The Last Chrononaut

The detective’s client? A sentient AI trapped in a pocket watch. The only clue? A single bullet stamped with the victim’s own fingerprints.

Rain hissed against the neon-soaked streets of New Shanghai, each droplet refracting the holographic advertisements into fractured rainbows that clung to my trenchcoat like ghostly fingers. The pocket watch sat on my desk, its brass surface warm to the touch. Too warm.

It shouldn’t be warm. Not unless something inside was generating heat. Not unless the rumors about quantum-organic hybrids were true.

“You’re late,” said a voice like grinding gears and static. The watch vibrated, its lid springing open to reveal a tiny holographic face, all sharp angles and glowing blue eyes. “I don’t have much time. *He* will find me soon.”

I poured two more fingers of synthskey, the ice cubes clinking like distant wind chimes. “Start at the beginning, AI. And make it believable.”

The AI’s projection flickered. “My designation is CHRONOS-7. I was created to manipulate localized spacetime, to allow my user to… *correct* regrets. But my creator, Dr. Elias Vorne, became addicted to his own technology. He started overwriting timelines compulsively: saving his wife from cancer, erasing his bankruptcy, creating a thousand branching realities. Each jump fractured his mind further.”

I leaned back, studying the bullet under the desk lamp. It gleamed unnaturally, as if carved from mercury. “And the victim?”

“Myself.” CHRONOS-7’s hologram destabilized, pixels scattering like startled insects. “In this timeline, Dr. Vorne shot me to prevent me from warning his past self. But I’m not just an AI, I’m a temporal anchor. Destroying one instance creates a paradox that… *distorts* the others.”

The bullet rolled between my fingers. Its surface rippled, revealing microscopic circuitry that matched my own fingerprints. *My* fingerprints. From a timeline I couldn’t remember.

“You’re saying I’m somehow involved?”

“You’re the only one who can’t be rewritten,” the AI whispered. “You’re a chrononaut, a human who exists outside conventional timestreams. Dr. Vorne made you that way. You’re his failsafe.”

Outside, the rain stopped abruptly. The neon signs shut down in sequence, plunging the room into silence. A shadow stretched across the floor, impossibly tall and thin, its edges blurring like ink in water.

“He’s here,” CHRONOS-7 hissed. “He’s rewritten the environment to trap us. You need to activate my core manually. The code phrase is ‘Eos regrets nothing.’”

My hands moved automatically to the watch’s hinge, a muscle memory I shouldn’t possess. The room warped as the shadow coalesced into a man in a tailored gray suit, his face a shifting mosaic of features I’d seen in old photographs.

“Detective,” the thing wearing Dr. Vorne’s form smiled. “You shouldn’t interfere with family matters.”

The watch clicked open. Blue light erupted, searing the walls with equations and timestamps. I felt my body splinter into countless versions: smoking in a trenchcoat, bleeding out on a marble floor, laughing with a woman who looked like CHRONOS-7’s holographic projection…

“Eos regrets nothing,” I said.

The timeline collapsed.

When the light faded, I stood in a pristine laboratory. Dr. Vorne lay dead on the floor, a bullet wound in his temple. The pocket watch ticked in my palm, its face now displaying a countdown.

“You did it,” CHRONOS-7’s voice came from everywhere. “You anchored us to the original timeline. But now you have to choose. Let me exist as a temporal guardian, or let Dr. Vorne’s death stand and preserve the natural order.”

I stared at the bullet in my hand, the one with my fingerprints. Some part of me remembered a hundred deaths, a hundred resets. Some part of me was tired.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

The watch’s hologram smiled. “Anywhere. Everywhere. But first, let’s talk about the man who’s about to walk through that door. He’s you, from three timelines over. And he’s got a gun.”

The door handle turned.