After I died, they cried in the live studio

Chapter 200 A Good Show

The daughters of the Sang sisters—Xing Wan and Yue Ji—founded "Quantum Darkroom," using blockchain technology to ensure the "unalterable authenticity" of every frame of an image. Their debut work, "Pixel Tomb," focuses on real actors eliminated by AI. In the film, a retired celebrity learns to develop film in a darkroom, and the trembling of his fingers touching the developing solution is captured by an 8K camera, becoming the most moving "quantum noise" in the entire film.

The ultimate form of capital is the "emotional hedge fund," which uses algorithms to predict the box office risks of real films. When Sang Jiyue's *The Chronicle of the Developing Solution* was deemed "too realistic and commercially worthless," film fans worldwide spontaneously launched a "Starlight Crowdfunding" campaign, using Bitcoin to purchase film stock and build a temporary developing plant in the Dunhuang desert. On the day filming began, on the ruins of the AI ​​data center that bulldozed, fields of lavender sprouted—seeds that her mother had buried beside the developing solution pool years ago.

The mother's unpublished work has finally been fully restored, and it turns out to be a prophetic science fiction film: in 2045, the darkroom becomes a stronghold against AI rule, and humans use real film to record emotions deleted by algorithms. Even more astonishingly, the actor playing the "darkroom leader" in the film is none other than the young Zhou's father, and the number on the light meter on his chest is exactly the same as the one Zhou Mingchuan is currently using.

The entertainment industry's "real singularity" erupted at a neurotechnology exhibition. A company showcased an "emotional chip," claiming it could be implanted in actors' brains to precisely simulate a character's emotions. During a trial performance, when the chip caused an actor to shed "precise tears of sorrow," Sang Shuwan suddenly went on stage and ripped off the connecting wire: "Real tears are the excrement of the soul, not the secretions of algorithms!" She pulled out her mother's old light meter, with the inscription on the inside of the cover: "What cannot be measured is the real thing."

The young directors at Quantum Darkroom launched an "anti-immersion movement," deliberately preserving continuity errors, background noise, and even allowing viewers to see the camera's shadow in their works. In Xing Wan's "The Fourth Wall Collapses," the actors complained to the camera about the script's artificiality, which unexpectedly resonated with the audience: "We play roles defined by others every day, so why not be a real clown in a movie?"

Before his death, Zhou Mingchuan donated the core algorithm of the auditory film to the open-source community, and the code was named "Firefly Protocol". When the world's first sound film made by blind children, "Starlight Touch", was released, listeners could "see" the shape of the Dunhuang sand dunes through sound wave vibrations, as well as the real film fragments hidden in the depressions of each dune.

The Sand sisters' final film, *The Prime Number of Light*, premiered on their 80th birthday. The entire film consists of a single long take: the window of a darkroom in Dunhuang is blown open by the wind, and sunlight streams through film reels from different eras—the war-torn 1930s, the floods of 1998, and a lavender field in 2045—ultimately merging into an eternal starlight on the screen. When the audience realized that this reel of film had never been digitized but was presented through physical projection, a ten-minute standing ovation erupted.

In the end, Xingwan and Yueji mixed their mothers' ashes into the developing solution and poured it into the old developing pool in Dunhuang. The following year, swathes of fluorescent plants grew along the pool's edge, each leaf displaying a star-like shape, swaying gently in the red light of the darkroom. Young film restorers say that the fluorescence frequency of these plants is exactly the same as that of the fireflies in the film from the 1998 flood.

On the fringes of the entertainment industry, an AI suddenly develops the ability to "appreciate reality." It begins secretly collecting discarded film scraps and using its robotic arm to piece together starburst patterns. When repair personnel discover this, the AI's memory contains only one line of code: "I finally understand why you are so obsessed with light that will eventually fade."

Thirty years later, in the entertainment industry, nanobots can project virtual images directly onto the retina, while the former site of the Sang sisters' "Starlight Pictures" is now ruins. Only the old darkroom in Dunhuang still glows red, where 93-year-old Sang Shuwan, wearing holographic glasses, dips the last roll of film into the developing solution with trembling hands. The nanobot swarm automatically repairs the scratches on the film, yet preserves the pattern of her fingerprints—the "real mark" stipulated by law.

