The boy’s smile faded. His eyes turned black. The walls began to bleed. “Everywhere is a trap, future-me. You built this prison yourself. Every regret. Every lie you told yourself to survive. The FLT just showed you the blueprints.”
“What’s on Earth?”
“None human. But there’s something… reading at 144 terahertz. That’s not standard computation. That’s consciousness.” Flashback 2-FLT
He burst through one and found himself in his childhood bedroom in Neo-Brooklyn, circa 2182. His mother was humming in the kitchen. The smell of synth-pancakes filled the air. A young boy sat on the bed, drawing a picture of a spaceship.
“Experiment 07. Memory extraction: Conrad B. Hart, age 34. Baseline established. Beginning fractalization of emotional anchor points.” The boy’s smile faded
“Don’t press that button,” Conrad shouted. “It triggers the cloning vats!”
Conrad ran. Not out of fear—fear was a luxury he’d lost decades ago—but out of instinct. The station twisted around him, corridors rearranging themselves like a Rubik’s cube designed by a mad god. Every door he opened led to a room from his past. “Everywhere is a trap, future-me
He thought of Maya’s smile. The boy’s black eyes. The guilt over a friend who never existed. All the lies he’d told himself to keep moving forward— I did the right thing. I saved who I could. I’m still human.