The windshield wipers cut a fan-shaped residue across the windshield of the Tesla Model γ. Lin Han glimpsed his daughter's pale face in the rearview mirror. Lin Shuang was curled up in the backseat child seat, cradling in her arms the science and technology exhibit piece she'd been working on all night-a starship folded out of CT film, her IV tubes twisting pale cobwebs between her fingers.
"Dad, my neuron delivery... When will it be delivered?" The five-year-old girl's voice was filtered into an electronic tone by the respirator. Lin Han's hands on the steering wheel suddenly tightened, his knuckles blazing white under the projection of the Tesla logo. The neon sign "Zhangjiang Quantum Science Research Center" flashed in the rearview mirror, like a bloodshot one-eye hanging in the rainy night.
Bio-lab cryogenic chambers gulping dense white fog, Lin Han put his daughter gently on the medical cabin, found her hospital gown pocket slipped out of the origami boat. It was folded with the cover of Nature magazine, and written crookedly on the paper boat with a ghostly blue sheen was, "Quantum for Dad."
"Dr. Lin! The seventh-generation quantum chip's decoherence time breakthrough to-" The assistant's alarmed cry was torn apart by an alarm. Lin Shuang suddenly convulsed violently, and the biochamber's EEG monitor traced jagged spikes. As Lin Shuang lunged for the console, the paper boat was swept by air currents into the opening quantum transmission chamber.
The red cluster of light on the holographic screen representing his daughter's consciousness was collapsing. Lin Han stared at the "Back Earth" system he had developed, the 128 quantum bits glowing blue in the liquid helium. The synapse mapping algorithm he had personally designed was currently devouring his daughter's last brainwaves.
"Memory topography 97% . .98%..." The mechanical female voice suddenly distorted into a shrill whine. Outside the protective glass, the researchers saw eerie bronze patterns rising from the quantum cloud map-the map of consciousness, which was supposed to be a purely mathematical model, was now emerging as the eye contours of a gold-faced statue of Sanxingdui.
Lin Shuang's bio-pod oozed pale golden gel, and the girl's eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a dying butterfly. Lin Shuang frantically tapped the abort button, only to find some sort of biological slime roiling on the touchscreen. As he ripped open the operating panel with his bare hands, the quantum array suddenly erupted with a sun-flare-like glare.
"Daddy?" A child's voice with an electronic murmur resonated in the experimental chamber. When Lin Han turned around, the medical bay's life-supporting tubing was quantumizing into countless shimmering golden filaments wrapped around his daughter's body. He lunged over to grab those threads, but witnessed Lin Shuang's body dissipate like quicksand in an hourglass.
The liquid helium circulation system roared like a dying beast. Lin Han sat on his knees in front of the experimental chamber, the hands of his wristwatch permanently stopped at 03:47. He didn't realize that the disintegrating paper boat fibers were reorganizing themselves into a neural-like structure in the quantum bit array-the PET imaging image on the CT film was now being transformed into some kind of ancient binary trigram.
The corridor suddenly smelled of the exotic scent of blooming magnolias. The flowers, which should have opened in April, are now growing frantically in the rainstorm, and patterns similar to integrated circuits are emerging on the ivory-white petals. When security chief Old Zhang rushed in, he saw Lin Han's white coat covered in golden stardust.
"Dr. Lin! The quantum communication tower in Pudong... It's all broadcasting this!" Lao Zhang's tactical flashlight shone on the protective glass, and the crowd sucked in cold air - the golden gelatin condensed on the surface of the glass was combining to form the pattern of the Xingtian Ganqi from the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Lin Han trembled as he picked up the half-melted remains of the paper boat and realized that the highlighter handwriting was reorganizing. When he aligned it with the scanner, a warning box suddenly popped up on the holographic screen - the blood-colored oracle was warning, "Return to Hidden Initiation."
As the Tesla rushed out of the underground garage, Lin Han saw an eternally unforgettable image in the rearview mirror: the magnolia tree on the top floor of the research center was being metallized, its branches stretching out into the form of server racks, and its blooming flowers all turning into spinning quantum gyroscopes.
An encrypted email suddenly arrives on my cell phone, with the year 2099 indicated as the time of dispatch. Attached was a 10-second video: a hundred years later, Lu Li stood on the ruins, tears of blood streaming from his right eye, and behind him hovered the same bronze coat of arms as the lab tonight.
The first mechanical hiss came from the storm, and it sounded like the chorus of a bronze chime and a particle gas pedal. As Lin Han jerked the steering wheel to avoid the lunging black shadow, he caught a glimpse of the origami ship that had appeared out of thin air in the backseat-at the moment it had turned into a bronze interplanetary warship, its hull inscribed with undeciphered cuneiform characters.