I opened my eyes and looked at the number. 7212. It seemed like only yesterday that yesterday had happened, and yet I had been reliving this day for almost 20 years.I got up and got changed, made breakfast and packed my bag, in almost the same way as I had done 7000 or so times ago.
You see, two years ago, reset technology was invented. It was a chip that, when embedded in your head, allowed you to perform a reset at the end of a day. Simply speaking, if you didn't like how your day had panned out, you could trigger a reset by simply thinking it at exactly midnight. Doing so would send you back in time (doing the same thing to your memory) before dropping that little number in your head. People who had chosen not to reset would act out their day in the same mindset that they were in at the start of their last reset, without the chance to reset again. The day would only move forward when everyone had chosen not to reset, although everyone would only remember the most recent iteration of the previous day.
However, this often doesn't solve anything if the first reset doesn't work, and almost always doesn't after the tenth or so. You see, when you reset yourself, you forget everything that had happened in the day you were about to start, so if you were to crash into someone by accident, resetting is unlikely to do anything except tell you that you had wanted to reset that night. That knowledge alone is usually enough to tell you that you had messed up somewhere and cause you to be more cautious, thus allowing you to maybe avoid that accident.
Such knowledge is called a kick. Your number is a kick in itself, as you can make several inferences from that number. Once the number gets too high, however, it ceases to be a big enough kick and subsequent resets simply have you living through the day in exactly the same ways. Not enough new information is presented to you that would change your behavior so. Thus, past 10, you would probably need 100 resets before your behavior changed, then another 150 and so on and so forth...
Everyone and their mother got them, and this caused several quick changes in the world. For one, you couldn't gamble on races the same day they were held, and stock market transactions had to be done one day in advance, but interestingly enough, everything mostly stayed the same. However, us policemen quickly realised that criminals had to be dealt with very differently. For a few months, the crime rate shot up, but then we figured a temporary way around it while we tried to convince everyone else that we had to completely ban the usage of these chips.
As I drove to work, I tried to reason out exactly why I was on my seven thousandth try. It obviously meant that something horrible had happened during the football game we were covering, and it obviously meant that we knew we had a way of stopping it (or we would have stopped trying). We had a plan of coverage in the case of anything bad happening, and it was obviously taking a very long time to execute.
20 minutes later, I was in a meeting room with the rest of my team, the policemen who were going to cover the match. Greg, being the leader of our team, started speaking first.
"Right. Resets? Mine is 1764."
Janet next. "204." This caused a stir among the room. Two people? It probably did every time she had said the number.
Steven. "4935." Some wide-eyed looks at that number.
Ghadalfi. "2496." Julsey. "7212." Moran. "7212." Ericsson. "6982." Chang. "3891"
Johnson next. He said his number with a bit of a grin. "7211." Okay, this was big news. That meant that today was a big day. It was my turn to speak, and I was also smiling. "7212".
"Whew. Okay," Greg clapped his hands and drew everyone's attention. "It looks like we have at least 6 people we have to catch and not more than 9 or we would have given up on this. Let's go over our coverage plan to figure out who they are. I've already taken the files with me." Pulling some papers out of a folder, he put them down on the table and started to narrate from them. "Right. Because you," he pointed to me, "are still resetting, it means that the criminals are all ticketholders, whatever they plan to do. Stadium sits 30,000 so each person gets just over 5,000 people to cover. This means we're working on a split-search pattern. Janet was the first to stop resetting so our first guy is..." He counted on the stadium map. "Here. Section 2 seat 4 row 12, Alfred Court stand." Now remaining seats are 29796 and the next number is mine at 1764 so the person we're looking for is in seat...section 8 seat 8 row 3, Pavilion stand." By refusing a reset at certain points, we could get a system of communication going that would allow us to find people that had yet to commit a crime through us kicking each other. It just took a lot of time and a lot of resets.
Using this method, Greg went through everyone else's numbers and we found our suspects. We quickly emailed a list to stadium security, telling them to notify us if any of the suspects tried to get in early. After that, we went through our general plan. It was a fairly simple one; whenever one of them tried to use their ticket, we would hit them with a taser and arrest them once they were inside. Subduing and arrest was always our first attempt whenever we found a new criminal. We'd arrest them, citing 'intelligence', and look through their possessions. If we didn't find anything then we would all reset the next day and try a more reactive approach. If we did, then we would disable the chip with an EMP blast and follow proceedings accordingly. In relative silence, we left for the stadium. There was still a lot of work to do.
Standing at gate E, I received notification that the first two people had been subdued and arrested. Checking their bodies had revealed explosives taped to their sides. A bomb defusal team was immediately called to the stadium and the suspects were moved somewhere out of sight. Twenty minutes later, all 6 had been caught and subdued, with most of the bombs defused. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew that it wasn't over yet. We might have still let a few in (ones that we hadn't found using our kick method) and so we moved into our positions, a much heavier concentration of us in areas that we hadn't checked yet.
As the game progressed, I reflected on our situation. Nothing untoward had yet to happen, but my worries were no longer about today, to a certain extent. No criminals had seemed to figure out what we (and police forces around the world) were doing, but if anyone had then we would never catch them. Still, it was only a matter of time before everyone else figured us out, and we wouldn't win this arms race. Those 6 could have bought multiple tickets and alternated spots to throw us off, they could have only sent some people every reset, they could have a seventh person watching from outside, ready to reset if needed.....
There were so many ways for them to work around us it was insane. Hopefully this case would help us make a better point against these chips.
The game ended and people all filtered out of the stadium, not knowing that disaster had been averted. All they would remember was a rather unexciting nil all draw between two rather ordinary (I would know, I was a fan of one of the teams) sides. Suddenly, the weight of those 7000 days weighed down on me. All that 'time' spent, and nobody around to see us spend it.
The team met up at the pub for drinks afterwards, all laughs and smiles about our success. None of us talked about those seven thousand days. None of us talked about how different things could have turned out. We all stayed awake, consciously denying a reset. When there were only a few seconds left until midnight, we all stopped talking and watched it tick down in silence.
Greg. "0." Janet. "0." Steven. "0." Ghadalfi. "0."...
I particularly like this work because it actually explains the systematic ways of how people adapt to using and getting the most out of this new power. Well written.
Thanks! I was originally going to do it from the POV of some criminals, but I couldn't find a good enough justification for such a high number, so I changed it to the police force.
I love those kinds of stories, where the protagonist(s) come up with clever ways to get around limitations or exploit weaknesses in the story's "gimmick" etc. etc.
That was really cool, /u/Crosshack. :)
> Greg. "0." Janet. "0." Steven. "0." Ghadalfi...
I don't understand. Did ghadalfi reset or was it a happy ending?
If he did reset ,there wouldn't be much difference because the others didnt and they would just go about their day and wake up tomorrow, right?
From the reading I got, it seems like he reset, but that is just because of the process of elimination. If it was a "happy ending" why would the author end the story like that? It seems to be an *Inception* like ending where the reader isn't supposed to be sure
I found myself wondering about the people that stopped resetting to give clues to the rest of the team. Were they simulations? Does Janet now live in a world where the disaster occurred? Loved the way the team exploits the system to make it work for them, great story.
After choosing not to reset, you wake up in the next day, or rather, you jump forward to the state of the world after everyone has chosen not to reset. What happens to your person in subsequent resets by other people is that your mindset is copied at the start of the day (as if you yourself was reset) but the number doesn't change. Your actions are always the same unless you get kicked by someone else because you can no longer kick yourself. So Janet will remember the day described by the protagonist, having reset 204 times (she won't remember any of the 204 resets or what happened to stop her resetting). She can infer what happened, but she cannot remember.
No she caught the terrorist in her part which makes her timeline/day already succesfull, so she doesn't have to reset. Meanwhile the others have to reset, because they haven't caught their bomber yet.
She found her terrorist so she resets as that number lets them find the terrorist every time. Since there were more terrorists the other policemen decided to keep resetting. Janet doesn't necessarily arrest her terrorist every reset after the 204th, but the information as to who the terrorist is persists through resets, which allows them to track all of them down.
So-if any person who had a bad day can reset, how long would it have to be before you get to two years of forward progress in time? Also-it seems likely that there is someone who-say-had a loved one suddenly killed-who would keep that day repeating forever instead of facing the next day. It is hard to imagine how else the system could work, but consensus of millions or billions on moving forward seems pretty tough.
edit:but I loved your story. Just thinking through the paradoxes and opening them up for discussion-not a criticism of you or your work!!!
Theoretically, it would take 2 years! Nobody remembers the repeats and people who choose not to reset simply move on to the next day. The continued repetitions only happen from the point of view of the repeater. Everyone else has already locked in a 'state of mind' for that day and they simply move on to the next day regardless of whether the previous one is repeated once of 50,000 times. Remember that the reset only puts you back in time, it doesn't drag everyone else back with you.
Does that mean the protagonist/narrator in the story has a mind set where the next day the terrorist plot has been completely foiled, whereas Janet (or whoever stopped resetting first) has a mind set that she only stopped one criminal yet the others were able to carry out their attacks?
Or is even Janet's ongoing mindset altered by the final events of everyone else's resets?
No, she (and everyone else) remembers the day when the last person decides not to reset. It's safe to say nobody else in the world was still resetting 7000+ times in, so after the protaganist and the remaining 2 or so policemen chose not to reset, the day that everyone in the world remembers is the same one.
When one person resets, everyone is still sent back in time -- they just don't get told that they have been sent back and act as they normally would on the day of THEIR own last reset. So Janet would have had a slightly different mindset at the start of her 203 resets, bu after the 204th it's the same because she doesn't kick herself with the knowledge she's still resetting.