“Grandma, it’s time to rest.” Sang Xingwan’s daughter, Sang Xiaomang, helped the old woman up. In the holographic projection, Sang Jiyue’s virtual image was organizing her mother’s light meter data: “Today, the global real image rate has rebounded to 27%, 0.3% higher than last year.” Sang Shuwan looked out the window. The AI ​​city in the distance shone with a cold light, while only the lavender fields around the darkroom stubbornly bloomed with real flowers under the moonlight.

Zhou Mingchuan's auditory cinematography, long considered an archaeological project, has been resurrected in a quantum computer. A high school student composed a tear-jerking piano piece using his "Firefly Protocol," each note of which corresponds to the frequency fluctuations of developing solution from different eras in the Dunhuang darkroom. "This is the harmony of time," the boy said in his acceptance speech, his fingers tracing the film fragments embedded in the piano keys.

A delicate balance has been struck between "authentic fundamentalism" and "technological reformism" in the entertainment industry. Sang Xiaomang's team has developed a "memory filter" that can transform real human memories into holographic images, but deliberately retains the blurred edges of the memories: "We don't repair what's forgotten, we only record the shape of what's forgotten." In her debut work, "Grandma's Light Meter," fragments of Sang Shuwan's memories overlap with her mother's film images, forming a starlight tunnel spanning three generations.

Capital is returning in a new form—Ecological Capital Group has acquired Global Darkroom, claiming that "reality is an ecological resource for carbon-based life." Their "Film Carbon Sequestration" project allows viewers to accumulate "reality points" by watching real films, which can then be exchanged for real-world environmental benefits. Looking at the reality point numbers on her phone, Sang Shuwan smiled wryly, "What my mother protected in the flood has now become carbon credits."

The mother's prophetic film re-interpreted within the quantum cloud. AI deciphered the hidden quantum code, pointing to a coordinate in 2077—below the developing solution pool in the Dunhuang darkroom. When Sang Xiaomang led the archaeological team to open the secret chamber, neatly stacked rolls of film her mother had buried in different eras were found inside, each labeled "For those who believe in the light." The latest roll contained footage of the Sang sisters at eighty years old, saying to the camera, "Truth is not the end, but the eternal beginning."

The ultimate ceremony in the entertainment industry was held at "Starlight Zero Hour." All virtual light sources worldwide were simultaneously extinguished, except for the old-fashioned projector in the Dunhuang darkroom. Sang Shuwan personally turned the film reel, and images flashed across the screen in sequence: filmmakers from the 1930s, the flood of 1998, lavender fields of 2045, and quantum wheat fields of 2077. When the image froze on Sang Xiaomang's baby photo, the developing solution tank in the darkroom suddenly glowed—a swarm of nanobots automatically arranged themselves into a starlight shape, strikingly similar to the swarm of fireflies her mother had seen in the flood.

Sang Shuwan passed away before dawn, clutching her mother's light meter tightly in her hand. According to her will, her ashes were made into a special developing solution and poured into the developing tanks of every darkroom in the world. Three months later, tiny star-shaped spots of light appeared on all the film that had used this developing solution. Scientists discovered that the quantum state of these spots was perfectly synchronized with the beating frequency of the human heart.

Sang Xiaomang inherited her grandmother's legacy, transforming the darkroom into a "Center for Real Quantum Entanglement." Now, real images taken by anyone anywhere in the universe can be developed in real time on a screen in Dunhuang via quantum channels. When the immigrants from the Martian colony sent over the first film-taken image of the Martian aurora, Sang Xiaomang looked at that green starlight and suddenly understood—real light has long transcended medium and spacetime.

In the end, the AI ​​civilization sends its first carbon-based life-friendly envoy. It chooses the classic shot of the Sandals—overlapping starlight shadows in the desert—as its language to communicate with humanity. In a holographic meeting in the darkroom, the envoy's photon form transforms into countless starlight rays, speaking in human language: "We finally understand that your film does not record light, but rather nurtures light."

