(72 hours prior to calibration of memory entropy value)

I learnt to shed tears when the lab's mechanical cherry blossom bloomed for the 127th time.

They call me 'Egg' as I'm encased in a Klein bottle-shaped incubator. The nutrient solution reflected off the researchers' white coats like swimming, glowing jellyfish. Whenever they took my cerebrospinal fluid, my father's face, the geneticist who had sold me to the company, appeared on the walls.

'Cognitive synchronisation rate 91.7%, exceeding the limits of Type 7 clones,' recorded the lead researcher in amber glasses, the rim of his frame inscribed in Latin I couldn't read: Memoria est clavicularium animae.

The retinal projection suddenly appears as an abnormal data stream. Between two heartbeats, I see memories that don't belong to me: the woman in the mint green dress falling in a rainstorm, her mechanical prosthetic leg stuck into her temple, blood staining the standing water in binary code.

This is the ███ time '' predicts the future.

'Target appears to be timeline contaminated!' The alarm exploded simultaneously with the sound of shattering glass. My palms pressed against the interior of the pod, and silver patterns emerged for the first time. They told me later that it was the first ever self-awakening prototype of a legacy moult management system.

The moment the incubation chamber burst, I saw the memories of the fellows floating away like ribbons of colour. The lead researcher took on a bizarre state 0.3 seconds before his death - his childhood memories suddenly overlayed his near-death fear, and the corners of his mouth even lifted into a smile. This reminds me of the Broad-tailed Crested Butterfly specimen that I dissected last week: after being injected with coloured liquid during the pupal stage, the feathered wings would carry artificial markings.

My father's memories sicken me the most. Deep in his hippocampus were the bodies of two teenage girls with the same iris code as me. I finally understood what he meant by 'perfect iteration' when he stroked my hair.

My long snow-white hair was still dripping nutrient solution as I stepped out of the ruins barefoot. Thirty-seven incubation pods were emitting a ghostly light on the second basement level, and each of them was slumbering with young girls with the same face as mine, their ankle tattoos displaying different generations: β-001 to β-037.

The sound of the alarm was mixed with an urgent communication from the Board of Directors, 'Destroy all experimental subjects immediately! Repeat, Destroy all experimental subjects immediately! '

My fingers automatically plugged into the backup power supply port; this body was obviously hiding a backdoor programme that I didn't know about. Surveillance images of the entire building flooded into my mind: in lab B-17, personnel in chemical suits were injecting beta-series clones with neurotoxins; in warehouse C-02, thirty thousand coffins bearing the Hourglass logo were being loaded onto ships.

The sudden received encrypted file stung the nerves, it was a confessional video uploaded by my father on his deathbed, 'Eggy, the real experiment only started after you woke up. Not for perfect human beings ...'

The video is overlaid here as a company promo, 'The Memory Forever Project, allowing love to cross the boundaries of life and death!'

I kneel in the pouring rain and vomit, artificial stomach fluids corroding the lawn. Some command deeper than instinct was activating, silver lines spreading to my collarbone. As the first of my pursuers approached, my throat automatically made a sound that wasn't my own - it was Lin Geun's voice mixed with a mechanical synth: 'Mandatory activation of the Remnant Management System, enforcing Law Zero: Protecting the Survival of Human Civilisation.'

By the time I regained consciousness, three kilometres in every direction had been reduced to a glassy crystalline landscape. Holding half a melted job tag in my palm, the number remaining on it sent shivers down my spine: TC-00.

In the distance came the cries of the clones. β-002 was bandaging β-015's broken calf with my long hair, and the tattoos on the back of their necks formed a Fibonacci sequence. I counted to the 21st survivor and was suddenly struck dumb - the mole of tears at the corner of everyone's eyes grew on the lower right, except for β-008.

She hid behind a broken wall and signed to me, 'They buried an hourglass in our hearts.'

There was an unusual twinkle in the stars that night, which I later learnt was the company's artificial satellite modifying memory data. I led the clones to break into the underground gene vault, where three hundred of my corpses were floating in the freezer, the earliest dating back to 1997.

Beta-008 suddenly began to recite pi, her pupils turning the ghostly green of data streams, 'Eggy, we weren't being created.' She slit her wrist, revealing the coordinates carved into her silver skeleton, 'We are meant to be recycled.'

The coordinates point to the ruins beneath the Greenland ice sheet. As I pressed my hand against the 10,000 year old ice wall, huge metal hulls emerged from the depths of the ice, with hatch covers boldly inscribed:

Primordial Remnant Shelter

TC-00 prototype

Date of commissioning: 1024 B.C.