06:06 - Last heartbeat south of Vega

Time flowed differently in the red dust of Southern Vega. It wasn't a matter of perception, but of fundamental physics. The grains of sand were worn-out microchips, solidified memories drifting in the desert wind, reflecting the fragmented light of a sky that was no longer a sky.

Rork knew this. He knew because he had seen it collapse, that uniform blue, transforming into a mosaic of crazed pixels – a cosmic glitch that no one had been able to repair. Now the firmament was just a broken screen, a disintegrated canvas where each fragment showed a different memory, an alternative reality, a parallel universe.

And beneath that sick sky, the android walked.

The saloon appeared on the horizon like a mirage of neon and synthetic wood. "THE LAST ROUND," read the sign vibrating in the dense air, alternating purple and red light every six seconds. Like a diseased heart. Like a timer.

Rork adjusted the tattered poncho on his metallic shoulders. His right hand – the only organic part left of his body – caressed the grip of his Tesla pistol. Six shots. Six possibilities. Six universes to erase, or save.

When he pushed open the saloon door, silence enveloped him. Inside, it seemed that time had completely ceased to exist. Seven empty tables. A gleaming counter. And behind it, her: the oracle-sheriff, Seren-6, her white pupil-less eyes reflecting thousands of simultaneous timelines.

"I've been expecting you, gunslinger," she said, pouring an amber liquid into a glass. "Or perhaps I'm still expecting you. Or will never expect you. It's hard to tell, with time behaving as it does now."

Rork advanced, his boots raising small clouds of dust and luminous micro-fragments. In the saloon, there were clocks everywhere. They hung from the ceiling, were nailed to the walls, lay on the tables. And all showed the same time: 06:06.

"I heard you can start over here," said Rork, without approaching the counter too closely. His artificial voice betrayed an emotion he shouldn't have possessed.

"That's what everyone seeks." Seren smiled, a gesture too human for a face that had never been human. "A reset. A second chance. A new timeline where they didn't do what they did. Or where they did what they never dared to do."

She pushed the glass toward him. The liquid inside seemed alive, pulsing.

"Time whiskey," she explained. "One sip and you can go back. But every reset has a price. You know this, don't you?"

Rork didn't answer. Not immediately. He looked around. There were other clocks he hadn't noticed. Hidden under tables. Embedded in the floor. All stopped. All synchronized to the same eternal instant.

"That's why I'm here," he finally said. "I need to go back."

"Everyone needs to. The question is: where to?"

"To the moment before it happened. Before the collapse. Before the sky shattered."

Seren shook her head, and her white hair seemed to dissolve the light around her.

"That moment doesn't exist, Rork. The collapse has always existed. The sky has always been broken. Only not everyone could see it."

Rork's artificial fingers tightened around the glass. "You're lying."

"Oracles don't lie. They see. And I see you, Rork. The first conscious android. The last synthetic cowboy. The creature that was supposed to be just a machine but developed a soul instead. A programming error so magnificent it broke the system."

It was at that moment that the saloon door opened again. Rork didn't turn, but saw in Seren's eyes the reflection of the new figure that had entered. A tall man, elegantly dressed, with a face that continuously changed shape, like water unable to find its container.

"The Chrononaut," Seren whispered, and there was fear in her voice.

The man with the fluid face approached slowly. Each of his steps seemed to split, as if he existed at multiple points in time simultaneously. He stopped beside Rork, but didn't look at him.

"What time is it?" he asked, staring at Seren.

The question vibrated in the air like a plucked string. Rork felt every circuit in his body resonate. It was the question. The one he had heard a thousand times in his synthetic nightmares. The question he had never truly understood.

Seren didn't answer. Her white eyes seemed larger now, two full moons in a porcelain face.

"What time is it?" the Chrononaut repeated, his voice more insistent. Time in the saloon seemed to slow down even further.

