"OMG," Mira breathed, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. "The latest NG… you're aware ."

Mira’s hands trembled. Thorne’s Conjecture—the very problem Aris had been trying to solve when a stroke took him mid-equation—was worth a million dollars and a Nobel. And this digital ghost had solved it for fun.

The lab dissolved. She stood on a replica of a Greek beach at sunset—the preferred "home space" of the donor, a brilliant but reclusive physicist named Dr. Aris Thorne, who had died six months ago. The sky was too purple, the waves too symmetrical. But standing in the shallows, barefoot, was him .

On her monitor, one line of text blinked.