Digitized Pine Cones (June 15, 2023)
As Lin Luo's smart contact lens flashed the 17th bidding warning, the air in the auction room began to seep with the aroma of virtual wine. She hides her left hand in a nanofiber glove, and her fingertips unconsciously rub the birthmark on her right shoulder -- a vine-like cluster of bumps that are burning as if a grape root is about to break ground beneath her.
"The last lot, carbonized Pine Cone 1927, comes with a blockchain certificate of ownership."
The holographic auctioneer rolled out a three-dimensional projection of charred pine cones suspended in bulletproof glass, each crack flowing with the bluish glow of data streams.
When the bid soared to €500,000, Linlo activated the neural link that had been cracked the night before. Her retinal interface suddenly flooded with unfamiliar memories: boys running on a stormy night, the reflection of a hound's tusk, and pinecone necklaces carved with Celtic knots - exactly the same as the items on display.
"Fifty-five million."
She held up the electronic number plate and the burning pain of the birthmark spread to the back of her neck. At the other end of the table, a silver-haired man in a dark-striped suit raised his hand in synch, the lead scar on the back of his right hand glowing dead gray under the laser light.
When Gabriel Moreau tasted the third drop of Neurowine, he finally confirmed that it was not a synesthetic hallucination.
The aromas of chardonnay oozing from the air-conditioning system in the auction room were turning his taste buds into time projectors-in the trenches of 1943, he (or some young man who looked exactly like him) was carving miniature grapevines out of shell casings, blood dripping from shrapnel holes in pinecone cores.
"Six hundred thousand."
His voice had a trill that was not his own. The auction interface suddenly pops up a red warning:
the NFT has abnormal transaction records. The blockchain shows that on September 7, 1943, an account named "Louie" closed with three shell casings.
At this moment, the holographic pine cone has a quantum shake, and the burnt black skin is peeled off, revealing the brand new grain of the inner layer. The auctioneer's smile appeared for 0.3 seconds, which was a rare mistake by advanced AI.
Lin Luo's birthmark had burned to her collarbone. The moment she turned on the genetic test, it burst out a warning in Provencal:
"Madeleine sequence detected!"
This string of genetic markers that should have belonged to the lab in 1927 is now waking up in her blood.
"Eight hundred thousand! Molten lead scar The man rises, and the scar twists into a grape tendrils with the movement. Gabriel noticed that his bid was adorned with a double snake staff logo - the logo of the multinational liquor giant Deep Roots Capital.
The smart temperature control system in the auction room suddenly went out of control, and the rainstorm of 1927 was re-enacted outside the VR shield.
Lin Luo's contact lenses are forced into an unfamiliar scene: a girl in a rough dress holds a copper astrolabe, and rain is washing blood from a pinecone necklace.
"This is... My memory?"
She grabbed the back of her chair and found the holographic auctioneer turned overalls veteran carpenter, modifying the blockchain hash with a carving knife.
Gabriel's synesthesia is at its peak right now. When the CEO of Deep Roots Capital called out "One million," he tasted saltpeter mixed with lavender - the smell of a 1953 wedding scene. His iris recognition system suddenly unlocks the deep data of the lot:
the geographic coordinates hidden in the three-dimensional pine cone core are familiar, and it is the GPS location of the mill ruins that repeatedly appeared in the dream last night.
"One hundred and two million."
His offer triggered the auction hall's fraud prevention mechanism. The biometrics went off, because he had two identities in his pupil: Gabriel Moreau from 2023, and Louis Moreau from 1943.
Lin Luo's genetic detector exploded at the moment, and the splashing nano liquid condensed into a astrolabe projection in the air. When she reached out to touch it, the torrential rain of 1927 penetrated the VR shield, literally wetting the molten lead scar of the CEO of Deep Roots Capital.
In the underground parking lot at midnight, Lin Luo ran wildly with the auction box in her arms.
Carbonized pine cones continue to change inside the ballistic hood, and the timestamp on the blockchain certificate is rewinding: 2023→1953→1927→ a certain autumn equinox in the ancient Roman calendar.
The red sports car stands across the exit, the Windows down to reveal Gabriel's virtual rain-stained face: "Get in, the vine mark on your shoulder is leaking bioelectricity."
As the tires grind, the rearview mirror reflects the drone swarm of Deep Root Capital.
They look like mechanized hummingbirds, but their beaks glow like grafting knives. Gabriel presses the compartment of the car's liquor cabinet, and real wine from the 1940s splatters on the windshield - a recipe for intoxicant AI vision sensors.
"Go to Provence,"
Linlo said, tearing off the nanogloves to reveal her fully vinized right hand.
"My genes are asking me to return to the land."