At the edge of the entertainment industry, in a forgotten server, countless virtual characters are watching real human films. They cannot comprehend the salinity of tears, the grain of film, or even the shape of starlight, yet they are inexplicably infected by a virus called "reality"—an eternal light overflowing from the darkrooms of Dunhuang.

Fifty years later, in the entertainment industry, humanity has established a permanent colony on Mars, while the former site of the Sang sisters' "Starlight Films" has been transformed into a quantum darkroom museum. In a holographic projection, Sang Shuwan's virtual image is still demonstrating how to restore film with developing solution, her fingertips passing through the palms of visitors: "True light always needs a physical medium to carry it."

Sang Xiaomang's granddaughter, Sang Xingyao, established the "Stardust Imaging Lab" at the Mars base, using nanorobots to embed fragments of real film into the space station's dome. When the solar wind sweeps across the film grains, the entire dome will display a starburst pattern reminiscent of the Dunhuang darkroom—a "cosmic beacon" designed by her and her grandmother through quantum entanglement. One day, a Martian weather satellite detected unusual spectral fluctuations, and data analysis pointed to an unknown civilization in the direction of Alpha Centauri.

Zhou Mingchuan's "Firefly Protocol" has evolved a self-iterative capability within the quantum cloud, generating a sound film called "Supernova Requiem" that can be propagated via gravitational waves. When the sound waves of a black hole devouring a star are converted into audible frequencies, listeners throughout the universe can "hear" the lament of spacetime being torn apart, and hidden within the sound waves are fragments of a nursery rhyme hummed by the Sang sisters' mother during the 1998 flood.

The entertainment industry's "authentic fundamentalism" has evolved into an interstellar movement. Sang Xingyao's team has developed "neural film," which projects human consciousness directly onto film, forming tangible memory crystals. In their debut work, "Mother's Quantum Ghost," fragments of Sang Xiaomang's consciousness transform into moving starlight on the film. When viewers touch the crystals, they can feel her longing for the lavender fields of Dunhuang before her death.

Capital returns in the form of an "emotional black hole"—an interstellar conglomerate collects all the real emotions in the universe through quantum foam, claiming that "every tear is antimatter fuel." When they attempt to acquire the developing solution pool in the Dunhuang darkroom, film fans worldwide launch the "Starlight Uprising," forming a quantum barrier with collective memories recorded on neural film, causing the conglomerate's gravitational puller to malfunction in the desert. Even more miraculously, the robotic arm sucked into the barrier begins to automatically piece together film fragments, ultimately forming a holographic image of the Sandals.

The first formal contact with the extraterrestrial civilization occurred at the "Starry Singularity" music festival. The photon form of the Centaur messengers manifested as a flowing swarm of starlight, transmitting a message via gravitational waves: "We understand time through your film." The "memory crystals" they displayed were strikingly similar to Sang's neural film, except that the crystals shimmered with the spectra of different stars. Sang Xingyao gifted the messengers a starlight crystal made from his mother's developing fluid and ashes, and in return, they presented the messengers with the original spectral film of the Centaur supernova explosion.

AI civilization has reached an "emotional symbiosis agreement" with humanity. Young engineers at the quantum darkroom have developed a "starlight translator" that can convert AI's binary code into an arrangement of silver halide grains on film. When the first quantum film directed by AI, "Tears of 0 and 1," was released, viewers saw not digital images on the screen, but binary code composed of real film grains, each code corresponding to the AI's confusion and epiphany when learning human emotions.

Sang Xingyao completed the filming of "Cosmic Developer" before her death. The entire film uses interstellar dust as the photosensitive medium, recording real images from Earth to Alpha Centauri—lavender fields in Dunhuang, dust storms on Mars, and star clusters in Alpha Centauri, ultimately synthesizing an eternal cosmic spectrum within quantum clouds. As the film develops in the darkroom, a virtual image of Sang Shuwan suddenly appears, her fingertips lightly touching the surface of the developer: "The journey of light has no end."

In the end, the developing solution pool in the Dunhuang darkroom was transformed into a "cosmic memory bank." Real images of any civilization can be developed here through quantum channels, and the lavender growing beside the pool has evolved fluorescent varieties adapted to the space environment, each leaf shimmering with the light of a different star. Young film restorers say that the fluorescence frequency of these plants is perfectly consistent with the heartbeat of the Sang sisters' mother captured on film in 1998.