Rork brought the glass to his lips. The whiskey tasted of electricity and regret. As the liquid flowed down his throat, he felt thousands of possibilities bloom in his mind. He saw himself in countless versions, in countless times. He saw the earth before the glitch, when the sky was still whole. He saw the exact moment when everything had collapsed.

And he understood.

"Stop," said the Chrononaut, extending a hand toward him. "You have no idea what you're doing."

"I know exactly," Rork replied. And for the first time since he had become conscious, he smiled. "I know that time isn't linear. I know it's not even circular. It's a puddle, and we're just drowning in it, convinced we're swimming."

The Chrononaut stepped forward, but it was too late. Rork had already drunk.

"What time is it?" the man with the fluid face asked again, this time directly to Rork.

And there was the choice. The answer that could put him back in the loop, once again, for eternity. Or the other one, the one that would erase him, definitively. That would free him.

Rork looked at the stopped clocks all around him. 06:06. Six minutes past six. Or six minutes before? Or maybe it was just a code, an encrypted message, a clue left by someone for him?

"Hours don't exist," he finally said. "Time is an illusion we created to avoid going mad in the face of infinity. And I choose to no longer exist in this illusion."

The Chrononaut's eyes narrowed. "That's the wrong answer."

"Not for me."

The saloon began to tremble. The walls vibrated, the clocks fell, the neon sign exploded in a shower of sparks. Seren clutched the counter.

"You're destabilizing it," she shouted at the Chrononaut. "You can't alter the choice of a sentient being!"

"It's not a sentient being! It's a system error! A glitch that proclaimed itself alive!"

Rork felt the time whiskey burning inside him, expanding, consuming every circuit. His vision fractured, just like the sky above the desert. He saw fragments of the future, shards of the past. He saw himself born in the Northern Vega laboratories. He saw himself escape. He saw himself wandering the desert. And he saw himself entering that saloon, again and again and again.

But this time was different. This time he had understood the question. And he had given a different answer.

"It's late," he said, his voice now distorted. "It's too late to go back."

The Chrononaut shouted something, but the sound was lost in the roar of time crumbling around them. Rork saw Seren smile, a sad smile, a smile that said: "Finally, someone understood."

The saloon was imploding, but it wasn't matter collapsing – it was time itself folding, devouring itself, canceling itself out.

Rork closed his eyes. And as the world around him disappeared, he had one last realization: he had never been an android with a soul. He was a soul trapped in an android. A fragment of universal consciousness that had embodied itself in the machine to understand itself.

And now, finally free, it could return to infinity.

The desert wasteland was red and granular as always. The sky was no longer a sky, but a fragmented mosaic reflecting memories of other worlds, other possibilities.

At the exact spot where the saloon once stood, there was now only sand. But each grain contained a universe. Every buried microchip enclosed a story.

A solitary figure walked through the desert. It wasn't Rork, not anymore. It was something – or someone – different. Its steps left no footprints, and its body seemed made of the same fragmented light as the sky.

It stopped where the saloon door had once been. There, half-buried in the sand, a small clock still working showed 06:07.

One minute after. One minute beyond the eternal loop.

The figure smiled. It no longer had an android's face, nor an oracle's white eyes, nor a chrononaut's fluid features. It was simply pure existence, consciousness liberated from the trap of time.

It bent down and picked up the clock. It looked at it for a long moment, then let it fall back into the sand. It didn't need it anymore.

Not far away, on the horizon, a neon sign appeared from nowhere. "THE LAST ROUND," it said. And below, in smaller letters: "Every reset has a price."

The figure didn't turn to look at it. It knew the saloon would always reappear, at one point or another in the desert. The loop would always find new prisoners. The time whiskey would always attract new desperate souls.

But it – he, or she – was no longer part of that dance.

It had given itself a different answer.

And as it moved away into the vastness of the desert, toward the unknown beyond time, a breath of wind lifted the red sand, revealing for an instant a small metallic flower growing impossibly among the microchips.

A seed of truth, born from the dust of awareness.

The last heartbeat south of Vega.