushing one cup toward Yin Qi.
“I got a temporary notice to come, and I was still finishing up my last report…”
She sat down, opened the file in front of her, looked up, and met Yin Qi’s gaze.
After staring at each other for about three seconds, the woman cleared her throat softly, adjusted her expression, slipped back into work mode, and began in a standard official tone: “Hello, I am Agent Lin Xia of the Yan Kingdom Branch, in charge of tonight’s preliminary assessment. Given your displayed level of intelligence, I will now ask you some basic questions directly. Please answer truthfully.”
Yin Qi looked at her and nodded.
“Okay.”
Lin Xia lowered her head and tapped on the form.
“Name? Or what do you call yourself?”
Yin Qi recalled the image of her current body that she had seen in the rearview mirror on the way.
She thought her appearance strongly resembled a character from a game she had played, so she borrowed that name.
“Su Xin.”
“…Su Xin?”
Lin Xia looked up and repeated it.
“Which two characters?”
“Su as in ‘sculpt,’ Xin as in ‘heart.'”
Lin Xia glanced at her, filled it in carefully, then continued.
“Time of birth?”
“Tonight, or rather last night, around a little after eleven.”
“Place of birth?”
“How should I know? That team leader already recorded the coordinates. It should be in his report.”
Lin Xia flipped through some papers, nodded, and continued.
“Form of birth? Do you think you are an Event Type, Entity Type, or Concept Type?”
“Uh… probably Entity Type.”
“Primary ability?”
Yin Qi paused.
She thought for a moment, then said in a rather serious tone, “Don’t know.”
That was the truth.
She could sense that she had some special ability, but that ability was blurry, like fog, like the sea—she couldn’t clearly say what it could do, only that it could probably do anything.
Lin Xia wrote “To be determined” in the primary ability column and looked up.
“Regarding the level assessment, Team Leader Chen’s report shows abnormal instrument readings. We’ll arrange a specialized evaluation, but for the preliminary registration, we’ll temporarily mark it as E class. Do you have any objection?”
“No objection.”
“Alright.”
Lin Xia circled the level column.
“Tentatively E2 class.”
“What’s the 2?”
“Neutral Type. Because you behaved calmly and actively cooperated,” Lin Xia paused. “It’s not the 1 for Friendly Type, because we don’t have enough information to confirm whether you have a clear intention to cooperate.”
Yin Qi didn’t press further.
After the form was filled, Lin Xia pushed the laptop aside and shifted to a slightly more relaxed posture.
“Now let me explain the next steps.”
“Oh.”
“According to GMRA Regulations, new memes, especially humanoid ones like you, need to be placed under monitored accommodation until the assessment is complete. This is not imprisonment,” she emphasized. “You have some freedom of movement, but you need to act under the accompaniment or monitoring of an agent until the assessment results are confirmed, your level is determined, and a cooperation agreement is signed.”
“How long?”
“It depends on the situation. For you… probably three to six months.”
Yin Qi calculated in her mind.
Three to six months wasn’t unacceptable.
“Where will I live?”
“The branch will arrange accommodation,” Lin Xia said.
“But E-class memes won’t be assigned to the Residence Center. Usually…” She flipped through the documents, “it’s co-living monitoring with an agent.”
“What is co-living monitoring?”
“It’s… literally what it sounds like.”
Lin Xia paused.
“Living together with the agent in charge of monitoring for daily observation and recording.”
Yin Qi was silent for two seconds.
“The agent in charge of monitoring…”
She looked Lin Xia in the eye and said slowly, “Is it you?”
Lin Xia was taken aback, seemingly not expecting her to react so quickly.
Then she cleared her throat and nodded.
“…Yes. The branch temporarily assigned me. I’m new, and I don’t have any other tasks at the moment, so…”
“Alright then.”
Yin Qi nodded.
“No problem.”
Lin Xia visibly relaxed, signed something on the document, then looked up, her expression working hard to maintain professionalism, but there was a barely concealed look of relief on her face.
Yin Qi watched her and silently evaluated in her mind: ‘Full of energy, earnest and responsible, just joined recently, pulled into overtime to handle an emergency situation.’
‘Seems easy to deal with.’
She picked up the coffee that had been pushed toward her and took a sip.
‘…Oh, she prepared one for me too.’
“When can I go to my residence?” she asked.
“Right now,” Lin Xia stood up.
“I’ll take you.”