Chapter One: "Experiment Number 13"
On March 30, 2214, a luxurious Rolls-Royce Phantom, painted black, sped North towards the city's heart at 98 kilometers per hour. Its destination: Copper Technology Corporation.
The city stretched out before them like a jungle of steel and glass, its lights never dimming. Towering skyscrapers merged with the purple haze reflected by colossal advertising screens displaying soulless digital faces. From above, the city seemed like a giant, synthetic organism breathing through millions of wires and conduits.
The streets on the upper layers were pristine, illuminated by blue and green neon lines. Silent, majestic flying cars traversed them in technological quietude. Down below, beneath the layers of luxury and light, the alleys were drowned in darkness and humidity, where the poor lived amidst the ruins of old factories.
Down there, people clustered around electronic kiosks selling filtered air. Dirty-faced children attempted to repair obsolete robots to sell for scrap metal. Meanwhile, in the glass worlds above, the wealthy resided in their luminous towers, seeing nothing of the city but the clouds that shielded them from the stench of poverty.
The air held a faint metallic scent, saturated with a blue vapor emanating from the thermal vents scattered across the ground. Occasionally, electrical sparks flashed across the wires connecting the buildings, as if the entire city were a heart pulsing with energy. The car glided through this commotion with perfect fluidity, its tinted windows separating its occupants from the outside world, as if they were moving in another dimension, far from the noise of people and machines.
Inside the car sat two people: The first was a seventeen-year-old youth, fair-skinned, specifically Aryan, with gray hair and blue eyes. He stood 168 centimeters tall and weighed 68 kilograms. He wore a navy-blue training suit with gray and green lines accentuating his chest, thighs, and arms. He was Suiger, nicknamed "Number 13" by his father.
The other man was in his forties, with a thick mustache covering his upper lip, 180 cm tall, and weighing 80 kg with somewhat broad shoulders. He wore a black formal suit with a red tie, and his medium-length, salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back. This was Dr. Sputnik, the owner and first heir of the company from his father, R.C.A.
Sputnik sat leaning on a cane, the handle of which was shaped like a copper cobra. He raised his head, looked at his son, and said:
– "Number 13."
Suiger replied:
– "Yes, sir."
Sputnik's voice was cold and sharp:
– "You have little time left before the final test, and you know what that means... Failure means death and replacement. Your fate will be like the twelve previous projects."
Suiger responded with steady resolve, without even blinking:
– "Yes, certainly. I will be the successful experiment."
During this conversation, the car reached the company building. The driver announced:
– "We have arrived, Mr. Sputnik."
Suiger opened the door and peered out first, looking left and right. He then stepped out with his right foot first, and nodded to his father to indicate the area was secure. Sputnik placed his cane down first, then followed with his right foot.
The two moved toward the main entrance, where a humanoid robot guard stood, speaking in a low, metallic voice:
– "Good day, Mr. Sputnik. Good day, Mr. Suiger."
Both entered the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor. As the elevator ascended, Sputnik began to speak without preamble:
– "The Great World War was indescribably difficult in the history of the Solar System. There have not been, nor will there ever be, wars tougher than it. The number of lives extinguished in that war exceeds any other. Statistics indicate that the death toll in this war was between 700 million and one billion."
His speech was interrupted as the elevator reached the twenty-fifth floor. The door opened quietly, and from their perspective, they entered a lab teeming with scientists rushing back and forth. From amidst the crowd emerged a tired-looking girl. Her purple hair was tied in a long ponytail that reached below her shoulders. She wore a white lab coat over a lovely violet-pink sweater, clutching a small notebook and pen.
She raised her head wearily, her pupils widening the moment she saw Dr. Sputnik. She hurried towards him, exclaiming:
– "Mr. Sputnik! Mr. Sputnik! It's finished!"
This was Dr. Holly Day. She reached him, breathless with exhaustion, and said:
– "I apologize for the commotion this morning. But first, good morning, sir."
Dr. Sputnik replied:
– "Good morning, Holly Day."