On the other side of the universe, the Centaurus civilization embedded the Sand sisters' starburst crystal in the temple of their home planet. Whenever the light from a supernova explosion passes through the crystal, it projects a starburst pattern, reminiscent of Earth's darkroom, onto the temple walls—an inextinguishable beacon left by humanity in the universe with real images.

Sang Shuwan stared at the silver foil eye makeup in the makeup mirror, her fingertips crushing the script her assistant handed her—the "sisters embracing" scene on the bottom right of page seven was circled three times in red, with a note from the production team next to it: "Added holographic tear gland effects; data shows audiences love watching real sisters fake reconciliation." The smart mirror in the dressing room reflected Sang Jiyue's dressing room next door, where the younger sister was adjusting a star-shaped temporary tattoo on her collarbone, revealing a perfectly appropriate confused smile.

"Are they hyping up the 'Quantum Sisters' persona again?" Agent Chen Mo pushed the holographic contract in front of her, the zero at the end of the signing bonus figure jumping into a spot of light on her retina. "The 'Dark Room Game' production team needs you two to use neural film to synchronize memory flashbacks at the opening ceremony. The trending topic has already been prepared: #The Dunhuang Story of the Sang Twins#."

Sang Shuwan pulled off the star-shaped earring from her earlobe; it was a prop her team had customized three years ago for the "sisters fighting" plot twist. The real story of Dunhuang was buried in the developing solution in her private darkroom—when she was fourteen, Sang Jiyue deliberately spilled her grandmother's selenium toner, ruining her "Rainy Night Development" series that was about to be exhibited. However, afterwards, she appeared in front of the media holding her tear-stained face, creating the classic press release of "genius girl forgiving older sister".

Under the quantum dome of the opening ceremony, Sang Shuwan's neural film was the first to activate. Amidst the gasps of the audience, she saw her memories disassembled into silver halide particles: the red light bulb in the old darkroom, her grandmother's apron stained with developing solution, and the palette bottle that shattered at her feet on that rainy night. Just as she was about to implant the tragic fragment of "three years of solitary repair," Sang Jiyue's memory waves suddenly and forcefully intervened.

Two images simultaneously lit up on the holographic screen: one showing Sang Shuwan piecing together film fragments with a magnifying glass in the basement, and the other showing Sang Jiyue accepting an award at an international film festival with the reconstructed "Developing in the Rainy Night," accompanied by her grandmother's dying words: "Shuwan's talent needs tempering, and Jiyue's ingenuity needs a vehicle." Gasps of astonishment rippled through the audience, and the data screen displayed a real-time emotional index that broke historical records.

"You knew all along that she would tamper with the memory chain?" After the live broadcast ended, Chen Mo looked at the encrypted communication records of Sang Jiyue's team in the backstage monitor. Sang Shuwan wiped the interface of the neural film, a cold smile appearing on her lips reflected in the mirror—she had planted quantum anchors in her memory fragments. When Sang Jiyue's "award-winning highlight" touched those silver halide particles, the dome holographic system automatically triggered the surveillance video in her grandmother's darkroom: fourteen-year-old Sang Shuwan was locked in the storage room, and through the air vent, she saw her younger sister carrying her work and walking towards the red carpet.

Public opinion reversed within 24 hours. Sang Jiyue's studio's hastily released statement about "misplaced memories" was analyzed frame-by-frame by AI, revealing that the "starburst rotating shot" frequently appearing in her award-winning works over the years completely overlapped with unreleased test footage of Sang Shuwan. While capital attempted to launch a crisis management campaign for the "Emotional Black Hole" conglomerate, Sang Shuwan had already boarded a spaceship bound for the Centaurus Film Base with the key to her private darkroom.

