The giant baby's dissolution went off like a goddamn supernova, man. When the light finally cleared, I was floating in this nebula that looked straight-up like a cosmic placenta, all swirly pink and glowy. Dr. Lin's crystal heart was embedded in my chest, each beat spawning tiny star dust particles that sparkled like fairy lights. But my vision was getting all messed up—like, the edges were turning into those old-school pixel art games, and my fingers were straight-up quantum-collapsing, fading in and out like a bad TV signal.
"Yo, Lu Zhao—keep that heart rate under 120," Xiaoyu's voice crackles through from the lunar base, all staticky with background noise. "These motherfuckers are brainwashing the AI with some lullaby bullshit—wait, hold on, what the actual hell is that?!"
And then she just cuts out. The last image on my comm screen freezes my blood: my mom's young face, clear as day, staring back at me through the crater observation window. But deeper in the base, the feed showed hundreds of red-clad girl clones floating in those glass tanks, all hooked up to tubes like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.
Next thing I know, young Lu Zhao's ghost is standing in my left hand's crystal lattice, looking all see-through and glowy. He swipes his hand through the stardust, drawing this insane star chart made entirely of umbilical cords. "Head to the Whale Fall coordinates," he says, his voice all echoey. "And take this." Then he straight-up snaps one of his quantumizing ribs, and it turns into this glowing milk bottle, like something a space baby would use.
The whole nebula starts shrinking, forming this tight tunnel that looks exactly like a birth canal. I'm falling through it, choking on nothing, and the walls are inlaid with all these birth scenes from history: Cro-Magnon tribeswomen bleeding on stone altars, Egyptian queens giving birth in pyramids, even future space moms in zero-gravity wombs. And get this—every single umbilical cord in those scenes is pointing to the same goddamn star cluster. Trippy as hell.
I crash into this warm, sticky liquid, like being back in the womb or some shit. Giant bones are floating all around, their ribs arching up like natural star gates. My wristwatch lights up with the words: COSMIC NAVEL - CIVILIZATIONAL WOMB. No kidding.
"About time you showed up," says this voice from deep in the bones. It's the red-clad girl, her mechanical spine floating in the center, connected to a dying star that's pulsing weakly. When I swim closer, her spine just stabs into my crystal heart, and bam—memories start flooding in. Turns out she's the one who implanted Lu Zhao's quantum chip in his third rib at the hospital all those years ago!
"Your mom traded her entire life for this coordinate," the spine glows brighter, "It's hidden in the whale song."
Right on cue, this eerie ass singing starts echoing outside the bones. I look through the rib gaps and see the most amazing thing: quantum whales swimming through the nebula, their transparent bodies loaded with embryos from different civilizations. One baby whale turns toward me, and on its forehead is a mark that looks exactly like a 7-Eleven barcode. No way.
My crystal heart goes haywire, and I can feel Dr. Lin's consciousness taking over. She makes me leap for that baby whale, and the second my fingers touch its forehead, a full-on convenience store materializes in space. Gas-mask wearing goons are patrolling the aisles, and in the freezer—fucking 5-year-old Lu Zhao is there, hugging a teddy bear.
"Error code purge protocol initiated," a mechanical voice booms through the universe, shaking everything.
The baby whale thrashes in pain, and all the store shelves start launching like missiles. I'm dodging flying bags of chips and soda cans, crystal spreading up my neck like a goddamn infection. Finally, I smash through the freezer door, and Lu Zhao's lashes are frosted over, a key stuck in the teddy bear's heart. As soon as I pull that key, the whole store starts dataizing, the goons melting into digital goo. But here's the problem: the baby whale is falling apart without the key, and the entire quantum whale pod is turning back, their 喷出的 (exhaled) nebula turning into acid rain.
"Use the umbilical cords!" the red-clad girl's spine unwinds, wrapping around the baby whale's wound. And instead of blood, Oracle Bone Script chains pour out—those same chains I saw in the subway ages ago.
I jam the key into the baby whale's forehead, and the entire universe makes this massive clicking sound, like giant gears finally meshing. The baby whale turns into a stream of light and sinks into my crystal heart, and the teddy bear starts crying—its wails matching the frequency we picked up on the moon exactly.
A starmap unfolds in the void: Earth, Moon, and Whale Fall connect to form a huge ouroboros. The snake's eyes light up two spots: the Nestorian Stele in Xi'an's Forest of Steles, and a shadowy area in the Mare Crisium lunar crater.
By now, crystal has covered my entire body. Right before I fully quantumize, I hear three voices overlapping:
The baby whale cries: "Mom..."
The lunar base radio blares: "Biological matrix signal detected..."
And the red-clad girl's echo whispers: "...Go home."
(End of Chapter 17)