Patch walked ahead with a spring in his step and the stuffed trauma-bear tucked under one arm like it was a magical relic. "You know," he said, "if we ever escape this recursive carnival of despair, I'm opening a tea shop. Cinnamon-themed. Very niche. We'll call it 'The Spiced Loop.'"
"Please don't," Fry muttered.
Zero followed in silence.
The recursion had changed again. The floor beneath them was no longer reflective steel or obsidian—but soft, like crushed velvet stitched with invisible threads. The path twisted subtly, forming a slow spiral. Around them, memory echoes shimmered faintly—images flickering in and out of the fog like fireflies in a dream.
Most of them were of Zero.
He saw a dozen versions of himself—some laughing, some fighting, one standing atop a tower screaming into a void of stars. All of them blurred at the edges.
Patch paused and squinted into the fog. "Okay, that's either another memory fragment... or you had a very dramatic phase."
Fry knelt, tracing her fingers along the floor. "This isn't a natural recursion path. It's a trail. Someone—or something—is pulling us through."
Zero nodded. "The bear pulsed. It reacted to this direction. The spiral must be encoded to it."
Patch raised the bear. "Alright, Spiral Boy. Lead the way."
The glyph on its back shimmered once. A thread of light pulled forward through the fog.
And the path responded.
As they walked, the trail grew deeper—not in elevation, but in density. Time felt thicker here. Each step dragged against resistance like walking through syrup.
Fry's face grew tight. "Temporal tension. We're walking through compounded memory strata. If it gets worse, we'll start losing short-term recall."
Patch blinked. "...Wait, what?"
"Like trying to remember why you entered a room," she said. "Except the room is your life."
Zero clenched his jaw. "How do we stop it?"
"You don't," Fry said. "You just keep walking before your name dissolves."
Eventually, the trail led to a clearing.
In the center stood a strange construct—a tree made of data filaments, pulsing slowly, each branch curling like a helix. Hanging from the limbs were hundreds of tiny glass spheres. Inside each one flickered a single image.
A memory.
Zero stepped forward. The bear pulsed brighter.
Fry examined the trunk. "It's a mnemonic archive. These were once used by proto-recursives to map human thought before digital entanglement took over."
Patch cupped one sphere in his palm and whistled. Inside was a flickering image of Zero—age twelve—clutching a small glowing cube and screaming as someone in a dark robe dragged his mother away.
Zero stared.
"I... I don't remember that."
Fry didn't look surprised. "You're not supposed to. That cube might be another seed. Or worse—a key to a seed."
The tree pulsed.
Suddenly, all the spheres lit up at once—and one dropped from a branch, gently landing in Zero's palm.
He braced himself.
It was snowing.
He was thirteen. The sky above him was filled with fractured towers and broken satellites.
His mother knelt in front of him, holding a device—small, flat, blinking.
"Hold out your arm," she said.
"I don't want to," his younger self whispered.
"I know. But we don't have time."
She injected something into his wrist. Zero screamed.
"Listen to me," she said. "They'll find you. They'll try to make you forget. But your truth is a spiral. Follow it. Always follow it. And if you ever see Fry—run."
Zero's breath caught.
The vision faded.
He stood in the clearing again, hand trembling.
Fry looked away.
Patch's voice was small. "Well. That's... awkward."
Zero finally spoke. "You were there. Back then."
Fry's lips tightened. "Yes."
"You knew her."
"Yes."
"She told me to run from you."
Silence.
Patch took a slow step back. "Okay, just flagging this for the group—very high betrayal potential. Possibly emotional outburst incoming."
Zero didn't lash out.
He just stared.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Fry's voice was flat. "Because you weren't ready."
"I saw her," Zero said, voice raw. "She looked afraid. She didn't trust you."
Fry met his eyes. "She didn't understand what I became. And neither do you. Not yet."
The tree pulsed again.
This time, it dropped two spheres.
Fry caught one. Zero caught the other.
And neither of them looked at Patch, who whispered to himself, "I should've opened that bakery."