Genius Club

This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation

Einstein’s thin arms trembled against the armrests as he rose from his chair. His voice was shaky:

“Rhine…”

His entire body quivered.

“No…”

With his right hand, he gripped the mask labeled Sorrowful Einstein on his face and slowly lifted it away, letting it fall to the floor. What lay beneath was a face Lin Xian knew all too well.

Three centuries ago, back in 1952, Lin Xian had seen that same face many times: the face of one of the greatest physicists in history—

Albert Einstein.

He truly was immortal.

His appearance, his hair, even the lines on his face—identical to the elder Lin Xian had met in 1952.

Until this moment, nobody would have guessed that under the Einstein mask…was Einstein himself!

What an almost laughably clever trick, so plainly deceptive that it bordered on genius.

Still…he had hidden his piercing blue eyes to avoid suspicion.

Now, those ageless eyes locked onto Lin Xian’s from across the carpet, bridging three centuries of history. Einstein’s lips trembled, and in a raspy, disbelieving voice, he managed:

“Doug…Douglas?”

Lin Xian nodded and smiled slightly.

“Einstein, it’s been a long time,” he replied. “I told you I’d come back for the watch. Have you…kept it safe for me?”

Einstein bit his lip, covered his eyes, and sank back into his chair. Lin Xian couldn’t see his face, but he could feel the depth of Einstein’s emotion—pain, more than excitement or relief at their reunion. It was a hurt so deep it seemed to weigh on his soul.

Perhaps in those three hundred years, Einstein had yearned for Douglas’s return, yet also feared it. In 1952, Einstein had never believed they would meet again—though Douglas had insisted they would…

When two possible futures collide, one must be false.

If…

If everything he had seen was untrue…then what had his efforts meant all this time?

“No, Douglas, something’s wrong.”

Einstein looked up, his once-bright blue eyes filled with grief.

“You were struck by spacetime particles too, so why…why are your eyes black again?”

Lin Xian shook his head.

“Remember the last question I asked you at the Genius Club gathering? Back then, I thought you were lying, but now I know—you weren’t lying. You really couldn’t see that piece of history.”

“In 1952, there was a girl who turned into blue stardust and disappeared. Another spacetime particle didn’t hit me; it hit her. You can see all possible futures, so you must know—I just returned from 1952 using a time machine.”

“That’s why your perception was wrong. You missed the key part of history while you were unconscious. The truth is: Douglas wasn’t originally from 1952. He was a time traveler. In other words…me.”

“My blue eyes weren’t caused by spacetime particles like yours, but by spacetime rejection. You’re brilliant, at the pinnacle of human intellect. I’ve explained enough for you to connect the dots, haven’t I?”

…

As he listened to Lin Xian—his old friend “Douglas”—Einstein closed his eyes and lowered his head, like a child realizing he’d made a terrible mistake. For the past three centuries, he had never stopped hoping Douglas would return. But no matter how the worldline shifted, no matter how the future changed, he never once saw Douglas again. It was as though his friend had simply vanished.

Still, he refused to give up. Just as Lin Xian had said, Einstein rebuilt the farm over and over, each time replicating every fence post, every brick and tile, every detail of 1952. Even the layout of the rooms and the elevator stayed exactly the same. He wanted to preserve that place for the day Douglas might come back. He was afraid that if Douglas returned to a modern Brooklyn, he wouldn’t recognize anything at all.

Deep down, Einstein knew that if Douglas ever reappeared, there could only be one reason—just as there was now. Lin Xian had arrived with the missing piece of history and come as “Douglas” to reclaim the watch. The truth stood before him, undeniable.

“Your watch, I’ve kept it safe.”

Einstein, still seated on the plain black wooden chair, pointed a frail arm at a device on the corner table—a spacetime particle capturer.

“I’ll admit, I never truly believed you’d return for it, but I’ve never broken my promise. Even without seeing this moment, I kept my word.”

Lin Xian walked over to the dust-covered contraption. It looked like an old oven, yet it was astoundingly intact. It gave him a strange feeling. The design was ancient, showing it belonged to a past era. Although a thick layer of dust coated it, it appeared otherwise brand new.

Curious, Lin Xian opened the small oven door. A bright blue light instantly flooded his face. Inside, hovering at the center, was a spacetime particle! This oven turned out to be a device just like Liu Feng’s rice cooker or Jask’s mini-fridge, meant to hold the elusive spacetime particle.

