Title: Quantum Immortality and the Timeline Convergence
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: 7000 words
Notes: Lin Jing, time travel, fixit, canon-typical science, canon-typical computing, canon divergent AU. Spoilers for everything! (Not for mergatrude!) Also for the "Secrets" prompt in Guardian Fandom Bingo. So much thanks to trobadora for beta. <3 <3 <3
Summary: The other him tensed, eyes narrowed. “Hologram, clone, robot doppelganger, evil twin, or face-stealing Dixingren?”

“Time traveller. The Hallows brought me from the future to set things right, and I haven’t eaten in days, so you should give me that.” He pointed at the noodles. “You’ll thank yourself later.”




Lao-Zhao was leaning against a fallen statue, bleeding, the Guardian Lantern dangling loosely from one hand. When he pushed himself upright, he sagged as if his legs couldn’t hold him. Lin Jing ran across the throne room to help him, took him through the arched doorway, along corridors and down a wide stone staircase until they were outside the palace, away from the gaping absence where Ye Zun had been. Where Professor Shen had been.

If lao-Zhao had known it was Lin Jing who’d ended Professor Shen’s life, he wouldn’t have let him help. Would have rallied and turned his rage on Lin Jing, cursing him for not finding a different solution to the problem of Ye Zun. But he didn’t know, and it wasn’t the time to confess. Lin Jing was used to keeping secrets (though not usually ones so terrible), and he could decide what to do about this one when they were safely back in Haixing and he’d had three or four showers and recovered from his sojourn in Ye Zun’s belly. He shuddered, remembering, and as he did the city shuddered with him. And kept on shuddering.

He tightened his grip on lao-Zhao, alarmed. Escaping Dixing might not be so easy. The illusion of dark sky overhead was almost certainly due to partial dimensional entanglement, which required the forces between connection and separation to be carefully balanced. The vast pull of Ye Zun’s appetite, followed by its sudden collapse would have acted like a toilet plunger, and now an inexorable crack was forming in reality, threatening to tear Dixing to pieces. And lao-Zhao’s feet were dragging as if he couldn’t keep up. “Boss, it looks like Ye Zun really is dead, but Dixing’s energy has been completely drained. If this crack keeps growing, the whole planet could be destroyed.”

There was nothing they could do about it. If Lin Jing had had six months in a well-resourced lab and access to arXiv, perhaps he could have come up with an answer. But he didn’t, and that meant a lot more people were going to die.

Lao-Zhao didn’t answer. Was he even fully conscious? A sudden jolt tore him from Lin Jing’s hold, sent them reeling apart. Lao-Zhao fell to the ground, blood spilling from his lips.

“Boss, are you okay?” Lin Jing scrambled back to his feet. “Just rest here a minute. I’ll go find lao-Chu and others.” Lao-Chu knew Dixing, could guide them straight to the portal, and it would be easier to support lao-Zhao once they had an idea where they were going. Or maybe, contrary to appearances, there was a scientific facility here, someplace Lin Jing could work. Maybe lao-Chu would be able to take him there.

Lin Jing hurried back in the direction of the palace, trying to be thorough in his search without wasting time. Bemoaning the lack of basic cell phone service or even GPS. The city was a twisting, narrow maze, and his senses were blurred by the ongoing quakes. It would be far too easy to miss the others merely by turning a corner at the wrong moment.

Where had they gone? Why were the streets so empty? Was the crack already swallowing people, as Ye Zun had done? Well, it would be a cleaner, quicker death than waiting to be digested. Lin Jing’s skin still felt greasy, his clothes stank of rank sweat and bile, and he couldn’t shake the image of Sha Ya’s guitar in Ye Zun’s stomach, like a memorial to the girl she could have been if she hadn’t been bent on vengeance.

He came to an intersection, hesitated and was about to turn right when Zhu Hong, lao-Chu and xiao-Guo appeared from the left.

“Lin Jing, there you are—just standing around!” Zhu Hong marched over and punched him hard on the arm. “Where’s lao-Zhao? I’ll tell him to cancel this month’s bonus.”

“He’s down here. We have to hurry.” Lin Jing led them back the way he’d come, rubbing his arm without complaint, knowing the blow had been powered by relief and affection, even if Zhu Hong would never admit it.

The earth heaved again, and he sped up, worried about having left lao-Zhao alone, biting his lips together to keep from blurting out the details of Professor Shen’s last moments that only he had witnessed. The others were concentrating on keeping their footing and didn’t speak.