Holly Day continued:
– "Firstly, the project was completed one hour and forty-three minutes ago. Secondly, everyone is waiting in the testing hall... Oh, good morning, my brother Suiger."
Suiger responded:
– "Good morning, Daio."
Dr. Holly Day said enthusiastically:
– "Well then! Let's all head to the testing hall."
The three moved with light, quick steps. Holly Day thought to herself:
(I sincerely hope the test succeeds, and that the device works this time.)
The three arrived at the hall. Holly Day took a seat among the attendees, while Suiger and Dr. Sputnik continued their way to the platform. Sputnik stood beside Suiger, and the platform projected a giant hologram visible to the audience.
Sputnik spoke in a slightly elevated voice:
– "Scientists, begin the charging sequence."
A floor panel opened, revealing a small platform bearing humanity's greatest invention... the Time Flash.
Sputnik then began his speech, saying:
– "I never imagined humanity could reach this high level of scientific advancement. I intensely loathe this blood that runs in my veins."
The device began to rotate and glow, and Dr. Sputnik shouted:
– "Today... we will change history!"
The device glowed brighter and brighter.
He spoke with a voice full of obsession:
– "We should not have tried to fix what our predecessors broke... but we did!"
He yelled once more:
– "Today, we will fix all of humanity's mistakes!"
His words were cut short by the roar of explosions in multiple locations. Rocks fell, glass shattered, and screams filled the air. Suiger tried to shield his father from the debris, but his excessive focus on Sputnik caused the floor beneath him to shatter. He fell headfirst, crashing into a nearby wall, causing a deep wound on his head. He fell unconscious for a moment, then awoke from the pain. Looking around, he found the device had landed beside him.
He rushed toward it, hoping he could use it to avert the catastrophe. He grabbed the device with his right hand and plunged it into his wound. He winced; the wound was still fresh. He tried to focus, while Sputnik lay sprawled on the ground, looking through the hole where Suiger had fallen. He saw him implanting the device into his head and screamed:
– "Suiger! Noooo! It's not worth it!"
But Suiger did not stop; he continued to focus. In a single instant, an intensely powerful light shone, filling the place as if a sun had exploded inside. Then, Suiger vanished, leaving behind a single shoe and a dense vapor filling the room.
Four days after this event, we see repair operations underway in the company building. The explosions have affected three floors, from the twenty-fourth to the twenty-sixth.
Specifically inside the twenty-fifth floor, the scene unfolds like an organized chaotic painting: investigators are in different parts of the floor, each noting observations or taking 3D digital photos of the explosion's remnants.
Repair workers move in a harmony that resembles the movement of ants; some lift debris wearing mechanical suits that help them carry heavy stones as if they were made of Styrofoam, others secure temporary supports for threatened ceilings, and still others transfer burnt wires into sterile containers.
Engineers sit before portable screens, planning what needs to be fixed first, while small robots circulate among everyone, carrying refreshing drinks and quick energy bars for the workers, with gentle, repetitive mechanical voices:
– "Short break... Please hydrate before continuing."
Amidst this industrial noise, in a relatively quiet spot in the hall, we see Dr. Sputnik standing by the hole where Suiger disappeared.
He leans on his copper cane, slightly hunched, his left arm in a sling due to a fracture from falling onto a sharp rock.
He stares at the spot with lifeless eyes, whispering to himself in a voice barely audible:
– "My son, Suiger... Why were you the only one I didn't kill with my own hands? Your level indicated you would be the successful experiment... It's as if fate refuses to fulfill my father's wish, which I failed to achieve. I'm alive now only because of luck... nothing more."
A faint breeze carries the scent of metal and ash, echoing against the torn walls of the hall.
Before he could continue his thoughts, he was interrupted by an electronic bell announcing the lunch break.
His voice dropped completely. He looked down as if ashamed of the idea of "survival," then slowly turned his back, leaning on his cane, and left the area.
