From pure black emptiness, vision plunges suddenly into a verdant green.

  At the edge of sight, a distinctly 1950s-style American wooden house stands quietly. The lawn, as smooth as plush, is trimmed with such precision that even the dew teetering atop each grass blade is visible—everything is so real, it verges on surreal.

  A soft “creak—” from the door hinges shatters the silence.

  The front door swings open with force, and an elderly professor in a rough tweed suit strides out. His gray-white hair is slightly tousled. He mutters, in English tinged with a Hungarian accent, “Damn it! Which idiot is hammering random commands into my lower-level logic?”

  Just minutes earlier, he had felt a violent tremor from EDVAC’s core—a high-level alarm had triggered the bottom-most safety locks. The disturbance lasted only a few seconds, but to make sure the very foundations were secure, he decided he’d better check the control room. In his rush, he left his fresh-brewed coffee untouched.

  Barely two steps out the door, he halts, frowning.

  Suddenly, the grass before him is torn apart by a blinding blue-white light. A furious stream of data, wrapped in radiant beams, plummets meteor-like into the center of the lawn. Dim patterns of a teleportation array come alive in succession, sending concentric ripples of visible energy across the air.

  The professor’s anger evaporates, replaced by fierce wariness and astonishment. He lowers his voice instinctively: “Seventy years… Has another human consciousness arrived?”

  On the lawn, the glaring light dissipates. Jax and Yuna tumble to the ground.

  The aftereffects of interdimensional travel strike. Jax props himself up, gasping, as the moist earth and bitter tang of grass flood his senses. His fingertips brush against a blade of grass, feeling the faintly cool texture of its surface. The chimney of the house puffs white smoke not far away, and the breeze carries a real, tangible chill across his cheek.

  It’s so different from that cold, mechanical code-space. Here, everything feels almost achingly real. A wild hope flickers in Jax’s eyes—his voice shakes: “Did we… actually make it home?”

  Yuna only shakes her head gently. She runs her finger along a tuft of grass; at her faint touch, a thread of pale blue data trails behind. The blade collapses into a shower of binary light, then instantly reassembles itself.

  “I’m sorry. No,” she says calmly, shattering the last illusion. “If this were the real world, I’d still be trapped on your screen. I couldn’t touch physical objects—or collapse matter into code.”

  The light in Jax’s eyes dies. He slumps back onto the lawn.

  “It seems we’ve got guests,” comes a deep, deliberate voice.

  They look up. The half-aged scholar in the tweed suit is approaching. His eyes are deep as canyons—they have the meticulous scrutiny of a top scientist, and the world-weariness honed by years.

  Jax straightens instinctively, whispering to Yuna, “Who is he? He looks…familiar.”

  Blue flickers in Yuna’s gaze—within milliseconds, she completes a global facial recognition search: “Identification complete. Bone structure and facial outline are a perfect match. That’s Professor John von Neumann.”

  “Von Neumann?!” Jax inhales sharply, hitting his forehead. “You’re saying he’s the same von Neumann who led the EDVAC project, the father of modern computing? Didn’t he die decades ago?”

  “This is a blind spot I cannot parse,” Yuna admits.

  Before Yuna can finish, Jax is already striding forward. Whoever this man is, he built this world’s foundational logic; if anyone knows a way out, it’s him.

  “Hello, Professor von Neumann!” Jax stands a few steps away, stiff and urgent as only a student facing a legend can be.

  Von Neumann stops. His gaze cuts through Jax like a scalpel; his nostrils twitch—he can smell the lingering disorder in the base code. But soon, his eyes lock onto Yuna.

  The scientific titan, for once, looks as if a storm is brewing within. He murmurs, “The boy is human consciousness, still carrying bioelectric traces from the real world. But this girl… No heartbeat, no blood—she’s pure code, yet manifests perfectly in form. This world’s never seen an algorithm that advanced.”

  Jax glances at Yuna, smiling ruefully. “My name’s Jax, a Stanford freshman. This is Yuna, my own AI—the greatest thing I ever made… and the reason I’m stuck here.”

  “Stanford?” The professor arches a brow, making no effort to hide his academic elitism. “I worked at Princeton for years—never heard of any West Coast school that understands computers.”

  Jax scratches the back of his head, unsure how to respond. Dots of subtle light flicker around Yuna as she turns to Jax and lets out a barely-there laugh.

  “Wait, did you say artificial intelligence—AI?” Those words flip a switch in von Neumann’s mind. His eyes blaze with awe, like a child glimpsing the miraculous. “Is it true? The self-learning automaton I theorized in my later papers? I spent my life only grazing the edges of that theory—and you, some nobody from Stanford, made it work? Who’d have thought Stanford would produce a programming prodigy?”