They arrived back too late. It was obvious the moment Lin Jing saw lao-Zhao’s head slumped forward, his body unmoving, the Lantern glowing brightly on the ground beside him. If there’d been modern medical equipment to hand, a defibrillator or adrenalin, Lin Jing would have tried to intervene, but as he thought that, the ground steadied and, more incredibly, the sky lightened.

Powered by the Hallow, which was powered by lao-Zhao.

Shouts rang out across the city—confused, scared, awed, and Lin Jing felt every one of them. This was his fault. He’d told lao-Zhao that the planet was in danger, and lao-Zhao had taken him at his word.

It was easy, when faced with a problem, to get caught up in the mechanics of it. To reduce it to equations or theories or to follow a chain of chemical reactions to their logical conclusion and lose sight of the weight of one’s actions. But there wasn’t any science here to hide behind. Lao-Zhao had poured all his efforts and wits into protecting those around him, and when that hadn’t been enough, he’d given his very essence as wick to the Lantern. He was more of a hero than Lin Jing would ever be.

Humbled, Lin Jing stepped forward to collect the body, but a sudden violent gust of wind sent him reeling. And then the Lantern rocked and rose glowing into the air, to be joined as if from nowhere by the other Hallows—the Longevity Dial, the Mountain-River Awl, the Merit Brush—all of them swirling faster and faster, creating a vortex that pulled at Lin Jing’s clothes and blasted him with grit and dirt. He tried to retreat to where the others were standing only a few metres away, out of the tumult.

What was activating the Hallows? Could he stop them? He didn’t have time to form a hypothesis. A portal opened in the sky, blinding white, and sent an invisible tractor beam straight at him. It was like being devoured by Ye Zun all over again. Lin Jing couldn’t help himself: he screamed.

Zhu Hong shouted, but her words were lost in the growing pressure differential. Lao-Chu spun thin blue energy cords to catch Lin Jing and pull him to safety, but the wind whipped them away. Lin Jing was drawn up with sickening speed, the ground two metres below, then twenty, then gone. Just like that: one second he was in Dixing, and the next, his ears popped and he was swallowed whole.



*



The Hallows spat him out high enough that when he smacked into the ground, it rattled his teeth and battered his entire body. He groaned and caught his breath, grateful to be stationary and breathing fresh air. The ground was cold, paved, unmoving. The sky was dark, scattered with stars. He sat up gingerly and looked around.

He was in Guangming Road right outside the SID. He was alone.

The Hallows had brought him back to Haixing. His mission was obvious: find a way to rescue lao-Zhao from the Lantern—wherever that Lantern was. It must be time-critical, since the Hallows had express delivered him like this. Even so, he was in no state to work—not until he’d had a shower and a bite to eat. He took out his phone to check the time, but he’d been using it as a flashlight over the last few days, and the battery was dead.

Plan: 1. Charge phone. 2. Shower. 3. Food. 4. Get to work.

He let himself in the back entrance of the SID, in case the Department of Supervision were monitoring the front of the building, and went to the lab to dig out some clean clothes. He hadn’t been back since lao-Zhao faked firing him, but there had to be something he could change into, even if it was just an old lab coat and jeans.

The lights were on. The computer was on. All his knickknacks were clustered on his desk in familiar disarray. Had the Hallows brought his personal effects from the Department of Supervision research lab? That was a nice gesture.

He sat down and reflexively checked his browser—he’d been offline for days, and there were bound to be new instalments of at least one of the web novels he was following. Several of them were gripping enough that they’d take priority over a shower, and reading would get his mind off Sha Ya, Professor Shen and lao-Zhao, help him settle into gear for the work ahead. The chair was comfortingly familiar, and the mouse in his hand made him feel like himself again. He opened his inbox on the site (no unread messages; that was weird) and glanced at his profile.

Last comment posted: 13 minutes ago.

What? Thirteen minutes ago he’d been in Dixing with a dead cell phone battery and no service. Had someone hacked his account? (If so, his money was on Cong Bo, and they would be having serious words.)

He clicked through to read the latest comment, and it was vaguely familiar—it definitely sounded like something he would say—but it was time-stamped 11:44pm, 31 August. That couldn’t be right. He opened a new tab and checked the online world clock. As he watched, it ticked over from 11:57pm to 11:58pm on 31 August.

The next two sites both confirmed it: 31 August.

He frowned, glanced in the rubbish bin by his desk and saw a crumpled grease-stained receipt, probably from lunch. That said 31 August too.

