Chapter 4: Collapse

They worked together for two weeks, the original and the copy, modifying the device to reverse its function. Instead of creating branches, it would reabsorb them, pulling their energy back into the trunk timeline and allowing reality to restabilize. Seven contributed knowledge from her own experiments, insights that Adaeze would have taken months to develop independently. They were the same person separated by different choices, and the collaboration was both profoundly intimate and deeply unsettling. 'Do you remember the day we decided to build the device?' Seven asked one evening while they soldered connections in the modified coil assembly. 'Professor Yeboah's lecture on closed timelike curves. We stayed after class and filled three whiteboards with equations.' 'I remember.' 'In Branch Seven, Yeboah survived the car accident. She is still teaching.' Adaeze set down her soldering iron. 'She died here.' 'I know. That is the cruelty of branches. Every timeline contains both better and worse versions of events. Collapsing one does not eliminate suffering. It redistributes it.' They completed the modifications on a Tuesday. The device looked different now, the coils reconfigured in a pattern that Seven described as an implosion lens, designed to focus energy inward rather than project it outward. The process would be automatic once initiated. The device would identify each branch, calculate its energy contribution, and reabsorb it in sequence from the outermost twigs to the major limbs. Branch Seven would be among the last to collapse, giving Seven time to verify that the process was working correctly. 'I need you to promise me something,' Seven said as they stood before the modified device. 'After this is done, destroy it. Not the plans, not the theory. The actual machine. Melt it down to components that cannot be reassembled.' 'I promise.' Seven nodded, stepped into the chamber, and pressed the activation switch from inside.