Chapter Fourteen: The Gardener Who Weaves Time

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Cain stared intently at the strange symbol on the pocket watch: “∞→.” It was neither a mathematical symbol nor a physics formula, but resembled a careless gesture—both an invitation and a farewell. The blue sand on the dial trembled slightly, vibrating at exactly 7.100011Hz, the critical frequency that shattered the Möbius loop.

“So, what do we do now?” Maggie tied her white hair into a ponytail, the neural interface leaving a web-like red mark on her temple. “We can’t really be gardeners planting flowers, can we?”

Hassan was dismantling the scanner left behind by the hound. Hearing this, he looked up. “Strictly speaking, we are indeed ‘cultivating’ time. But the seeds are paradoxes, and the soil is fractured causality...”

His words were interrupted by a crisp bell. Around the street corner appeared a tricycle ice cream vendor, the body of his cart emblazoned with an exaggerated infinity symbol. More oddly, glowing geometric patterns briefly appeared on the asphalt wherever the wheels rolled.

“That’s the new messenger of time,” Edgar said, suddenly standing behind them with a blue ice cream cone in hand. “Try it—mint-flavored memory enhancer.”

The moment Cain took the cone, his tongue tasted the scent of Tokyo cherry blossoms. A foreign memory surfaced: on a rainy night, he had hidden a blue crystal inside the freezer of an ice cream cart. That vendor... was a former agent of the Time Bureau!

“The effect of the Memory Corridor,” Hassan noted Cain’s expression change. “A byproduct of the Time Tree; all key node participants gradually regain their true memories.”

Suddenly, Maggie grabbed Cain’s arm. “Look at the sky!”

The originally azure sky was now faintly overlaid with a mesh-like structure, as if someone had outlined the skeleton of spacetime with a glowing pencil. One node suddenly flickered red, and immediately all their pocket watches began to vibrate.

“London Tower Bridge,” Edgar squinted. “A node is unstable.”

Images projected automatically onto Cain’s retina: the bridge’s mechanical parts were running in reverse; rusted gears reappeared. Worse, a dozen gray-coated figures stood on the bridge—not transformed ones, but enforcers armed with new weapons.

“They’ve activated the backup system,” Hassan’s scanner alarmed. “Someone is trying to rebuild the closed loop.”

The ice cream cart’s bell rang urgently. The vendor threw down his cart and ran over, his irises now completely blue. “It’s not just London! Cairo, Tokyo, New York—all major nodes detect abnormal fluctuations!”

Cain’s watch grew scorching hot. The blue sand whirled wildly, forming a miniature map: among seven red dots, three were turning gray. The root system of the Time Tree was being eroded by some force.

“We need to split up,” Cain heard himself say, his voice strangely borrowed. “Maggie to London, Hassan back to Cairo, Edgar...”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said the old man from the newsstand, pulling a strangely shaped gun from under the counter—the barrel spiraled. “This old bone’s got a use yet.”

The ice cream vendor revealed a mark on his wrist identical to Cain’s. “I’m going to Tokyo. There’s another version of me there.”

Cain noticed a tiny tattoo of the number 71 behind the vendor’s ear. Memories flooded back: the earliest carrier experiments of the Time Bureau, 71 clones scattered across different timelines.

“Wait,” Maggie suddenly pointed at the sky. “What’s that?”

At the center of the mesh appeared a vortex, glowing particles drifting down. Cain’s pupils adjusted focus, revealing those “particles” as countless miniature Time Tree leaves, each with a tiny human figure standing on it.

“A distress signal,” Hassan adjusted his scanner. “From… all timelines?”

The pocket watch suddenly floated from Cain’s hand, its cover springing open. Red and blue sand burst forth, forming a three-dimensional star map in the air. Seven main nodes were connected by golden lines, but three lines were breaking. More astonishingly, hundreds of faint lights dotted the map’s periphery—other timelines not yet activated.

“We thought breaking the Möbius loop was the end,” Maggie’s voice trembled. “But in truth, we only tore open a rift...”

The ice cream vendor—now Cain recalled his name was Leon—began trembling violently. His blue eyes flickered with silver light. “They found me... the purge protocol...”

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Before he finished speaking, Leon’s left arm suddenly turned to dust. No blood, as if erased like pencil marks.

“Quantum-level erasure!” Hassan lunged forward, but Leon’s right leg began to disappear too. “Someone is deleting us directly from the timeline!”

Edgar’s antique pistol hummed strangely. He fired a shot into the sky; the spiral bullet exploded a hundred meters above, creating a brief blue dome of light. Leon’s disappearance paused, but the dome was fading rapidly.

“I’m going to London,” Maggie activated her watch. “Remember? The Tower Bridge structure hides brass gear assemblies—that’s the physical anchor of the Time Tree.”

Hassan grabbed Cain’s shoulder. “The Cairo Obelisk requires the Aldrin family’s genetic key. Only you can...”

A silver flash cut off Hassan’s words. A perfect circular hole appeared in his chest. No blood, only data-stream-like points shimmering around the edges.

“Sniper! Take cover!” Edgar pushed Cain behind the newsstand.

But Hassan didn’t fall. Looking down at the hole, he smiled. “So this is it... we were quantum states all along.”