His breath went shaky. On 31 August everyone had been safe—lao-Zhao and Shen Wei were still alive. Wang Zheng and Sang Zan would be upstairs in the library right now, and lao-Li asleep in the caretaker’s office. Lin Jing hadn’t even met Sha Ya yet. (He knew more this time. There was still a chance for them. He could save her.) But—

The Hallows had brought him back in time. What did that mean for the space-time continuum? He jumped to his feet, looking around for a device to measure reality, or a small, discrete problem to solve. Something logical, manageable, known. His gaze fell on the Hallows in their cases: the Dial, the Awl. The exact opposite of logical and manageable.

The act of standing up had sent a gust of rancid body smell towards his face. Right, right, okay. He was in the past, but he still desperately needed a shower.

He was about to rummage through the locker in the back corner of the lab when another him came in, carrying a steaming bowl of noodles. The other him stopped dead. “You’re—”

“You,” he finished, completing the sentence.

The other him tensed, eyes narrowed. “Hologram, clone, robot doppelganger, evil twin, or face-stealing Dixingren?”

“Time traveller. The Hallows brought me from the future to set things right, and I haven’t eaten in days, so you should give me that.” He pointed at the noodles. “You’ll thank yourself later.”

“Ugh, fine,” said the other Lin Jing. He seemed terribly young and had obviously been spending the evening messing around aimlessly on the internet. “This is my second bowl anyway. But you should shower first—you smell revolting.”

“That’s what you get for being swallowed alive.” Lin Jing took the noodles and slurped up a delicious mouthful, too hungry to care when he burnt his tongue. “There was a climactic showdown. We won, but at high cost. We can definitely do better.” He wasn’t sure how many details to give out, how much his former self needed to go into the future a blank slate.

“Seriously,” said the other Lin Jing, backing away with an exaggerated grimace. “Shower!”

Lin Jing rolled his eyes. His former self had no sense of urgency! On the other hand, if he was in the past, he had some breathing space before things went awry, and he did his best thinking in the shower. He grabbed a towel and some clean clothes—including his favourite t-shirt, which he’d ruined weeks ago in an incident with some spicy fish soup, a vial of hydrochloric acid and a poorly directed stress ball—and went to clean up.

He came back smelling fragrant and feeling a hundred times better. “I’ve got a plan. We need to make a wick for the Guardian Lantern, an energy bomb and a remote deton—”

He broke off, annoyed to find the other him sitting on the experiment bed, wrapped in a blanket and eating the rest of his noodles. Except, wait, another him was sitting at his computer, looking at some kind of 3D model of—Lin Jing looked closer—the timeline. Branching universes.

“I turn my back for two minutes and now there are three of us?” Lin Jing pointed at the Lin Jing who was eating his noodles. “Where did you come from?”

“The future.” He looked haggard and pale, even had some grey hairs. The air around him was acrid, and his eyes were rimmed with red. “Not a good one. Professor Ouyang forced the gateway open, and the Xingdu Bureau sent the air force in to bomb Dixing to rubble. Everyone from the SID was down there when it happened.”

The few bites of noodles that had made it into Lin Jing’s stomach formed a heavy lump. He hadn’t considered how much worse the future could get. Plus, if he was the only unfixed variable, the worseness was theoretically his fault. “Spoilers!” he said hastily. “Don’t tell me anything else, or you’ll bias the data! We need to—”

“—write it down,” said the younger Lin Jing, from his seat at the computer. Lin Jing couldn’t help thinking of him as xiao-Jing. “Both of you need to record everything you can think of, no matter how insignificant. We’ll use your accounts to make a plan. I’ve grabbed an algorithm from GitHub, and I’m adapting it to analyse your timelines, figure out the branch points, and signpost the worst-case scenarios.”

Lin Jing grabbed a tablet and sat down in the other desk chair, but before he could begin his brain dump, a thought occurred to him. “The Hallows have sent us back to tonight twice. What’s so special about now?”

The Lin Jing on the experiment bed—Lin Jing-3—didn’t answer, was staring into space with a haunted look. Lin Jing wished they had an energy bar or something to give him. Should he go and raid lao-Zhao’s desk for lollipops? He shunted his chair over and patted Lin Jing-3 on the knee. “We’ll fix this. After all, three heads are better than one.”

“It’s the same head three times,” xiao-Jing and Lin Jing-3 countered—in unison but with markedly different levels of optimism.

