Chapter 2: Echoes of Tomorrow

She ran the device fourteen more times over the following month, each activation creating a new branch that her instruments could detect but not observe. The branches were real, fully formed timelines that diverged from the moment of activation and continued independently. Adaeze imagined them spreading like the roots of a tree, each one a complete universe containing complete people living complete lives that had not existed until she pressed a button. The ethical implications kept her awake at night. On the fifteenth activation, something came back. Not the titanium sphere. Not anything she had sent. The receiving platform, which had remained stubbornly empty through every previous test, now held a handwritten note on paper that had not existed in her laboratory. The note was in her own handwriting. It read: Stop. Every branch you create takes energy from existing branches. You are draining timelines that already contain living people. I am you from Branch Seven. My world is dying because you did not stop. Please. Adaeze stared at the note for a long time. Then she ran a diagnostic on the device and discovered something the note's author already knew. The branching process was not free. Each new timeline drew its initial energy from the originating branch, like a cutting taken from a plant. One cutting was harmless. Fifteen was causing measurable degradation across every branch she had created. The affected timelines were losing coherence: physical constants drifting, causality weakening, entropy accelerating. Real worlds with real people were fraying at the edges because she had been too excited about her discovery to consider the cost. She locked the laboratory and did not return for three days. When she came back, there was a woman sitting in her chair. The woman looked exactly like her, but older, thinner, and carrying an expression of desperate exhaustion. 'I am from Branch Seven,' the woman said. 'And I am running out of time.'