The grinding of the coffee machine concealed the ticking of a countdown. Veronica inserted the mechanical jasmine into the scar on her nape, its pistil housing a quantum clock displaying "721:00:00." In the lab's incubation chamber floated my cloned heart, each beat solidifying the holographic image of the mold-covered clock tower by another degree.
"The anchor point for the seven hundred twenty-third recursion is on the third sub-level of the bay bridge," she said, inserting a neural interface into the flower stem. Fluorescent blue fluid coursed down her spine. "Father hid our wedding videotape inside the time amber."
On the holographic map, an inverted Gothic cathedral now occupied the position where the pier should have been. The boy in the diving suit was scribbling graffiti on the stained glass windows, his paint made from moldy cake mixed with recursive code. When the chimes pierced through the quantum barrier, my Nobel medal suddenly cracked open, revealing a miniature mainspring mechanism within.
"He tampered with the award ceremony footage," I crushed the medal casing, and the spring gears automatically assembled themselves into the shape of a key. "The real trap activated the moment we accepted the honor."
Veronica's mechanical jasmine suddenly burst apart, its petals transforming into seven hundred twenty metallic albatrosses. They shattered the lab's bulletproof glass and formed a recursive equation in the pouring rain. By the time we reached the bay, the entrance to the third sub-level had transformed into a giant phonograph, its needle engraving the sound of our footsteps.
"Welcome to your own funeral," the boy in the diving suit emerged from the grooves of the record, his oxygen tank floating with fragments of wedding cake. "Daddy says this time, we'll be buried inside the time amber."
Inside the third sub-level was a reversed wedding scene. The pipe organ played the "Wedding March" backward, and the guests retreated while scattering quantum roses. As we ran against the flow of time, we saw another Veronica at the altar plunging a dagger into my heart—the conclusion of the seven hundred twenty-second cycle.
"Find the breach in reverse entropy!" the real Veronica tore off her wedding gown, exposing the computational module in her mechanical spine. "Use the jasmine fluid to rewrite..."
The boy in the diving suit suddenly hurled a cake grenade, and the explosion birthed a time amber coffin from the mold. The instant I was sealed inside the crystal, I saw the jasmine on Veronica's nape bloom into a quantum computer, its roots piercing the cathedral domes of all timelines.
Within the time amber lay a frozen moment of the wedding. Another version of me was slipping the wedding ring onto Veronica's mechanical limb, and her pupils held the flashing light of a countdown. When I touched the motionless quantum rose, the mold-covered clock tower suddenly materialized outside the crystal, its minute hand slowly driving toward Veronica's true body.
"Perception defines existence," Father's voice emanated from between the molecules of the amber. "Every time you recall the wedding, you reinforce another layer of the coffin..."
I drove the mainspring key into the frozen wedding ring, and memories from seven hundred twenty timelines flooded in simultaneously. In the oldest loop, Veronica's prototype had once plunged obstetric forceps into Father's heart—that was the origin of all recursions.
The frozen quantum rose suddenly came alive, its petals turning into blades that sliced through the amber. As time began to flow again, I grabbed the mechanical limb of the other Veronica and inserted the mainspring key into her computational module: "Execute the anti-recursion protocol!"
The entire third sub-level began to quake, and the wedding guests, who had been moving backward in time, suddenly broke into a mechanical dance. The diving suit boy's oxygen mask cracked, revealing Father's aged face: "How dare you use my origin code..."
Veronica's true form smashed through the stained glass, her mechanical spine now fused with the jasmine roots. As quantum fluid injected into the time amber, all the coffins exploded simultaneously, and seven hundred twenty versions of "us" stood holding obstetric forceps.
"The burial ends now," we declared in unison, driving the forceps into the foundation of the mold-covered clock tower.
Father's body disintegrated into infant form amid the collapse of recursion, his wedding cake melting into a string of Morse code: "Love is the strongest entropy reducer..." When the last of the mold dissipated, the third sub-level reverted to an ordinary pier, leaving only my cloned heart still beating in the incubation chamber.
Back in the lab, the coffee machine no longer spat out notes but instead produced a metal jasmine. Veronica inserted it into the scar on her nape, and the quantum clock began counting forward. But on the surveillance monitors, the boy in the diving suit was stacking new blocks underwater—this time using fragments of the Nobel medal.