“That doesn’t make us smarter—it just gives us more processing power,” added xiao-Jing. “Good thing we’re already brilliant.”

“Processing power’s important,” agreed Lin Jing. “Processing power, data, and scientific genius. That’s how we’re going to save the world. So—why tonight? What’s special about now?”

“That depends. Are you guys one of my futures or two? Do you—” Xiao-Jing pointed at Lin Jing, “become you?” He pointed at Lin Jing-3. “Or vice versa? Or do you each represent a different path forward from here?”

“Good question.” Lin Jing turned to Lin Jing-3, secretly hoping they were separate. His own timeline had been bad enough—he didn’t want to live through Lin Jing-3’s one too. And if he had to, if everything was pre-determined, then why was he even here? What good would it do to go through the motions? “This is my first time travel. Have you done it before?”

Lin Jing-3 took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “Everything’s pretty hazy, but I don’t think so.”

“Maybe it’s like the save point in a game,” suggested xiao-Jing. “This is the night that spawns a billion futures, from which anything is possible. When we set out from here, we’re starting fresh.”

“Let’s hope at least one of those futures is a better one.” Lin Jing-3 didn’t seem hopeful. Probably witnessing the annihilation of an ancient civilisation would do that to a person. Being swallowed by Ye Zun, seeing evidence of Sha Ya’s death, seeing lao-Zhao’s sacrifice to the Lantern—even ending the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s life—seemed smaller, more personal disasters in comparison.

“It will be. Uh, by the way,” said Lin Jing, keeping his tone light, “if the rest of the SID didn’t make it, how did you—we survive?”

“Greetings, fellow selves,” said yet another Lin Jing from the doorway. Great, now there was a Lin Jing-4 as well. How long had he been standing there listening in? Long enough to recover from his surprise at seeing multiple versions of himself, anyway. “I have a theory about that, actually. I was reading up on the many-worlds interpretation and quantum superposition the other day. You know how, in the Schrödinger’s Cat scenario, it’s the presence of an observer that causes the probability wave to collapse? Some people have suggested that if the observer is the cat, the collapse is always in its favour. In other words, when new universes branch off, we automatically end up in the version of the timeline where we survive, even if the odds are vanishingly small. From our point of view, the realities where we died just blink out of existence. Quantum immortality.” He folded his arms, his face tanned but grim. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Things kept getting worse—I thought maybe they’d go better without me, so I ran away, but the Hallows grabbed me just as the whole planet was being sucked into a singularity. Everyone and everything.”

They all took a moment to contemplate this prospect, except for xiao-Jing, who wailed, “How many of us are there going to be? I don’t have enough instant noodles for this!”

Apparently he was inured to the increasingly apocalyptic accounts of their future. He was the only one who hadn’t lived through some version of it yet.

Lin Jing felt unexpectedly protective of him and his innocence. “Relax, dude,” he said. “Let’s order in. We’ve got a lot of work to do. But first— This is getting confusing.” He found a sharpie and some stickers in the top desk drawer and labelled each of his selves: 1, 2, 3, 4.

None of the others objected, of course. “We should have stickers on our backs, too, for when we’re facing away,” said Lin Jing-4.

“Yeah, good idea,” said xiao-Jing, but he was busy taking his phone out of his pocket and opening their favourite takeout app. “What shall we eat?”

“You choose,” said Lin Jing, giving everyone additional back-stickers. “Pretty sure we’re going to like everything you like.”

“You can’t order in. Wang Zheng will notice and want to know why you’re getting enough for four,” said Lin Jing-4.

“You’re underestimating how much Wang Zheng thinks I can eat,” said Lin Jing, but he had a point. When he’d worked at the SID and ordered takeout in the middle of the night, nine times out of ten Wang Zheng would drift down the stairs just as it arrived and follow him back to the lab. Maybe she’d rigged up a food detection alarm system, or maybe energy spirits didn’t need to sleep and she just got bored hanging out alone in the library. Either way, he’d spent more night-time hours than he could count explaining to her what he was working on while she stole half his snacks, or telling her about the latest disagreements in his online communities. She was good company. He’d missed her when he’d left for the lab at the DoS and grieved for her when he’d heard she died. And now she was back, a tragedy undone, and he couldn’t risk letting her see him.

Lin Jing-4 was shaking his head. “No one can find out about us, not even Wang Zheng. If we alter the start point, everything we’ve learned from our respective futures will be useless.”

