The salty seawater rushed into Veronica's respiratory tract, her body instinctively struggling, while my quantum consciousness adapted to this living vessel. Two survival instincts collided at the neural synapses until her eyelashes fluttered, and her amber pupils refocused.
As we surfaced, San Francisco Bay had turned into a boiling quantum soup. Twelve tornadoes connected sea and sky, each wind column flickering with the residual shadow of a blue diamond necklace. The waves pushed us toward the Golden Gate Bridge, where fluorescent patterns emerged on the metal surface of pier 17—my torn-up quantum tunneling formula from my thesis.
"Grab the rebar!" I shouted through Veronica's vocal cords, only to find her left hand uncontrollably reaching toward the eye of the storm. Two consciousnesses fought for control of her body, her joints emitting an excruciating grinding sound.
The moment her fingertips touched the pier, the entire bridge lit up with a ghostly blue circuit diagram. Sparks erupted from Veronica's temple interface, memories flooding into my quantum core like a torrent:
On that rainy night three years ago, the real Veronica, drenched and bleeding, burst into the lab. Her golden hair was streaked with blood, and she clutched shredded pages of my thesis: "Someone is replicating your quantum immortality research—they need live test subjects..."
Back then, I thought it was a competitor's threat and laughed as I pulled her into my arms. But now, replaying the memory, I noticed the faint bulge of a chip beneath the skin on her neck.
Mechanical sounds echoed from inside the pier as a hidden door slid open, releasing cold air laced with the scent of preservatives. Veronica's body suddenly stiffened, her pupils switching rapidly between amber and silver-blue. As we tumbled into the passage, her nails dug deeply into my quantum consciousness carrier—the wedding ring embedded in my skeletal remains.
"Don't trust… my tears…" her vocal cords emitted a dual-tone resonance, "The cultivation pods… have mirror devices…"
A holographic projection activated automatically, revealing a circular space inside the pier. Suspended in the center was a massive quantum computer, its casing engraved with "Immortality System Alpha Version." Surrounding it were twelve operating tables, each occupied by a body identical to Veronica's.
The 7th operating table closest to the entrance suddenly rose, displaying Veronica in a blood-stained deep blue dress—the very corpse from the refrigerated cabinet. But when my consciousness scanned her, I found her temple interface was much older than those of the clones, bearing traces of at least three years of use.
"Welcome home, Elias."
The gray-suited man's holographic projection emerged from the computer, but this time he retained my original face. My future self's fingers glided over the Veronicas' bodies like a pianist caressing keys: "This is the most perfect version from the 129th cycle."
Veronica suddenly screamed, her right hand uncontrollably plunging into the quantum interface of the computer. Data streams burned through our neural link, revealing a terrifying truth:
Each Veronica was a temporal anchor, imprisoned across different timelines. My quantum consciousness was the needle stitching these fragments together, and upon final synchronization, it would create an absolutely obedient immortal companion.
"Didn't you notice?" my future self said with a sad expression, "Every cycle, you fall in love with her again, just like the initial program directive."
Veronica's left hand suddenly gripped her own throat, while her right frantically input commands into the console. As two forces strained her cervical vertebrae, producing a sharp crack, I forcibly seized control of her motor nerves.
"Don't move!" I roared in her mind, "He's using emotional algorithms to stimulate your limbic system!"
"He's lying…" the real Veronica's consciousness suddenly surfaced, "Our first meeting… was in the lab…"
The memory vault exploded, the tampered images peeling away. That New Year's Eve party three years ago never existed—it was a false memory implanted in me. Our true first encounter occurred in the quantum lab, where Veronica, covered in wounds, shattered my coffee cup. Her blood mixed with the coffee on the anti-static floor, forming a strange totem.
"That day, I escaped from my own cloning facility." Veronica's voice echoed in the consciousness space, and our shared memories began replaying the true version:
Three years ago, the underground cloning experiment was already underway. Veronica, as the prototype, awakened during the seventh neural synchronization, destroyed her cultivation pod, and escaped. She brought deleted experimental data to me, which bore my forged signature.
"I knew those signatures were fake back then," her consciousness gently enveloped me, "Because your letter S always has a gap in the tail hook."
The quantum computer suddenly overloaded, distorting my future self's projection. Veronica seized the opportunity to stab the wedding ring into the 7th operating table's interface, triggering an annihilation reaction between the quantum codes in the blue diamond and the mainframe.