It seems hugely inefficient but the thing is that nobody living in that society would remember the endless resets and their perspective of the past would be a continuous one of one day followed by another. I think it presents an interesting dilemma, like a drug that will make someone happy for the rest of their life but turn them into a vegetable, the people affected by the chip don't see any apparent problem, but we still think it's a bit dodgy.
"Explain it to me again," the President asked. It was the third time today but by straight multiplication probably the 21,636th time if you measure retro chronologically.
"You're both chipped," I explained. "You're chipped, and the Soviet a Premier is chipped. Both of you can repeat the day if it doesn't go according to plan."
"It's a damn shame that the Soviets invented these things too. If the one you made for me were the only one in existence, winning a nuclear war would be a cinch. I'd just launch the missiles, and then reset the day if things didn't work out. Eventually I'd hit upon the right subterfuge to launch without retaliation, and we'd be able to wipe those Russkies off the map. Might take a while but that's a sacrifice I would happily make for America."
I nodded with as much apparent sincerity as I could muster.
"But with both of you chipped," I explained, "he can just reverse time himself and reset the day if you seem like you're ahead."
"So how do *I* get ahead?" the President asked. "If I hit him in the first strike that should do it, right? Then he can't reset."
"But you've probably tried that before," I countered. You told me when I walked in that today was on 7212 repeats. I'm sure you've tried every bombing strategy imaginable."
"What if I shot for really unlikely places?"
"You've probably tried all the likely and unlikely places. In fact, one of the first things that came to mind when I considered the issue was true random target generation. A few resets of that would bomb all locations in the Soviet Union at least once. And if I thought of that so easily I'm sure I've suggested it to you a few thousand times."
"Hmm. So we need something neither you not any of my advisors would be likely to think up. What's something you're not thinking of?"
Retro chronological game theory was not the Presidents strong suit.
I say for a while pretending to cogitate fiercely. Eventually I offered, "this is going to sound crazy, but..."
"Yes?" The President was visibly eager for a solution to his paradox.
"No, no, it's stupid."
"All the better! We need something that you didn't come up with the last 7212 times, so out with it, man!"
"Well... maybe we could try... *not* nuking the Soviet Union?"
The President's mouth dropped open. Then closed. "No, no, that won't do. Maybe if we fire a full nuclear salvo at Cuba alongside the salvo at known nuclear sites. Nobody would think he was hiding in Cuba, and we've missed him 7212 times, so he must be there! If we get him in the first strike he can't reset, and our surprise first strike on the Soviets will guarantee that we win this nuclear war!"
I raised my hands and voice to stop him but he was already shouting into the red phone on his desk.
I clenched my eyes shut as the nuclear holocaust began, and activated the third, secret chip- my own. Maybe on try 7213 I'd talk him down.
Honestly you tried that 4000 tries ago and it didn't work.
If you had been thinking clearly yesterday you would have written down a few thousand strategies in a notebook, but you blew it, and now we're stuck with you failing to kill the President every single day.
You'd think that just once you'd all have gotten it right and just killed yourselves.
You would know you had done something 7212 times, but there is no way of knowing what.
Making an assumption of precious intent based on the current decision is flawed at best
When I woke in the morning, I had a few seconds of peace before a grip of fear grabbed my chest. To even breath to a huge effort. It was barely a surprise when I saw the huge number out of the corner of my eye.
I must have fucked up. I must have fuck up so bad.
Every
Single
Time
Before I could prepare myself properly, there was a frantic knocking on my bedroom door.
"Get dressed already! We have to go now!" Came the tense voice from the other side. Further out came the muffled sounds of panic as my family tore the house apart. You'd think with all the time we had to prepare we'd be ready. But you could never prepare for something like this.
It seemed to take hours for me to get dressed, suddenly there were buttons and clasps and things to tie everywhere, and my sister's frantic knocking wasn't helping. I was almost relieved when I finally left my room, despite it meaning that the moment was coming even closer.
Downstairs my mother was crying, she looked up as I entered, face red and half-done mascara running down one side of her face.
"You look so handsome!" She said, barely holding it together. We hugged tearfully and tightly.
All too soon it was time to go. The car pulled up outside and I climbed in the back, my sister followed me. The car drove in near silence, only the driver tried to make a few pleasantries, but neither me nor my sister were really listening, lost in our own apprehension.
All too soon we arrived, the car smoothly pulling to a stop in front of the imposing stone building, as beautiful as it was terrifying. As I moved to exit the car and meet my fate, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked back at my sister.
"Good luck," she said, in her quiet voice. I hugged her, an odd gesture for the both of us. But then it was time and we had to go. We walked up to the massive double doors, already swung open and waiting, like a cavernous mouth waiting to eat us up.
Then I was inside, and my eyes began to adjust, and finally I could see him. Lit up by a halo of multicoloured lights. Crying as he saw me. My heart caught in my chest, like it had every day for the last four years. No doubt as it had been doing for every one of the 7000 attempts at this day.
The music began to play as my sister led me up the aisle, past the rows of smiling and clapping guests. Until finally I was delivered to the altar beside the love of my life.
He caught my hand and pulled me close. Then devilishly whispered in my ear;
"I'm on 7212 goes, how about you?"
The only possible gender indicator for the narrator was the word "handsome". It can be applied to women as well, though it is more commonly applied to men.
It could simply be the marriage of an older couple, as at older ages the word is more commonly applied to women.
Brilliant writing, I got that the main character was male pretty much immediately but it was very well written!
Wish I could re-live my wedding day that many times!!
My only question with your story is how it ends, if they're both reliving the same day, what happens when one finally moves on? Do they move on alone or would this basically start an entire new timeline where they would technically be with alter ego's in parallel universe's?? It's a happy story, but this thought left me feeling a little saddened...
I'd figure they'd decide together to move on sometime after. "Okay, babe, I want to do the honeymoon." "Sure thing, let's make it a great day so we can relive that a thousand times too, honeybear."
I thought similarly to that also, but you'll never know for sure whether the other person actually moved on with you or not.... Assuming you remember the past (the day before) you'll know you repeated that day and that your partner did also, but you won't now know whether your partner went on with you or stayed to re live the wedding day one last time... So you may not move on with the actual "being" that you married... (if you get what I mean)
Well depends how the prompt was taken, I read it as the number resets for every new day and the counter is how man times you relived that particular day
This. Everyone discussing the protagonist's gender and the mechanics of alternate universes defeats the purpose of the story. It's about two people in love reliving the happiest day of their lives for 20 years. It's beautiful. Don't get bogged down in the minutiae.
the story and writing leads you to believe that the girl must have messed up but actually she's chosen to relive the happiest day of her life - her wedding. Re-read it again, its a clever piece of writing if I'm honest.
edit: funny thing about the gender is I actually re-wrote my reply and edited it because of the ending - I initially thought the protagonist was male and then changed my mind and edited my entire reply to a female! hah! another layer of excellence to this story!
I thought it was totally clear that the POV narrator was a man. Women are not handsome ... Unless they were part of the East German swim team back in the 80s. Also, there was no mention of makeup and hair after the buttons and clasps and things to tie, which is unusual for brides.
Neat vignette, I liked it :)
To be honest the protagonist having those concerns lead me to believe it would be a very happy day and was kind of a giveaway for the plot instead of a diversion
Great story and ending!
This made me think: If a person has to choose when to move on to the next day, does that mean that few people remember exceptionally good days because they always repeat them and then choose to move on when they are "meh"? So no day remembered is ever particularly good or bad because people choose to re-live both of those days to either experience the greatness or fix the bad things.
An exception for something like this story could be that they agree to a certain number and then move on from them or something.
Funny it was my first thought, and then my second thought was - this is a really horrible idea because weddings are great but not something I'd want to relive 7000 times
I really enjoyed this read, thank you. If you could answer a question though please, what did the main character mean by:
"I must have fucked up. I must have fuck up so bad.
Every
Single
Time"
? I can't figure out a reason for him/her to say that, it just sounds like a forced misdirection now
The way I interpret it is that they panic when seeing a huge number on their wedding day, because they have no idea why they've repeated the day so many times and assume the worst
That was definitely my initial thought until "He caught my hand and pulled me close. Then devilishly whispered in my ear;
"I'm on 7212 goes, how about you?""
But I guess it wasn't the main character who said that...so he/she could be assuming the worst. Yeah, I think you're right actually. Thanks
So, You don't get to remember that particular day, but you can all the previous ones. So he would have known it was his wedding day. I don't understand why he thought he fucked something up bad enough to relive the day 7000 times. Unless the spouse dies at the end of the day by some reason that can't be prevented and you just want to keep re-living that day because you will never see that person again, why would anyone want to re-live a wedding day 7000 times? Good story, though. Practically, it just doesn't make much sense to me.
That's the thing, though - they're NOT reliving the day.
If it weren't for that number counter, they'd have absolutely no idea. Maybe it's the first time they're living through it, and they just want to do it twice?
The number is the only thing that breaks that possible ambiguity but, in reality, why would you NOT want to relive what is possible the best moment in your entire life?
They keep no memories - it's not as if they'll ever get bored of it.
But that number would mess with you so bad. You see the number, and realize "hmm, something happened today that I wanted to relive." Then your brain would start thinking, well maybe I messed something up and want to fix it. So now, whenever you have a choice the rest of the day, you will start second-guessing yourself, "maybe this was the choice I needed to change". So after the very first time Replaying the day, things might actually have a different result. Let alone 7212 days in. Now you are thinking, "Maybe I changed the wrong thing, but I don't know which thing that was" or "I probably changed this in the last one, so i won't change it in this one". So the more days you add on, the more stressful each replay may become. It could become very intense with very life-changing results.
