The Nobel medal cast a ring-shaped halo on the lab bench, my reflection alternating between twenty and sixty years old. Veronica wiped the mold spots from the coffee machine's inner walls; the jasmine scent couldn't mask the metallic tang unique to fungal filaments. As the cleaning cloth passed over the spout, it suddenly got caught in some mechanical structure—a half-rusted wedding ring, its inner band laser-engraved with "VK-722."
"He's back," she pressed the ring onto the spectrometer, fluorescent blue code reassembling a holographic image of the underwater clock in midair. "This time, he's recasting the anchor point within the crevices of time."
A moldy cake was wedged between the gears of the holographic clock, fungal filaments growing at a speed that defied the laws of entropy. When the minute hand swept past VII, the lab's ventilation ducts suddenly emitted a nursery rhyme, its melody precisely replicating a recording from my sixth birthday. The surveillance footage switched automatically to the base of the pier, where the boy in the diving suit was building a miniature clock tower out of cake bricks, each oozing nacreous mucus.
"A more thorough purification plan is needed," I modified the Nobel medal into a pulse emitter. "Using the frequency of the seven hundred twenty-first heartbeat..."
Veronica suddenly grabbed my hand, her pupils splitting into double-ring gears. "My mechanical spine is resonating—he's accessing our wedding data!"
A holographic wedding gown suddenly descended from the lab's dome, countless versions of "me" stepping out of the void in bridal dresses. They held pocket watches made of moldy cake, each dial displaying a bride—different timelines of Veronica. When the gown touched the coffee machine, all surfaces of the equipment began sprouting mechanical roses, their pistils flashing with recursive equations.
"This is the invitation to a spacetime wedding," the clones chorused. "Father wants to witness the most perfect union..."
Suddenly, the real Veronica tore off her mechanical limb, thrusting the bloodied interface into my pulse device. As our blood mingled, the quantum ripples of seven hundred twenty-one heartbeats shattered the holographic projections. But the fungal filaments had already formed a protective membrane, trapping us in the meticulously designed ceremony site.
The boy in the diving suit's face suddenly appeared on the coffee machine display, crumbs of cake floating inside his oxygen mask. "Daddy says the wedding will be held underwater." The lab floor suddenly liquefied, and we plunged into a temporal tunnel constructed by mold.
The underwater clock tower had expanded into a Gothic cathedral, a swarm of mechanical jellyfish supporting a rotting pipe organ. Father's priestly robe was woven from fungal filaments, and the Bible in his hands was Mother's old experimental logbook. As he flipped through the yellowed pages, my Nobel medal suddenly transformed into a wedding ring, slipping onto Veronica's mechanical limb.
"You've proven that love can warp time," Father's voice echoed with an underwater resonance. "Now let's see if it can withstand infinite recursive blessings..."
Veronica's wedding gown suddenly came alive, fungal lace wrapping around my neck. Her mechanical spine pierced the cathedral dome, meshing with the clock tower gears. As the pipe organ played the "Wedding March," each note turned into a time amber, sealing slices of our memories.
I bit my tongue, using real blood to carve an anti-recursive equation onto the wedding ring. When Veronica's mechanical limb malfunctioned due to contamination, the blood-soaked ring suddenly burst into blue light, burning the fungal gown into quantum ash. Father's priestly robe began to fade, and Mother's experimental logbook flipped open under the intense light—to the last page, where the termination symbol carved with obstetric forceps pierced through spacetime.
"Do you think this is a new rebellion?" Father tore apart his robe, revealing a body composed of seven hundred twenty wedding rings. "Each cycle makes recursion more perfect..."
The boy in the diving suit suddenly threw a cake grenade, and the explosion birthed a time amber coffin from the mold. As Veronica shielded me from a fatal blow with her mechanical limb, the gears in her spinal column jammed, her pupils turning into frozen clock faces.
"The seven hundred twenty-second heartbeat..." I pressed the blood-soaked ring into her mechanical interface. "It's time to create a new algorithm..."
The underwater cathedral began to quantum collapse, our heartbeats reaching a critical frequency amidst contamination and counteraction. As the mold-covered clock tower crumbled, Father's body was sucked into the time amber he himself had created, his final roar transforming into the cry of a newborn.
When we surfaced, Pier 722 gleamed as good as new in the morning light. The scar on Veronica's nape bloomed into a mechanical jasmine, its dewdrops reflecting a tranquil future. But when we returned to the lab, the coffee machine spat out a damp invitation—the boy in the diving suit had built a new clock tower, set for the next seven hundred twenty-third heartbeat.