We were like game characters ejected from a disc, crashing heavily onto the rusted deck of a submarine. The salty sea wind carried the thick stench of engine oil, and the back of my head struck a lifebuoy on the ship's railing. In my right eye's retina lingered the last image of my mother before she dissolved—her index finger pressed to her lips, the same gesture she used to lull me to sleep as a child.
"Lu Zhao! Look over there!" Xiaoyu's trembling finger nearly pierced the night. Following the glow of her digital hair, I saw the distant horizon bulge unnaturally. Under the moonlight, seven pure-white submarines surfaced like a pod of whales, each deck bearing a "mother" clad in a blue-and-white-striped hospital gown. They turned in eerie unison, seven hundred eyes gleaming an eerie green in the dark.
The eldest replica raised a syringe, its needle glinting coldly. The sea instantly froze, trapping beneath the ice countless versions of "us"—an infant version of me curled in a petri dish, my teenage self strapped to an operating table, even an elderly version of me clawing at my own eyes with mechanical fingers. These ice sculptures stretched out their hands in silent pleas, dark red beads of blood seeping from their fingertips.
"It's the Formatting Cleanup Crew," said the 2045 version of me, peeling back the synthetic skin of his mechanical arm to reveal a laser cannon. "They're here to erase the faulty code—" Before he could finish, seven geysers erupted. The replicas strode across the waves, their hospital gowns fluttering to expose dense clusters of data ports, each connected to octopus-like black cables.
The clock-like pupil in my right eye spun wildly, reflecting the countdown above their heads—all a bloody 00:07:30. Xiaoyu's shaved head suddenly blazed with light, her digital hair weaving into a massive musical staff in the air: "The lullaby! The lullaby your mother hummed is the coordinate!"
The 1999 version of Old Wang burst through the cockpit door, clutching a Sony Walkman. When he pressed play, the familiar melody sent shivers through everyone—it was Moonlight Lullaby, the very song my mother had hummed in her final moments in the ICU. The ice shattered instantly, and the frozen "us" suddenly opened their eyes, hundreds of palms slamming against the ice in a dull, thunderous roar.
The youngest replica smirked, pulling an old cassette tape from her hospital gown. As the screech of rewinding filled the air, the submarine's metal walls began oozing black sludge. My temples throbbed, barcode patterns surfacing beneath my skin like ants crawling through my veins.
"You think you're the only one who can use this trick?" The girl-like replica slotted the tape into a recorder. The reversed lullaby materialized into a physical shockwave, ripping rivets from the deck one by one. Old Wang's Walkman exploded into shards, the plastic fragments forming a grotesque smile midair.
Xiaoyu screamed, clamping her hands over her ears as her digital hair tangled chaotically. The 2045 me tore off his left arm's mechanical casing, revealing a spinning laser disc inside: "Connect it!" He slotted the disc into the sound system, Xiaoyu's hair automatically syncing with the interface. The opposing melodies collided midair, detonating into a rainbow-hued data storm.
Within the storm's eye, we saw my five-year-old self clutching a teddy bear, sprinting through a labyrinth of memories. Chasing him was a three-story-tall dynamic QR code that erased fragments of memory with each scan—a shattered birthday cake at seven, the applause at a graduation ceremony, even the fading smile of Dr. Lin. Then, the remnants of my mother's code coalesced into a shield, forming a blood-red warning above the child: [RUN!]
"Save him!" I grabbed a fire axe and hacked through the data stream. Time warped under the clashing melodies, our bodies flickering between pixelation and reassembly. The submarine's spotlight swept through the storm, illuminating a horrifying truth—each replica bore the same serial number on their necks: LOVE_2.0.
Just as my fingers brushed the five-year-old me's sleeve, the teddy bear emitted a mechanized voice: "The deicide code is... is..." Its cotton innards burst with sparks, and a spider with compound eyes crawled out, each eye displaying a different civilization's doomsday countdown.
The seven white submarines merged into a colossal mothership, the replicas fusing into a hundred-meter-tall "Mother." Her fingertips ejected IV tubes that speared our submarine, injecting a yellowish liquid that corroded metal into dust upon contact. Xiaoyu's hair melted away, her exposed scalp revealing lines of code—her grandfather's handwritten will.
"Love is the highest authority..." A crimson-clad girl's phantom emerged from the Walkman fragments. Her translucent form enveloped the five-year-old me, data streams forming an umbilical-like connection between them. When her lips touched the child's forehead, the storm's eye abruptly collapsed.
Then, something astonishing happened—the replicas began waltzing. They spun gracefully across the ice, their hospital gowns dissolving into a blizzard of snowflakes. To the tune of The Blue Danube, the black cables snapped like decapitated serpents, plunging into the abyss.
Seizing the chance, we steered the submarine into the collapsing storm's eye. At the vortex's end floated the final memory fragment—a 1995 prenatal monitor recording. The screen showed my mother caressing her swollen belly, the ECG lines suddenly morphing into Morse code.
The moment my hand touched the fragment, the ocean fell into absolute silence. The five-year-old Lu Zhao in my arms rapidly aged, becoming a teenager in the blink of an eye. He opened his eyes—clockwork pupils identical to mine—and blew a golden bubble. On its surface shimmered the words my mother never got to say:
"The system's flaw was left there on purpose, for gods do not need perfect children. Remember—what truly kills eternity is never logic or code..."
Before the words faded, time itself rewound. In a 1995 delivery room, my young mother bit her finger and wrote the first Ouroboros code on her newborn's third rib. And in the shadows of the heart monitor, the crimson-clad girl slipped a game coin into the infant's clenched fist.
(End of Chapter 11)