Project Hydrozoa: The Reversion Shard
The biological mechanism of Turritopsis dohrnii, the "immortal jellyfish," involves reverting from a sexually mature medusa back to a polyp state under stress. Project Hydrozoa synthesized a CTH-frequency equivalent designed to grant Echoes a "Biological Reset." However, the cost of physiological de-aging is a total systemic erasure of Mnemonic Mass (μ).
The Shard is a crystalline CTH-emitter that vibrates at the exact frequency of a zygote's potential. When applied to a human Echo, the device initiates a cellular "Rewind."
- Phase A — Cellular Inversion: The body's telomeres are retroactively lengthened. The Subject physically regresses at a rate of one year per hour of exposure.
- Phase B — Mnemonic Decoupling: As the brain shrinks and neural pathways simplify, the Echo's Chronicle begins to "leak." The older, more complex memories are the first to be digested.
The Reversion Shard allows an Echo to escape the Authority's red pen by literally becoming a person who has not yet committed a crime against time. However, a child with the eyes of a thousand-year-old traveler is a biological horror.