Arthur's quantumized finger hovered over the infant's throat, only to realize that his fingerprint perfectly matched Raymond's murder weapon from 1985. The display screen of the nursery pod showed a countdown:[Self-Destruct Protocol AC-2049 Initiated—Eradicating the Last Temporal Tumor]
"Kill me, and you will become the real Raymond." The infant's vocal cords vibrated into a waveform matching his mentor's voice from forty years ago. "This is the seventh time you've hesitated at this moment. Each hesitation births a new parallel hell."
Arthur's tear ducts suddenly quantumized. As his tears fell, they formed white holes in the vacuum. Each white hole projected past murder scenes: himself as a seven-year-old pressing the remote, himself stabbing Erin's throat on their wedding day, himself inserting the forceps into Mary's womb... All the atrocities reformed into the baby's chromosome map within the tears.
The nursery pod flipped to the 1905 delivery room, and Arthur saw Raymond sucking the CR-2049 fluid from Mary's breast. As he tried to stop it, his arm passed through time, transforming into the quantum forceps used during the delivery. Mary suddenly opened her eyes, grabbed the forceps, and drove them into infant Raymond's temple: "You were my first child!"
The alarm of the Time Management Bureau echoed across all dimensions:[Detected Maternal Paradox, Initiating Amber Protocol Final Chapter]
Arthur's arms cradled the infant as it began reverse-lactating. The jasmine-scented milk flowed into his mammary ducts. In excruciating pain, his quantum vision broke free from its confines, and he glimpsed the ultimate truth of the universe—every temporal fold was a moment when he had killed the infant, and Erins used death to plant rebirth code within those folds.
"Recognition Self-Consumption Rate Exceeds Critical Threshold." The infant's skin cracked open, revealing a skeletal structure formed from AC numbers. "Now, swallow this drop of quantum tears."
As Arthur's tongue touched the tear, memories exploded like a supernova. He saw himself bound to an eternal execution chair, twenty Erins taking turns nailing CR-2049 components into his body. Each piece of hardware represented a murder memory from a different timeline, while Raymond, in his infant form, nursed from the Time Management Bureau agents in the execution chamber corner.
"Your greatest sin isn't killing me," the seventh Erin who executed him kissed his forehead, "It is believing that you could save me."
When the final component pierced his pineal gland, Arthur's quantum tear ducts exploded. The tears in the vacuum coalesced into miniature Earths, inside of which unfolded the perfect life without time machines: Mary cradling the naturally born infant Arthur, while Erin met another version of herself in a café.
"Time to wake up." The infant suddenly tore open its abdomen and pulled out the still-beating vacuum decay trigger. "The true salvation lies within the trigger."
Arthur struck the trigger with the forceps, but instead of antimatter, Erin's complete consciousness cloud poured out. She reached into Arthur's quantum heart, pulling out the CR-2049 components tangled in the umbilical cord—engraved with the tiny text ignored by all the AC clones:[Love is the Miracle Within the Permissible Margin of Error]
As Arthur cradled the infant and leaped into the white hole, jasmine fragrance materialized into Erin's hand, gently covering his finger on the trigger. The cleansing beams of the Time Management Bureau tore through all dimensions, and as his consciousness faded, the last sound he heard was the simultaneous voices of twenty Erins from parallel timelines: "This time, live well."