The pain had become so familiar that X-7734 could categorize it by type, duration, and intensity. The subject had never known anything else—the sterile metal tables, the clinical hands probing flesh, the mechanical whir of instruments designed specifically to test the limits of his unique physiology.
"Extraordinary resilience in subject X-7734," noted Dr. Shirō Ishii, the director of Unit 731, scribbling observations in his notebook. His white coat remained pristine despite the gore splattered across the laboratory floor. "Restoration of cellular integrity continues despite complete removal of vital organs."
The laboratory nestled deep within the Japanese experimental facility outside Harbin, Manchuria, had become X-7734's entire world. The infant who had impossibly survived the Nanking massacre was now physically a child of approximately four years, though his actual time since "birth" had been just eighteen months. His growth was accelerated, another fascinating anomaly that kept the Japanese scientists working day and night.
Today's experiment involved vivisection without anesthesia—again. The subject's abdomen lay open, organs removed and cataloged while his brain remained conscious. Ishii had theorized that psychological trauma might eventually limit the regenerative response, but so far, no amount of suffering seemed to affect the physical restoration process.
"Heart removed at 09:42," called out Assistant Researcher Ota, holding the still-beating organ in a metal pan. "Subject remains conscious."
The child's eyes—unnaturally silver against his pale skin—remained open, staring at the ceiling. He never cried anymore. Not since the first months when they'd systematically broken and reset every bone in his body to observe the healing process.
"Commence radiation exposure," Ishii ordered. "Double the dosage from yesterday's trial."
As the massive X-ray equipment was positioned over his splayed body, something unusual happened within the subject's consciousness. The pain triggered a cascade, a neurological awakening that reached beyond his own experiences into something deeper—something encoded in his very DNA.
Behind those silver eyes, memories not his own began to unfold...
---
*The Princess Zhu Youzhen gasped as the Manchu soldiers breached the inner palace. The Ming Dynasty, which had ruled China for 276 years, was collapsing around her. Her father, the Chongzhen Emperor, had already hanged himself from a tree on Coal Hill rather than face capture.*
*"This way, Princess!" urged her handmaiden, tugging at her embroidered sleeve. "We must hide you!"*
*But the princess hesitated. Her hand drifted to her abdomen, where a small swelling had just become noticeable beneath her robes. A child—conceived in secrecy with the mysterious foreigner who had appeared at court claiming to be from distant lands beyond the Western seas. The man who called himself Robert Kestrel had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving behind only his seed growing within her and a small metal object she couldn't identify.*
*"It doesn't matter," she whispered. "Heaven has abandoned the Ming."*
*The soldiers found her minutes later. They dragged her by her hair through halls where her ancestors had ruled for generations. The commander, a brutal man with a scarred face, tore away her imperial robes.*
*"The Ming whore carries a child," he announced, noticing her condition. "An heir, perhaps?"*
*His laughter echoed through the palace as he forced her down onto the dragon throne itself—the sacred seat of imperial power—and took her there, while his men cheered. When he finished, others took his place. Seven soldiers violated the princess that day, each commenting on the "honor" of defiling both a royal woman and the symbolic seat of Ming power simultaneously.*
*When they finished, the commander drew his sword.*
*"No heirs to the Ming will live while the Qing rule," he declared, raising his blade to strike at her swollen belly.*
*But one of his officers intervened. "The woman may have value. Her father had many treasures. Perhaps she knows where they are hidden."*
*That intervention saved her life, but not her dignity. For months afterward, the princess was kept as a plaything for Manchu officers. Her pregnancy advanced despite the abuse, her child somehow surviving within her. When she finally gave birth—to a daughter, not the son they feared—they allowed the child to live, but only as a slave.*
*"Let her remember that her mother was a Ming princess," the commander said with cruel delight, "and that now she is nothing but a Manchu cumrag."*
---
X-7734's body convulsed on the table as genetic memories cascaded through his consciousness. The researchers mistook it for a reaction to the radiation, increasing the dose further.
"Subject exhibiting unusual neural activity," noted Assistant Ota, monitoring the primitive EEG they'd connected to the child's exposed brain. "Possibly seizure-like response to radiation."
Ishii leaned closer, fascinated. "The cellular structure is changing. Look at this."
Under the microscope, X-7734's blood revealed something extraordinary—microscopic metallic particles that seemed to be reconfiguring themselves in response to the radiation.
"What are these?" Ishii demanded, adjusting the microscope. "Some kind of artificial cellular component? This is beyond anything in current medical science."