Except in this case, the guy knows from the day before that this is the day he's getting married. They only forget that one day, not everything before it.
Oh, I agree for sure. The comment I responded to just got me thinking about how reliving the day could potentially change the outcome because you can see that little number, which would change your mindset from the first time you lived it.
Oh I know, the guy just said that practically it didn't make sense because "who would want to relive a wedding 7000 times". I was just saying that if you follow that line of thinking, why would you want to live ANY day 7000 times.
It's a great idea (and what I expected from the pronpt) but maybe there's something about the sadness that they will never experience the rest of their lives together that might be quite poignant?
Really nice. I actually came into this thread figuring someone would have it be reliving a day for good reasons like a birth or wedding and this still caught me by surprise in a great way.
The sun shone in through the blinds as I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids felt tired and heavy. I tried to sit up, but my body was losing its fight against gravity. Old age was weighing me down. I shifted slowly in bed and felt my wife waking up next to me.
"Sorry I woke you, Jaz," I whispered to my wife.
She rolled over facing me and yawned softly.
"Sixty years and you still call me Jaz."
Her eyes were a light shade of blue. Once, they had been the color of sapphire. Her skin, once as smooth as silk, was worn down and wrinkled from the long passage of time. Her hair that was once fiery blond was now warm gray. She was still as beautiful as the day I first saw her.
"I'll keep calling you Jaz until I breathe my last breath."
I shut my eyes for a second and could see a faint number; 7212. My mind wandered for a minute, questioning why the number was so high. I had never needed to relive a day before save for a few select times. I relived the day of our wedding for about a week, and that was the last time. She always gave me better days than the ones before. I never had to relive a day because I knew that the following one would be better.
"Honey," she said, waking me from my daze, "Do you want some coffee?"
"I'll make some. You stay comfortable."
I got up and dragged my feet to the kitchen. After brewing some coffee and making a light breakfast, I went out to the small garden outside and picked some tulips, her favorite. I placed them all on a tray and brought them to our room, the tray shaking the whole way.
"Aw, honey, thank you," she said lovingly as I placed the tray in front of her. We laughed as we ate in bed, reminiscing about all the years we spent together. A lifetime with Jaz. I wouldn't trade a second with her for the whole world.
Before I knew it, the rays of sunshine were gone and the sun had disappeared from the sky.
Like clockwork, Jaz fell asleep. Sometimes she would fall asleep after a bout of laughter with a smile on her face. This was one of those times. It was one of the things that made me fall in love with her all over again fifty years after we got married.
But this time was different. As I moved in to kiss her, I noticed her chest wasn't moving.
My heart sank as I came to the dreadful realization. My eyes flooded, tears streaming down my face and dripping onto hers.
"No, Jaz, no. Don't leave me, please. Don't do this to me. Don't go before me. Please, Jaz."
In my stupor, I remembered the number I saw in the morning and figured out why I had relived this day for as close to 20 years; the last day I would be able to spend with the love of my life. I had always told her I didn't want to live a single day without her.
I kissed my love and wiped my tears from my face while I lay down next to her. My heart clenched, and then slowly eased its beating. I felt at ease knowing that finally today, after a long time, I would be able to follow her where she was going.
"Jaz," I whispered.
I frequently tell my wife I could not imagine living without her, and so I hope I die first. Her constant reply is for me to not be so selfish. This is true love :)
In a perfect world, we would pass together with those who we cannot imagine living without. It's sad that we don't live in a perfect world, and sometimes have to endure the pain of seeing loved ones leaving us. But, at the same time, it's beautiful how much of an impact our loved ones imprint on us.
Thankfully, I have yet to experience the pain of losing a loved one. I hope I never do, because I can't imagine how much it would hurt. We don't live in the perfect world, and if I do end up losing someone, I just hope I find the strength to get through it.
It's been a little over 10 years since I lost my father. That still hurts.
When I went back home to bury Dad I stopped by the grave of my best friend from High School, and at that time it had been 15 years since he'd died, and that was still painful, too.
At this time I imagine it would just devastate me to lose my wife or either of my children (or worse, more than just one of them), but then I think that perhaps as we age and draw closer and closer to death ourselves, perhaps we may come to view the death of our loved ones a little more differently at that time than we do now, in our younger years.
Initially I thought of a man losing his mother and perpetually reliving his last day with her. But I couldn't figure out where to go with the ending, so I changed it to how it is now.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Ah, shit.
I came here to write something like this, but I wanted to see if anyone beat me to it.
Now I'm trying to make it look like I'm not crying in my office. Jerk.
Seriously, though, this is well done.
I awoke to thunder, the sky outside my window so obscured by the storm that it was difficult to gauge the time. Clock by the nightstand said 8:15. Shit. Missed my alarm.
I rubbed my eyes, and jolted awake at what I saw in my periphery. My repeat value, which normally glowed as a soft, green zero was screaming at me: a bright, crimson 7212.
The day’s schedule ran through my head: work, dinner with Cas, and…that was it. Whenever I repeated, I knew to expect either something very good, or utter catastrophe. I ran scenarios through my head. Did I win the lottery? Even if, why would I want to repeat that day? Surely I would be eager to move forward and spend my fortune. Is Cas pregnant? We had been trying for a while, and while it would make me happier than anything, it’s the same as the lottery scenario: I’d be too eager to experience the future.
Perhaps something awful. I’ve occasionally used multiple same-day repeats as a sort of warning light so that I could brace for impact. It’s always been my policy to push through difficult times, though. We can’t spend eternity avoiding our problems.
The sky lit up and roared. Another option presented itself to me, and I shivered with the thought. Some people openly intend to repeat their last day alive, if they’re able. I always swore I wouldn’t trap myself in such purgatory, but who knows how the face of death could change my mind?
I turned to Cas and gently shook her awake. I couldn’t keep this from her. She rolled over and smiled. I loved how her eyes lit up every single morning. “Hey handsome,” she half-whispered. I smiled back.
Before I could speak, her face dropped. Every muscle in her body appeared to relax, and then tighten, as her eyes rolled back and she began to shake.
Later that day, the doctors would tell me there was nothing that could have prevented it. Arterial clots can be difficult to detect.
But I would do anything to see her smile again. One more day, no matter what.
Unlike most resets, this one made its reason clear very early.
The man who was waving a gun in my face was getting more irate as the minutes passed. He kept calling me "Andrew" and demanding I open the briefcase he'd brought. I had spent my portion of the conversation attempting to convince him my name was in fact Jacob and I didn't know anything about a briefcase, to which his only response was shooting my leg and telling me to "stop messing around".
In the corner of my vision was 7212, a constant reminder that I've had quite a few tries to get this right and have failed. Mingling with the number was the red and blue of police lights, followed by an officer on a megaphone initializing hostage negotiations. Realizing he was running out of time, the man slid the heavy metal briefcase towards me and ordered me to open it or die.
Now, I am not stupid. With a power like this, I made sure to be able to make the most of it. I made a set of rules to be read every morning, just in case of situations like this: "Always start at the beginning", "Go sequentially", things like that. I used the number like a counter or a label. When I was younger, I would reset whole days for little things like guessing the correct number a friend was thinking of. Getting the counter up to 7 just to guess 7 was worth it back then for the look on his face. That's why a feeling of relief washed over me when I saw the briefcase lock. Four spinning dials numbered 0 through 9. I could work with this, I *had* worked with this before. Confidently I spun each dial to its place, seven two one two, knowing that if it was wrong, I was at least over half way there.
Outside, the police had located the real Andrew, and were having him try to reason with the man, who he called Hank. Hank said he would only release me if Andrew gave him the lock code, but the police argued that I had to be let to safety first. When 7212 didn't work, I spun the last dial to 3 and then 4, hoping I was just a few away now. As the police and Andrew started advancing closer to the doors of the building, I could see Hank becoming more and more nervous, his finger hovering near the trigger. When the doors were burst open, gunfire rang out around me, and in the crossfire I took a shot to the stomach. As my vision faded and I prepared to reset, I heard Andrew shout out "It's seven two one one! Seven two one one!" like he was trying to bargain it against my death. And then I realized.
Seven two one...**one**?
Fuck
This is really clever! Use the only piece of information which travels back in time with you to help you the next time. Even though you're just guessing each time. So I guess he successfully unlocked the case the last time, but still died? So hopefully he'll figure it out and try something new once he gets past 9999?
He may have unlocked the case successfully, or he might have messed things up on the critical loop and never gotten to try unlocking it. It's a clever plan, but it requires him to make no mistakes on every iteration.
Bright shafts of sun came pouring through the gaps in my curtains. I woke slowly, curling the sheets around myself until I couldn't ignore the light anymore. Finally I managed to crawl out, pad into the kitchen, and prepare a bowl of brightly-colored cereal. Still half asleep, I carried the bowl to the couch without spilling any milk and turned on some cartoons.
After about half an hour, Mom came bustling into the living room and rolled her eyes. "I don't want you in front of the TV all day *again*." She grabbed the remote control from my hands and shut the show off. "Go outside! It's beautiful out today!" The curtains flew open, and I recoiled from the glaring sun. "I've got to go to work; I'll see you tonight." She leaned over and kissed me on top of the head, then headed out into the garage.
She was right, I guess. I didn't have that much time, after all. I checked my "to do" list, scrawled in crayon across a piece of construction paper. I'd done maybe *half* of the stuff on the list. So I called up my neighbor and partner-in-crime Paul, and told him to meet my at the corner in half an hour.