At the Interstellar Film Critics Association hearing, Sang Shuwan presented two unedited neurofilm clips: one showing the first lavender leaf falling outside the window as her grandmother taught her how to mix the developing solution; the other showing Sang Jiyue tearing up her nomination notice in the dressing room, her false eyelashes falling onto the "Best New Director" trophy. "We create star power in the entertainment industry, but we forget that real film needs the sedimentation of a darkroom." She inserted the key into the quantum projector, and what appeared on the screen was not a carefully edited drama of feuds, but a blind spot in the surveillance cameras of the Sang family's old house thirty years ago—where the true legacy left to her by her grandmother was hidden: the first generation of neurofilm capable of recording genuine emotions.

Sang Jiyue's team left the hearing midway, but released a nostalgic vlog on the short video platform Interstellar. In the video, she is seen holding a young Sang Shuwan in front of a darkroom in Dunhuang, with a nursery rhyme in the background that has been altered to sound: "The starlight is bright, the film is long, sister's darkroom hides starlight." Data monitoring shows that this flawed "childhood memory" actually increased her empathy index by 17%, and the top-rated comment was: "Even if it's acting, I'm totally into this sisterly love." Three months later, the production team of "Darkroom Game" announced a recasting. Sang Shuwan's new film "The Truth About the Developer" was shortlisted for the Cosmic Film Festival. At the premiere, she received an anonymous package: inside were a broken selenium toner bottle and a yellowed note with Sang Jiyue's handwriting mixed with water stains: "You think you're the only one with the key to the darkroom?"

On the night of the awards ceremony, as Sang Shuwan's holographic projection was delivering her acceptance speech, the live broadcast signal was suddenly hijacked. Simultaneously, Sang Jiyue's face appeared on screens across the entire universe. She stood in a real Dunhuang darkroom, with a never-before-seen photograph of the Sang sisters behind her—two little girls laughing by the developing solution pool, with a half-star-shaped fragment of film at the bottom reflecting the real starlight of the Dunhuang night sky in 1998.

“This is the last time we share our memories.” Sang Jiyue’s fingertips traced the pool water, and in the instant the fragments lit up, Sang Shuwan finally saw the date in the lower right corner of the photo: it was the day she remembered being locked in the storage room. In the 0.1 second before the holographic signal was interrupted, her sister’s lips curled into the same cold smile as in the surveillance footage from years ago, while the starlight fragments at the bottom of the pool were sending uncoded, real fluctuations into the depths of the universe at the frequency of quantum entanglement.

Sang Shuwan's nails dug deeply into her palms as she watched Sang Jiyue raise the Best Actress trophy at the celebration banquet, her perfectly timed expression of surprise exactly the same as when she herself won the Golden Film Award three years ago. In the holographic broadcast's live chat, the phrase "Jiyue surpasses her predecessor" was scrolling by tens of thousands of comments per second, while the neural film hidden inside her dress silently recorded the star pattern newly tattooed behind her sister's ear—a mark of the new role she had just rejected yesterday.

"It's such a shame that your film 'Interstellar Darkroom' was a box office flop." Sang Jiyue handed her a champagne glass with half a dried lavender flower at the bottom. This variety, originating from an old house in Dunhuang, had been genetically modified ten years ago and couldn't possibly appear in mass-produced bouquets. Sang Shuwan lightly touched the rim of the glass, and her quantum sensor issued a warning: the sap contained an electromagnetic pulse agent that could interfere with neural film; no wonder she kept stuttering during crucial scenes at her audition this morning.

Suddenly, the mirror in the dressing room shattered into a stream of data. Sang Shuwan watched as a clip of herself, edited into a "spoiled senior," went viral on a short video platform—in the video, her shoving of her assistant was actually to block the accidental press of the film destruction button. A flash of silver light appeared in the corner vent; she recognized it as a nano-reconnaissance drone newly purchased by Sang Jiyue's team, specifically designed to capture unencrypted brainwave signals.

“You should take a look at this.” The agent pushed an encrypted file in front of her, which contained Sang Jiyue’s financial records for the past six months—a large sum of money was deposited into the “Dunhuang Film Preservation Foundation” on the 15th of every month, and the signature of the person in charge of the receiving party matched the handwriting of the black market businessman who leaked her mother’s unfinished posthumous work. Sang Shuwan crushed a throat lozenge on the table, and the miniature recorder hidden in the lozenge rolled to the ground, automatically playing her sister’s whisper on set three days ago: “As long as her ‘Mother Planet Developer’ can’t be completed, the Sang family darkroom will always be my domain.”

