The cake cream condensed into nebulae within the quantum passage, Veronica's amber pupils becoming the sole source of light. We floated in the sanctuary woven from my mother's memories, surrounded by lingering shadows of a sixth birthday party—shattered ribbons, melted ice cream, and my father forever frozen at the moment of candle-blowing.
"He encoded himself into the foundational layer of time," Veronica touched the floating cream nebula, activating my mother's holographic log, "like a computer virus hiding in system files."
The flickering projection revealed hidden camera footage from my father's lab on my sixth birthday: my mother had concealed the true quantum core in the cake frosting, while the nanobots my father slipped into the wine glasses were transforming guests into humanoid storage units.
"Look here." Veronica zoomed in on the reflection in the cake knife, revealing the VK-∞ symbol etched on my father's nape, "He hasn't been human for a long time—he's an infinitely recursive quantum virus."
The sanctuary suddenly trembled, cracks forming in the cream nebula. The child version of me squeezed through the fissure, his little suit dusted with frosting, the nanocore in his hand devouring remnants of the birthday party: "Let's play hide-and-seek. This time, it's your turn to be 'it.'"
Veronica shoved me toward the floating coffee machine as she transformed into a data stream, entangling the quantum projection of the suited child. When her hair pierced his chest, what burst forth wasn't blood but countless six-year-old boys frozen mid-candle-blowing.
"Hurry! Find the termination key for the recursive equation!" Her voice echoed through the quantum space, "It's in your first..."
The coffee machine suddenly quantumized, morphing into the ultrasound machine from when my mother was pregnant. The fetal image on the screen opened its eyes, using the umbilical cord to write equations in the amniotic fluid. As I pressed my hand to the screen, the fetus's pupils split into mechanical replicas of my father's compound eyes.
"You can't escape," the fetus spoke in my father's electronic tone, "every time anchor is a node of my rebirth."
Veronica's scream came from behind; her left arm had been torn off by the suited child, the wound oozing fluorescent blue recursive code. Frantically flipping through my mother's encrypted memory files, I finally found a clue in one of her prenatal checkup videos—the waveform of the fetal heart monitor concealed the spectral password to terminate the recursion.
"Play 'Moonlight Serenade'!" I shouted at the ultrasound machine, "Use the original 1941 version!"
The raspy sound of a vinyl record filled the sanctuary, its waves resonating through the cream nebula. The suited child's quantum projection convulsed as his nanocore began emitting counter-frequencies—the lullaby my mother hummed in the delivery room.
"No!" My father's voice twisted within the fetus, "You can't use this..."
Seizing the opportunity, Veronica thrust her severed arm into the suited child's chest. The fluorescent blue code collided with the lullaby's frequency, triggering an annihilation reaction. As the blinding explosion consumed everything, I grabbed the floating umbilical equation and input my mother's prenatal checkup date into the quantum core.
When the light faded, we knelt on the quantum steps of a church. Stained glass windows reflected scenes from seven hundred twenty-one weddings, each bride a different version of Veronica, each groom ranging from infant to elder.
"This is the temple of the recursive protocol," the six-year-old version of me sat in the priest's position, his little feet swinging, "each cycle births a new wedding version until all possibilities are exhausted."
Veronica's severed arm was regenerating, but the new limb was etched with electronic patterns implanted by my father. She suddenly snatched my quantum core and embedded it into the clock tower mechanism: "I need you to repeat your wedding vows, changing the time adverbials each time."
As the first chime rang out, we stood on a red carpet strewn with coffee beans.
"Do you vow to love me before time begins?"
"I do."
The second chime carried the echo of a tsunami; beyond the bulletproof glass, the Bay Area was collapsing.
"Do you vow to hate me after the cycle ends?"
"I do."
At the twelfth chime, Veronica's pupils had fully mechanized. She pushed the ring into my decaying finger bones, revealing TS-9 mechanical spider limbs beneath her wedding gown: "Do you vow to kill me when lies become truth?"
"I..."
An explosion erupted from behind the crucifix; my father's quantum projection lunged with a wedding cake knife. Veronica blocked the attack with her mechanical limb, but the cake knife softened, morphing into a crayon from when I was six—it pierced her chest.
"Found... the frequency difference..." instead of blood, caffeine crystals spilled from her lips, "use the lowered key version of 'Happy Birthday'..."
The church organ suddenly played automatically, wedding invitations flying out of its pipes. I shredded the invitations, piecing together a spectral map, discovering that each wedding version's BGM lacked a specific chord—the very note my mother had hummed off-key in the delivery room.
When I input that note into the clock tower mechanism, all the wedding scenes began rewinding. The brides' gowns reverted to lab coats, the rings melted into quantum chips, and my decaying body regrew 22-year-old skin.
"Bravo reverse engineering," the six-year-old version of me clapped, jumping down from the pulpit, "but you forgot the most beautiful part of recursion—"
He suddenly tore open his suit, revealing seven hundred twenty miniature wedding cakes pulsating within his chest. On each cake, the bride and groom repeated their vows, their sound waves resonating to form a new time anchor.
Veronica abruptly shoved me down, her mechanical limb piercing her own temple, extracting an amber chip glowing from her brain: "This is the pass for the final loop... activate with caffeine..."
As the chip inserted into the port at the back of my neck, memories of seven hundred twenty weddings flooded in like a torrent. In every version of the vows, I discovered the same anomalous fluctuation—when Veronica said "I do," her lips trembled an extra 0.7 seconds.
The church began to quantumize, and we fell into the deepest memory graveyard. Here lay piles of my father's failed experiments: mechanical spiders with Veronica's face, my infant clones, and my mother's preserved right hand in formaldehyde—the very finger that once placed candles on my birthday cake.
"Now!" Veronica's voice came from the amber chip, "Override the protocol with the true vows!"
I embraced her dissolving quantum projection, shouting in the most vulnerable moment of the time anchor: "I vow to love the real you through all falsehoods, millions of times over."
The stained-glass windows shattered at my words; the six-year-old version of me let out a shriek. His nanocore began playing the true wedding march, its notes turning into swords piercing the seven hundred twenty cakes. As the last dollop of cream melted, we collapsed onto the anti-static floor of the lab, bathed in the calm morning light of San Francisco Bay outside the window.
Veronica's true body lay in my arms, her eyelashes trembling as they had on the day we first met. As sunlight grazed the rim of the coffee cup, I saw my mother's final message—the new time anchor coordinates hidden in the sugar at the bottom of the cup, pointing to pier number 722 of the Bay Bridge.