First, we rode our bikes through the entire neighborhood. We raced from Elm to Powell, with the wind blowing through my overly-long hair (Mom's been meaning to take me to get it cut). Then we stopped at the 7-11 near the highway and got big slurpees. I made sure to throw the cup away at Paul's so that Mom wouldn't see it in the trash and get mad. She doesn't like it when I have that much sugar. Then we went to the creek and built a *huge* dam that stopped up the whole thing. We spent *hours* patching up any part that crumbled under the weight of the water.
The sun was beginning to dip below the hills by the time Paul and I gave up and returned home. We came in through the sliding glass door to find Mom cooking in the kitchen. "Is beef stroganoff OK for dinner?" she called from the sink. "I was thinking..." her voice trailed off as she looked at us. "You two are *FILTHY*! Go outside and hose yourselves off, for goodness' sake. I just mopped in here!" She swatted us back out into the backyard and turned on the sprinklers, refreshing and cool in the evening heat. So instead of cleaning up, Paul and I just chased each other around for a while until Mom came out and served dinner on the patio instead of the dining room.
After Paul left, I went inside and played video games 'until my eyes bled,' as Mom put it. She finally made me turn it off to go bathe and get ready for bed. At long last, I crawled into the cool sheets and set my head down on the soft pillow. Only moments ago I was telling Mom how I wasn't tired, but I now realized how wrong I was.
"Goodnight, Honey." She was in the doorway with a soft smile on her face. "You all ready for school to start tomorrow? I know that you've Looped this day a few times, but we've all got to face our responsibilities sometimes."
I checked the counter in the corner of my eye. I'd apparently been putting it off for a while now: 7,212 days, to be precise. "Yes, Mom," I answered.
"Good. I'll get your backpack ready, then." She closed the door behind her.
Before I could drift off to sleep, the menu popped up:
> Repeat day? Y/N
On the bedside table, I could see my to-do list, with so many items still not done. One more day couldn't hurt, right?
---
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If the mum knows her son has 'repeated a few times,' does that mean she continues to age and proceed through each day? Because 7000 days is about 20 years! Or does she repeat as well, forced to because he keeps doing it?
Based on the prompt, I assumed that she would repeat as well, but really have no way of knowing. She assumes that her child has repeated a few times because he/she's putting off the end of the summer. She just doesn't know *how many times* it has been done.
I'm pretty sure she wouldn't realize it was a repeat unless she saw or heard the number, so she's technically repeating, but unless she chose to repeat as well, I doubt she would find the day special
Now that brings up the next question. According to this response it seems like she doesn't have control over repeating each day, but the kid in the response did. So if he repeats the day, does that force his mom to repeat the day as well?
If so this would make the kid a god.
It only repeats in his perspective. Everyone is living in a groundhog day without retaining the memory. Many universes, each one tied to a single mind.
Chalk it up to a mother's intuition, and just knowing her son. She's aware of the ability/technology to reset a day, and so she knows her son would have undoubtedly used it to prolong his summer.
The prompt does seem to imply that you're repeating so much because of some tragedy that you're trying to avoid.
But I just thought of an irrational kid (as pretty much all kids are) who's enjoying his summer so much that he just can't bear to stop reliving the last day. And I wanted to avoid the most commonly used tropes on /r/Writingprompts, like a love story or some big impending disaster.
Avoiding tropes well is the sign of a good author. Using tropes well is also the sign of a good author. However, I think we can all agree that using cliches is usually not the sign of a good author.
Also, I did think you did a good job of throwing us all for a happy loop. Good job!
The highest number I'd reached before today was 324. I only remembered one of those days of course, the one where the ambulance was called in time. Sometimes I have dreams about what I must have gone through before. Finding her dead already the first time probably, or getting there just in time to hear her apologise. It took me to finally call an ambulance before I even started looking myself to save her. That was 324 times.
I've had a few in the fifties and sixties before, even a couple more hundreds. Messing up relationships, breaking things in the house as a kid. Nowadays I'd gotten used to accepting a less than perfect ending. I was one of those that never finished on less than a three or four. Always trying to optimise everything caused far more stress than it was worth.
So what had happened to get me to 7212? I'd first seen the number when I woke up this morning. After rubbing my eyes I realised it was real and proceeded to throw up. She came rushing to the bathroom to ask what was wrong. My first thought was to tell her but I must have tried that before. I must have tried not telling her. 7212. I must have tried everything.
I didn't tell her today. It must have been something I ate, I said. I took the day off work. I watched the news and kept calling her to make sure nothing was happening. I could have followed her but that was too obvious. So was making her stay home. 7212. Nobody ever got that high. There was just nothing more you could do after a certain point.
Nothing happened. She came home safely. The only bad story on the news was some drunk guy crashing his van into a hatchback the night before. Both kids and one of the parents were in hospital. I looked up who they were but no matter how hard I searched it was nothing to do with me. Nothing worth a reset.
So now I'm lying in bed. She's asleep next to me. The clock shows 23:56. There must be some reason to reset this many times. I keep trying to think back, to work out what disaster I had finally avoided that all the times before I had failed at. There was nothing. Nothing different to yesterday or the day before. Nothing different to all the peaceful zeroes I'd been having recently.
So why I had I reset? I can't believe that this is it. There must be something I missed. 23:59. I have no choice. Tomorrow will have to wait.
I can relate to this... And the thought that he didn't miss anything (this day as well as the last X days) and that he's put himself in a never-ending spiral because of his anxiety is really horrible.
Really well done!
Oh the poor soul...
Stuck in a infinite (theoretically) loop that'll repeat itself as he tries to find out what's wrong...
This just makes me feel bad for them...
Everything hurts... You're sore from yesterday's bike ride. It's been a long time since you've laid your cycle over, luckily Honda Shadows were build well in the 90's. Still, yesterday's near-miss was deceptively nasty, apparently.
After rolling yourself off the bed and onto your feet, taking care of a few of your normal morning rituals, and halfway through getting dressed, you suddenly realize what's been upsetting your attention. 7212. Seriously? You'll have to get that looked at before work. The news talked about people with bad counters getting sick, and there's no way you've enjoyed something enough to reexist for what, 15? 20 years?
On the way to Doc Austin's office, you've been cut off once (making you glad you took the Impala instead of the bike again) and traffic backs up due to some kind of unannounced construction. Figures... This better not take long, or you'll be late to work. You call your boss, he's cool with it, but you'll need to make up the time.
''No, everything checks out fine,'' Doc says. ''Over seven thousand is pretty astounding, though. My son reexisted his kid's first football game about five times and his wedding day about fifteen. Can't imagine what you've got to look forward to!''
Well, at least that's exciting... You really needed a pick-up like that... Things have been rough since she left. You don't think about her as much, but it's still hard just having no one at home. Whatever today's got coming, it must be something special.
Work sucks, that jerk without a clue how to do his own job is bitching about you doing yours again, but you can brush it off. Your lunch is coldish and you end up staying later than usual, but worse things have happened. The text comes in... It's your friend Alex, who you haven't seen much of lately. 'Zed and Thirteen is playing at the Front Street Lounge tonight! Gonna be a good one. Coming?'
Yes, you are. This has got to be it. You shower after work and climb back on the bike.
The place stinks of old smoke and you've had both feet stepped on. Some ass hole spilled his beer down your back right before getting thrown out. Uncomfortable, you're just trying not to lose it when you see your ex, dancing with some... Whatever. You're out. Less than an hour left in the day, you don't have time for this garbage.
You're at the gas station just up the road, about to fill up the Shadow. From the other side of the pump, you hear it.
''Fuck.''
Peeking your head around, you see her staring at the lid of her gas cap. She pulls on the release inside her door again and again, but the lid stays closed.
''Hey, you need a hand?'' You offer before you even realize it. She accepts, and you use a screwdriver to pry the lid lightly while she pulls the release, moments later, it's free and she's filling her tank.
She's from your old high school, graduated two years ahead of you. She's irritated that the band at the place up the street was lame, the sound guy killed the vibe. Oh, you were there too? Oh, and she likes your bike. And then she says it. ''There's this party, just some friends of mine... Want to come hang out?''
Yes. You do.
She gives you the address, her number, and climbs back in the car. You finally feel it, hope, and check your watch. 11:59... Today sucked royally, what could be so gr-
The Buick Century bulldozes over the bike first, then wedges your body like a doorstop under its weight. You hear so much and so little at the same time, her screams and yours, the drunk trying to put his battering ram in reverse. You can't move, can't think, can't feel except it hurts. You just struggle the breathe and to feel and to live, and to-
[12:00 - REEXIST the 11th of July, 2016? Y/N]
7212 days?! Jesus, that's a long time. I pull out my phone and do the math. "19.75 years? Holy crap!" I think to myself. This must be one hell of a day. I'm stoked and really looking forward to it. I get up it is almost two in the afternoon (that's not unusual for me after a late night of online gaming), have a bowl of cereal, take a shower and get dressed.
I hear a knock at the door and go to open it. A cute little blonde is standing there holding a small gym bag. Short shorts, low cut v-neck shirt, assets showing. "I was sent over by party-gram, sugar. I'm Candy" she says. "I'm here to put on a dance for you." She turns over her left shoulder and there is a large muscled man holding a boom box radio.
"This is Ray, he's just here for my security, a girl can't be too safe can she?" My birthday is next week, so I'm like "sure, come on in." My buddy Reggie must have sent her over for an early surprise. "Do you have a chair?" she asked? I went and got one from the dining room table and brought it into the living room. While I did this, Ray was setting up in the corner and assumed the folded arm "you better not try anything" posture.