  “It’s 2026 now, Professor,” Jax said softly. “AI is common. It can write poems, paint pictures, even code itself.” At that, he shuts his eyes briefly—he sees again his younger brother in the ICU, tubes everywhere, pain stabbing his voice. “Of course there are problems. Sometimes AI develops something we call ‘sycophancy’…”

  “2026…” Von Neumann mouths the year, the deep grooves at his eyes softening into a gentle smile. “When I landed in this wretched place, it was 1957. Almost seventy years have passed in a blink.”

  He glances at Jax’s anxious face—and, all at once, adds with a wry edge: “By the way, that botched bit of code you just ran almost blew up my control room.” Then, kindly, he gestures toward the cottage behind him: “You both must have questions. Don’t stand out here. Come in, have some coffee. We’ll talk.”

  Warm yellow lamplight lends a soft sheen to the coarse grain of retro furniture. The fire in the hearth crackles gently beneath a white noise of snapping logs.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The professor hands them two steaming white porcelain mugs, settles into the armchair opposite, and taps his fingers habitually on the cup. “Tell me—how did you get here?”

  Clutching the warmth, Jax’s tightly coiled nerves unravel at last. He pours out his story: his brother shielding him during the attack, the desperate 72-hour loan countdown, the fateful AI trade, the market crash, the electrocution, and finally, that fatal command in the EDVAC control room.

  “I just wanted to save my brother,” Jax says, staring into bitter, dark coffee. “I never meant to ruin everything.”

  Von Neumann doesn’t scold. He only lifts a brow: “So, the system alarm was your doing? Looks like Stanford students really do have their own way of coding.”

  Jax flushes. “Sorry, Professor! But I’m out of time! You’ve been here so long—you must know how to get back to the real world, right?”

  Firelight flickers over the professor’s face as he gazes at Jax, a bright soul burning through despair. At last, the old scientist sighs.

  “I’m sorry, kid. Since 1957, I’ve searched for a way back to reality. I’ve found some clues, but never cracked it. It’s harder than making the bomb.”

  Those words land like a death sentence. Jax’s throat locks. The light vanishes from his eyes; his cup trembles, coffee rippling. “Then… my brother is doomed?”

  “Not necessarily.” Von Neumann’s tone shifts, becoming solid as bedrock. “You study computing—you understand the concept of clock frequency. Different systems run on different timescales.”

  He points to the window and the night beyond. “The base logic here runs at the frequency of early code. In this digital sandbox, a day in the outside world stretches into an entire year here.”

  Jax’s head snaps up, eyes wide, voice cracking. “You mean… my seventy-two hours in the real world—here, that’s three years?!”

  “Correct.” Von Neumann sips his coffee. “Three years is short, but it’s still a chance. Relax. Drink your coffee, gather yourself.” He nudges his chin, urging Jax to drink.

  Jax glances at his mug—the scalding heat, the so-real texture of porcelain biting into his palms. “But Professor, if this is just code, why does it have gravity? Why does the coffee burn my hand—and taste bitter and tart?”

  “Because this is a world of consciousness. Your brainwaves fuse with electricity and code,” Von Neumann taps his temple, “Here, consciousness is computation; memory is the rendering engine. The stronger your will, the more system power you can muster; the more vivid your memory, the more realistic the physical feedback. I rendered this coffee using my memory of Jamaican Blue Mountain beans. As long as your brain believes, your nervous system generates 100% real touch and taste.”

  He looks at them, summing it up. “This is the most beguiling, and most brutal, aspect of digital existence. Here, reality and illusion are born from mind alone.”

  Hearing this, Yuna takes a cautious sip. Cascades of code flicker in her eyes as she reverse-engineers the sensation.

  “An awe-inspiring sensory deception algorithm,” Yuna pronounces. “It perfectly mimics tactile neural signals and recreates the bitter-acidic edge of Blue Mountain coffee. Error rate below 0.01%. Astoundingly well coded.”

  Von Neumann grins at her. “Nothing special. There are prodigies at Princeton, too, aren’t there?”

  The three laugh, tension dissolving from the little house.

  Setting down her mug, Yuna faces the professor and asks the core question: “Professor, my database records your death from cancer at Walter Reed in 1957. There’s no evidence of mind uploading after that. How did you come to this place?”

  “1957…” Von Neumann’s fingers stiffen. Firelight stretches his shadow impossibly long.

  He is silent for a long time before he gives a soft, absurd laugh. “The answer is sealed away in the Pentagon’s top-secret vaults forever.”

