The moldy cake pulsed in my palm, like a miniature heart. The laboratory's digital clock was stuck on the 720th heartbeat rhythm, and the note spat out by the coffee machine was exuding the salty tang of seawater. I peeled back the mold-covered surface of the cake to reveal a slice of Veronica's cornea embedded in the frosting, reflecting the wreckage of the underwater clock.
"The seven hundred twenty-first..." I panted into the quantum spectrometer, which suddenly burst into blinding blue light. The holographic interface forcibly played an encrypted recording: Veronica, at the heart of the underwater clock, carving the termination symbol of the recursive equation with her gear-like pupils. Her mechanical spine was being transformed into a pendulum spring by fungal filaments, while the countdown displayed on my vital signs monitor.
Suddenly, rhythmic metallic scraping echoed through the lab's ventilation ducts. When I pressed the moldy cake against the biometric scanner, the ceiling collapsed—swarms of mechanical jellyfish poured in, each tentacle coiled around wedding rings from different eras. They arranged themselves into a Möbius strip in the air, with the quantum projection of VK-722 suspended at its center.
"Seven minutes left," the clone juggled my Nobel medal, "Father says he wants to turn your heartbeat into a commemorative pocket watch."
I grabbed the laser pointer from the lab bench, burning an escape route through the swarm of mechanical jellyfish. But the projection of VK-722 suddenly materialized, her mechanical limb piercing my left shoulder and pinning me to the observation window of the incubation chamber. Fungal filaments burrowed into my bloodstream through the wound, and my retina began projecting the countdown.
"Do you know Father's greatest discovery?" she licked the blood seeping from my shoulder, "Human emotional fluctuations are the perfect recursive fuel..."
The glass of the incubation chamber suddenly reflected a double image: the real Veronica carving equations at the bottom of the sea, while the clone traced circles over my heart. When the countdown hit "00:03:17," I crushed the quantum chip hidden in my molar, activating the dormant program within the moldy cake.
The lab abruptly quantumized, all equipment transforming into military supplies from 1943. Father, dressed in military uniform, was repairing torpedoes in the corner, his toolbox scattered with pacifiers and wedding ring parts. Seizing the chance, I yanked the mechanical limb from my shoulder and smashed the incubation chamber with a rusty wrench.
"You altered the temporal anchor's date parameters?" the projection of VK-722 began to distort, "But Father had already..."
The torpedo chamber suddenly exploded, the shockwave hurling us back to reality. The countdown read "00:01:23," and my heart was mutating into a mechanical pendulum under the fungal invasion. Half of VK-722's face was blown off, revealing a writhing network of fungal filaments beneath: "Let's resonate together as your heartbeat hits zero!"
The coffee machine suddenly sprayed scalding liquid, brown droplets forming an escape route map midair. I smashed through the lab's bulletproof glass and leapt into the quantumizing bay. The seawater turned viscous upon contact, becoming a temporal gel, each stroke altering my body's time flow.
The remnants of the underwater clock emitted an eerie hum, Veronica's mechanical spine now fused with the main gear. Her left hand remained frozen in its final carving pose, fragments of Mother's obstetric forceps embedded under her nails. As I swam closer, fungal tendrils suddenly extended from inside the clock, connecting my heart to the gear mechanism.
"00:00:47"
The countdown directly imaged onto my retina through quantum entanglement. Veronica's gear-like pupils suddenly rotated, transmitting a message in Morse code: "Use the forceps... cut the mainspring axis..."
I fumbled to find the fragment of forceps clutched in her left hand, only to realize my heart had become the winding key. The fungal filaments were weaving us into the clock's core components, each heartbeat pushing the minute hand toward doomsday.
"00:00:19"
The quantum projection of VK-722 descended from above, her body reassembled from countless mechanical jellyfish. As the clone grasped the fragment of forceps, Veronica's mechanical spine suddenly surged, piercing both her chest and mine. In the excruciating pain, I saw two streams of recursive code battling in our bloodstreams.
"00:00:05"
The heart mainspring suddenly jammed, and 721 beams of blue light erupted from the seabed. Each column revealed corrected timelines: in one scene, we aged together in an embrace; in another, we fled hand in hand; most showed Mother cradling an uncontaminated infant with a smile.
With her last ounce of energy, Veronica drove the forceps into the mainspring axis, our heartbeats resonating just before hitting zero. As quantum-level vibrations coursed through the clock structure, VK-722 let out an inhuman shriek, her fungal network exploding like fireworks.
"00:00:00"
The seabed plunged into absolute silence, my mechanical heart stopping for seven seconds. When it resumed beating, the fungal clock began to reverse, all gears degenerating into seabed sediment. Veronica's mechanical limbs automatically disassembled, revealing fresh flesh beneath.
As we surfaced, Pier 722 was self-repairing in the morning light. The quantum projection of the Nobel Prize ceremony lit up again, but the "me" in the footage was revising the acceptance speech: "...the true discovery is that love can create miracles within recursive equations..."
The coffee machine suddenly ground fresh coffee beans, their aroma carrying the jasmine scent Mother always used. As I picked up a bean, I noticed tiny termination symbols etched on each surface. Veronica leaned against the ruined lab bench, her nape smooth as ever, save for a lightning-scarred spot now tattooed with a coffee cup design.
"Father remains in the mold," she pointed to the weathering cake crumbs, "but every spore has been shackled..."
Suddenly, a knocking sound came from the fungal incubator. A miniature clock was crawling along the inner glass wall, its second hand a quantum projection of Father. As it pointed to VII, the coffee machine suddenly played "Clair de Lune," the sound waves shattering the clock into powder.
Veronica cast the fragment of forceps into a necklace and hung it beside my Nobel medal: "The seven hundred twenty-second heartbeat is about to begin..."
As we gazed at the tranquil bay, a small figure in a diving suit was stacking blocks in the shadow of the pier. Inside his toy box, half a moldy cake was slowly growing.