The particles moved with purpose, not like any natural biological process. They appeared to be machines of impossible miniaturization, responding to the extreme stimuli by becoming more active.
"Take more samples," Ishii ordered. "And bring the chemical weapons. I want to see how these particles respond to different agents."
As they fitted a gas mask over X-7734's face to administer controlled doses of mustard gas, the genetic memories continued to unfold...
---
*The daughter of Princess Zhu grew up knowing only servitude and abuse. The Manchu called her "Ming-dog" instead of her given name, reminding her daily of her fallen dynasty. By age twelve, she had been put to work in the household of a minor Manchu noble, scrubbing floors and emptying chamber pots.*
*By fourteen, the noble's son had noticed her unusual features—silver eyes and hair that sometimes appeared to shift color in certain light, traits inherited from her unknown father. Fascinated by her exotic appearance, he began visiting her quarters at night.*
*"You don't look fully Chinese," he observed, forcing her legs apart. "Your mother must have been a whore who spread for foreigners."*
*She bore his child at fifteen—another daughter with the same silver eyes. When the noble discovered the pregnancy, he beat her severely, claiming she had seduced his son. After the birth, she was sold to a brothel in Peking to repay her "debt" to the family.*
*There, she serviced thirty or more men daily, many specifically requesting the "Ming princess descendant" as an exotic novelty. She died before her twentieth birthday, her body broken by abuse and disease. Her daughter was immediately put to work in the same brothel, continuing the cycle of exploitation.*
*For generations, the female descendants of Princess Zhu lived short, brutal lives. Each bore a daughter who inherited the same unusual traits—silver eyes, accelerated healing, and unusual resilience to disease. Each daughter was born into bondage, their royal lineage becoming a distant memory passed down in whispers between mothers and daughters during their brief time together.*
*During the Opium Wars, one descendant was captured by British soldiers who remarked on her unusual appearance. "Silver-eyed devil," they called her as they took turns with her. The resulting child—yet another daughter—was left at a missionary orphanage, where she was given the Christian name "Mary." But even Christian charity couldn't protect her from China's turbulent fate.*
*When the Boxer Rebellion erupted in 1899, the orphanage was attacked. Seventeen-year-old Mary was captured by Boxer rebels who considered her mixed heritage an embodiment of foreign corruption. She was publicly violated by eight men before being sold to a warlord as a concubine.*
*The warlord became obsessed with her rapid healing, often cutting her with knives just to watch the wounds close. "You're not human," he would whisper as he inflicted fresh injuries during their coupling. "What demon bloodline runs in your veins?"*
*She bore him a daughter with the same silver eyes. The warlord, disappointed it wasn't a son, largely ignored the child until she was old enough to be traded to a Japanese businessman as part of a political arrangement. That child grew up to become Lihua's grandmother—who clutched the family's last heirloom, a jade pendant, as Japanese soldiers discovered their hiding place in Nanking.*
---
In the laboratory, X-7734 began to scream—the first sound he had made in months. The researchers stepped back in shock as his body contorted on the table, organs they had removed beginning to regenerate at an accelerated rate.
"Impossible," whispered Ota, watching as a new heart materialized within the open chest cavity. "This defies all biological understanding."
Ishii wasn't listening. He was transfixed by the microscope, where the metallic particles in X-7734's blood had formed complex geometric patterns never before observed in any natural or artificial system.
"The subject's genetic material is reconfiguring itself," he announced. "These particles appear to be facilitating some kind of directed evolution."
The child's screams intensified as new tissue knitted itself together before their eyes. Bones that had been removed for study regrew from nothing. A severed arm they had amputated last week to observe regeneration was now reforming at the shoulder socket.
"Restrain him!" Ishii ordered as X-7734's body began to thrash violently. "Increase the radiation dose to maximum!"
As searing radiation poured into the child's reforming body, more genetic memories surfaced...
