Reality fractured here, splintering into a thousand mirrors, each reflecting a different stream of time. Chen Mo saw seven versions of Li Mingyuan simultaneously eating, sleeping, lecturing, and dying. The very fabric of spacetime had been violently torn, exposing the chaotic threads beneath.
"The entire Quantum Institute went missing three days ago," Lin Zhan's voice was as taut as a bowstring. "For them to reappear like this… it's no coincidence."
Before Chen Mo could respond, the center of the fractured zone shifted.
The seven Li Mingyuans collapsed into a single, coherent form. He took a steady step, crossing the boundary of normal reality. The ground he walked on briefly cast a four-dimensional shadow; for an instant, the grass beneath his feet was both green and withered.
"Don't move!" Lin Zhan leveled his weapon.
Li Mingyuan smiled, the quantum light swirling in his eyes was dizzying. "Dr. Chen, Colonel Lin. You're trying to comprehend a fourth-dimensional phenomenon with a three-dimensional brain. It must be painful."
Chen Mo noticed a detail that made his skin crawl: Li's shadow moved independently, about a third of a second ahead of his body.
"Are you still alive?" Chen Mo asked.
"'Alive'?" Li chuckled. "That's like asking a deep-sea fish if it understands the desert. We've simply entered a new state of being."
Suddenly, the reality fragments behind him rearranged, displaying a chilling image: a memory of Lin Zhan hugging his daughter at a military base, the colors visibly fading.
"Your memory degradation is accelerating, Colonel," Li said softly. "In seventy-two hours, you'll forget the color of your daughter's eyes. In a week, you'll forget you ever had a daughter."
Lin Zhan's finger tightened on the trigger.
Li produced a device whose surface swirled with the topology of a Klein bottle. "A quantum memory stabilizer. It creates a protective field, shielding your memories from being consumed by the reality restructuring."
"What's the price?" Chen Mo's eyes were fixed on the device.
"Partial acceptance of the transformation. To resist completely is like trying to stop a tsunami with a fishing net; it will only accelerate your collapse." Li placed the device on the ground. "Just as an organ transplant requires suppressing the immune system, refusing to adapt will only make the 3iAtlas's radiation erase you more thoroughly."
Space warped violently, and Li's body began to de-rez. "Choose. Evolve with your memories intact, or perish with your fragmented humanity."
He gave Chen Mo one last look before vanishing. "A scientist's responsibility is to the truth, not to a side."
The device pulsed with a soft, blue light.
---
Back at the base, General Zhang's briefing was grim. "The Eiffel Tower is caught in a six-hour time loop. Central Park has begun to fold in on itself." He pulled up a list of names. "Worse, the Ascensionists have infiltrated the highest levels of command—"
Lin Zhan choked. The last name on the list was his most trusted deputy, Wang Lei.
"Impossible! Wang was just helping me remember my daughter's birthday yesterday—"
"That was his quantum projection," General Zhang said heavily. "The real Wang Lei joined the Ascensionists three days ago."
Chen Mo silently felt his pocket. That morning, he'd realized he had forgotten his wedding anniversary. A date he had never, ever forgotten.
---
Late that night, Chen Mo stood alone before the containment field in the lab. The technician's report was unnerving. "The radiation from the device is identical to the 3iAtlas's, but every subject exposed to it reports hyper-realistic memory recall, even details from early childhood…"
Suddenly, the lights flickered. The device projected a hologram of Li Mingyuan.
"Good evening, Dr. Chen. I thought you might appreciate some empirical evidence."
The hologram displayed a graph of Lin Zhan's memory degradation. The curve representing his daughter was in a steep decline.
"Now, look at the data after exposure." The curve instantly flattened. "It's not just protection. It's a full cognitive enhancement. This is evolution, Doctor."
"What's the price?" Chen Mo repeated.
"You will see patterns others cannot. You will comprehend concepts that are incomprehensible. You will drift away from the old world." The hologram moved closer. "But tell me, in a world that is collapsing, what is the value of being normal?"
Just before the image vanished, Chen Mo noticed a 0.1-second freeze in Li's expression. It wasn't human. It was a meticulously crafted AI-driven imitation.
---
Chen Mo walked to the analysis chamber. Bypassing the surveillance, he picked up the glowing device.
The moment his finger touched the activation button, spacetime froze. He saw cognition itself unfold like a scroll. Quantum probability waves, neural pathways of memory, every precious moment he was losing—all of it was suspended before him, tangible and real.
"The price is leaving the old world behind?" he whispered.
The first thing that flooded his mind wasn't knowledge, but the forgotten last words of his dying wife: *"Remember, true evolution never asks you to abandon your humanity."*
He pressed the button.
A tide of blue light washed over him. In his last moment of clarity, Chen Mo understood. He thought he was saving his memories, but in reality, his memories were choosing a new vessel.
And at a black site out west, in an isolation chamber, Lin Zhan's daughter suddenly looked up, her eyes glowing with the same quantum light as Li Mingyuan's. She smiled at the security camera, a smile that did not belong to a seven-year-old child.
"It's time for Daddy to make his choice."