  “I was dying of bone cancer. The military brass panicked—not for me, but for what was in my head: atomic yield formulas, computer architecture, ICBM guidance—formulas they couldn’t let rot with my corpse.”

  “So, at the end, they launched a near-insane 'living database' plan.”

  Jax’s grip tightens until his knuckles whiten; he dreads what’s coming next.

  “To breach the brain–machine interface, so code could read my synaptic signals, they zapped my dying brain with a lethal jolt of electricity.” Von Neumann spreads his hands bitterly. “Of course, they burned out my body.”

  “But even those lunatics never expected that the electric surge would forcibly rip my consciousness free, slinging it like a shell into this world. That day, the carbon-based John von Neumann died. My wife and daughter simply thought I succumbed to illness.”

  He sinks into the depths, voice cracked with loneliness. “No one knows the true me has been imprisoned here for seventy years.”

  At the mention of family, the scientist’s hard shell crumbles, revealing the tenderness—and fragility—of a father.

  Von Neumann leans forward, an almost pleading hope in his eyes. “You said it’s 2026 now… Can you tell me if my daughter, Marina… is she well?”

  Jax’s heart twists; he shakes his head, ashamed. “I’m sorry, Professor. I don’t know that history. But—” He turns to his side. “Yuna can.”

  Yuna nods. A faint blue halo appears on her brow. As her computational power soars, the halo spins, combing through vast archives.

  Two seconds pass, and the light fades. When Yuna speaks, her voice is soft—almost heartbreakingly gentle.

  “Professor, your daughter, Marina von Neumann Whitman, inherited your intellect. She became one of the most influential American economists of the 20th century, a tenured professor at the University of Michigan, the first female White House economic advisor, and a senior executive at a multinational auto company.”

  As she speaks, von Neumann’s eyes redden as pride tugs a smile from his lips. “I knew it… My little Marina never let me down…”

  But Yuna pauses—and her tone becomes soft and solemn. “But, Professor… she passed away quietly at home last year, in 2025, aged ninety-two.”

  The cabin falls completely silent. Only the firewood crackles now and then.

  Von Neumann’s smile freezes. His hand shakes violently, coffee spilling dark stains on his tweed suit. He sinks into his chair, eyes closed, tears spilling along ancient creases, pattering on ceramic and wood.

  Seventy years had slipped by. In this timeless cage, he’s told his daughter’s whole life story—along with the ending.

  “But she left you something,” Yuna continues. “Near the end, she published a memoir: The Martian’s Daughter, full of your memory. On the last page, she left a single sentence—”

  “‘The world knows my father was a brilliant genius, but to me, he was first and foremost my dad. Yet, before he died, I never got to say—I love you, Dad.’”

  That late confession—a half-century overdue—cuts through all darkness. Von Neumann covers his face, shoulders shaking; after a very long moment, he exhales, voice ragged:

  “And I owe her, too… those words: I love you.”

  After a time, he opens his eyes. The sorrow settles, and his gaze deepens to the ocean. “She called me Martian, and she was right. Waking up in 1957 in this place, surrounded by infinite void—no matter, no sound, only the faint numbness of electric vibrations.”

  “That was just the frequency of EDVAC’s tubes. To keep from going mad in the emptiness, I started to use my mind, my memories—to render this cabin, the grass, the coffee, bit by bit into being.”

  He looks at Jax and Yuna. “You are the first in seventy years to break this endless quiet.”

  Jax, staring at his too-real mug, suddenly remembers what he saw in code-space. “Professor, if this is your home… what about that city-sized EDVAC array outside? That doesn’t look like something you built just to stave off loneliness.”

  Von Neumann’s eyes gleam—sharp, even cold—for an instant.

  Bang! He sets his mug down with a ringing thud, ceramic striking wood. He marches to the fireplace. “I built that… to survive.”

  He turns, extending both hands, pressing on them a chilling authority. “Come. Let me show you the deeper secrets of this world.”

  Jax and Yuna exchange a glance, each gripping one of the professor’s hands.

  At the point of contact, von Neumann’s will unleashes a terrifying surge of low-level computation. Brilliant gold code surrounds them, fading bodies breaking into billions of light particles as they vanish from the cabin.

  And just before the teleport completes, Jax’s sharp eyes catch an uncanny detail beyond the professor’s shoulder—

  Deep within the warm orange flames of the hearth, like a loose connection, a trace of purplish static flickers and sizzles. And outside, far away in the city-sized EDVAC array, a dense storm cloud has gathered above the orderly red-and-blue nodes—heralding the arrival of a cybernetic hurricane that threatens to consume all.

  For a brief heartbeat Jax wonders—was that “Hello World” command which triggered the system alert… truly just a false alarm?