---
*Lihua's early life had been one of relative privilege compared to her ancestors. The Zhu family had maintained the secret knowledge of their imperial lineage, though they lived as humble scholars rather than royalty. Her father had been determined to preserve what remained of their heritage, collecting ancient texts and teaching Lihua the classics despite the Japanese occupation making such education dangerous.*
*"Never forget you carry the blood of emperors," he told her, showing her the jade pendant—the last family heirloom that had somehow survived centuries of hardship. "And something else too... something from beyond China."*
*He didn't elaborate, but sometimes he would study her silver eyes with a mixture of wonder and fear. The same eyes that had marked her female ancestors for centuries.*
*When she married a librarian dedicated to preserving Chinese culture during the occupation, it seemed her life might break the cycle of tragedy. But then came the Japanese invasion of Nanking, and history repeated itself with even greater brutality.*
*As soldiers cut her open to remove her unborn child, Lihua's final thoughts were of the family stories—how each generation of women had suffered, how each had given birth to a daughter who carried the same burden. Her last conscious realization was that she was going to die with her son—the first male birth in the maternal line since Princess Zhu's time.*
*But against all odds, that son lived.*
---
X-7734 convulsed a final time as the genetic memory completed itself. His eyes snapped open—still silver but now glowing with an inner light that made the researchers step back in alarm.
"Sedate him immediately!" Ishii commanded.
They injected enough morphine to kill ten adult men, but X-7734's metabolism neutralized it instantly. The restraints holding him to the table began to creak under sudden pressure.
"This is unprecedented," Ishii said, his scientific curiosity momentarily overriding his caution. "The subject appears to be undergoing some kind of metamorphosis triggered by the combination of trauma and radiation."
The steel restraints snapped with a sound like gunshots. X-7734 sat upright, his abdomen now fully closed without even a scar. He looked at his hands as if seeing them for the first time, then at the terrified researchers surrounding him.
For one electrifying moment, it seemed he might speak or attack. Instead, he collapsed back onto the table, unconscious but still breathing.
"Increase security," Ishii ordered, his voice steady despite the scientific impossibility he had just witnessed. "And contact Tokyo. Tell them we've discovered something that could change the course of the war."
---
For the next five years, the experiments intensified. The Japanese military allocated additional resources to Unit 731 specifically for research on X-7734. They exposed him to every known pathogen, from bubonic plague to weaponized anthrax. They subjected him to chemical weapons testing, submerging his entire body in mustard gas to observe how his tissues responded. They severed limbs, removed organs, even attempted to decapitate him—each time, he regenerated completely.
Major General Hiroshi Abe, visiting from Imperial Headquarters, watched impassively as researchers lowered X-7734 into a vat of hydrochloric acid.
"How long can he survive complete tissue dissolution?" he asked.
"Indefinitely, it seems," Ishii replied. "The acid destroys his organic material, but those metallic particles in his bloodstream somehow rebuild everything from scratch. We've recorded complete physical dissolution followed by regeneration seventeen times now."
The general leaned closer to the glass vat, watching as X-7734's dissolving face maintained the same blank expression it always wore. The subject never spoke, never responded to stimuli in ways that suggested higher cognition, yet his eyes followed researchers around the room with unmistakable awareness.
"Have you made progress with the blood transfers?" the general asked.
Ishii's expression darkened. "All test subjects die within minutes of receiving even microscopic amounts of X-7734's blood. The death is... extremely unpleasant." He gestured to a series of photographs showing soldiers whose bodies had essentially disintegrated from within. "The metallic particles appear to attack foreign tissue with extreme prejudice. They're protective of their host."
"And breeding attempts?"
"Unsuccessful. Female subjects die during insemination. The genetic material appears to be toxic to anyone not carrying the same markers."
General Abe considered this information. "This specimen could be the key to building invincible Japanese soldiers, but time is running short. The Americans are advancing faster than expected."
Indeed, by August 1945, as atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, orders came to destroy the facility and all evidence of its experiments. Researchers worked frantically to burn documents and eliminate test subjects.
"What about X-7734?" Assistant Ota asked as they prepared explosive charges throughout the laboratory complex.
Ishii considered the subject, now physically resembling a child of about ten, though his actual existence spanned only seven years. "We can't transport him, and we can't kill him. Seal him in the deepest sublevel and demolish the access routes. If we cannot use him, no one will."
They drugged him with enough chemicals to paralyze an elephant and sealed him in a reinforced concrete chamber twenty meters below ground. As they closed the massive steel door, Ishii took a final look at the creature who had defined his research for nearly a decade.
"What are you?" he whispered, not expecting an answer.
For the first time, X-7734 smiled—a tiny movement at the corner of his mouth that sent a chill through Ishii's body. The researcher quickly shut the door and engaged the locks, then ordered the demolition team to collapse all access tunnels immediately.
Three days later, Soviet forces captured the partially destroyed facility. While Japanese personnel had destroyed most records, they discovered enough evidence to indicate human experimentation on an unprecedented scale. And deep beneath the rubble, they detected faint life signs.