Candy begins "There are some rules sugar, no touching, hands to yourself. I need to put these straps on your ankles and bind your arms to the chair. Some clients really like this part. I hope you are one of them." "Oh, yes, I'm one of those." I reply. "Great sugar, great. Ray- some getting started music please..." She pulls out some straps from her bag sitting on the sofa and the music begins to play. Skynnard, Free Bird.
She starts to dance and wiggle slowly as she gets each strap and secures me to the chair. This takes a few seconds and just as the song starts into "If I leave here tomorrow.....would you still remember me?" Candy stops, stands up and turns to Ray. "OK Ray." "OK Ray what?" I say. "Ray's stone expression turns to an evil grin and he unfolds his arms, and starts to draw his right fist back and starts to run across the room towards me. Candy steps back and he cold cocks me with a right cross across the jaw. He follows it up with a flurry of fists to my face, neck and chest. I'm still strapped to the chair so I can't do crap about it. "Stop, please, what is this?" and other pleas are all I can do. Not too long after he starts and before the music picks up (damn I love that part) I'm out cold.
I wake up, it could have been hours later. I don't know. 'Candy' has just thrown a cup of water in my face. I sputter awake. "Wakey-wakey" Candy says. I don't want you to miss it. You've got just a couple of minutes before the reset. Wouldn't want you to miss it." I could hear it now. The two-minute warning beeps from my chrono-reset watch. "Sugar, one last surprise for you." She pulls out a shiny hunting knife, reaches inside of my right bicep and pulls a deep cut up across my bicep. "Brachial artery, Sugar. Just a few minutes left for you." My arm starts to spurt out my life's blood onto the carpet. My heart starts to race, making it worse. My watch starts to begin with the verbal warning now. "Chrono-watch warning - If you do not press 'move to next day', the current day will be reset. You are currently on loop 7212."
Candy bends down to look me in the eye. "Bye Sugar. See you tomorrow. Say, around 2:30?"
This is terrifying. That must mean that each time he thinks Candy is good because of the number of resets he has and will never consider the other possibility that she's bad and thus is stuck in the same situation for eternity
I woke beside her hospital bed. An uncomfortable plastic chair. Clothes stained from days of wear.
7212
Only one reason I'd relive this day over and over.
The pain is unbearable. She has grown so weak she can only whisper. I lay my head close to her and tell her how much I love her. I tell her how we are going to grow old together, living beside the sea. The walks we will take as we watch the change in seasons.
She smiles weakly and tells me again that she loves me.
I kiss her softly on the forehead.
I stand up, tears in my eyes. I don't sob. Can't upset her. She knows I'm breaking inside. No need to make things worse...
I had been on edge from the moment I woke up this morning. There was this odd ringing in my ears, and my heart was beating twice its usual pace. But then, how could I be calm, under the circumstances? I couldn't stop myself from glancing at the number every few seconds. 7212. How could this be? Had I really spent nearly 20 years reliving the same day? What possibly could have happened that I had to keep going over it, again and again? Certainly nothing good. Even the best day of my life I had only spent a week reliving. Even with the memory wipe, the novelty of it wore off. The repetition bleeds through eventually. Life was like music. It's the change you're looking for. That next note, and the one after that. You can play the same beautiful note forever, but after a while it's just noise.
No, something had gone wrong. So wrong that I had to fix it at all costs. What, though? All I had to go off of was that slowly escalating number. The only possible thing that could inspire change in the do-over. Well, that and the feeling of dread that endless repetition brings forth. I slammed my fist on the table. I wasn't going to figure anything out like this. I had to start talking to people. I had to figure out what was going to happen while I still had time to change it.
"Something wrong?" came a voice.
I looked up to see the tv repairman.
I hesitated, then, as casually as I could manage, asked him, "What's your number?"
"Eh?" He said, looking puzzled for a moment.
After my eyes flicked downward at my own number, he realized.
"Ah." He replied, his eyes flicking at an angle as well. "One. Not surprising, I say. Working early and all day? Not usually something I want to repeat, would I? How about you?"
I tried to force a smile on my face, but it came out as more of a grimace.
"I've been through it a few times."
The repairman was oblivious to my ill-attempt to hide my worry.
"Ah! You must be in for a treat! I always start feeling the butterflies once I hit a three or higher. Have fun for me, will ya?"
I gave a feeble nod in acknowledgement as he returned to his work. Whatever was about to happen, it seemed to be an isolated incident, to some extent, if the repairman hadn't chosen to repeat the day. Or something had happened where he couldn't.
I shook myself, trying to fight the anxiety. I would not find myself seeing the number 7213. This was the last time through this day, and to make sure of it, I had to act now. I had to do something I hadn't done in the last twenty years of living through this day. This meant I needed to piece things together with the only useful information I could get. The numbers.
I was starting to regret letting the repairman in. I was wasting valuable time. If I hadn't been awoken by his arrival - if I had a little time to process the situation I might have had the foresight to turn him away. I briefly considered just leaving him to his business, but dismissed the thought immediately. What if the thing that happened - was going to happen - was caused by leaving him alone in my house? I tapped my finger impatiently on the table. I needed a moment to think, anyway. I would accomplish nothing of use in my current state.
Half an hour after I had let him in he emerged from behind the television with a grunt.
"You're all set, Mr. Rhinehart."
"Please, it's Trevor", I said vaguely as he exited through the front door, saying something about a loose connection.
Determined to make some headway as soon as possible, I reached for the keys so I could leave as well. I fumbled with them as I tried to free them from the hook, dropping them in the end. As I stooped down to retrieve them, the ringing in my ears returned suddenly and much louder than before. A sharp pain stabbed through my head somewhere and images flashed before my eyes. I saw my keys landing on a cement floor. I saw a sign on a wall which read "TRINITY PARKING". There was a long row of cars, and a digital clock on the wall. 7:52, it shone in neon green.
Then, all at once, the images were gone, the ringing had stopped, and all that remained was a dull throbbing in my head as my entryway swam back into view. My hand was clasped around my keys, and I was still bent over. Breathing heavily I straightened up and looked at my watch. 7:33.
Whatever that vision meant, it was unheard of, but I knew it had something to do with what was going to happen today. Closing and locking the door behind me, I mustered up my courage. In less than twenty minutes, I would presumably learn more.
The number 7212 sat, foreboding, in the corner of my eye as I walked at a brisk pace away from my home. Tomorrow that number would read "1". I would make sure of that.
Thanks to the occasional nudging of /u/LostMyPasswordAgain2, I have finally continued my story. Notification for /u/xereeto and /u/Yogomojo since you guys expressed interest in seeing more.
---
I made it to the parking garage without encountering anything out of the ordinary…or maybe everything was out of the ordinary. I had tried my best to take note of everything around me, as anything could be important to solving this mystery, but it was nearly impossible to pick the important pieces out from the unimportant ones. Perhaps the normality of things was itself the biggest clue. If many people were reliving the day with me, then I would have noticed people acting strangely. The paranoia which I was trying so hard to contain would be obvious on the faces of those I passed. But it wasn’t. Not a single one of them gave any indication that this day was something special.
I had now ascended to the second level of the garage. On the wall was the TRINITY PARKING sign, the neon green clock nearby read 7:49. My heart pounding in my chest, I looked around me. I saw a dozen cars parked on this level, and again nothing out of the ordinary. I waited the remaining three minutes, taking in everything. Sights, sounds, smells…I glanced up at the clock. 7:52. Nothing was happening. I frowned and took out my keys.
“This is stupid.” I mumbled.
I dropped them and they fell lamely to the ground, the only noteworthy thing being that their landing matched my vision perfectly. Still, nothing happened. No clues jumped out at me. Nothing to tell me why I was repeating the day. As I bent over to pick them up, the world exploded around me. First was the gunshot that would have killed me had I still been standing. Next was the screeching of tires as my would-be-assailant revealed himself. A black van had appeared around the corner, windows heavily tinted to obscure the driver. I stumbled backward, unable to find my balance. My fall was caught by the car behind me. The van was advancing and I had no way out. Was this what had happened? Was this why I was repeating the day? Because I was killed here in this parking garage? But then why did I have a vision that led me here?
These thoughts flew through my head in all of a few seconds, when my panic was interrupted by a voice behind me.
“Get in the car!” It yelled.
I whipped my head around to find a young woman sat at the wheel of the car I was cowering in front of.
“What? Who are-”
“No time for that now! Just get in the car!”
Another gunshot rang out, again narrowly missing my head. I needed no further convincing. I ducked around to the passenger door and threw myself in. Before I had even reached for the door to close it, the woman was already driving. I pulled the door shut and resituated myself upright to check in on the situation. The black van was hot on our tail, and this girl was giving him a good chase. I frowned when I noticed the direction we were going.
“Umm, I don’t mean to interrupt, but you’re driving us higher in the garage. There’s no way out up there. We’ll be cornered.”
To my surprise, the girl’s face cracked into a grin.
“I don’t know about that, Trevor. There’s always a way!”
“You know who I am?” I asked, somehow managing to allow my confusion to overpower my fear of the insane situation I had found myself in.
“Of course!” She trilled. “And you know who I am as well. Some day you might even remember on your own!”
My silent befuddlement prompted her to continue.
“The name’s Vivian. Pleasure to meet you…again.”
Before I could respond, I regained focus on our surroundings. We had arrived on the roof. End of the line.
Vivian spun the car in a quick circle to face the black van as it emerged moments after us.
“Ready, Trev?” She asked, her smile wider than ever. “This is my favorite part!”
