Familial Universe
Dr. Elia Renner’s midnight oil burned in two forms: in the low hum of the Genevantis Chrono-Gene Lab and in the spiraling totem on her drafting table. Stacked clay heads—goat, bird, mechanized skull—jutted skyward, each painted in mocking neon that flickered under her single desk lamp. Outside, sheep grazed in the valley; inside, her relatives circled like vultures, their ambitions as raw as the countryside air.
Confinement and Coffee
Elia paced an obsidian tile floor, mug in hand, coffee bitter enough to scratch enamel. Her father, Jonas Renner, lurked over holoscreens displaying ancestral DNA sequences warped in temporal flux. He’d pioneered genetic splitting; she’d reinvented it as a way to visit the dead. Tonight they’d synchronize the Chrono-Gene node, aiming to transmit a living echo of great-grandmother Mireka—rumored to have dodged execution for practicing farmyard necromancy. The question: did Mireka’s restless spirit still linger in the family code?
Veer, Elia’s twin, fiddled with temporal stabilizers in lab shadows. His brittle jokes—“Nothing like grandmother’s ghost between your chromosomes to spice up dinner”—didn’t land. Aunt Mirra hovered by a glass wall displaying swirling platonic solids, calibrating her code-cracking AI, Harriet, to translate Mireka’s dialect. Cousin Arne—score composer for indie time-bender films—adjusted soundscapes, layering funeral dirges with carnival horns. Each person carried secrets sharper than scalpels.
“I’ve hidden a variable,” Jonas confessed. He tapped a line of code that glowed blood-red. “It scrambles the heirloom genome if mishandled.” Veer smirked, “Parent traps always go well.” Mirra’s knuckles whitened around her stylus. Elia felt a flicker of delight: family turmoil was the best catalyst for a breakthrough.
The Experiment Unfolds
At 3:07 AM, the Chrono-Gene chamber—an orb of fractured mirrors— whirred awake. Elia placed her clay totem on its rotating plinth, aligning horns with dish antennae. She sealed the lab doors and hit GO. A hum blossomed into a roar as holographic ancestors sprang free. Mireka emerged: rooster’s beak, goat’s horns, spectacles perched on a wrinkled brow—just like Elia’s sculpture. It stared at Jonas.
Mirra shouted, “She’s refusing the link!” Harriet’s voice crackled, “Syntax broken by late 19th-century patois. Must…interpret…” Arne’s soundtrack slashed like angry geology. Jonas lunged for the kill switch. The lab lights shattered into fractured prisms, bathing everyone in kaleidoscopic terror.
Elia dove under the console. Through trembling glass, she saw her sister-in-law, Lise—no, not Lise at all, but a version of Mireka formed from stolen villagers: her body fused to mechanical bric-à-brac, wires coiling around human bone. The ghost-construct drifted toward her.
“Stop!” Elia screamed. Lise’s eyes rolled back, revealing fractal galaxies. “Family isn’t linear,” the specter whispered, voice riddled with static. “Time folds; we are consumed.” With a clawed finger, she pricked Elia’s wrist. Pain bloomed, silver code blooming beneath skin.
Revelations and Betrayals
When Elia awoke, the lab lay silent. Jonas lay crumpled in a corner, face unscarred but lifeless. Veer pounded at a shuttered door. Arne sat on the control panel, composing sad notes on his synth. Mirra typed furiously, tears glinting in laser beams.
Elia examined her wrist: fine wires snaked under her flesh, knitting her DNA to Mireka’s. “He installed the trap,” she said, voice hollow. Veer snapped, “You’d have done the same for progress.” Mirra turned her screen: tangled family trees now resembled screaming faces, each branch bleeding data.
They realized too late that Jonas had aimed to secure immortality. The trap’s scramble code would bind Mireka’s marrow to every descendant—an eternal curse.
Arne laughed, “Great, we’ll all get haunted. Perfect Easter egg for my next album.”
Flight and Fracture
Desperate, Elia reset the chamber. “I can reverse it,” she muttered. She placed the clay totem inside, chanting an incantation she’d found scrawled in Mireka’s diary: “Lineage untangle, let time set free.” The orb glowed turquoise. Elia’s face reflected in shifting panels: horns, beak, bone.
The walls flexed. Voices echoed: “Family is forge.” “Bound by blood.” “Release me.”
In a final surge, the device pulsed. A shockwave blew open the lab door, flinging Veer into the night. Arne’s synth crashed. Mirra’s console collapsed into a black hole of code. Elia felt herself fragmenting: part sculptor, part scientist, part ancestral ghost.
An Uncertain Legacy
Dawn’s pale light spilled across smashed mirrors. The Chrono-Gene orb lay dormant. Elia perched on the threshold, her wrist wire-streaked, her sculpted headpiece half-melted onto her workbench. She stared down the lane where Veer stumbled toward the farmhouse—alone, unhinged.
No triumphant return. No neat resolution. Mireka’s laughter echoed faintly in the wind that rattled lab windows. Somewhere, Harriet’s voice choked on lost dialect.
Elia lifted a shard of reflective glass. In its fractured surface, she saw many faces: goat, bird, soldier, scientist—each blinked before disappearing.
She tucked the clay totem under her arm. Wordlessly, she vanished into the mist-shrouded field, footprints trailing knitted roots behind her. The lab lay silent, a vessel of broken promises, waiting for its next family to unlock the universe.