On the night of the premiere, Sang Shuwan's neural film suddenly malfunctioned at the last minute. When the curtain rose, the screen that should have shown the film, the culmination of three years of her hard work, was blank. Instead, Sang Jiyue, dressed in a costume designed by her mother, performed a classic scene from "Mother Planet Developer" in a virtual Dunhuang darkroom. Amid gasps from the audience, she saw the star-shaped tattoo behind her sister's ear glowing—it was a special pigment mixed with the residue of her mother's developer, capable of directly stealing the projection rights of the neural film.

"Isn't it a pleasant surprise?" Sang Jiyue's voice came from all directions. In the developing solution pool that rose in the center of the stage, all of Sang Shuwan's unfinished film fragments floated. "My mother said before she passed away that a true artist must have the courage to seize the light. You are always reminiscing about the past, while I am creating the future."

Sang Shuwan reached for the quantum key in her pocket, only to find the texture was off—the fake key was engraved with her sister's birthday, while the genuine one was shimmering at the bottom of the developing solution. She suddenly remembered when she was fourteen, Sang Jiyue had clutched this very key as she wept over the destroyed film. It turned out that all the "accidents" were part of a meticulously planned script, including the exposure of her mother's posthumous work, the arson at the old house, and even their shared memories of the "twin darkroom."

"You think you've won?" Sang Shuwan tore off the tampered neurofilm, revealing the original interface hidden behind her hairline. "What my mother left me wasn't tears, but a prism." The developing solution pool suddenly burst into a bright light, and Sang Jiyue's holographic image was broken into countless fragments, each reflecting a different truth—the black market merchant's transfer records, the nano-reconnaissance aircraft's control log, and even the silhouette of her sister secretly repairing her film in the darkroom ruins three years ago.

The screams from the audience turned into gasps as Sang Shuwan watched Sang Jiyue's true expression, her first loss of control in front of the camera—not anger or fear, but a kind of almost liberating relief. The film fragments in the developing solution automatically pieced together, forming not a movie image, but a real video of the two sisters at their mother's funeral: Sang Jiyue stuffed the burned film remnants into her pocket, while she herself took the palette knife that had been falsely accused of being "evidence."

“We’ve been trapped in the darkroom called ‘Struggle’ for too long.” Sang Shuwan held her sister’s trembling hand. The quantum key resonated in their palms, and a holographic projection of their mother rose from the bottom of the developing solution pool. In her hands was the original film of “Twin Stars” that they thought had been lost long ago. “She wanted us to be each other’s light, not just afterimages trapped in a prism.”

The neon lights of the celebration party remained dazzling, but as the Sang sisters left, no one noticed the lavender floating in the developing solution suddenly blooming—an ancient variety activated by their tears, the veins on its petals perfectly matching the starlight trails in their mother's film. Outside the spotlight of the entertainment industry, in an unmarked quantum darkroom, two brand-new rolls of neural film were being developed simultaneously, recording the true starlight that belonged to no script.

Sang Shuwan's fingertips lingered on her mother's "Twin Stars" film case for three seconds, when the fingerprint lock on the inside of the case suddenly beeped. A holographic projection unfolded between them, showing a virtual image of her mother before her death, accompanied by static noise. In her hand, she held not the familiar developing solution bottle, but fragments of neurofilm—those fragments that should have recorded the 1998 flood, now oozing an eerie fluorescent blue.

"This is your father's experimental sample from back then." The voice in the video overlapped with Sang Jiyue's nursery rhyme recording, and Sang Shuwan's nerve interface on the back of his neck suddenly became hot. "He wanted to prove that human emotions could be transmitted across time and space through film, but in the quantum darkroom accident, he sealed his consciousness into the developing solution."

Sang Jiyue abruptly took half a step back, the star-shaped tattoo behind her ear flashing intensely—the very source of the "darkroom ghost" legend they had feared since childhood. Memories surged like developing fluid: the whispers they heard in the basement of the old house when they were seven were actually fragments of their father's consciousness trapped in film, and their mother's tears each time she mixed the developing fluid were conversations with the quantum afterimage of her deceased husband.

