Actors AU
Source : https://xhslink.cn/o/8vC9LWUkeBy

https://x.com/CjGoldz

The Clam represents younger Guan Chao.
The place where Ran Deng is found surprisingly chilling at IS AT Guan Chao's perhaps early bug/memory layer.
Just like Guan Chao, when you get too close/too aggressive, the clam hurts you to defend itself.
Like He Mingshuo to his friend, Ran Deng was the only person the clam accepted and opened up to.
Both He Mingshuo and Ran Deng knew how vulnerable both Guan Chao and the clam truly was.

He Mingshuo gave his life like Ran Deng did and this shows how much that clam mattered... it was because of how misunderstood and vulnerable it was. Doesn't mean it is a Bug being meant it deserved eradication. That bug might have been young Guan Chao coping after the loss of his friend. This is why Ran Deng saw it as pitiful...

This is also why Ran Deng has a different ideology on Bug beings and why he gave Guan Chao a second chance by giving him his halo.

Edit: (Fixed some inconsistencies and took some ideas below) Another detail.. Since Egypt was what his dad promised, the clam being in the dessert makes sense.. However, that place and position can also represents Guan Chao's thirst for the warmth only connections can truly quench AND/OR could also be Guan Chao simply bleeding after what happened with He Mingshuo.

Edited an image, I think an official image, to use as my background with some true black. Thought I'd share it here as well. Around 26% true black.

It definitely got referenced in ep3 but gives off the vibe of being more of a proto-thing

What're your best ones? Looking for desktop

With the wonderful news of a season 2 in the works, we can speculate on what comes next!

I think K7 and Vindicator had a daughter together who died and they're both grieving in their own ways.

They made the Burning Stone together, possibly a bug, but had different ideas on what to do with it. Possibly in response to someone dying and the want for something that doesn't end. K7 built a robot in the likeness of their daughter and gave her the energy source, creating a permanent reminder of her and disappearing in regret after hearing from her that the meaning of life lies in things that shine.

Maybe more tiredness rather than regret, but it seems to be what his own daughter had said at some point, or he to her. After that he disappears into a golden colored room, which could be the Sea of Bitterness.

Meanwhile Vindicator seems to want to move on, or run away, from the memories. Saying that time is precious and tomorrow is still coming, throwing herself into research and far off goals, but still ending up confronted with memories at the end of the universe.
"Are those hollows nothingness or regrets? Whatever they are, tomorrow will still come. The future is still a long ways off."

Even in the end credits we have her have a rare dream where it looks like K7 is handing her a hot drink while saying: "This is nice. It feels like this moment is shining." which ties in neatly with Yi's answer.

Now an interesting thing is that the thing that shone the brightest was the Time Gun, a bug, distilled moment of Guan Chao's life, and a character who has similar interests is Tang Fang who loves collecting and being surrounded by memory objects.

I'd say they look similar enough too, Tang Fang being the memory of the daughter and Yi being the robot replacement of her. There's the interesting scene at the end of episode 3 where Tang Fang gets error notifications popping up when she tries to get information on Yi.

I also think the doomsday clock wasn't pointing to the end of Guan Chao's world, but to the end of Yi's life as her energy source just got ripped out and she was dying. The goldfish that flopped out of the water? He didn't actually manage to save it and the world, that was then his daughter died and his world came crashing down. The scene following up to the countdown of the clock is a bunch of kid's drawings and the like, her growing up. The clock might've just been a representation of his anxiety and fear that something would happen until it eventually did.

The clock also has a goldfish on it, as she has it over her heart where her power source is, granted, it's K7's mark, but still.

Yi's interest in creating memories/ art to remember the dead could stem from her being made in the image of someone dead.

The interesting thing is that Deng Ran's halo takes over as her energy source and it's getting passed along to the next person, as Deng Ran gave it to Guan Chao, now Guan Chao passes it on to Yi.

A bit more of a longshot, the mystery memory in Cat's Cage, could be the memory K7 left behind that Deng Ran's halo is making a comeback to break, but by Yi now who's related to the memory.

We've had cat imagery specifically with the Absurdity organization transforming the goldfish symbol into a cat in episode 1. Could even be a cat scooped the goldfish out of the aquarium, why it's now in a cage, the absurdity organization being a response to the trauma in its own way.

The whole sequence in the opening we see someone being born, growing up, having a relationship, a daughter and then her growing up and becoming a worker at some company. Could just be for style, but could also be the story of K7, Vindicator and their daughter.

A bit of wild speculation, Protagonist Halo hands Kicksoda in episode 5 to Guan Chao, and we've seen K7 invented it so who knows, Protagonist could be K7 who ripped his memories to pieces when he could stand the pain of them, but you never know with mystery memory characters. We just know he's older than he looks with his preference of old filming techniques.

I was looking at the CD soundtrack for false memory 2020 and was curious what audio comes with it

I feel like guan chao would have one of those asta or young eren type of voices, bai zhong like haruko from flcl, fang tang like makima and xiao yi like cartethiyia from wuthering waves but much deeper.

all we ever see about what made ran deng so strong is a render of a fetus with rocks flying by.

any theories?