Chapter Sixteen: The Gardener Who Grows Backwards

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Cain sat on a bench in Greenwich Park, staring intently at the golden patterns on the inside of his forearm. Sunlight filtered through the sycamore leaves, casting mottled shadows across his skin. The patterns seemed to pulse with life, gradually taking the shape of a dandelion stem. His pocket watch warmed in his palm; the blue sand on its dial condensed into an arrow pointing toward the Thames.

“Sir, your coffee.”

A barista in a red uniform handed him a paper cup, emblazoned with the words “Time Roastery” and a small infinity symbol. As Cain took the cup, a gear tattoo flashed briefly on the clerk’s wrist.

“A new place?”

“Seventy-seven years in business,” the young man winked, a mechanical blue gleam flickering in his left eye. “Family recipe.”

The first sip of coffee tasted like a blend of Tokyo’s morning mist mixed with Cairo’s spices. Suddenly, a translucent menu appeared on Cain’s retina:

【Today’s Specials】

Quantum Foam Latte – Experience 0.7 seconds of a parallel life

Entropy-Reducing Mocha – Temporarily reverse local time flow

Standard Americano – Ordinary coffee, for ordinary customers

Cain choked slightly and cautiously chose the “Standard Americano” mode for the second sip. The coffee immediately became mundane but at least no illusions followed—if those had been illusions at all.

Suddenly, the pocket watch popped open, blue sand spewing forth to form a miniature map of the Thames in midair. Seven glowing points marked the river’s surface, all clustered near Tower Bridge. The brightest flickered beneath the third pier of the bridge, its pulse synchronized with the patterns on Cain’s arm.

The riverside path bustled with tourists. Cain, posing as an ordinary visitor, slowly approached Tower Bridge. He noticed at least five “staff members” patrolling the bridge—workers in fluorescent vests, engineers with rangefinders, ice cream vendors, even a street performer dressed in a bear costume. Though seemingly unrelated, all their gazes subtly shifted to track Cain’s movements.

The pier entrance was sealed with an iron gate, a sign reading “Structural Maintenance.” Pretending to take photos, Cain aimed his pocket watch at the lock. The blue sand instantly reformed into a key shape, while the copper key in his pocket began to heat.

“Need some help, sir?”

The bear mascot suddenly stood behind him, its plush paw resting on Cain’s shoulder. Up close, its eyes were two high-definition cameras, and a fine mesh concealed a precision nozzle at its mouth.

“Just a tourist,” Cain said, raising his camera and shielding his watch with his body. “I heard this is the best photo spot.”

“Of course,” the bear’s voice was unnervingly sweet. “But there’s special maintenance today. Maybe you should visit the…,” its electronic eyes locked onto the pattern on Cain’s exposed arm, “…observatory instead.”

The last words shifted oddly in tone. Cain felt the key vibrate in his pocket, synchronizing with microwaves emitted from the bear’s head. The mascot froze for a second, then wildly flailed its arms: “Ah! System update! Please try again later!” With that, it mechanically moonwalked backward and left.

The gate lock clicked open. Cain swiftly slipped inside the pier, the gate closing automatically behind him. A dark passage descended, walls covered in damp moss and glowing fungi. Deeper in, the mycelium formed a clear pattern—the root system of a dandelion.

At the passage’s end was a circular stone chamber. At its center stood a massive, rusted gear assembly—not mere decoration but a functioning mechanism. Each cogshaft turned slowly, emitting a deep hum. Fixed in the gears’ core was a transparent cylinder, inside which floated a miniature model of Tower Bridge with seven tiny human figures standing upon it.

Cain’s pocket watch suddenly jerked free from his hand, flying to the cylinder and snapping against its surface. Blue sand seeped through the glass, coloring the figures. The shortest figure lifted its head—it was a miniature version of Lina.

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“Authentication confirmed,” Maggie’s voice echoed in the chamber, though no one appeared. “The Seventh Gardener is in position.”

The left stone wall slid open, revealing a control room. Maggie’s quantum projection busied herself at the console, looking younger than before. Her white hair had reverted to chestnut, save for a few fine wrinkles at the eyes.

“Reverse aging?” Cain touched his face, noticing his beard was shorter than that morning.

“A side effect of the time anchor,” Maggie’s projection pulled up a spectrum graph. “The more we maintain the timeline, the closer our bodies revert to when we first became gardeners. Edgar has returned to his forties.”

The holographic screen displayed real-time statuses of seven major global nodes. At Cairo’s obelisk, Hassan’s projection taught children to assemble circuits with obsidian shards; atop Tokyo Tower, Leon’s ice cream truck doubled as a mobile command post; most surprising was Greenwich Observatory—Little Key’s image looked about ten, explaining constellations to visitors, each touched wrist briefly glowing with the infinity symbol.

“What about the Purifiers?”

Maggie brought up surveillance. Thorn’s black-clad forces were retreating across timelines—not defeated but transformed. One frame showed a gray trench coat agent removing a silver mask, revealing a normal face beneath; another showed the Time Bureau building being converted into a children’s science museum.

“But the core problem remains unresolved,” Maggie zoomed in on a data stream. “Thorn himself has disappeared. Not fleeing but seemingly… recalled by a higher-dimensional force.”

Suddenly alarms blared from the console. The Tower Bridge model shook violently; the rusted gears accelerated. Cain’s arm patterns burned painfully as golden lines crawled up to his neck.