“So I’ll come up with a cover story. I’m always keeping secrets. It’s what I do.” Saying it aloud made Lin Jing’s face heat, but none of the others seemed to notice.

“Isn’t the timeline already wacked? Unless any of you remember starting out with three handsome time travellers at your side,” said xiao-Jing. “Besides, we can’t solve this without food. You all know that as well as I do.”

“It doesn’t have to be wacked. Not if we converge the timeline,” said Lin Jing-4.

Lin Jing looked at the others: xiao-Jing with his relative naivety, the traumatised Lin Jing-3, Lin Jing-4’s front of intellectual detachment. He didn’t want to merge with any of them, was having enough trouble managing his own equilibrium after losing Sha Ya, after what had happened with Professor Shen and lao-Zhao. And what if merging meant he was subsumed?

Xiao-Jing was stealing glances at the others as if he shared Lin Jing’s misgivings, but he spoke up gamely. “What better way to earn the adulation of beautiful women than preventing an apocalypse?” Lin Jing thought of Sha Ya and had to suppress a flinch, saw Lin Jing-3 and Lin Jing-4 tense as if they were doing the same. Xiao-Jing continued, oblivious, “But how do we do it?”

“The Mountain-River Awl,” said Lin Jing, Lin Jing-3 and Lin Jing-4, all together.

“Huh.” Xiao-Jing went over and regarded the Awl in its glass case. It sat there, dormant and unfathomable.

“First we have to record everything we know from our respective timelines, and we have to do it without Wang Zheng noticing and before the rest of the team starts to arrive in—” Lin Jing peered at the corner of the computer screen. It was nearly 1am. “—six hours. So we’d better get started.”

“I suppose—” Xiao-Jing stood up with an exaggerated air of lethargic martyrdom. “I suppose since I have nothing to contribute at this stage, I could go find a convenience store.”

“Or a street stall,” said Lin Jing-4, dropping his condescending manner. “And beer.”

“We don’t have time to drink,” said Lin Jing, before depressed Lin Jing-3 decided to drown the memories of his timeline and lost focus on finding a better one.

Xiao-Jing checked his wallet. “I’ll go, but Dragon City Street Fighters: Badass Hero III just dropped, so I’m running on empty.”

Lin Jing had spent the last few weeks working non-stop for Professor Ouyang and hadn’t had time for computer games. He tossed xiao-Jing his wallet. “Go nuts.”

After xiao-Jing left, Lin Jing-4 clapped his hands together. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

They sat spaced out so they could write in private. Lin Jing began noting down every significant event he could think of, each with its own dependencies, outcomes and their estimated probabilities. At first the words came easily, spilling across the screen, but when it came to recording his spying for Professor Ouyang, he hesitated. The other versions of him already knew about it, were in exactly the same boat, but he still didn’t like laying it out there. Lao-Zhao was his Chief. The SID team were his family. He’d used to be comfortable in the moral grey areas, so long as he wasn’t hurting anyone directly, but recent events had made him want to be better. If he had been, who knew what might have gone differently. Still, lao-Zhao had forgiven him, and Sha Ya had made her own choices. This was no time to prevaricate. He gritted his teeth and kept going.

A few minutes later, xiao-Jing was back. Lin Jing barely looked up. “That was quick. Did you get fishcakes?”

“It’s not One,” said Lin Jing-3. “Are you okay?”

The new Lin Jing (Lin Jing-5) was clutching his stomach. He was older, gaunt, and his sweatshirt and jeans were torn and scorched. There was tape holding the bridge of his glasses together. He limped into the middle of the room, swayed, then crumpled to the floor. Blood trickled from his hairline, down his cheek. “You’re all—” He stared at the others in shock.

“We’re all you from different timelines,” said Lin Jing-4. “It’s the start of September. We’re building a model to map a way forward. What happened to you?”

“Ye Zun’s taken over Haixing,” said Lin Jing-5. “He—”

“Don’t tell us,” interrupted Lin Jing sharply. He didn’t want to know.

“I was delivering the serum from Professor Ouyang to Zhu Hong’s resistance movement when the Dixing forces blew up their HQ—some kind of dark energy blast.” Lin Jing-5 was sweating. “I don’t know how I ended up here.”

“The Hallows,” said Lin Jing-4. “They’ve been snatching us from all over the multiverse and bringing us back to put things right.”

Lin Jing pulled Lin Jing-5’s hand away from his body and peeled up his blood-soaked sweatshirt, wincing at the deep gashes and rainbow bruises beneath; he looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“We can’t,” said Lin Jing-3.