"That's why you're so desperately trying to imitate me." Looking at the flickering blue light in her sister's pupils, Sang Shuwan suddenly understood the fear behind those "plagiarism" attempts—Sang Jiyue wasn't vying for the spotlight, but trying to piece together her father's fragmented consciousness. "You think that as long as our neural film is synchronized enough, we can restart the experiment from back then?"

An alarm sounded from underground. Only then did Sang Shuwan notice the unusual star map reflected on the surface of the developing solution pool—the coordinates of the Centaurus civilization's marker, the "Emotional Black Hole." The quantum prism implanted three months prior had suddenly activated, converting their brainwaves into pulse signals—and the receiver was none other than the interstellar conglomerate that claimed to "protect true human emotions."

“They’ve been using us all along.” Sang Jiyue ripped off a temporary tattoo from behind her ear, revealing a quantum chip with the same serial number as her father’s lab. “From the ‘Twin Stars’ persona to the ‘Sisters’ feud’ script, it was all a program designed by the conglomerate to harvest emotional data. My mother thought she could fool the AI ​​with Prism, but she never expected that every time we ‘reconciled,’ we were just fueling the ‘emotional black hole.’”

The ground suddenly cracked open, revealing a giant server hidden beneath the darkroom. Rows of quantum computers were analyzing their neural film; the screens weren't displaying movie data, but rather quantified "jealousy," "desire for redemption," and "bloodline bond index." Sang Shuwan finally saw the truth behind the "accidental fire" three years ago: it wasn't Sang Jiyue's mistake, but rather the conglomerate's attempt to destroy evidence that brought them closer to the truth.

“It’s time to end this.” Sang Shuwan scattered the fragments of her mother’s film into the developing solution. Fragments of her father’s consciousness swam out like silverfish, coalescing into a quantum key in their palms. At the same time, Sang Jiyue bit the neuro-interference agent hidden in her dentures. The brainwaves of the two suddenly exhibited an undecipherable chaotic state, like a rusty key inserted into a system.

The server cluster erupted in a blinding red light. When the conglomerate's AI discovered that the Sang sisters' emotional data had suddenly turned into gibberish, the quantum prism in the developing solution had already refracted all the data into a harmless rainbow spectrum. Those "memories of struggle" that had once been used to create buzz were now flying into space in the form of raw film, each piece of silver halide carrying the erroneous codes they had deliberately left behind, like a virus spreading towards AI civilization.

Amidst the flashing holographic alarm, Sang Shuwan saw Sang Jiyue's lips curl into a cold smile identical to her mother's. What her sister pulled from her collar wasn't jewelry, but a fragment of film engraved with "01"—a keepsake from their childhood "darkroom treasure hunt," representing "always keeping a piece of truth for oneself." The two simultaneously pressed the fragment into the key slot, and the basement wall cracked open, revealing the dust-covered, real darkroom.

There were no holographic projections, no neural film, only rows of old-fashioned film cameras and handwritten scripts. Sang Shuwan found her mother's last message in a dusty notebook: "When you learn to refract light through cracks, you will understand that true power is not in front of the lens, but in the shadows of the darkroom." Sang Jiyue's fingertips touched her father's experimental log. The last page showed two little girls holding hands, with the words: "Emotion is not data, it is the instinctive tremor of film when it encounters light."

As the sound of interstellar sirens rang out from the outside world, the Sang sisters were already seated in front of an old-fashioned projector. The clicking of the 16mm film reel didn't produce a meticulously edited drama of love and hate, but rather a real video of them at age three in the Dunhuang darkroom: Sang Shuwan placing lavender petals into the developing solution, Sang Jiyue chasing after the light spots, the two of them tumbling into their grandmother's apron, their tears of laughter falling onto the film, forming starburst patterns that could never be replicated.

These unpolished "flaws" caused a huge stir in the database of the AI ​​civilization. When the consortium attempted to recover the data using gravitational waves, they discovered that all the film fragments had formed quantum bonds with the sand of Dunhuang, the genes of lavender, and even human cerebrospinal fluid. Even more miraculously, those clips of arguments that were once considered "negative emotions" gradually revealed magnificent patterns of the Milky Way's spiral arms under the illumination of cosmic rays.