On the other side of the city, in a quiet neighborhood where glass mixed with steam, Dr. Holly Day sat in her small house with its pale-gray white walls.
The room was semi-dark, curtains drawn, with a faint light from a side screen reflecting on her exhausted face.
She was weeping bitterly over the loss of Suiger — the only person she had felt something akin to a sibling bond with, even though he was never her brother by blood or upbringing.
They had never lived together, and they were only united by the long hours working on the same project, yet what those years in the lab brought them was deeper than any genetic or familial connection.
Her tears fell silently to the floor, her voice hoarse as she whispered:
– "This shouldn't have happened... I shouldn't have left him alone."
Her mechanical left arm, the original having been lost during her attempt to escape, lay beside her on the table, still connected to its charging system. She paid it no mind; the pain in her chest was greater than any physical ache.
Her gaze was lost, staring into space as if trying to recall the last look she exchanged with Suiger.
Sputnik's words, which she had heard in the hall before the explosion, echoed in her mind:
– "Today, we will fix all of humanity's mistakes!"
She wondered in a hoarse voice filled with bitterness:
– "Were we the mistake?"
Time crawled by. In the background, news channels broadcast aerial footage of the burnt company building and a report on "The Mysterious Explosion Incident at Copper Technology" without official comment from the authorities.
The city had not paused for a moment, but those who lived through the catastrophe were no longer the same.
On the same day, at the Scientific Investigations Headquarters of the Federal Research Council, a number of experts and military officers gathered before a holographic model of the exploded building.
One of the officers spoke in a low but sharp voice:
– "There are no charred human remains at the explosion site, which was announced as the device's energy center. The heat was high enough to vaporize metals. It's as if something... drew the energy from everything around it."
A nervous physicist replied:
– "That's impossible, sir, unless there was a disturbance in time itself... a momentary warp in the space-time fabric!"
Another interjected with a sarcastic, desperate tone:
– "Are you saying he vanished through time? That's nonsense."
But the silence that followed was not the silence of conviction; it was the silence of fear before an idea no one wanted to believe.
At that moment, the screen displayed an image taken by thermal cameras three minutes after the accident: a small flicker, then a sudden disappearance.
Whispers circulated among the attendees, but Sputnik, who was sitting in the corner, did not utter a word.
His face was rigid as stone, his gaze lost in a distant place no one could see.
One of the investigators finally dared to ask him:
– "Dr. Sputnik... Do you believe your son is alive?"
He replied without raising his head:
– "The word 'alive'... means nothing anymore."
A long moment of silence passed, broken only by the sound of cooling units, before he added in a faint voice, as if speaking to himself:
– "If he is still somewhere... then perhaps time itself curses us all."
Night drew its curtain over the city that had not calmed since the explosion.
The sky was filled with a faint purple haze, and the lights reflected on the clouds like a distant flame.
Inside the company building, among the wreckage, automated cameras installed to monitor the restoration were broadcasting a distorted image.
In one frame, an extremely faint flicker appeared above the hole where Suiger disappeared, lasting no more than a second, then vanishing.
No one saw it, and the system did not record it clearly, but the temperature in that spot rose by a small, unexplained amount.
A maintenance robot that passed by stopped for a moment, as if its sensors had picked up a strange electrical pulse, then continued on its way unconcerned.
The wind passed through the empty hall, stirring metallic dust, and from a distance, the sound of Sputnik's copper cane striking the floor three times in a steady, slow beat was heard before it stopped.
His eyes fixed on the hole, and the darkness swallowed his voice as he muttered:
– "Is this the end... or the beginning?"
A slight vapor rose from the rubble, forming a transparent mist in the air. It coiled for a brief moment then dissipated, like the faint breath of an invisible person.
The automated lighting gradually faded, and only a small spot of light remained above the place where Suiger Number 13 had been.
Outside, the city continued its metallic breathing, as if nothing had happened...
But beneath its surface, in depths unseen by anyone, time itself was slowly faltering, awaiting a return no one had yet imagined.
To be continued...