“We can’t just let him—” Lin Jing broke off, feeling sick. Apparently quantum immortality had its limits. His own timeline hadn’t been so bad, relatively speaking: Dixing was still standing, the world hadn’t ended. Should they let it be? Was that why he was here—to lead the others down that path? Or was it already too late for that? “Let’s get him onto the experiment bed.”

They moved him as gently as they could, but his breathing was fast and ragged by the time they got him laid out on the bed, a whimper in every exhalation. Lin Jing swabbed, glued and bandaged as best he could to stop the external bleeding, but there was no saying how much internal damage had been done.

Lin Jing-3 was digging in the first aid kit. “He needs pain relief.”

“It’ll make me groggy. ’M okay. You need data, and I don’t have much time,” said Lin Jing-5, but when he tried to take the tablet Lin Jing-4 offered, it fell from his grasp.

This was where heroism led—just like it had for Professor Shen and lao-Zhao.

Lin Jing-3 took Lin Jing-5’s hand. Being faced with this injured, probably dying version of himself seemed to have shaken him out of his gloom. “Tell me. I’ll record it for you.”

Lin Jing turned away. The others had this covered. There was no point in all of them standing around his own deathbed. “I’ve finished writing up my timeline,” he said. All but the last few days, anyway, and he’d spent those in Ye Zun’s stomach. If he ended up there again, there’d be nothing he could do differently, short of refusing Professor Shen’s request and letting Ye Zun win. “I’m going to work on the algorithm.”

He sat down at the computer, put on headphones and cued up his most recent playlist, a foreign technopop one he hadn’t listened to since before he’d met Sha Ya and his musical tastes had shifted to indie rock.

The first track sounded soulless and irritating now. He skipped forward, but they were all the same. And how stupid was it that, out of everything, it was that which made his eyes sting and his chest ache. It was that which brought home how, though he hadn’t managed to save Sha Ya, she had saved him—from cruising through life, smug and complacent. He’d admired her, tried to be worthy of her, but their relationship had been a superpositioned Schrödinger’s Cat all along, too many secrets on either side for them to form a true connection. Compared to the horrors of the other Lin Jings’ apocalyptic timelines, maybe it was nothing, but to him, just the possibility of it had been special. Something to reach for.

The track ended, and he surreptitiously wiped his eyes, switched to another, older playlist and made himself get to work.

He was testing the algorithm’s interface for uploading the XML timeline files when a loud clatter made him look up. He pushed back the headphones. Xiao-Jing was standing in the doorway, his arms full of plastic bags, the containers inside squashed and leaking. He must have almost dropped them but grabbed hold before they fell. Cans of energy drink were scattered at his feet, at least two of them exploded and fizzing onto the floor. He was staring at Lin Jing-5 on the experiment bed, appalled.

Lin Jing always thought of himself as calm and in control. When he’d anticipated his own death in his timeline, he hadn’t freaked out, hadn’t run. He’d left a message for the others—maybe helped turn the tide of events, letting them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Even in Ye Zun’s stomach, receiving gritted instructions on how to end Professor Shen’s life, he’d kept his head.

But xiao-Jing hadn’t seen what Lin Jing had seen, or what any of the other versions of them had lived through, and his dread hit Lin Jing like a blow. If only he could rescue that younger version of himself from this mess, find him a research post in a lab somewhere far away and safe where he could make cool stuff and write brilliant papers, get a nice uncomplicated girlfriend, start a band. Where the worst thing that might happen would be having his favourite TV show cancelled or losing research funding. Where he wouldn’t be faced with someone who looked like him, who was him, dying before his eyes, every breath laboured.

It wasn’t fair. At least one of them should get a happy ending.

Lin Jing-4 stepped into the centre of the room, tablet in hand. “We need to converge the timelines now. It’s the only way to save him.”

“We haven’t loaded the data into the algorithm yet.” Lin Jing folded his arms.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Lin Jing-3. “We needed to record the data separately, but we can run the algorithm after we merge.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Lin Jing was stalling. He knew he shouldn’t, that Lin Jing-3 was right, but he didn’t want to let these other selves into xiao-Jing’s head, didn’t want his former self to have to deal with their depression and trauma, pain and detachment, or his own guilt. Didn’t want it for himself, either. So what if they were him? That didn’t mean they had a right to his secrets. He was distinct by virtue of his experiences, and he wanted to keep those private.