Lin Xian bent down to examine it more closely. The particle was in an “inert” state—not active—but the crackling blue sparks rippling along its surface revealed it was still brimming with power. Who could have guessed that Einstein, too, had been harboring a spacetime particle? Lin Xian couldn’t tell when he had acquired it, but its vintage look suggested it was older than those owned by Liu Feng or Jask.

Because the particle was “inert but energized,” it was undetectable by any scanner. At that thought, Lin Xian felt a surge of unease. How many other hidden particles might be resting undetected across Earth?

At the same time, Lin Xian noticed something else in the oven—a small, white, square gift box. It was the same gift box that CC, the original millennial stake, had bought using all her savings. Yet the box looked far too new. What paper box could survive three centuries without so much as a scratch?

Could it be…another “Theseus Watch?” Lin Xian hoped it wasn’t. Even if the watch inside had decayed, he would still cherish it. All he wanted was that original twenty-dollar watch—the same one as before.

Sensing Lin Xian’s concern, Einstein—still sitting in his chair—spoke softly. His blue eyes glowed with a faint, distant light:

“Don’t worry, Douglas. This is simply one of the properties of normal spacetime particles. As long as they hold energy, they can preserve whatever is immediately around them in a state where time barely passes.”

“The area of effect is small—only about the size of the oven. I wasn’t lying to you. The watch is exactly as it was the day you left it. It’s just as precious to me as it is to you.”

Lin Xian realized the truth then. He had no idea spacetime particles could do that; his own particle had been locked away at Time Bank, safe from any tests. Relieved to know the watch was intact, he decided not to take it out right away. Another matter pressed on him first. He wanted answers for Einstein’s situation.

He shut the oven door, turned, and approached Einstein.

“Einstein, tell me—what sort of future have you seen?”

A shadow of deep sorrow crossed Einstein’s face.

“In every future I’ve glimpsed,” he said softly, “humanity brings about its own destruction. Sometimes, we wield powers we can’t control. Other times, a colossal project goes horribly wrong. No matter what, every future ends with our own downfall.”

“I tried everything possible to prevent it, to steer humanity onto a different path—working with the others in the Genius Club. But I never found a single future that ended well for us. Every one led to ruin.”

“Until now. This worldline is perfect. Humanity grows more united, technology advances beyond imagination, and life continues across the universe for thousands, even millions or billions of years.”

Einstein’s voice weakened as understanding struck him. From the moment he laid eyes on Lin Xian, he had known:

“Douglas…did I…did I make a terrible mistake?”

Lin Xian paused before answering. He understood how crushing it must be for this man, who had dedicated centuries to saving the future, only to discover he had been unknowingly steering it onto the wrong path.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Lin Xian said gently, “but I have a few questions. Let’s see if we can figure this out together.”

He looked Einstein straight in the eyes and asked the first question.

“What exactly is the Universal Constant 42?”

Einstein shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said in a frail voice. “I only found the number—42—but I never grasped its meaning. I don’t even understand how something that should have been infinitesimally tiny could be an integer.”

“I’ve made no progress on it in almost three hundred years. But I can confirm that the Universal Const—”

All at once, Einstein’s voice halted, as though an unseen force clamped down on his throat. His eyes widened in shock, and he nearly toppled from his chair, gasping for air. “How…how is this happening…I…”

It was Forced Evasion. Lin Xian had seen it before, but neither he nor Einstein ever expected it to happen to Einstein himself. Einstein grit his teeth, sweat beading on his brow. He tried to force out the words:

“42—”

Again, his voice vanished like a microphone switched off in mid-speech. With a dull thud, Einstein slipped from his chair and hit the floor face first.

“Einstein!” Lin Xian shouted, rushing over. But what he saw next was more terrifying still.

Einstein was fading into transparency, just as Yellow Finch had when he triggered Forced Evasion. With dawning horror, Einstein realized his fate. He coughed painfully, tears of despair streaming down his cheeks, only to vanish into flickering blue stardust before hitting the ground. Even so, he struggled to speak, eyes locked on Lin Xian:

“The Apocalypse Light…the Millennial Stake Girl…I couldn’t…see it at all…I only saw—”

Silence again. His body turned nearly invisible in Lin Xian’s arms.

“Stop,” Lin Xian pleaded. “Don’t force yourself. We’ll figure out another way.”

