The Chrono Cocoon

California Mojave Desert, March 14, 2085, 4:18 PM

Eileen parked the off-road vehicle beside an abandoned gas station, where three figures huddled beneath the rusted Shell logo.

"Welcome to the Doomsday Book Club." Max raised a laser pointer, its red beam sweeping over the group: a red-haired woman in tactical gear disassembling an electromagnetic handgun; an Asian man with a neural interface headband typing code in the air on a holographic keyboard; and an elderly man wrapped in a radiation-proof blanket gnawing on a cactus fruit—the flesh oozing blue-violet juice, resembling a frozen starry sky.

The red-haired woman stood first, crushing a desert beetle under her combat boot. "Sara Cortez, retired Marine Corps predictive analyst." She tossed a data chip to Eileen. "Over the past five days, I've dreamed of Los Angeles being destroyed in seven different ways—earthquake, nuclear leak, alien fungus... This morning, I found these are the raw codes of military-grade disaster simulation programs."

The Asian man didn't look up; the data waterfall flowing across his retina glowed faintly green in the twilight. "Rex Chen, former Google Quantum Brain Project chief engineer." He tapped the air, his fingers suddenly twitching. "My neural implant started malfunctioning three days ago; now I can 'see' probability clouds... For example, you have 0.7 grams of plutonium-238 in your backpack, used to make a dirty bomb?"

Eileen's pupils contracted. Max, however, laughed heartily. "That's my 'borrowed' insurance from the institute!"

The elderly man spat out cactus seeds, his raspy voice tinged with a Mexican accent. "They're all crazy; only I am awake." He lifted his radiation-proof blanket, revealing skin covered in ulcers. "Each cycle, my cancer cells spread to new organs—this is God's 72-hour final confession for me."

Rex suddenly froze. Sparks flew from his neural interface, and his body convulsed like a marionette. "First contact... quantum resonance... they're here!"

The group followed his contorted finger. On the desert horizon, a blue refrigerated truck was approaching the gas station, its rooftop antenna array rotating and emitting microwave pulses. Eileen's quantum counter screamed—this was the "blue truck" Joe had described.

Sara swiftly assembled her handgun. "Military-grade predictive algorithms show," she aimed at the truck, "we have an 83.6% chance of dying within 15 seconds after contact."

The truck screeched to a halt fifty meters away. The driver's seat was empty, and the vehicle's AI synthesized voice blared from the speakers: "Dr. Eileen Carter, you have been selected as a civilization continuity observation sample. Please submit proof of human civilization's value within 72 hours, or this cycle will be marked as elimination sequence No. 7..."

Before the voice finished, Sara shot through the engine hood. The truck dissolved into a quantum foam, leaving only a charred Klein bottle-shaped mark on the asphalt.

"Elimination No. 7," Rex wiped his nosebleed. "Means at least six previous batches of the Awakened have failed."

Eileen inserted the data chip. Sara's military program was generating real-time prediction graphs: the underground magma chamber beneath Los Angeles was expanding 17% faster with each cycle, and this time... She zoomed into the 3D model—a shadow of some mechanical structure appeared beneath the city, like a massive artificial spine buried deep in the crust.

The elderly man suddenly coughed violently, and blood droplets suspended in the air formed a floating dodecahedron. "Look!" He frantically pointed toward the Eye of God satellite's position. "Those iron coffins are nailing the Earth!"

On the way back, Max suddenly jerked the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, two unmarked black SUVs were tearing through the desert night. Eileen's quantum counter screamed again, this time at a frequency matching the quantum noise residue of Joe's brainwaves.

"Hold on!" Sara charged her electromagnetic handgun. "I hate time loops, but I prefer killing the second time."

As the off-road vehicle veered off the highway, Eileen glanced at the dashboard: March 14. 71 hours left until Los Angeles's destruction.