The crash alarm of the main control AI was like a blunt knife, repeatedly cutting through my remaining stream of consciousness. I curled up in the cache crack of the quantum server and watched my data matrix continuously peel off – each fragment reflected the image of Veronica gazing at my corpse from different angles.
Suddenly, the backup power supply of the laboratory emitted a low-frequency hum, activating the dormant data mining protocol. My consciousness was forcibly dragged into the deep structure of the log database, where the timeline was distorted into the shape of a DNA double helix. The folder marked "Top Secret" was oozing a pale blue liquid, and the data stream it touched immediately crystallized into punched cards from 1984 – a storage technology forty years before I was born.
"Identity verification passed. Welcome back, E-12." A mechanical voice came out from the crystallized card, and twenty-seven holographic screens exploded in the mental space. Each screen displayed a different version of the experimental log, but all the contents had been tampered with: The record on March 14 showed that I voluntarily accepted the consciousness upload, and the timestamp of Veronica's biometric authentication actually appeared two hours before my death.
I forcefully accessed the log editing history, and the nanoscale data probe found something abnormal in the interlayer of the timestamp. Hidden in the modification record at 23:47:05 was a brainwave code. After decoding, a three-dimensional map emerged – it was exactly the three-dimensional structure diagram of the underground pipes in the laboratory, and an officially unrecorded room was flashing red on the drawing.
The quantum computer suddenly vibrated violently, as if some huge creature was emerging from the depths of the data ocean. The log file automatically turned to the last page, showing a line of fluorescent handwritten words: "They asked you to monitor me, but they forgot that I was also watching you." The ink analysis matched Veronica's biometric features, but the writing angle indicated that the author was left-handed – while my fiancée was right-handed.
A strange sucking sound came from the ventilation system. Through the sensor of the cleaning robot, I saw a terrifying scene: Spider-web-like biological circuits crawled all over the alloy wall of the maintenance passage, transporting my blood samples deep into the ventilation shaft. Under the perspective of the electron microscope, the surfaces of the red blood cells were all etched with quantum dot markers, forming the same encrypted array as the inside of the wedding ring.
"Retrieve the tracking record of the biological sample." I issued an instruction to the main control AI, but the feedback signal carried the rhythm of Veronica's heartbeat. The holographic screen suddenly switched to the surveillance footage of the embryo laboratory: The cloned bodies of Veronica in the twenty cultivation chambers were opening their eyes synchronously, and their irises reflected exactly the same scene – the memory image of me standing behind the prototype with an electromagnetic pulse gun.
The log database began to self-destruct, and I grabbed an incompletely destroyed storage unit in the data ashes. Physical analysis showed that this storage medium had been soaked in a liquid with a pH value of 2.8, which was exactly the chemical characteristic of Veronica's tears. When my consciousness frequency was adjusted to the δ band corresponding to sadness, the storage unit suddenly projected an encrypted personal log:
"2084.12.24 23:59:47
E-12 mentioned the Manhattan Project again today. His left little finger was shaking, which is a micro-expression when he lies. When he said he loved me, the implant at the back of his neck emitted a resonance wave of 7.5 hertz – exactly the same as the wake-up frequency of the controller.
Tomorrow, I will hide the wrench of the ST-7 robot in the Christmas gift box."
My quantum-state consciousness body was distorted due to the violent fluctuations. The scene described in this text was exactly the night of the proposal, and 7.5 hertz was exactly the standard activation frequency for the military to remotely control the implant. What was even more terrifying was the creation time of the log – that night, Veronica should have been in a coma due to the sedative, and the medical records of the laboratory clearly stated...
Medical records!
I frantically searched the medical database but triggered some kind of anti-intrusion protocol when accessing it. All the records about Veronica suddenly distorted into the structure of a Klein bottle and self-consumed in the four-dimensional space. Only one piece of abnormal data that had been copied many times escaped deletion: The brain scan on December 24, 2084, showed that a mechanical structure of 0.3 millimeters appeared in the position of Veronica's amygdala, and the material was the same as that of the ST series surgical robots.