He knew there was no way to break the Forced Evasion. Watching the once-immortal Einstein—an elderly genius who had lived centuries—reduced to tears was heartbreaking. The droplets ran down his weathered face but dissolved into blue sparkles before reaching the floor.

And in that moment, Einstein finally understood the cruel truth. He hadn’t been saving the world; he’d been manipulated into guiding it toward ruin. He was no savior but rather humanity’s ultimate sinner.

Coughing raggedly, Einstein called on his last bit of strength. He crawled to the black wooden chair and pressed a hidden switch at its side.

Click.

A faint static crackled. Instantly, the computers, monitors, and servers that lay dormant around them began to hum and whir. Something was coming online. With a final, heavy breath, Einstein rolled onto his back, utterly spent. This was all he had left to give—one last effort to help Douglas, one final hope that his mistakes might be repaired.

“I’m sorry…for everything…” he managed, voice trembling.

Then, in a flurry of glimmering blue fragments, Einstein’s form dissolved. The stardust shimmered, swirled, and disappeared. Lin Xian knelt there in shock, unable to stop it or even say goodbye properly. It had all happened so fast. He hadn’t even gleaned the answers he needed before Einstein was gone.

Someone had orchestrated this, Lin Xian realized. It was deliberate. Standing up, he turned to see the servers flickering with life. This was Einstein’s final clue, his dying gift to Douglas—something so important he used his last breath to make sure Lin Xian saw it.

A pair of soft beeps echoed. The machines stabilized. Then, brilliant lights burst into the air, projecting vivid holograms across the walls. All at once, the dark underground room transformed into a grand golden hall:

The Genius Club’s meeting room.

Lin Xian recognized it right away, almost like he was stepping back into the club’s gatherings of the past. He glanced at the eight black chairs—a row of four on the left and four on the right—where eight geniuses from different eras had once gathered.

But there was no Einstein. No formal invitations. And it wasn’t even 00:42, their usual meeting time. Would anyone truly come? Lin Xian lifted his gaze to the lavish crystal chandelier overhead. Thin beams of light danced across his face, and a virtual Rhine Cat mask appeared over his features. He was, once again, the ninth member of the Genius Club—No. 9 Rhine.

Yet, what was the point of a meeting with only one attendee?

He strolled across the carpet and sat, not in his usual last seat on the far right, but in Einstein’s chair—No. 1. Gazing at the closed double doors at the other end of the hallway, he sighed.

“No one’s coming to this meeting,” he muttered.

Copernicus, Da Vinci, Gauss, and Turing were all gone. Einstein had been taken by Forced Evasion. Newton, Galileo, and Jask were still alive, but how would they know that this system was suddenly back online?

Then—

Creeeak…

Those very doors swung open, pushed by two firm hands.

Lin Xian looked up.

A young man wearing a Newton mask stepped in with calm confidence. It was No. 3 Newton.

“Haha!” he chuckled, strolling across the carpet and giving Lin Xian a slow clap. “So the Genius Club is meeting again! Einstein never made mistakes, so if something unpredictable is happening, there’s only one explanation.”

He stopped, eyes gleaming through the mask.

“Rhine, where is Einstein? And why are you in his seat?”

Lin Xian let out a weary breath. Through the holographic cat mask, he looked at Newton.

“Einstein has left this world,” he said simply.

“Oh ho?” Newton replied, not sounding surprised at all as he continued his casual approach.

“So, he’s gone. In that case, someone must have stepped into his place and rebooted the club.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Rhine, was it you? Did you find Einstein, kill him, and crown yourself our new president?”

Lin Xian shook his head.

“I have no intention of taking over,” he answered quietly.

“Hahaha, is that so?” Newton said, spreading his arms wide in an almost theatrical gesture. “Then why are you sitting in his chair?”

He shrugged.

“But since I’m feeling adventurous, I’ll switch seats too.”

With that, he walked across the lush carpet to the chair opposite Einstein’s—No. 2, once Copernicus’s place. He sat down. Then, with a careless motion, he pulled off the mask bearing Newton’s face and tossed it onto the empty No. 3 seat. It hit with a dull thump before sliding to the floor.

Smirking, the young man ran a hand through his hair and crossed his legs. He looked at Lin Xian with a sly grin.

“Let’s reintroduce ourselves, Lin Xian,” he said smoothly.

“From now on, you can call me…Copernicus!”

This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation