The Chrono Cocoon

Washington D.C., White House Underground Bunker, March 15, 2085, 06:30

President Walker caressed the holographic globe in the war room, his fingertip tracing a blood-red ripple over Los Angeles.

"Does Dr. Carter believe this is an alien judgment?" he turned to the Secretary of Defense. "Then why did the CIA intercept a Russian encrypted signal in Alaska last night? The content was precisely the quantum resonance parameters of the time cocoon."

Dr. Carter's projection distorted amidst electromagnetic interference.

"Mr. President, those parameters were discovered just three hours ago; the Russians couldn't have..."

"Enough." Walker pressed a button on the console, and Dr. Carter's image was abruptly replaced by a live feed from Moscow's Red Square: crowds were burning flags emblazoned with the time cocoon pattern, and loudspeakers were repeatedly broadcasting in English, "American imperialism fabricates cosmic crises." The President's blue eyes glinted behind the blast-proof glass. "Do you know why the public believes this is a lie? Because the truth is more terrifying than the deception."

Sara suddenly barged into the encrypted channel, her face filling half the holographic screen.

"Don't be swayed by him!" Behind her, a warehouse was piled high with lead containers marked with radioactive symbols. "I found something good in the third underground level of Area 51 in Nevada—last year's leaked plutonium-239 wasn't cleaned up; instead, the contamination data was reset using time loops!"

Rex's code window popped up in the corner of the screen: "Confirmed! All nuclear test accidents in the past five years have been reset through time loops, with a cumulative death toll of..."

Walker cut off the power.

The darkness lasted for 17 seconds. When the emergency lights came on, the surface of the globe was covered with fine cracks, as if countless transparent worms were gnawing at the continental plates. The Secretary of Defense loosened his tie, revealing the interface of his neck implant: "Activating the 'Doomsday Clock' plan requires congressional authorization."

"We don't need authorization." The President took a black card from the safe; the countdown on it made the Secretary of Defense's pupils contract sharply—00:47:32. "Seven hours ago, three intercontinental missiles equipped with quantum disruptors entered the launch silos. If Dr. Carter's team causes any more trouble..."

The globe suddenly exploded, and the splattered nanomaterials coalesced into a holographic model of the time cocoon. A line of blood-red characters appeared before the President: "Screening Program Phase Seven, Civilizational Self-Destruction Tendency Detection in Progress."

San Bernardino Mountains, California, Same Day, 07:18

Dr. Carter smashed the shell of the quantum communicator and extracted two superconducting nerve fibers.

"They've implanted cognitive filters across all frequency bands," she connected the fibers to Rex's interface. "Let's try transmitting information using pain signals."

Rex's screams accompanied a Mandelbrot fractal burning on everyone's retinas.

Sara was the first to understand: "Nuclear missile launch coordinates... covering all possible orbital points of the time cocoon? They want to induce vacuum decay!"

The old man drew the outline of the biblical beast of the apocalypse on the cave wall with his decaying fingers: "There's something inside the President... I dissected his corpse during the sixth cycle; there's a silicon-based neural node on the back of his head, like a parasite's egg sac."

Max suddenly vomited; his vomit wriggled with translucent topological structures—these were the synthetic proteins he had for breakfast, now exhibiting four-dimensional geometric forms under the influence of the time cocoon. "Underground!" he gasped, pointing to the radiation detector. "Fifty meters deep, something is breathing!"

Sara blasted open the rock layers with her electromagnetic pistol. Blue light seeped from the cracks, illuminating a mechanical structure embedded in the granite: kilometer-long metal cones arranged like a spine, each vertebra emitting neutrino pulses. Dr. Carter's quantum counter indicated that these pulses were rewriting the tectonic stress field.

"Roots of the time cocoon," Rex's interface dripped with cerebrospinal fluid. "They've transformed Earth into a living laboratory; nuclear explosions would accelerate the experiment's progress..."

The cave suddenly shook violently. The holographic screen forcibly activated, and the President's face split into two halves amidst the snowflake noise: "American citizens, in three minutes, we will press the reset button for human civilization."

The countdown appeared in everyone's view, including those running in the streets, the wealthy hiding in bunkers, and the homeless still graffitiing—00:03:00.

Sara loaded the last superconducting battery into her pistol. "Do you know why I retired?" She broke open the electronic lock of the classified weapons vault, revealing dusty Cold War-era antimatter warheads. "Because the military always thinks pressing a button solves the problem..."

When the countdown had two minutes left, Dr. Carter noticed that Rex was missing. Also gone was the plutonium-238 Max had buried in the Nevada desert.