Lin Jing-4 regarded Lin Jing as if he knew exactly what he was thinking and had no patience for it. “He’s running out of time.”

Lin Jing-5 was panting, his eyes glazed. “It doesn’t matter—”

“It matters,” snapped Lin Jing-4. “Each of us has different impulses, shaped by our experiences. Why would the Hallows bring you back, if we didn’t need you?”

Xiao-Jing assumed a confident expression. It didn’t entirely mask the panic beneath, but he still agreed. “We have to.”

He dumped the takeout bags in a messy pile on the floor, wiped his hands on his jeans and went and took the Mountain-River Awl from its case.

Lin Jing scowled. They hadn’t tested whether the algorithm would work. They hadn’t eaten yet and weren’t thinking rationally. There were so many reasons to wait, to be cautious and thorough. This wasn’t just a dark energy detector or a set of high-tech earplugs; they were about to screw with the space-time continuum! But he was the master of inventing things on the fly, of coming up with improbable technical solutions and making them work, against all odds. He might not want to merge with the other versions of him, but when it came to science, he trusted their instincts. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fine, whatever.”

It wasn’t his most gracious concession, but it was enough to win a twisted smile from xiao-Jing and a pat on the shoulder. As soon as they touched, the Awl began to glow, and Lin Jing felt the tug of it, like the tractor beam from the portal, like the pull of Ye Zun’s power.

He jerked away, and the golden light from the Awl faded and died.

“Well, that answers one question,” said Lin Jing-3. “I guess we know how to activate it.” He took the Awl from xiao-Jing, went to Lin Jing-5’s side and visibly braced himself. “Ready?”

Lin Jing-5 was bathed in sweat and seemed not to hear. His head wound had started bleeding again. Lin Jing-3 covered his hand, where it gripped the edge of the bed, white-knuckled.

Nothing happened.

Lin Jing-3 shook the Awl, then smacked it as if it might have a loose connection. “Why isn’t it working?”

Lin Jing-4 frowned. “Let me try.”

He grabbed the Awl and took Lin Jing-5’s hand, then his shoulder. Nothing. They all looked at each other, frowning in confusion.

“It was working—was that our only chance?” Lin Jing-C sent Lin Jing a dark look, as if it were his fault for backing away.

Lin Jing-4 was examining the Awl. “Maybe it has to happen in a particular order.”

“Maybe it has to be me,” said xiao-Jing.

Lin Jing stiffened. That would make sense. Xiao-Jing was the only one who hadn’t time travelled. He was the closest they had to a blank slate, a representative of the point they diverged. He was everything they had in common. “Try it.”

When Lin Jing-4 handed xiao-Jing the Awl, their fingers brushed, and a few sparks of energy rose like fireflies into the air.

Lin Jing swallowed, his throat so dry it clicked. “Looks like you’re right.”

Xiao-Jing nodded, set his jaw and turned to Lin Jing-5. Since he’d arrived back to find him here, he’d been avoiding looking at him, but now he stepped close.

“We should all converge at once,” said Lin Jing-4. “The Hallows are unpredictable, and we can’t afford to miss our chance.”

The others nodded. Lin Jing couldn’t disagree without earning their scorn, so he nodded too, but he was thinking furiously. There had to be a way out, a logical reason why he should stay separate. If there were two of him, maybe the future would be better. Maybe that was what it would take.

But xiao-Jing was gathering with the others around the experiment bed, and Lin Jing found himself stepping in too, pretending to be confident and sure like the rest of them.

He didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t going to let xiao-Jing go through it alone. He fisted his hands at his sides, summoning the courage, then blew out a breath and gripped xiao-Jing’s shoulder and, with his other hand, took Lin Jing-5’s cold, clammy hand. Was he still conscious? What would it do to them if he died now, at this moment of merging? Would they all be dragged under with him? It was the kind of experiment that should be done carefully, after checking the science and triple-checking the calculations—not recklessly, on a hunch at two-thirty in the morning!

He opened his mouth to say so, but just then, the others reached out, and the Awl lit up, its glow building and expanding like a hazy ball of sunlight, swelling to encompass them all.

It burned! For a few moments, they were separate but linked, and Lin Jing felt everything—fear, devastation and loss. All their lies and selfish actions, all of their compromises and careless mistakes. Lin Jing-5’s pain and resignation washed through them all, the heavy undertow of Lin Jing-3’s depression, xiao-Jing’s uncertainty, Lin Jing-4’s self-hatred, and Lin Jing’s own shame and heartache, from him but outside him. All of them crashing together like particles in a nuclear reactor, building up to a meltdown.