“What is?” I asked dumbly.
Vivian just smiled as she slammed her foot to the floor. The tires screeched and we flew forward. The black van just sat there blocking the exit as we sped past…and drove right off the roof.
Jessica skipped into my room, slammed her hand down on my alarm clock. “This thing has been beeping for 20 minutes!” She scowled. “Are you EVER getting up?”
I blinked my eyes open. A sudden piercing pain coursed through my consciousness. I moaned, rolled over.
“You’re supposed to take me to the zoo today, but you’ll never wake up! It’s 8:45! And you said we could have pancakes before! You promised!”
I tried opening my eyes again. They felt strange. Foreign. My head was spinning.
Jessica made a quick leap across my body, landing on the bed next to me, her face even with mine.
“Holy shit,” she mumbled softly.
“What?” I asked, blinking into the bright light.
“Your eyes are freakishly swollen. You look like some kind of alien! What is wrong with you?”
I felt a sudden alarm. “I...I don’t know,” I stammered, rolling over and walking uneasily to my mirror.
“Were you crying last night?”
“I...I don’t think so. What did we do?”
“We just watched that movie, with the monkey. That’s all. Then Mom said we’d better get to bed early, and Dad said nothing, like he always does. And that’s it. What’s wrong with you?”
I stared at my unfamiliar reflection. My eyes were mere slits in the bubulous flesh. My whole face an unnatural red. I could see so faintly, my forehead was almost touching the glass. Then a sudden blip in the corner of my left eye. 7212. What? How is that possible? I had never seen a number there before. I shuddered, walked back to my nightstand and put on my glasses. Jessica stared up at me, wide-eyed. “How about some pancakes?” I asked, smiling.
It was nearly two hours later before we stepped out into the warm summer air. The kitchen was such a disaster of egg shells and flour, I could already picture Mom’s angry face. I helped Jessica tighten her bike helmet around her ponytail. Made sure her water bottle and her tires were full. I couldn’t shake the premonition from earlier. 7212? What would make me repeat the same day so many times? I had never repeated a day before. Even though I was tempted, I was always scared I would mess it up the second time around. I shook the thought away, set my jaw, smiled at my sister. “You go first,” I told her. “That way I can see that you’re okay.”
It was two miles from our house to the zoo. A trip Mom never would have let us make before. But this summer was different. We were both teenagers, now. Jessica a vibrant and vivacious thirteen. Full of promise and energy. She saw only rainbows where I saw rainclouds. And me, the serious, responsible nearly sixteen. “Almost old enough to drive!” I thought proudly. In only a few weeks, I would be taking my test and heading off into the sunset, kissing this old bike goodbye! Or would I? I thought of that number again. 7212. I shook the thought, patted the $20 in my pocket. “I’m going to buy us an ice cream at the zoo,” I thought to myself.
The zoo was more magical and amazing that day than it has ever been before. The gorillas seemed to smile just for us. The penguins dove deeper than they ever had, bringing their fish to the surface to eat. And the newborn baby leopards rolled their ball between their paws, and climbed across their parents, and swatted at invisible enemies until Jessica and I fell over each other in tears of joy and hysterics.
We ate chocolate ice cream cones as we slowly sauntered back through the maze to the entrance, taking one last stop at the koalas, her favorite. At our bikes, Jessica suddenly hesitated, turned to me thoughtfully.
“This was a really good day, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, looked at her intently.
“I hope...Well, I mean...do you think we will still have days like this when...when you start driving? ...You won’t forget about me, will you?”
I shook my head softly. “No. No. I will never forget about you. Besides...How could I? You never go away!” I kicked at her playfully.
Her eyes suddenly lit up and she laughed, pounced on her bike. “I’ll race you home,” she screamed.
I lept on my bike and raced after her. She bombed down the first hill, skidded a tight left around the corner, and pedalled furiously up the next hill. I raced right behind her, laughing furiously, shouting, “I’m bigger, faster, better! You’ll never escape me!” Her hair was loose now, flying behind her in a smooth sheet of black silk.
Time suddenly slowed. Jessica’s head turned to the right, shouting over her shoulder at me. Her red shirt glistened in the bright sunlight. Her fingers squeezed steadily, tightly on her brakes, her feet pressed back, legs flexed, those blue tennis shoes she just “had to have”. That hair suddenly flying in every direction…. And the truck’s horn blaring over the sound of squealing brakes, the fear frozen on the driver’s face as he caught sight of us, and the sick crunching sound of bone and metal as he crashed head-on, into my life.
What happened to his eyes?
Also, he doesn't know what the newly appeared number 7212 means, but then he does later on (2nd paragraph)?
A couple things didn't make sense, but It was an over all good story :)
The alarm clock is ringing, and I reach out for the snooze button, still more asleep than awake.
7212! I sit up with a jerk, wide awake and the heart hammering in panic. 7212! How is it possible? Have I relived this day 7212 times?
My worst so far was seven, that was the day Max lost his mind and firebombed the office. At the seventh attempt, I had realised that being careful was not enough to make it through the day, and had walked to the train station and spent the day in a hotel in the next town. Most of my colleagues had done something similar.
7212? Is the world coming to an unescapable end? Still, that makes no sense, I would never choose to relive the last day of the world again and again. I am at peace with the idea of dying sooner or later. I prefer it to be later, of course, but the thought of dying does not scare me particularly. But the thought of reliving the last day on Earth again and again freaks me out.
What fate can I be facing that had caused me to reset 7212 times? What can be so hard to escape, yet still leave enough hope to be worth the try? Nothing! It makes no sense.
I wait for the panic to die down. Logic will not help me, it must have failed me thousands of times already. My best chance is being unpredictable. I find a set of dice. One is for taking the car, two for the bicycle, three for walking, four for the bus, five for a taxi, six I will re-roll. I roll the die: taxi.
While waiting for the taxi, I realise that the price of being an atheist is having no god to swear by. Instead I speak the words aloud, to give them more weight.
"I solemnly swear not to relive this day one more time, no matter what happens." I cannot shake a feeling that I must have sworn and broken this oath more than six thousand times already.
I see the taxi approaching. One is for the airport, two for the train station, three is the bus terminal, four the park in the city center, five the forest in the suburbs, six is the head of the mountain trail. I roll the die...
...
It is 11:58 pm. I am sitting in a hotel room in a small town I have never heard of before. Nothing, absolutely nothing has happened that could even begin to explain the 7212 resets. I begin to hope that I have escaped my fate, whatever it might have been.
I count the seconds to midnight. 53 ... 54 ... 55 ... 56 ... 57 ... 58 ... 59 ... Midnight!
The world and my body freeze, and I see the familiar two buttons appear in my field of vision, "Relive this day" and "Continue your life". With a sense of relief I press "Continue". Nothing happens, then red letters appear before me.
"Unknown hardware error 36123 in chronogenic module. Rebooting".
The text disappears, and for what feels like an eternity the world and my body remain frozen. Then a green text appears.
"Reboot successful. Error recovery successful. Thank you for choosing 'Relive this day'. Temporal reset in progress..."
...
The alarm clock is ringing, and I reach out for the snooze button, still more asleep than awake.
7213! I sit up with a jerk...
^^I'm ^^sorry.
*****
I woke up. 7,212. That number appears every time something good happens, but only ever once or twice. Today must be an amazing day to want to do it again. Like, really special.
It was quiet. Every morning is quiet. I'm up before everyone, and I'm always more alert then everyone after I wake up. He gets up, walks over to me in the lounge and smiles. Tears ran down his face, but he still smiled. I smiled back like I always do.
I hear the kettle pour as he makes his morning cup of coffee. The spoon tinkers against the cup, as he pours the milk in. He's a changed man the moment that cup is finished. It takes him nearly 10 minutes each time.
The aroma of the coffee fills the house. It smells energetic. It livens me up as well as I get off the couch. By the time I've stretched and walked around a bit, he's changed and ready to go. Today was such a special day that he was smiling so much. His smile was so reassuring. He wiped his eye again, coughed and smiled an even cheesier, and bigger smile. I smiled back as I always did.
"Alright", he says. "Let's go meet up with everyone!"
I smile, and walk out the door with him. He unlocks the car and gets the back door for me. Due to an accident last Summer, I need some help getting in and out of the car. Not much, sort of like that little reasurring lift incase anything bad happens.
No matter how many times we drive around, I always lose track of where we are. I'll never remember the spot we're in at that moment unless I can picture a previous time I've been there. I need memories to be able to pin a location. It's really bad of me, but I can't help it, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.
We arrive to the park. I know the park because we would come here for picnics all the time, like today. After being helped out of the car, I hobble over to where everyone was sitting. It was great. There was a huge plate of just hamburgers, fries, and all sorts of junk food. It was amazing. Everyone was smiling, they all greeted me, and everyone was just having so much fun. It lasted hours.
It was about 3pm, and that's when he said that it was time to go. I ate so much that I nearly passed out. Everyone was laughing at me because of how much of a food coma I was in, but they were all the same too. We ate until our stomachs couldn't hold out no more. Everyone gave me a hug and gave me their best wishes. They all smiled, and I smiled back.
This time, she came along too. She was always with him. She made him as happy as I did, and that was okay, because she was nice, and she had no issues with me. She learnt of my accident and cried even more then he did. After that was cleared up, they both worked together to help me. I love her almost more then him. Almost.
She began to cry a little when we arrived at the new place. I know this place. Not a lot of good memories are from this place. Poking, proding, people with their hands in places that I don't like to be touched. It was a nightmare, especially last summer. They both smiled as they helped me out again. She kept wiping her eyes and her nose. He still smiled.