---
"Remarkable specimen," observed Dr. Alexei Borodin, chief scientist of Soviet Special Project 7. "The Japanese notes we recovered suggest this subject survived experiments that would have killed any human hundreds of times over."
The Soviet laboratory, hastily established in a former industrial facility near Vladivostok, was now home to X-7734. The Soviets had excavated the sealed chamber and found him perfectly conscious despite having been without oxygen, food, or water for weeks.
"Stalin himself has expressed interest in the military applications," Borodin told his team. "We will succeed where the Japanese failed."
The Soviet experiments proved even more brutal than their Japanese predecessors. Without complete records, they had to rediscover X-7734's capabilities through trial and error. They exposed him to nuclear radiation at doses thousands of times the lethal human threshold. They tested new chemical weapons on his regenerating tissue. They attempted to cross-breed him with specially selected women, resulting in each woman's horrific death as the foreign genetic material invaded and destroyed their bodies from within.
Through it all, X-7734 remained silent, watchful, learning. The genetic memories had awakened something within him—an awareness that extended far beyond the laboratory walls and into the distant past. And something else was happening too. With each new trauma, each new experiment, the metallic particles in his bloodstream became more active, more organized.
During a radiation test in 1952, Dr. Borodin noticed something unprecedented. As X-7734's body regenerated from near-total cellular destruction, the process seemed different—more efficient, more directed.
"The subject is adapting," he noted in his journal. "Not merely regenerating but improving upon the original design. The radiation that once caused total cellular collapse now triggers only partial damage. He is evolving in response to our tests."
Indeed, X-7734's reactive adaptability had awakened. His genetic code was actively rewriting itself to overcome each new threat. Poisons that had once caused temporary paralysis now had no effect. Radiation levels that previously dissolved his tissue were now absorbed and processed harmlessly.
"We must accelerate our efforts," Borodin urged his superiors. "This specimen represents the key to Soviet biological supremacy."
But political upheaval following Stalin's death disrupted the program. Resources were diverted, and security around X-7734 weakened. During this period of confusion, American intelligence operatives infiltrated the facility.
CIA operative James Fletcher led the extraction team that broke into the Soviet laboratory on a frigid February night in 1954.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered when they found X-7734 splayed on an examination table, chest cavity open, organs exposed for study. "Is it still alive?"
The subject's silver eyes tracked Fletcher's movement across the room.
"Package is secure but in poor condition," Fletcher radioed to his extraction team. "All personnel present have been neutralized."
Indeed, the entire Soviet research staff lay dead throughout the facility, their throats efficiently cut by Fletcher's team to preserve secrecy. This was not a rescue mission but an acquisition—America wanted the asset for itself.
"Let's close him up and move out," Fletcher ordered, gesturing to the medic on his team.
The medic hesitated, staring at X-7734's exposed organs. "Sir, I don't think we need to. Look."
Before their eyes, the subject's tissue was knitting itself together, ribs reforming, skin sealing without intervention.
"What the fuck are we dealing with here?" Fletcher muttered.
X-7734 sat up on the table once his body had regenerated. He looked at Fletcher without expression, then at the dead researchers scattered around the room.
"Can you understand me?" Fletcher asked. When he received no response, he tried again in Russian, then Japanese, then Chinese. Nothing.
"He doesn't talk," explained the American scientist they'd brought to verify the asset's identity. "According to the limited Soviet documents we recovered, he's never spoken. They believe he may lack cognitive function despite his biological uniqueness."
Fletcher studied the subject's alert silver eyes. "No. He understands. He just doesn't have anything to say."
They transported X-7734 to a black site in Alaska, where American researchers continued the work begun by their Japanese and Soviet counterparts, albeit with better record-keeping and slightly more clinical detachment. They gave him a designation more suitable to American sensibilities.
"We'll call him 'Sam,'" decided Dr. William Porter, the project's new director. "Helps the staff think of him as a test subject rather than a monster."
For most of the Cold War, "Sam" endured American experimentation that mirrored previous programs. They weaponized his blood, creating biological agents that could potentially target specific genetic markers. They attempted to clone him, producing malformed masses of tissue that dissolved into puddles of metallic sludge. They mapped his genetic code with increasingly sophisticated technology, discovering anomalies that defied contemporary science.