But the Awl light softened, and the pain and discomfort eased, leaving him not cool, but calm and determined. His affection—for Da Qing and Zhu Hong and the rest of the SID, his pride in them and sense of belonging, his respect for lao-Zhao and Professor Shen—the strength of all of that welled up in layers from every version of himself, the strata of bedrock. Filling him with determination to keep them all safe.

He closed his eyes, and each set of memories fell into place beside the others, blurring until they were like dreams. “Oh,” said someone, sounding surprised. There was a clatter, and the ground flipped upside-down. When he opened his eyes, he was on his back on the experiment bed, and the others were gone. He was the others.

He was exhausted.

He pushed himself upright and checked for wounds, but he was whole. Not even bruised from the fall onto Guangming Road earlier. The takeout was on the floor where xiao-Jing had left it. He salvaged some fishcakes and a couple of energy drinks—he’d clean up the rest later—and sat down at his computer. He had to import the timelines. He needed to know how to go forward before the save point passed and his research proved useless. He input the data mechanically, and when he’d finished, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and let sleep take him.



*



“Sleeping on the job again? Did you stay here all night? There’s a deduction for that—it’s called rent.”

Lin Jing started upright, momentarily unmoored and unsure where he was, what time he was in. Four disastrous futures spread ahead of him, vague and ominous as shadows.

Lao-Zhao was leaning in the doorway, thumbs hooked in his pockets. Radiating vitality and exasperation. Alive.

“Boss?” Lin Jing wiped his mouth—he’d been drooling—and glanced at his monitor. It was just after 8am on 1 September. The algorithm had finished running. Runtime: 00:02:13:49. Errors: 0. Click here for results.

“Clean yourself up,” said lao-Zhao. “The Regent of Dixing is coming to visit this morning. And why is the Mountain-River Awl on the floor?”

“I—I was running some tests.” The Regent’s visit. Everything swooped into focus. The SID team didn’t know Professor Shen’s identity yet. Professor Shen was still alive. Lao-Zhao was about to accompany him to Dixing for the first time. And Lin Jing was Professor Ouyang’s plant in the SID. He was living a lie.

He clicked the link. Just one line displayed.

Result: Tell the Black-Cloaked Envoy about Sha Ya.

Lin Jing kept his expression blank, but his heart sank. The Envoy would send Sha Ya back to Dixing. Lin Jing would never meet her. He’d never hear her play guitar or make her smile, never sit with her in the streets of Dragon City, sharing stinky tofu. Even if the Envoy allowed her to stay in Haixing, Sha Ya wouldn’t look at Lin Jing the same way if she knew he’d sold her out—and the thought of lying to her made him feel in need of another shower.

How could reporting her be enough to change the fate of the world anyway? What if Lin Jing hadn’t recorded enough data or the right data, or there was a bug in the algorithm? Could he rely on this result?

“Boss.”

Lao-Zhao had been turning to leave. He swivelled back, his forehead creased in query. “What?”

Lin Jing stared at his screen. The result didn’t say anything about confessing his own secrets, but he couldn’t live his life second-guessing every move. When he’d run away, the world had ended. When lao-Zhao had discovered his betrayal, they’d won but at a terrible cost.

He didn’t need a computer program to spell it out: the closer he was with the SID, the better the outcome. It made sense to tell sooner rather than later, even if it meant seeing disappointment and distrust on lao-Zhao’s face.

Lao-Zhao wasn’t Sha Ya. Lao-Zhao would forgive him. He had before.

Lin Jing pushed his chair away from the desk and went to put the Awl back in its case. He replaced the glass cover. It didn’t have to be now. It didn’t even have to be today. But if he waited, he’d just keep putting it off. Next week or the week after, never willing to admit he was unworthy of lao-Zhao’s trust. He’d get caught, and he’d seen where that led.

He turned away from the Hallows. Lao-Zhao was watching him, eyes narrowed, waiting to hear him out.

Lin Jing took a deep breath. Tomorrow he’d tell the Envoy about Sha Ya—whatever the cost, he had to try. And who knew, maybe it would save her life as well as the world. That would be worth it. It had to be. But today, right now, he had to tell his own secrets.

“Boss,” he said, “there’s something you need to know.”



END




A/N: Quantum Immortality is an actual theory; I did not make it up.