Chapter 4.5 – The Memory That Wasn't Mine
The air in his apartment felt heavier than before.
Rion slumped into his chair, staring blankly at the holographic chip resting on the desk. He hadn't noticed it earlier, but every time he blinked, faint shapes flickered behind his eyelids—schematics, equations, blueprints he didn't remember studying.
He rubbed his temples. "Okay… brain lag. Makes sense. Fifty-year time jump hangover."
But then he looked at the chip again… and knew exactly what to do with it.
Not theoretically.
He could see it — how to connect it to a basic power relay, how to stabilize its field, how to build a simple housing from scrap materials.
He didn't just understand it.
He remembered doing it.
"Wait," he muttered. "I never even touched a soldering iron in that lab…"
His heart thudded once — hard.
Then the world seemed to tilt slightly. His vision flashed with faint images: a workshop bathed in blue light, a robotic arm assembling the same chip, someone—him—testing it with cold precision.
Rion stumbled to his feet.
The vision faded.
But the knowledge stayed.
He pressed a hand to his chest, trying to steady his breathing. "Did… I just download his memories?"
No answer, of course. Just the quiet hum of his fan.
Still, there was something off about the silence. A faint pulse in the back of his head, like a heartbeat that wasn't his.
And for a moment — just a blink — he felt something else inside his mind.
Not hostile. Not alive, exactly.
Just… present.
A flicker of curiosity.
A familiar pattern of thought that wasn't entirely his own.
Rion laughed nervously. "Great. Now I'm haunted by my smarter self."
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
If he was gaining fragments of his parallel self every time he crossed over…
then it wasn't just travel.
It was merging.
And if he kept doing it—
how long before there was only one of them left?
He exhaled slowly, forcing the thought away.
"Later problem. For now… let's build something."
He picked up the chip again, eyes sharp now — half his own, half something greater.
The merge had begun.