Chen Hao was awakened by a soft noise.
It wasn't an alarm, nor the hum of the robotic arm's rails, but rather the sound of a newly hatched chick in the corner of the incubator gently tapping the lid of its incubator with its beak. The sound wasn't loud, but in the quiet night, it was like the tapping of a wooden fish, each beat striking his ears.
He opened his eyes. The ceiling light had been dimmed, casting a bluish-gray glow onto the notepad in his hand. The edges of the pages were slightly curled, and there were still oil stains from cookie crumbs on them. He turned a page, confirming that the last line was still there: "B12 effective, halve the dosage next time." It hadn't been erased by anyone, nor had he altered it while sleepwalking.
"Has the serum been sealed?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
Nana's voice immediately rang out: "【Egg Shield-a】has been placed in cold storage, and the temperature is maintained at -18 degrees Celsius."
"What about the three that didn't come out?"
The monitoring screen lit up automatically, switching the view to the interior of the temperature-controlled chamber. Three eggs lay quietly, their shells an unnatural bluish-gray hue. One of them had a thin crack on its surface, as if something had pushed it from the inside.
“The neural tube defect rate is 68 percent,” she said. “The cell division remains abnormal, suggesting the presence of a heritable mutation.”
Chen Hao sat up straighter, and his back cracked. He stared at the screen for five seconds, then suddenly reached for the glove box under the control panel.
“Check their genes,” he said. “Don’t tell me that chickens on Earth can carry extraterrestrial DNA.”
“Conventional sequencing cannot read the complete sequence.” Nana brought up the data stream. “Some bases do not conform to the standard pairing rules, and the system marks them as ‘non-biological insertion fragments’.”
"Translate into human language."
"This gene... doesn't seem to have come from natural evolution."
He clicked his tongue and slowly put on his gloves, one by one, as slowly as squeezing toothpaste in the morning. The moment his fingers touched the microscope knob, the alarm light flashed red—he had accidentally pressed the sample scan start button.
“Your heart rate is still a bit low,” Nana said. “I suggest you replenish your calories first.”
“What I need last right now is advice.” He held onto the edge of the table and brought his eyes close to the eyepiece. “Let me see what that thing looks like.”
The image gradually became clearer. The chromosome structure was twisted into a ring, with a segment of extremely dense helical strand attached to the broken part in the middle, like a broken headphone wire that had been glued back together.
“I’ve seen this before.” He pointed to the strange structure. “When we sliced up that meteorite to make a shielding layer, the crystal lattice pattern was just like this.”
“The outer shell of the thermostat was indeed made from recycled meteorite iron,” Nana responded, “but no radioactivity or biological activity was detected at the time.”
"So it's only now starting to show its power?" He leaned back, the chair groaning under its weight. "We used alien rocks as hand warmers, and they hatched into mutated embryos? This is even more outrageous than a cafeteria chef putting dish soap in their cooking."
“The possibility exists.” She paused. “I will access the planetary geological archives and conduct cross-referencing.”
The screen refreshed, and rows of mineral crystal models scrolled by. A few minutes later, the system locked onto an entry: a rare silicate complex found in carbonaceous chondrites, whose atomic arrangement closely matched the current gene fragment.
"So," Chen Hao rubbed his temples, "this stone can not only resist radiation, but also change one's fate?"
"More precisely, it may have the ability to induce gene recombination," Nana said, "and its action is selective."
"Why pick these eggs of all people?" He stared at the three stillborn fetuses. "Could it be that they owed the universe a debt from their past lives?"
“Fresh samples are needed for verification,” she said. “The original vein area may still contain viable components.”
“Then let’s dig.” He stood up, his legs still a little weak, but at least he could walk in a straight line. “Anyway, I’m free, and if I go back to sleep, I’m afraid I’ll dream about eggs cursing me.”
They set off the next morning.
After the torrential rain, the ground was a muddy mess, and the metal stakes that had marked the meteorite's impact point had been washed away. Nana activated the underground radar, and the signal indicated a high-density reflective zone thirty meters to the southeast.
"Don't use metal tools." Chen Hao picked up a bamboo shovel. "You haven't forgotten the magnetization incident, have you?"
The excavation lasted for three full days.
