Chapter 6: Defusing the Time-Space Turbulence Time Bomb

"Finally, I'm back."

After 74 hours and 32 minutes, the coordinates in Lin Ran's mind settled back into the tent he had pitched himself in Cherry Springs State Park.

Cold wind whipped through the air, carrying snowflakes that rattled against the nylon fabric of the tent.

Lin Ran gripped the icy phone in his pocket, his mind flashing back to the hissing neon lights of Times Square. In the storefront windows, the perfume advertisements featuring Marilyn Monroe had smiled at him with a cloying sweetness. Passersby wrapped in wool coats had slowed their pace as they walked past—drawn, perhaps, by the strange, metallic sheen of his down jacket under the streetlights, or the loose 3M reflective threads still clinging to the folds of his hem.

Everything he had just experienced felt like a fever dream.

But now, the cold, curved edge of his iPhone XS reminded him that this ticking time bomb from the temporal turbulence had been successfully defused by him—a ghost of time and space.

Inside the device lay fragments of the future that would have sent agents at Area 51 into a collective frenzy: orbital trajectories for the Shenzhou rocket series, blueprints for the Artemis program’s ion thrusters, and even the prototype designs for the Starship he had scavenged from the SpaceX website the previous year.

He cast a glance around the familiar surroundings, then boldly pulled the phone from his pocket. Seeing the signal bars beginning to flicker back to life, he let out a habitual mental jab at the iPhone’s abysmal reception, and his anxious heart finally settled.

Being back meant that all was well.

Even if the "gate" could no longer be used, his own body and mind, now evolved, were undeniably real. Relying on this brain alone, achieving financial freedom in the present day would be no difficult task.

For the old Lin Ran, Graph AI might have been a bottomless pit, but for the man he was now—equipped with the general solution to the Navier-Stokes equations—Graph AI was no longer a pit, but a versatile tool capable of anything. Publishing papers would be a breeze; once you know where the gold mine is, you can just extract a little bit at a time. The N-S equations alone were enough to sustain him for a lifetime.

He allowed himself to fully relax. About thirty seconds later, the iPhone regained its signal. He checked the time and compared it to when he had left to find the gate; there was a discrepancy of about an hour.

"If we calculate based strictly on time, the flow ratio seems to be about 60 to 1? One hour over there equals one minute here?" Lin Ran mused. "In that case, even if I stayed in the sixties for a year, only about six days would have passed here. But what if I stay here for a year? Is the time dilation ratio still 60 to 1?"

Lin Ran pressed the timer function on his iPhone, determined to calculate the flow of time between the two realms with precision.

***

After a quick mental reset, Lin Ran hurriedly called Li Xiaoman. "Hey, Xiaoman."

A scream echoed from the other end of the line, followed by a crisp, pleasant female voice:

"Randolph! Where are you?"

Li Xiaoman, a third-generation Chinese-American, was Lin Ran's roommate, landlord, and a senior at the State University of New York. Over the past two years, their relationship had been ambiguous—not quite a romantic couple, but certainly more intimate than mere friends. After all, who goes stargazing for New Year's Eve with just a "friend"?

"I'm in my tent. I just blacked out for some reason," Lin Ran explained.

About twenty minutes later, a breathless Li Xiaoman unzipped the tent. Though she couldn't see any sign of illness in Lin Ran’s complexion, she snapped, "I searched the entire park and couldn't find you! Ugh, never mind. Do you want to go home now, or stick to the plan and head back tomorrow morning?"

Lin Ran smiled; it was rare to see Li Xiaoman so flustered.

Li Xiaoman had lost both parents at a young age and had been raised by her aunt and uncle, living a life of dependence. Given that background, her ability to make it all the way to a doctoral program in law at Stony Brook University spoke to an incredibly strong core. She was usually the picture of calm, meticulous composure; Lin Ran had never seen her lose her cool.

Lin Ran thought for a moment before saying, "Let’s go now. I’m sorry, Xiaoman, I really don't feel well. I’d rather be back in my own warm bed than in this tent; the ground dampness is too much."

"Dampness?" Li Xiaoman asked, confused. Even though her name was deeply rooted in Chinese tradition—a reminder that "a little fullness is better than perfection"—the concept of "dampness" was still a bit too esoteric for a third-generation immigrant.

"The moisture content in the air is too high. It’s too cold," Lin Ran explained.

It was a four-hour drive back to New York. Throughout the trip, Li Xiaoman sat in the driver's seat, while Lin Ran offered only vague, perfunctory answers to her questions, playing the part of someone feeling too unwell to talk.

"I had taken a biodegradable bag into the woods to use the bathroom, but halfway there, I started feeling terrible. My forehead was drenched in sweat. I rushed back to the tent, and before I could even sit down, I passed out."

"Oh, the cell signal? I don't know what happened. It just cut out."

Although Lin Ran’s explanation was riddled with holes—for one thing, Li Xiaoman had been sitting right in front of the tent waiting for him, and only went to search after she couldn't reach him for half an hour—the most damning evidence was the lack of footprints. There were tracks leading from the tent toward the forest, but none leading back.

These inconsistencies meant Li Xiaoman didn't believe a word of his pale, feeble excuse.

As a result, on the drive back, Li Xiaoman remained notably cold. "Oh," "I see," "Got it."

She was clearly just going through the motions. As she drove, she wondered what on earth Lin Ran had actually been doing. Would she receive a notice from the federal police tomorrow saying a murder had occurred in Cherry Springs State Park and they needed to assist in the investigation?

But no matter how hard she guessed, she could never have imagined Lin Ran’s miraculous encounter. A trip to 1960 was simply too fantastical to fathom.

Lin Ran sat in the used Corolla with his eyes closed, resting. He occasionally exchanged a few words with her, aware of her dissatisfaction, but to him, it no longer mattered.

***

Once they returned home, Lin Ran immediately messaged his client on WeChat to reschedule their appointment: "Ms. Li, can we start now? I apologize, I'm feeling a bit unwell and would like to move our session up to now, if that's alright?"

It was 4:00 AM in New York, which was 7:00 PM in Beijing. The response came quickly: "Now?"

"Yes."

"Alright, let me prepare."

Beyond his studies, Lin Ran ran a remote consulting business, providing study-abroad guidance to university students in China. He had started this business back when he was still in Shanghai. It served two purposes: earning some extra cash—as it was not easy to work while on an H1B visa in America—and building a vast network of connections.