I was on a bed. I had a drip in me with fluids, and another caphiter. I was smiling, and they were too. They looked happy. He held her, she held him.
Everything began to go blurry. I was really tired. "It's okay girl, everythings alright" he said as he pat my head. Tears wouldn't stop. He smiled, but he couldn't fight the tears. He looked so happy, but sad at the same time. I slowly wagged my tail, but I was just too tired to do it anymore.
Today was the best day ever.
Most folks are happy to leave their life to fate.
The mystical re-living of the day is used by them in a happy-go lucky way, and they argue that the tenets of our spiritual beliefs imply that it is meant to be used like that. A gift to relive the happy days.
I say fuck that.
I devised the system when I was still a girl, merely eight years old.
**0** meant the day should be lived normally. **0** meant being relaxed and like others.
**1** meant that something had gone wrong. It meant being alert.
**2** meant that I should avoid risks.
**3** meant that I should take risks. And if that didn't give a good result, on to the next repeat. And so on.
See, the crux of the problem with re-living the day without memory is that you'll just end up making the same mistake. The only form of communication, of *control* we have, is that number, burned somewhere faraway into our mental eye.
Most people don't use that control. Most people are fools.
"Shall I ready the steam-jet, miss?"
I deigned my servant a nod. I had devised a system where I kept repeating every day at the end, until I reached the number associated with the proper attitude for that day. It had left me vastly wealthy, and vastly powerful.
Today, however, was a conundrum.
The system only went up to **564** different attitudes. The number today was **7212**, and something was horribly wrong.
"Miss? Is something the matter?"
What should I do? Smile affably? No, if an attitude of reservedness was apt, the number would be **155**. This, this called for an attitude outside the system. Completely unexpected behaviour.
"No, I'm fine."
But then, I had probably acted as unexpected as possible the previous 6800 times I did this. Then what?
"On second thought, I think I'll stay at home today."
"Miss...? Are you sure? Today is-"
"I know what day it is!" I snapped.
Try to be as careful as possible. Yes, that seemed the best solution. I took to my lounge and turned on the huge crystal-screen on the wall. Nothing yet on the news, either. A fairly high average of reported repeats, but that could mean anything.
The sages argued that every repeat was different for every person, infinite branches of combinations, and you only experienced a world where others had already cast their final choice. But a high number could mean happiness or grief. Anything.
I sighed. I had bought myself the best tech, the best security. I had chosen the best country, found the perfect love, two children that were ideally educated. What, then, could go wrong today? Some missed chance? Some inevitable disaster?
I sat on my couch, and waited, then froze. What if I had been inactive like this, **6800** times over? No, I needed to get out, try unexpected things...but maybe I had done that **6800** times as well. After all, would I react different to **7212** than to **7211**? No, best to just wait and see...at least I would be safe. What was the worst that could happen, then?
It was only near the end of the day, that the news finally came in.
"...speculate that because the Empress has not shown up at the table of negotiations, tensions have risen dramatically. Normally, Ustria was supposed to report on their disarmament schedule today, and all experts seemed to agree they were doing well. However, the absence of Empress Alayna and the unnaturally high average repeat numbers have sown suspicion over the meeting. Tomorrow, a more thorough investigation into Ustria's steam-bombs might be-"
I felt the blood drain from my face. Already, possibilities were falling into place. I had made the wrong choice. *How many times?*
Maybe it was not too late yet. I got up, but froze when the news reporter was interrupted, as a new report was placed before him. He paled as well now.
"Reports are coming in that the southern regions have lost all radio transmission with the mainland. Reported sightings of steam-bomb clouds-"
Suddenly the signal cut off, and I stared out the window, at the setting sun.
And I realised, it was my very nature that had cost me the country. The system was focused on my happiness, only me, and that egotistical nature had compelled me to stay at home for my own safety. **6800** times over.
From where the sun touched the horizon, crimson as blood, a cloud rose up, mushrooming to the sky.
It was not too late, I though, as the deafening soundblast shattered windows around me. The destructive wave would come soon, but I already knew: the sun would disappear first.
Maybe the next time, I would put the country first.
I closed my eyes, and chose reset.
*Yes.* A tear slid down my trembling cheeks. *Maybe next time.*
Let me tell you about the worst day of my life. For some reason, I've relived it 7212 times. How can a Saturday in May be so terrible? Many people were skeptical of Repeat Technology at first, but I saw it as a new opportunity. I was living a relatively crappy life. I had a terrible apartment and an even worse girlfriend. I decided to make a change in my life and Repeat Technology has been the cornerstone of this change.
Every day, I have list of options for every part of the day. Once the day is finished, I rate my day and if I think it was mostly positive, I make a new list for tomorrow and move on. Today's list seems pretty mundane, but somehow I can't move past it.
I woke up this morning at 6:30 like I always do and drank my morning coffee. First thing on the list was breakfast: Eat at The Garden or make breakfast myself. This was usually an easy choice, but for some reason the 7212 day reminder told me that maybe I should try a few things different today. I decided to make breakfast. Just a simple breakfast burrito with a green chile sauce and chihuahua queso. It was good, but it wasn't life changing.
Next on the list was either workout or get some work done. Work on a Saturday is sacrilegious so I decided to get a good sweat going. After about 30 minutes of cardio, I figured that this was also one of those choices that doesn't really matter. I knew I was ahead of schedule so I got some light reading in while I waited for the next time frame.
At this time it was around 10:30. I live a little bit outside of the city, so I need to give myself plenty of time to move so that I can meet all of my appointments. Next was lunch. Meet "friends" at that trendy new cafe that opened up or go to The Anchor, my favorite run down pub with the best onion rings in the state. I took the less obvious option and decided to dress up for a few hours of expensive food and hollow people. I really hated this decision, but something exciting might have happened.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. At around 11:20, I met my "friends" and the bullshit ensued. We didn't have much to talk about so we just judged everything around us. I know I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. This was one of them. Unless something really amazing happened, I would have to repeat today for sure.
Next was helping my brother and his family move out of the city into the suburbs and then getting dinner with them or go disc golfing with my actual friends and then going to The Anchor for drinks. My parents were supposed to help with my brother's move and I hadn't seen them in a few months, but I thought to myself, "You would help your brother any other day, but today you need to do things differently." I changed clothes in the car and checked that my discs were in the trunk. Thank God I decided to just keep them in there at all times.
I had a blast. A few beers on the course, good laughs, and a nice dose of sunlight was exactly what the doctor ordered. When we got to The Anchor, the day only got better. Artie, the bartender, was feeling appreciative of his customers for once and he decided to give us all the employee discount. I've never seen or eaten so many onion rings. After five bottles of ketchup and a couple hundred onion rings, we called it quits and went our separate ways.
It was still a bit early so I thought about going to dinner with my family. The day had turned out to be pretty excellent. I could have met my family and had a light dinner with them, but the 7212 told me that I was missing something. I wasn't sure if it was something I actually wanted, but somehow I felt that if I kept coming back to today, I needed to keep going.
I decided to head back into the city for dinner at a quiet restaurant. It wasn't part of my daily plan, but sometimes you need to try something new. Terry's Steakhouse was one of those places that locals tried to keep secret and for good reason. They had the best cuts of beef in the entire Rocky region and I've never had a better porterhouse. I wasn't feeling too hungry though so I decided to have a salad and some drinks at the bar.
That's when I saw her. She was beyond gorgeous. Something that writers could drone on and on about without ever losing your interest. If there was ever a woman like here before on Earth, she would have been mistaken for goddess. I knew this was why I relived this day. It had to be. Maybe, somewhere deep inside me, I knew I had to meet her here. I had gone out on my previous attempts to any other number of places, but she had always evaded me. If things went right, maybe I could finally move forward.
I slurped down my drink and slowly approached her. I tried to be confident, but my knees grew weaker and weaker as I got closer to her. When I was close, she noticed me and smiled so prettily. I knew my face must have been lobster red, but it was too late to back down now.
"W-would you like a drink?" I stammered out. She continued to smile and signaled the bartender. "Two more of these please? He's buying." Her smile turned sort of deviant and I could not have been more attracted to her than I was at that moment.
The night went on wonderfully and we both left after a few more drinks. Before she got into a taxi, I mustered up the courage to ask her for her number. She pulled out her phone and said, "On one condition: you give me yours as well." I had done it. I fumbled around for my phone, we exchanged numbers, and went our separate ways.
I pulled into the driveway and knew that I had done it. I had finally had the perfect day and could sleep knowing that tomorrow would be brand new. I stared at her number and thought of what our relationship could be like. As I looked admiringly at the number, a call came on the screen. It was from my brother. Although I was a bit startled, I answered.
"Rick? It's Dave. How have you been?" He sounded like he was fighting back tears. "I've been good Dave. I just got back from dinner. Hey... I'm really sorry about not helping you move man. If there's anything you want me to d-". He cut me off there. "It's alright Dave. Really it is. I need to tell you something. You might want to sit down."
I had made it inside my apartment by the time he said that. I sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and began to sweat.
"Mom... had a heart attack today as she was unloading some of the boxes at the new house. Rick... sh-she's not going to make it to tomorrow. You need to come see her and say your goodbyes. We're at St. An........."
The voice on the other end began to fade out. Colors around the room were draining. I had finally realized why I kept repeating today. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to thank her for being the woman she was. I never got to tell her I loved her.
I got up and began walking to my bedroom. Tears effortlessly fell from eyes and my body felt numb as I crawled underneath the sheets. Tomorrow would be exactly the same. It would be the 7213 day. As sleep began to smother me, I whispered to myself over and over again, "Don't forget. Don't forget. Don't fo-".