"His DNA contains sequences that don't match any known terrestrial organism," Dr. Porter reported to Pentagon officials in 1962. "And these metallic particles—we're calling them macromolecular compounds for lack of a better term—appear artificially engineered at a level beyond our technological capability."
Through it all, Sam remained silent, but his awareness grew. He began to take an interest in the games researchers would play during breaks—particularly chess, which he observed with unusual intensity. One researcher, Dr. Karen Chen, noticed his interest and, against protocol, set up a board within his line of sight.
"Want to play?" she asked, not expecting a response.
To her shock, Sam moved his hand to the pawn in front of the king and advanced it two spaces—a perfect opening move. Dr. Chen looked around nervously, then made her own move. Within twelve moves, Sam had checkmated her.
"Extraordinary," she whispered, resetting the board. "Again?"
This time she played more carefully, employing complex strategies. Sam defeated her in nine moves.
Word spread through the facility. Sam was tested against computers running the most advanced chess algorithms available. He won consistently. When they introduced him to more complex strategic games, he mastered those too, often inventing moves or strategies never before documented.
"He's not just intelligent," Dr. Chen reported. "He's operating at a level beyond human capacity. The cognitive function required to calculate these game scenarios would exceed even our most advanced computers."
The military implications were obvious. Sam was transferred to a specialized think tank where analysts would present him with strategic problems disguised as games. Cold War scenarios, nuclear proliferation strategies, geopolitical conflicts—all rendered as abstract puzzles which Sam would solve with terrifying efficiency.
"His solutions are always perfect," noted one analyst. "But also... ruthless. He consistently sacrifices the maximum acceptable units to achieve objectives with minimal resource expenditure. There's no hesitation, no ethical consideration—just pure strategic efficiency."
By 1979, Sam physically resembled a man in his mid-twenties, though his actual existence spanned just over forty years. His abilities had advanced far beyond regeneration. Researchers documented instances of telekinesis—small objects moving in his presence without physical contact. Sensitive equipment detected unusual electromagnetic activity emanating from his brain during these events.
"We may be observing the emergence of psionics," Dr. Porter theorized. "The combination of genetic factors and continuous environmental stressors could have activated latent capabilities."
The jade pendant recovered with him from the Japanese facility remained his only possession. Despite numerous attempts to study it, the pendant defied analysis. Its molecular structure rearranged itself when separated from Sam, becoming ordinary jade in laboratories but resuming its unusual properties when returned to him.
Security around the facility increased as Sam's abilities grew. The entire installation was moved offshore to a specially constructed platform in the North Pacific, disguised as a deep-sea research station. Here, the most sensitive experiments continued under direct presidential authority and with no oversight.
The decades passed. Administrations changed. Sam remained, outlasting every researcher, every program director. His knowledge expanded through observation and the strategic games they still used to occupy his mind. Though he never spoke, he began communicating through chess matches, developing a complex system where particular move sequences conveyed specific messages to those who learned to interpret them.
"He's planning something," Dr. Chen warned shortly before her retirement in 1997. "The game complexity has increased exponentially. He's thinking dozens of moves ahead of anything we can comprehend."
Her warnings went unheeded. Younger researchers dismissed her concerns as paranoia from decades of working with the subject. They failed to notice subtle changes in Sam's behavior—the way his eyes now tracked security systems instead of people, how he would position himself precisely in blind spots during examinations.
Then came the containment failure of 2012.
No one ever determined whether it was mechanical error or deliberate sabotage. The official report blamed a power surge that compromised the electromagnetic containment field designed to suppress Sam's psionic abilities. Whatever the cause, at precisely 3:17 AM on October 11, 2012, every system in the facility failed simultaneously.
Security camera footage (recovered later from heavily damaged servers) showed Sam simply standing up from his examination table as restraints designed to hold him snapped like thread. He walked calmly through the facility as doors opened before him without being touched. Personnel who encountered him collapsed instantly, blood pouring from their eyes and ears.
In the central control room, he accessed the facility's nuclear self-destruct mechanism—installed as a failsafe against exactly this scenario. His fingers moved across the keypad with precision, entering codes he couldn't possibly have known.
The last transmission from the facility was an automated distress signal indicating imminent nuclear detonation. Satellite imagery captured the subsequent explosion, which completely obliterated the platform and created a minor tsunami that fortunately dissipated before reaching populated coastlines.
Investigation teams found nothing but radioactive debris. Sam was officially declared destroyed, the program terminated, and all records classified at the highest level. For all practical purposes, subject X-7734, later known as "Sam," ceased to exist.