“Someone’s reversing the Time Tree!” Maggie’s projection flickered. “All root systems are being… harvested?”

The chamber’s ceiling peeled away, revealing the starry sky—or rather, a projection simulating the stars. The constellations twisted and reshaped into a colossal ouroboros. At the serpent’s eye appeared Thorn’s face—youthful, merciless—with a glowing red quantum computer for a right eye.

“Found the greenhouse,” Thorn’s voice chuckled from the starry void. “Thanks for the navigation beacon.”

Simultaneously, snow-like static flickered on all node monitors. When images returned, each displayed Thorn’s red-eyed projection systematically dismantling equipment. At Tokyo Tower, Leon’s ice cream truck was hurled off the summit; at Cairo’s obelisk, Hassan’s projection was bound by red beams; most terrifyingly, at Greenwich Observatory—Little Key was trapped in a glowing cage, her body becoming transparent.

“He’s not the Thorn of our timeline,” Maggie said despairingly, manipulating the console. “From an upstream timeline where the Time Bureau was never overthrown…”

Cain’s pocket watch shattered abruptly, blue sand erupting into a storm. The grains formed complex equations midair: Δt = –71.

“Time flowing backward?” Cain grasped a handful of the blue sand, but it slipped through his fingers. “No… it’s…”

“The Reverse Growth Equation!” Maggie suddenly realized. “He’s forcing the entire system to regress! The Time Tree is reverting to a seed!”

The chamber began to collapse. The rusted gears halted one by one; cracks appeared on the Tower Bridge model. Cain’s arm patterns flickered wildly as the golden light beneath his skin was drawn out. Worst of all, he felt himself “growing younger”—not healthy rejuvenation but a terrifying degeneration; memories and cognition blurred.

Maggie’s projection summoned her last strength to open an escape route: “Find Edgar! The newsstand basement has…”

Her voice abruptly cut off. Thorn’s red-eyed visage filled the starry projection. “Game over, gardeners. Time to return to the lab.”

As the passage closed behind Cain, he saw Maggie’s quantum state compressed into a blue light and absorbed into Thorn’s red right eye. The pocket watch was utterly ruined, leaving only the copper key warming in his palm.

The Thames shone peacefully under the sun; tourists were oblivious to the pier’s anomaly. Cain staggered toward Greenwich Park, each step feeling like he was “shrinking”—not in age but in existence itself. Passing the coffee cart, the clerk in red no longer recognized him, and the “Time Roastery” sign had reverted to an ordinary sandwich advertisement.

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The newsstand remained but was run by an unfamiliar middle-aged woman. Summoning his last strength, Cain produced the copper key. The woman recoiled in terror: “Robbery!”

“Where’s Edgar?” Cain’s voice sounded frighteningly unfamiliar.

“What Edgar? I’ve run this newsstand for twenty years!”

The key suddenly shifted in Cain’s hand, pointing toward a manhole cover on the sidewalk. When police arrived, the cover was mysteriously welded shut from within.

In the dark sewer, Cain slid down the damp wall to sit on the floor. The copper key floated before him, emitting a faint blue glow. In its light, he saw the walls covered in graffiti—not ordinary street art but intricate time equations and dandelion diagrams. In one corner was a crude drawing of a newsstand labeled: “Memory Safe House, sealed 2005.”

The key suddenly pressed against Cain’s forehead. There was no pain, only a cold sensation, followed by a cascade of unlocked memories:

A rainy night in 2005—Edgar and a group of children buried a time capsule in the newsstand’s basement. Not an ordinary one, but a quantum memory storage device shaped like an old telephone switchboard. Each child contributed a memory fragment: Lina’s gear puzzle, the barista’s family recipe, the bear operator’s childhood dreams...

“When time flows backward,” memory-Edgar told young Little Key, “the true anchor isn’t in grand structures but in ordinary people’s daily lives.”

The key’s blue light intensified. Cain saw the patterns on his arm flare anew, but the design had changed—not a dandelion but a wreath formed of countless tiny infinity symbols. A warm power seeped from the sewer walls; the graffiti came alive as equations rearranged, forming new spatiotemporal coordinates.

Fragments of the pocket watch vibrated in his pocket. Cain emptied them into his palm, each shard reflecting a different scene:

In a classroom, a female teacher explaining the Möbius strip;

In a repair shop, a technician assembling gears into an infinity shape;

In a nursery, a toddler clutching an hourglass-shaped teething toy...

Every person in these fragments suddenly turned toward the “camera,” their wrists or necks bearing blue marks. Their voices layered together:

“The Gardener Network is activated.”

The key spun before Cain, its tip pointing deep into the sewer. In the darkness, a rusted iron door slowly creaked open, revealing the glowing switchboard inside—hundreds of lines connecting the most ordinary objects: coffee cups, teddy bear ears, student calculators, reading glasses...

“It’s not us who are regressing,” Cain suddenly understood, his voice echoing through the underground. “It’s time itself retreating to a state before control.”

He approached the switchboard and inserted the key into the central slot. All lines lit up simultaneously, forming a massive dandelion projection. From somewhere distant came the faint laughter of Little Key.

“Begin sowing,” Cain spoke into the void, knowing countless gardeners listened through the humblest of objects. “This time, we plant within time itself.”