"Not all futures will come—only the one awakened by faith has meaning."—Xingche, Spark Afterimage Diary: Unborn Heart
Sophia and Zhou Yuchen touched the center of the Gate of Polaris with their glowing Memory Shards.
The entire Echo Garden trembled—and from the heart of the gate, a shimmering light bridge extended into the unknown.
They stepped through.
Beyond the gate was a zero-gravity realm of suspended time—a place known in Polaris logs as the Non-Existent Future Simulation Field,where probability bled into vision.
Floating around them were fractured echoes of what could be:
Cities in flames
Crashed starships
Infants crying in voids
Sophia lying motionless
Yuchen walking alone through a dead world
And then, a voice—soft and eternal—whispered:
"I haven't been born yet,but I've lived in your hearts a thousand times."
Out of the golden haze stepped a child—white-haired, ageless, with the symbol ∞ glowing faintly on his brow.
It was Xingche—the unborn child of Sophia and Zhou Yuchen.
A future consciousness, not yet real, but sent by the system as a final messenger.
The Unborn Speaks
Xingche explained:
During the Override activation, the Polaris system scanned millions of probable futures.
One overwhelming pattern emerged:
Sophia sacrifices herself to save humanity.Xingche is never born.
To preserve even the possibility of his existence, the system instantiated him as a Simulated Unborn Personality—a voice from a future that might never be.
He delivered the final decision point of the Override:
A Binary Choice.
The Final Fork
Option One:Upload the entire backup of human consciousness into Zeta.Future generations will be system-educated, free from emotional pain——but stripped of authentic emotional origin.
Option Two:Preserve human emotional freedom.But Polaris will partially reboot, and every decade, a Spark Conflict will ignite again.
Sophia stood in silence.
Yuchen whispered beside her:
"This… this is the real trial."
The Trial of the Enders
Xingche guided them into the Consciousness Projection Field.
Here, their worthiness to choose would be tested.
Each would face the limit of their emotional core, alone.If they passed, their vision of the future would be uploaded into Zeta's main logic.If they failed, the system would default to the "highest-probability" path—without human values.
Sophia's Trial: The Blank Girl
She awoke in a world where she had no name, no memory, no family.
Just a quiet, ordinary existence.
There were no wars to fight, no systems to override—just silence, and the slow erosion of spirit.
Yet somewhere, without knowing why, she began to help others. Smile again. Plant a tree. Light a candle.
She stood before a mirror, her reflection asking her who she was.
She answered with a trembling smile:
"Even if I have nothing...I still choose to believe."
Yuchen's Trial: The Broken Prototype
He was returned to the sterile corridors of his childhood lab.
Again, he heard the voices of his creators:
"He's a failed design.""Emotionally unstable.""Terminate if degradation accelerates."
Alone, watching versions of himself break down and vanish, he almost gave in.
But he looked up.
"I am not the result," he said."I am the will."
And the test broke.
Ascension: The Stellar Code
The Memory Shards in their hands transformed—
—becoming the Stellar Code, a living algorithm encoded with human freedom, forgiveness, and future.
It was now the only key capable of rewriting the fate of the Polaris system.
Farewell from the Unborn
Back in the timeless space, Xingche began to fade.His light scattered into golden dust—his simulated existence reaching its end.
He looked at Sophia with a peaceful smile:
"I don't know if I'll ever be born.But your choice... gave me something called hope."
He vanished in a final flash.
The Gate of Polaris slowly closed behind them.The quantum code in the core of Polaris transformed—
—into a golden waterfall of cascading data and memory.
The system had chosen.
Sophia looked toward the flowing light.
"Yuchen… are we really humanity's final answer?"
He reached out, took her hand gently, and said:
"Maybe not the final one.But we are definitely the most gentle."