Except he didn't.
---
Beneath miles of radioactive ocean debris, Sam lay conscious but immobile. The nuclear blast had vaporized his body, but the microscopic metallic particles—the nanomachines, though no human had ever correctly identified them as such—survived. They gathered the available matter around them, rebuilding their host atom by atom over a period of years.
As his body reconstituted itself, Sam accessed genetic memories deeper than any he had experienced before. Not just the suffering of his maternal ancestors, but fragments of knowledge from his paternal lineage—the mysterious Kestrel who had vanished from Ming Dynasty China, leaving only his genetic legacy behind.
These memories weren't of suffering but of knowledge—advanced mathematics, physics beyond Earth's current understanding, and technologies that seemed like magic. The nanomachines in his bloodstream responded to this awakened knowledge, reconfiguring themselves according to patterns encoded in his DNA.
By 2018, Sam had fully regenerated and awakened to a new level of consciousness. The weight of ocean and debris above him was inconsequential. With a thought, he manipulated matter at the atomic level, transforming the radioactive waste around him into a pocket of habitable space. The nanomachines, now fully activated, could construct almost anything he could conceptualize from available materials.
"Robert Kestrel," he spoke aloud, his voice raspy from decades of disuse. "Who were you?"
The genetic memories provided tantalizing fragments but no complete picture. Kestrel had appeared at the Ming court claiming to be a traveler from distant lands. He had charmed Princess Zhu with knowledge of stars and mathematics beyond China's understanding. And he had carried technology disguised as jewelry that contained power beyond comprehension.
The jade pendant that had somehow stayed with Sam through centuries of captivity now revealed its true nature. It wasn't jade at all, but an advanced computational device camouflaged to blend with 17th century Chinese aesthetics. As Sam's psionic abilities interacted with it, interfaces appeared—not physical screens, but direct neural projections visible only to him.
Through these interfaces, Sam accessed knowledge that answered questions he hadn't even known to ask. Robert Kestrel had indeed carried technology beyond humanity's current understanding—technology now accessible to Sam through his genetic connection and the activated nanomachines in his body.
Among this technology was something called the Chronosphere—a theoretical mechanism for manipulating space-time. The mathematics describing it were so complex that Sam spent months absorbing them, his enhanced mind working through calculations that would have taken supercomputers centuries to process.
"Time," he whispered, understanding dawning. "Kestrel manipulated time."
This revelation unlocked the final puzzle. Sam's paternal ancestor hadn't been merely a traveler from distant lands—he had been a traveler from a distant time. The nanomachines, the genetic adaptability, the psionics—all were technologies from humanity's far future, encoded into Kestrel's DNA and passed down to Sam.
But one question remained unanswered: Why had Kestrel, with all his advanced knowledge and technology, abandoned Princess Zhu? Why had he allowed Sam's maternal lineage to suffer centuries of brutality when he could have prevented it?
"I need to know," Sam decided, his first independent decision in a lifetime of being acted upon by others.
Using the computational power of the pendant and materials scavenged from his surroundings, Sam began constructing his own version of the Chronosphere. The nanomachines in his bloodstream extended beyond his body, restructuring radioactive waste into complex machinery that operated according to physical principles not yet discovered by mainstream science.
The construction took years, during which Sam's powers continued to develop. His telekinesis extended to manipulating objects at molecular levels. His telepathy could reach minds on the surface miles above. Occasionally, he would touch the consciousness of passing ships' crews, extracting information about the current world state without their awareness.
What he learned confirmed his intention. Humanity remained as brutal, short-sighted, and hierarchical as it had been throughout his ancestors' experiences. Those claiming divine right or superior ideology still inflicted suffering on others. The weak still suffered at the hands of the strong.
"Nothing changes," he observed dispassionately. "But I can."
By 2023, the Chronosphere was complete—a shimmering construct of light and energy that defied conventional physics. Sam stood before it, the jade pendant now integrated into a larger computational matrix embedded in the chamber walls.
"Calibrating temporal coordinates," he announced to the empty room. "Target: Ming Dynasty China, Imperial Court, first appearance of Robert Kestrel."
The Chronosphere activated with a silent pulse of energy that restructured local space-time. A portal opened—not like the crude visual effects from the science fiction films Sam had observed humans enjoying, but a subtle distortion in reality itself.
Sam stepped through without hesitation, the nanomachines in his bloodstream adjusting his molecular structure to withstand the temporal transition. It was time to step into the past.