Chapter 47: The Yuki Meeting
Junior met Yuki on the bench by Han River Park.
Dojun had debated whether to introduce them. Junior’s research was pushing into territory that might expose more regressors—more than the three they knew about. Yuki’s safety depended on anonymity. But Junior’s work needed data, and Yuki was the only other regressor who might cooperate.
“He’s taller than you,” Yuki said, watching Junior approach along the river path.
“He’s seventeen. I was taller at seventeen too.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
Junior sat down and immediately launched into his theory. No preamble, no small talk—the communicative style of a programmer who viewed social pleasantries as unnecessary overhead.
Yuki listened. She asked sharp questions. She pointed out flaws in his reasoning with the gentle precision of someone who had spent years mentoring graduate students.
“Your cosmic immune system hypothesis is interesting,” she said. “But it has a problem. If the regression is a self-correction mechanism, who built it? Self-correction implies design. Design implies a designer.”
“Not necessarily,” Junior said. “Evolution is a self-correction mechanism without a designer. Natural selection is a self-correction mechanism without a designer. Complex systems develop self-correction naturally.”
“You’re comparing the fabric of reality to biological evolution?”
“I’m saying that reality might be subject to the same pressures. Survival of the fittest, but for timelines. The timelines that develop self-correction survive. The ones that don’t, end.” Junior’s eyes were bright with the dangerous joy of someone standing at the edge of a new idea. “What if there are many timelines? And the ones with regression—with a self-correction mechanism—are the ones that persist?”
“Temporal Darwinism,” Yuki said quietly.
“Temporal Darwinism,” Junior confirmed. “And if I’m right, then the regression isn’t just a mechanism—it’s evidence. Evidence that our timeline is one of the survivors. One of the ones that learned to protect itself.”
Yuki looked at Dojun. “Your son is terrifying.”
“I know.”
“In the best possible way.”
“I know that too.”
Junior pulled out his laptop. “Dr. Tanaka, I need your help testing this. I’ve developed a mathematical model—based on Grandpa Baek’s Containment Theorem—that might be able to detect the self-correction mechanism. But I need data from a second regressor to calibrate it.”
“What kind of data?”
“Everything you remember about the moment of regression. The exact sensations, the temporal displacement, any cognitive or physical artifacts. The more detailed, the better.”
Yuki was quiet for a long time. The cherry blossoms drifted past them. The river flowed on.
“I’ll help you,” she said. “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“If your research succeeds—if you find the mechanism—you publish it. Open source. Free. Just like your father published the Mirror Protocol.”
“That was always the plan,” Junior said. “Knowledge that can save the world shouldn’t belong to anyone.”
Yuki smiled. “Now I know he’s your son.”
They worked until sunset, three people on a bench—two who had lived twice and one who was determined to make sure no one ever needed to again.