The first two days yielded almost nothing, only pebbles and damp soil. On the evening of the third day, the bamboo shovel struck something hard. He knelt on the ground and dug through the mud with his hands, revealing a fist-sized crystal with a pale purple fluorescence.
"Is this the 'alien USB drive' you were talking about?" He gasped, holding it up to his eyes.
Fine lines of light flowed across the crystal's surface, as if liquid was slowly circulating inside. Nana immediately activated radiation monitoring.
“A trace amount of alpha radiation is released,” she said. “It is recommended to use lead boxes for isolated transport.”
On the way back, Chen Hao held the crystal close to his chest the whole time, and he could feel its warmth even through the protective bag. He joked, "This thing is better at warming the bed than my ex."
All the laboratory lights were on.
They ground the crystals into powder, dissolved them in a sterile solution, and prepared a culture medium additive with a concentration of one part per million. In the first experiment, the cells disintegrated directly; in the second experiment, the power supply system tripped twice due to energy fluctuations.
"Make it a little more diluted." Chen Hao stared at the microscope. "This stuff is too strong, like diluting baijiu with water. We'll have to do it several more times."
The seventh mixing attempt was successful.
In the petri dish, the previously distorted chromosomes began to slowly realign, the breaks reconnected, and the helical structure stabilized. The monitor displayed a message: "Gene sequence integrity restored to 99.7%."
"Done?" He released the regulating valve, his hand trembling slightly.
"Preliminary repair achieved." Nana recorded the data. "The solution can reverse structural distortions caused by unnatural splicing."
“Give it a name,” he said. “We can’t call it ‘purple sweet potato semen,’ can we?”
“Number x-07.” She labeled it. “Tentative name: Gene stabilizer prototype.”
Chen Hao picked up a small test tube containing a pale purple liquid and swirled it under the light. The liquid left fleeting streaks of light as it flowed, like fireflies flitting across a summer night.
“If this thing had come out sooner,” he leaned back in his chair, “wouldn’t we have avoided going through so many rounds of serum testing?”
"The premise is that you are aware of the biological effects of meteorite materials in advance," Nana said. "But your priority at the time was 'to stop the machine from constantly sounding the alarm.'"
"Well, when you're a person, you always have to solve the problems in front of you first." He smiled. "I'm just an ordinary person who wants to live."
The incubator lights were switched to night mode.
Twelve healthy chicks huddled in the incubator, some pecking at their feathers, others huddled together dozing. The chick with the striped markings on its left foot raised its head, glanced at the humans outside the glass, and chirped softly.
Chen Hao ignored him, his head down checking a new page on the record board. After writing the last line, he paused, then added:
"X-07 is effective, but the dosage must be strictly controlled. Otherwise, the chicken won't be cured, and a child who knows how to calculate will hatch first."
He put down his pen, stretched, and his shoulders made a familiar cracking sound.
"What's next?" he asked.
“We will conduct a 72-hour stability observation,” she said. “If there is no rebound, we can proceed to the next phase of testing.”
Which stage?
“The proposal you mentioned yesterday.” She pulled up a folder. “An idea for improving wheat field soil.”
He paused for a moment, then burst out laughing: "I was just kidding! You really plan to use alien rocks to grow crops?"
“The logic holds true.” She said calmly, “Since it can repair genes, why can’t it optimize crops?”
“But we don’t even understand how it works!” he pointed to the test tube. “It’s like using a prescription written by a stranger to treat cancer—purely suicidal innovation.”
“All breakthroughs begin with irrational attempts,” she said. “You once said that you can graduate even if you fail an exam—so why can’t experiments with high failure rates succeed?”
He opened his mouth, but didn't refute.
After a long pause, he muttered, "I just muddled through..."
“But you did go there.” She retracted the robotic arm. “Just like now.”
The laboratory fell into a brief silence.
The only sounds were the low-frequency hum of the equipment and the soft ticking of the incubator. Chen Hao stared at the purple test tube and suddenly felt that it didn't resemble a medicine, but rather some kind of invitation.
He reached out and tightened the bottle cap, his fingertips brushing against the edge of the label.
Outside the window, the spotted-legged chick looked up again, its beak slightly open, as if it wanted to say something.
Chen Hao turned his head and met its eyes.
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