The Government’s Lie

U.S. Central Air Defense Command, March 15, 2085, 07:59

The moment the missile silos opened, all the electronic clocks began rotating counterclockwise.

Rex's neural interface pierced the missile control system, liquid metal seeping through the gaps in the keypad and into the reactor core. "You forgot to update your firewalls." His voice echoed through the intercontinental missile's navigation speakers, and twenty-three silos simultaneously burst into a boyish laugh. "The backdoor protocol from NATO's 1999 drills... how adorable."

President Walker smashed the tactical command console's holographic screen, shards cutting his palm and leaking glowing blue liquid. The Secretary of Defense stared in shock as the droplets suspended in the air formed a Fibonacci sequence — 00:00:47.

Los Angeles, Santa Monica Underground Bunker, Same Day 07:59

Sara kicked open the blast doors of the hospital's database center, the residual energy from her electromagnetic gun scorching the federal emblem on the lock. The holographic terminal was automatically playing the president's speech, with the hexagonal projection of the time cocoon barely visible in the background.

"I've seen this scene in the seventh cycle," she yanked out the military-grade decoder and plugged it into the port. "The government uses nuclear explosions to create an EMP, disabling the time cocoon, but in reality, they're trying to erase the awakened ones…"

Medical records poured down like a blood-red waterfall. Sara entered her daughter Emily's citizen code, but a red warning popped up: [This individual does not exist in any timeline]. She froze for a moment when the underground bunker suddenly shook violently. The EMP from the nuclear explosion destroyed all the lighting systems.

In the dim light of the emergency backup, Sara pried open the filing cabinet with a military knife. Amid the musty scent of paper files, she found the torn truth: Emily's attending physician's signature was President Walker's handwriting, and the medication records showed injections of radioactive isotopes identical to those from the Area 51 nuclear accident site.

Underground, 300 meters below the Nevada Desert, Same Day 08:01

Max detected an abnormal gravitational wave in the lead coffin-like shelter. Twelve nuclear warheads detonated twenty kilometers above the ground in the ionosphere, not exploding into mushroom clouds but into countless Klein bottle-shaped energy vortices. The hexagonal structure of the time cocoon glowed with greedy fluorescence, like fireflies at a cosmic scale feeding on the residual light of the nuclear explosions.

"They're feeding," said Irene. Her quantum counter showed a sharp drop in entropy. "The president's nuclear missiles charged the time cocoon!"

The old man curled up in the corner, silicon crystals growing from his rotting skin. "The seventh cycle…" he murmured, pulling off a crystal. The cut surface revealed a miniature Los Angeles skyline. "Every cycle, they let the time cocoon sink deeper. Now the mantle is full of metallic roots…"

A blue light suddenly leaked into the shelter. Rex's projection appeared from the plutonium-238 container in Max's arms, his body made of radiation tracers, a flickering outline. "We need three simultaneous paradoxes," he said, Schrödinger's equation symbols flying out of his mouth. "At the peak of the nuclear explosion's EMP, bury the plutonium container into the quantum decoherence node of the time cocoon…"

The projection suddenly warped into the shape of Sara's daughter. Emily's apparition spoke with two voices at once: "Mom found our tomb in the bunker." "The president's neck hides the neural synapses of the time cocoon."

Washington D.C. Streets, Same Day 08:03

The first to notice the anomaly was a homeless man. He pointed to the White House roof, screaming as twelve clones of President Walker hovered there, each repeating in different languages, "Human civilization has passed the selection."

When the special forces stormed the Oval Office, all they found was a deflated humanoid husk in the president's chair — like a silicone doll emptied of its contents, with fiber-optic tendrils extending from the back of the head, connecting to a metal spine beneath the floor.

Sara's voice, broadcast through hijacked emergency channels, echoed across America: "They've used time loops to cover up 127 nuclear accidents, just like erasing a mistake in a homework notebook! Now it's our turn to choose—"

Her declaration was interrupted by an overwhelming silence. All the running machines, flowing electronics, and even human heartbeats froze at that moment. Only the pulse signals of the time cocoon echoed through the heavens, like Death's bell tolling for the universe.

Irene grabbed Max's hand in the frozen timeline and noticed his palm print was reforming into a Möbius strip. At their feet, the old man's fully crystallized corpse bore the final prophecy: At the seventh sunrise, the selectors will become the selected.