Golden patterns spread from the edges of the void, similar to those on Cain’s arm. Hassan’s body gradually became transparent, dissolving into countless points of light that surged toward Cain’s pocket watch.

“Find the little key...” His voice emanated from the watch. “She’s beyond time...”

Maggie and Leon also activated their watches. Edgar handed Cain the spiral gun. “Take this; it can temporarily disrupt the enforcers’ quantum lock.”

“And you?” Cain asked.

The old man grinned, missing a tooth. “I still have a newsstand to run.”

When Cain pressed the watch button, the last thing he saw was Edgar charging the gray-coated figures at the street corner, his white hair billowing like a banner in the wind.

Darkness. A falling sensation. Then unceasing flashes, as if traveling at light speed through countless mirrored corridors. At one moment, Cain saw Maggie running on Tower Bridge, the rusted gears glowing anew in her hands; the next was Leon adjusting an antenna atop Tokyo Tower, his body half-transparent; and Hassan’s light points reassembling into human form before the Cairo Obelisk.

The pocket watch suddenly shook violently. Cain was expelled from the temporal tunnel, landing in a pure white space. No walls, no ceiling—only endless whiteness and, at the center, the inverted Time Tree.

Its roots spread above like a crown; the trunk extended downward, branches piercing unseen ground. Stranger still, instead of leaves, the tree bore countless pocket watches, each dial showing different times.

“Dad.”

The Little Key sat on the lowest branch, swinging her legs. She looked older, about twelve, with glowing blue threads braided into her hair.

“Where is this?” Cain’s voice echoed strangely in the void.

“The backside of time,” she said, jumping down to barefootly touch the invisible ground. “Where all possibilities collapse.”

She reached out to touch Cain’s watch. The cover popped open, red and blue sand flowing out, reforming into projections of Hassan and the others.

“They…”

“Both existing and not,” the Little Key traced Maggie’s image with her fingertips. “Enforcers deleted their anchors in the main timeline, but the roots of the Time Tree preserve quantum memories.”

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Cain suddenly understood. “Just like you once were.”

The girl smiled. The space behind her turned transparent, revealing real-time images of seven key nodes: the mechanical structure of Tower Bridge corroding in reverse; cracks appearing on the Cairo Obelisk; Tokyo’s electronic screens flickering with static.

“The closed loop is being rebuilt,” the Little Key’s voice lost its childish tone. “Someone foresaw all this even before Thorn.”

She waved and summoned a hologram: a young Dr. Aldrin stood in a lab beside a shadowy tall figure. When they turned, Cain recognized the face—the elderly version of himself, white hair intertwined with data lines.

“The future you sent back the technology,” the Little Key said, “and the past you hid the seed.”

The pocket watch self-disassembled, parts suspending in the air to form a miniature Time Tree model. Of the seven glowing points, four had already gone dark.

“A new gardener is needed,” the Little Key pulled a blue thread from her hair and tied it to the model’s base. “But this time, from outside the closed loop.”

Cain recalled Edgar’s words: Time is a garden. Suddenly he understood. “We’re cultivating new timelines? Completely independent from the Möbius system?”

The Little Key’s pupils swirled with nebula-like patterns. “Like dandelions sowing seeds. But our seeds are…”

“Paradoxes,” Cain finished. He looked at his arm; the golden patterns had spread to his fingertips. “And the gardener is the quantum-state memory carrier.”

The space began to tremble. Several pocket watches on the inverted Time Tree exploded.

“They found this place,” the Little Key grasped Cain’s hand. “The final step requires you to complete it.”

Her touch unleashed a flood of memories: the original time experiment was no accident but a carefully designed trap. Dr. Aldrin—the true first version of himself—discovered the Time Bureau’s ultimate goal: to imprison all humanity in a controllable loop. And the Little Key… was never an experimental accident; she was the first weapon of the resistance.

“Time’s up,” the Little Key pushed him.

Cain plunged into a new temporal tunnel. This time, he clearly saw the “walls” on either side—countless parallel timelines scrolling like film strips. Some lines suddenly snapped; others sprouted new branches. On one line, he saw Maggie’s white hair turn black again; on another, Leon’s ice cream cart passed through cherry blossom rain; and Edgar… Edgar’s newsstand had turned blue, with a sign reading “Spacetime Station” hanging outside.

The pocket watch parts reassembled in his hand, now a small sowing device. When Cain was ejected from the tunnel, he stood beneath a ginkgo tree in Greenwich Village—but this time, the tree was a normal green, the sky unfractured, and no gray-coated figures patrolled the street.

“Sir, want a newspaper?”

Cain turned. A stranger stood in the newsstand, a girl about twenty with blue-tipped hair tied with copper bells.

“Today’s the new park’s opening day,” she said, handing him The New York Times. The front-page photo showed the Time Technology Research Institute’s sign being dismantled, “They say it’s being rebuilt into a children’s science museum.”

As Cain took the paper, their fingers briefly touched. The girl’s pupils flickered with the familiar nebula glow.

“The seed has been sown,” she whispered, her voice echoing the Little Key’s. “Now it’s your turn to be the gardener, Dad.”

Children’s laughter echoed in the distance. Cain touched his pocket, the sowing device transforming into a packet of blue seeds, each engraved with the symbol ∞→.