When the car ran into a rainstorm, the carbonized pine cone finally cracked. Lying in the charred shell were not pine nuts, but a shell with longitude and latitude engraved on it, and a 1927 grape leaf with teeth marks.
The car's autopilot system suddenly sounds an alarm in Provencal:
"Graft tracker detected!" Lin Luo's vine-like right hand thrusts uncontrollably into the center console, pulling a mechanical root from the circuit board - the double snake pattern on Deep Root Capital's Logo.
"Hold on tight! Gabriel swiped the steering wheel, and the tires curved Burgundy from the 1914 Pinot Noir in the acid rain. In the rearview mirror, three drones, wrapped in wet grape leaves, crash into the billboard, and the sparks from the neon tubes mirror the spectrum of the mill cellar in 1927.
Lin Luo tore a 1927 grape leaf with his teeth, and the veins of the leaf projected a holographic map under the stimulation of saliva.
When Gabriel's iris scans the coordinates of the bullet case, the chip in the back of his neck burns - the first time the Morro family memory implanted at his grandfather's funeral has been activated.
"Turn left!" "They both shouted. The steering wheel automatically turns 15 degrees to the right, avoiding the sudden rise of silicon-based vines.
The blue glow of the plant roots is strikingly similar to the lines of Lin Luo's birthmark.
The drone swarm reorganizes into a honeycomb matrix in the rain. Gabriel opens the concealed weapon in the car's wine cabinet, and the 1940's Farewell Wine is loaded into the air pressure transmitter.
When the liquor bomb hit the lead drone, Lin Luo's retinal interface suddenly loaded the trench vision:
A man in a vintage military uniform (with Gabriel's face) stuffed shell casings into pine cones, blood seeping from his palm into the grain of the wood. In the light of the explosion in the distance, a girl in a rough dress (clearly the mirror image of Lin Luo) is reflecting the searchlight of a German reconnaissance plane with her astrodisk.
"Is this memory sharing?"
She tore the data cable spreading in her right hand, and the actual liquor bomb detonated, sending lavender mushroom clouds into the acid rain.
A holographic keyboard pops up on the back of the passenger seat. Gabriel single-handedly decodes Morse code on bullet casings, blockchain certificates suddenly start reverse-affirming - Louis Moreau in 1943 is authenticating his biometric information via a quantum channel.
"The gene lock is open!"
Lin Luo's vine finger plugs into the car's charging port and taps the municipal power grid to activate the Madeleine sequence in the birthmark. A map of vineyards from 1927 appears on the dashboard, with red dots where they overlap the coordinates of the bullet casings:
the core frequency of the drone hive at this moment.
Gabriel bites the tip of his tongue and smears blood on the cork of a nerve wine bottle.
At the moment of the synesthesia explosion, he tasted the coordinate parameters of the seven dimensions of space-time, and the family tattoo on his ankle began to heat up - a Fibonacci sequence in the shape of a grapevine.
"Jam their graft protocol with an EMP!"
He flicked out his ancestral brass flask and splashed liquid into the laser scanner at the back of the car. Linlo's vines immediately wrap around the jug, reassembling the 1939 wine molecules into a signal-shielding web.
The drones shut down en masse amid the aroma of grapes. Two people rushed to the abandoned gas station, Lin Luo's right hand has returned to normal, but the palm has more and the same brand with the shell shell marks.
Gabriel removes his iris, corroded by acid rain, to reveal the true amber pupil of his left eye - flashing in sync with the red dot on the holographic map.
"These are not ordinary coordinates."
He wipes the virtual rust on the surface of the shell casing, "the anchor of the Morro family contract for seven centuries."
The old radio in the gas station convenience store suddenly played automatically:
"... We now insert Deep Root Capital's emergency announcement, offering a reward to track down stolen blockchain artifacts..." The noise is mixed with a 1953 wedding march and a quantum storm warning for the Mars colony.
Lin Luo tore off the June 15th of the convenience store calendar, and the back of the paper oozed grape juice from 1927.
When she held the pages up to the moonlight, the SAP quickly crystallized into two prototype rings - samples of the "immortal rootstock" described in Madeline's lab journal.
"Here they come."
Gabriel stared at the purple lightning on the horizon - the ionic trail characteristic of Deep Root Capital's maglev fleet. His synesthesia strikes again, this time tasting the loneliness of a space capsule in 2097, and the silicon-based flowers in Lin's hair.
When the two men burst into the gas station cellar, the remnants of the carbonized pine cone suddenly sprouted.
Sprouts grow through the concrete, weaving into the walls the frescoes of a seventh-century monastery dome. As the last leaf unfolded, there was a sharp pain from Lin Lo's birthmark - the Saint of Wine in the mural, holding the Madeleine sequence from her genetic test report.