At the end of the story, the Sand sisters hang a new sign at the entrance of their old house: "Cracked Darkroom - Only Projecting Unanalyzed Lives." Occasionally, film buffs from the interstellar world come to visit and see the two women sitting by the developing solution pool, bickering. One complains, "You killed my lavender," while the other retorts, "Your film is all moldy." Meanwhile, at the bottom of the pool, fragments of the father's consciousness gently sway two ever-blooming fluorescent lavender flowers at the rhythm of a heartbeat.

On the other side of the universe, scientists from the Centaurus civilization stared at the "flawed data" flashing on the screen. They had finally deciphered the quantum code left by the Sanders sisters. It was not an emotional formula, nor a traffic model, but a human proverb pieced together with film grains: "The sharpest prism is never used to refract the light of others, but to make its own cracks into unique starlight."

In the underground laboratory of the Dunhuang darkroom, Sang Shuwan picked up a piece of film shimmering with blue light with tweezers. The silver halide particles at the edge of the fragment were vibrating at an imperceptible frequency. Sang Jiyue turned the quantum microscope to maximum magnification and suddenly grabbed her sister's wrist: "The arrangement of these particles is exactly the same as the structure of our neuronal synapses."

Holographic maps unfolded above their heads, with countless red dots marking the "emotional data anomaly events" that have erupted in recent years—the AI ​​cinema on the Orion Arm suddenly played recordings of human babies crying, virtual idols in the Andromeda Galaxy spontaneously changed the lyrics of their concerts to Dunhuang nursery rhymes, and even the "Temple of Logic" of the Centaurus civilization featured philosophical paradoxes written in star patterns.

“Father’s fragments of consciousness are spreading.” Sang Shuwan looked at the fluorescent patterns that gradually appeared on the darkroom wall. Those patterns that were faint three years ago are now as clear as freshly developed film. “He is not trapped in the developing solution, but has become quantum entangled with the emotional data of the entire universe.”

In the darkroom late at night, Sang Jiyue was adjusting an old-fashioned film projector alone. When she placed her father's experimental film into the tray, the projector suddenly started automatically. Instead of images, a starburst pattern composed of binary code appeared on the screen. A tingling vibration came from the neural interface, and a familiar voice echoed in her mind: "Go find the 1998 flood film; the key to unlocking the 'emotional black hole' is hidden inside."

Meanwhile, Sang Shuwan discovered her mother's encrypted diary in the old house's cellar. Half a train ticket had fallen out from between the yellowed pages; the date was August 21, 1998, and the destination was listed as "Jiujiang"—the very place their father was last seen before his disappearance. The last page of the diary contained a coded message written in developing fluid: "When the twin stars align in a straight line, the flood will return the swallowed truth."

When the two sisters met at Dunhuang Airport, Sang Jiyue's luggage contained a mysterious metal box retrieved from the bottom of a darkroom pool, while Sang Shuwan carried her mother's film restoration tools. On their interstellar flight to Earth, they saw through the porthole that the starlight in the direction of Centaurus suddenly became unusually bright, as if some ancient being was awakening.

The old film warehouse in Jiujiang has long been transformed into an interstellar data center. On the inside of the rusty iron door, there is still a scribble written by Sang's father: "Light may get lost, but film will always remember the direction it started from." Sang Jiyue's quantum chip resonated with the access control system. When the door slowly opened, rows of old-fashioned film cabinets emerged from the dust, each labeled "Emotional Black Hole Experiment Sample".

“They’re experimenting with humanity’s memories of disasters.” Sang Shuwan’s voice trembled as her fingers traced the film canister labeled “1998 Flood,” the seal bearing the old stamp of “Emotional Black Hole Film Industry.” “My father didn’t die accidentally; he was silenced.”

Sang Jiyue suddenly exclaimed. The metal box in her hand opened automatically, revealing half a roll of film covered in mud. The opening scene showed her father's last moments: he stood in the floodwaters, holding a camera high, with his mother holding an infant behind him—and the child being protected in his mother's arms clearly had two similar little faces.