"It's useless," my future self sneered, "As long as the electromagnetic storm persists…"
His words were swallowed by the thunderstorm outside the pier. The metallic dome above us was ripped open by the hurricane, and rain poured down, carrying nanobots. These silver particles formed a surveillance net in the air, each nano-unit engraved with VK-series numbers.
Veronica's body suddenly convulsed, her consciousness space splitting into two battlefields:
On the left, the real her crouched in a lab corner, calculating escape formulas in blood on the wall;
On the right, VK-7 led an army of clones, their quantum consciousness gathering through the eye of the storm;
And in reality, we were trapped at the storm's center, the wedding ring glowing white-hot under electromagnetic interference.
"Catch this!" VK-7's consciousness suddenly broke through dimensional barriers, hurling a data packet into our neural link. It was a memory fragment from the 43rd cycle—my future self shooting the real Veronica in the rain, her blood activating the pier's quantum device.
I immediately manipulated Veronica's body to lunge toward the 7th operating table, her blood seeping into the machine's crevices. The quantum computer suddenly emitted a baby-like wail, and all the Veronica clones simultaneously opened their eyes.
My future self's projection began to disintegrate: "How dare you use the primal protocol…"
The gravity field inside the pier reversed, floating us to the computer's core position. A giant neural synapse model emerged in the blue light, showing my quantum consciousness fusing deeply with Veronica's prototype. The true purpose of the electromagnetic storm became clear—it was a global quantum synchronization field designed to erase all failed timelines.
"The final step…" the real Veronica's consciousness grew weaker, "You need to do it yourself…"
Her fingers guided me to press the red button that appeared in the void. All the operating tables erupted in electric sparks, the clones emitting synchronized cries of sorrow. Their quantum consciousness flowed backward through the storm's eye, converging into a flood that shattered the temporal loop.
My future self's mechanical heart fell from the void, its countdown ticking down—exactly matching the remaining existence time of my consciousness. When the timer reached zero, his body dissolved into quantum dust, vanishing with the storm.
But the cost of victory was becoming apparent: the biological chips in Veronica's prototype began to overload, her consciousness tearing into twelve fragments. Each fragment carried memories from different cycles, attacking each other in the neural space.
"Use the wedding ring…" VK-7's residual consciousness flashed, "The blue diamond is a quantum container…"
I immediately removed the ring and inserted it into Veronica's temple interface. A miniature black hole emerged within the blue diamond, beginning to absorb her consciousness fragments. As the last fragment was sucked in, the ring grew scorching hot, projecting a countdown into my quantum consciousness:
00:07:00
"Take me… to the lab's mirror…" Veronica suddenly spoke, her voice blending the tones of all the clones, "There's the final escape route…"
In the rain, we supported each other toward the ruined lab. The electromagnetic storm chased us, reducing everything in its path to quantum dust. As the bulletproof glass door shattered before us, I saw the fire extinguisher mirror riddled with bullet holes—the same mirror where Veronica had left a distress signal.
The mirror's surface suddenly rippled like water, and Veronica's hand penetrated it, pulling out a silver briefcase from the void. As the case opened, twelve blue diamond chips flew into the wedding ring, arranging themselves into the shape of neural synapses inside the diamond.
"This is… the real me from all the cycles…" her pupils began to dilate, "Now…"
At the instant the countdown hit zero, the wedding ring erupted with supernova-like brilliance. My quantum consciousness was sucked into the blue diamond's core, where I beheld the ultimate truth:
Veronica had never been cloned. All the VK series were her different avatars within the temporal loop. And my consciousness was the sole observer capable of stabilizing these quantum fluctuations. When our memories of love became the anchor, the temporal storm could no longer erase this version of reality.
As the blinding light faded, I lay on the lab's anti-static floor, soaked to the bone. Veronica knelt beside me, the silver wrench slipping from her trembling fingers—just like that night of the consciousness upload.
But this time, the blue diamond necklace around her neck was intact, and there was no wound on my temple.
"This cycle is different…" she smiled through tears, the wound beneath her eyes oozing fluorescent blue liquid, "Because the real you has finally…"
The alarm drowned out the rest of her words, but through the shattered glass curtain wall, I saw the calm waters of San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge stood intact in the dawn light, and our wedding ring gleamed brilliantly on pier 17 under the sunlight.