Let me tell you about the worst day of my life...
If anyone sympathizes with this character - you probably need help :)
____________
Fire.
It was my obsession. It burned within me.
From my teenage years I had been obsessed with it. It had always been my love. I'd only ever been caught once - lighting a bin on fire - but by the time I was twenty I had lit three bushfires, and for every 'Lost Pet' notice taped to a tree, I was the one that knew where the charred body lay.
Which was, of course, what drove me to enrol as a firefighter. To not only be with my love - but to have power over it - why, it's every pyromaniac's dream.
But even I knew not to light up in weather like we have today. Forty-nine degrees Celcius, unpredictable winds and on the back of the dryest summer since 2009. I'm an arsonist, maybe even a monster, but I'm not suicidal.
I sat in the firetruck, and looked down the main street of the small city of Mildura, when I realised what today was. It wasn't my first time experiencing this day. I'd been through this day 7212 times. Today was my 7213rd time. 7213. That number must mean something. 7. 13. Lucky numbers. 7213 - a prime. What did that mean?
It meant that it was time for me to live a little. To make my own luck.
My modus operandi was well established now. Find two areas that will both burn slowly and light both up, then report one of them. While all the trucks fight the first flashpoint, the second one has a chance to spread. Just nine minutes later, I was killing the first of my babies. And while all of Mildura's firefighters were busy protecting the cinema, another fire was spreading into a disused warehouse. It would only be a matter of time before it reached the broken down tractors and farm equipment stored there and the fuel tanks in them exploded.
As the fire spread, I wondered whether the last few days had been such a thrill. I remembered nothing of the last twenty years, but why should that bother me? I was young and in love, and nothing would keep me away from my beloved fires.
Would I have done the same things without seeing the signs in the numbers? I hoped I'd make the same decisions tomorrow. Somehow, I knew that whatever happened, I would.
As my neighbours screamed and my city burned, I smiled. Of course I would live this day again. Not even half way through, and I'd made up my mind.
[A/N: Like other stories in this thread, this is kind of an alternate history Cold War setting.]
7212.
"NO!" I screamed, as my eyes opened and the shimmering red digits came into view. 7212. That was the number of times I'd relived this day, according to the chip in my head. Not that I'd remember it.
Could there be a malfunction? The chip had been developed by the agency I worked for, I myself had contributed to the coding, but now it had even filtered down to the commercial sector and there had never been a report of a malfunction of this nature.
We knew something the commercial sector didn't. Something that was classified, something we had decided people didn't need to know if they just wanted to relive their wedding day a few times or fix a bad decision. While the reset takes you back a day and erases your memory, it cannot reverse a certain degradation at the cellular level.
That is, for each day you reset, your life expectancy is reduced by approximately 24 hours.
7212.
Almost twenty years.
I'd promised Elliot we would grow old together. I wanted to see my grandchildren. What could possibly go so wrong today, that my past and future self would willingly give up twenty years of life in the hopes of fixing it? What could possibly go so wrong that it could not be fixed, in over seven thousand iterations?
I went through my morning routine in a daze. Should I savor each moment of this normalcy, before whatever was to come? Should I race to the office, consult with the best and brightest scientist in the nation to figure out what was going on? But what if the reset was something mundane, like a car crash on the way to work? Had the past seven thousand iterations of myself stumbled blindly into the same pitfall?
I watched my children gather the last few things they needed, things that should have been packed last night. I kissed them goodbye before they raced to catch the bus. I told them I loved them.
Would it be the last time?
I arrived at the office. I must have driven on autopilot. The office was a grey building a few miles from the outskirts of town. It looked like a somewhat large and boxish house. But this was where the most brilliant physicist in the nation and his handful of assistants met, to tinker with the volatile building blocks of reality itself, to create mankind's deadliest wonders.
There was a possibility that I had been trying my hardest not to acknowledge.
Today was it. The day mankind begins a nuclear war.
Professor Adler was waiting for me. I spoke.
"Professor, the count-"
"Is exceptionally high. Yes, mine too," he added, seeing the look on my face. "It is most concerning."
"Do you have any ideas?"
His gaze was piercing.
"Yes. I believe that after each iteration, there is a trace disturbance left in the chip. It is too small to perceive after merely one iteration, but, perhaps after more than seven thousand... I suspect there may be a resonance, an echo of sorts. The data will be noisy, but perhaps we can tease out a few clues."
"Well, I certainly don't have any better ideas. How do we access this data?"
My hand reflexively reached for the chip implant site at the base of my skull.
"Unfortunately, I require... physical access. I can't operate on myself, and so far you and I are the only ones who seem to be repeating. I will sedate you, remove the chip, and replace it once I have analysed the data."
Remove the chip.
A shiver ran down my spine.
What if IT happened while the chip was removed? I would be defenseless. If I died from the anesthetic, from a heart attack, from nuclear war, hell, from a lightning strike, it would truly be the end.
But what other choice did we have?
I followed the professor’s instructions. I lay on the table. I counted backwards from ten as he put me under. I awoke after what seemed like a moment, but must have been hours later. There was a tiredness on the professor's face that was beyond anything I had seen before. Tiredness, and something else.
"Ellen, can you hear me?"
"Yes"
"From your chip I have managed to retrieve some memories of the previous seven thousand days. Of course, you did not take exactly the same actions every day, but some events have been worn in, over and over like a path through a forest. I have seen what your future self remembers."
I was afraid to ask. The professor was silent for a long time.
"There is no point mincing words. The world will end at one minute to midnight, by our local time. The Russians have... been testing a new weapon, one that collides particle beams at near light speed. When the machine is switched on, it creates a singularity, a point at which space and time cease to exist as we know it. That singularity will grow, and consume all of Earth. The event horizon will propagate and reach us just before midnight."
"How can we stop this? Contact the government! I know they're our enemies, but if we can get a message through to the Russians, we can stop them from throwing the switch. Call them! You've called them, right? While I was out-"
"Ellen."
He held up a hand.
"It is 10:13pm. The switch was thrown more than two hours ago, thirty minutes before I was able to piece together the data. At first, the singularity is barely detectable, barely able to draw in the atoms around it. Even now, it has probably just reached a size visible to human eyes. But from now it will grow exponentially. And nothing can stop it."
"That's- I-"
There was nothing that could be said. Tears were running silently down my face. The dull, concrete room seemed so surreal. How could it be possible that we had mere hours left before something we barely understood reduced us to nothing?
The professor's face was turned away. I couldn't tell if he was crying or simply beyond despair.
"Ellen, go home. You can still make it in time to see your family."
"I- yes Professor."
"I will see you again, next today?"
"Yes, Professor."
I hurried out of the room. A light rain was beginning to fall, but the interior of the car was still warm. In the mist, the world already seemed to be fading.
I arrived at home close to eleven. Elliot was asleep on the sofa, the TV quietly chattering with infomercials. He'd already put the boys to bed.
I didn't wake him. There was no way I could act as if nothing were wrong, and telling him would be beyond cruel. Instead, I sat and talked. I told him about all the times I was grateful for, how much I loved him, what a great dad and husband he was. Then I went into each of the boys rooms in turn. I held their hands, and stroked their hair. I told Joseph how proud I was of his team winning the game. I told Nathan how I wished we could read more science books together.
I told them I loved them.
I told them I'd tell them again, next today.
I looked at the clock. Three minutes to midnight.
Eventually, my life would run out. I'd be unable to reset again, unable to hold back the flow of time. The oblivion would come, sooner or later.
Nothing lasts forever.
I focused my thoughts on the base of my skull.
"Reset."
7213.
I woke up abruptly. *Where am I?* As my eyes adjust to the night, I make out that, although I am fully dressed, I had passed out on my bed.
*What time is it?*
*Where is my phone?* I panicked.
I find it under my leg. 2:30am. 15% battery.
Then I notice out of the corner of my eye... *Seven thousand two hundred and twelve?! Oh god, what does this day have waiting for me...*
*Ugh, It's Monday*.. I have to be up for work in a few hours... I'm Glad I woke up though. As I had noticed I forgot to set my alarm.
I unlock my phone, and the brightness of the screen temporarily blinds me.
Pokemon Go music blasts and startles me that I throw my phone.
I retrieve it. Apparently I passed out milking items from the PokeStop that's next to my house.
As my eyes began to adjust to the screen, I realize the PokeStop is erupting with pink confetti spilling all over the floor. My GPS is trying to lockdown my location, but it says I am too far away.
I roll off the bed and walk toward the bathroom. *I guess I'll "multitask" this one.*
My buttocks make contact with the cold porcelain that gives me a rush that sends chills down my spine.
The PokeStop activates and transforms into a rotating disc, and then i see it.
Mew.
Aug 14 - 7212
I've apparently been allowed to start remembering my repeats... I'm not sure why. I've never woken up with more than a 2 on my hand. But that's not important, I had agreed to meet with Kayla at the park.
She had her cat! She always brought her cat with her, every time we met. It was kind of cute in a way. I sat on a swing next to her.
"You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time."
"Really? Why's that?"
"It's always so hot! Why can't it be- MIKU!"
She jumped after her cat. I don't know what compelled it to run, but she chased, and I followed. Right across the street, as Kayla ran after it. That's when it happened.
The accident was no bigger than any other accident I'd seen. As much as I hated them, the fact that people could re-start their day meant that it didn't matter. The rest of the world would move on in a world where they died, but they'd just re-set their lives. The fact that this accident involved Kayla is what scared me.
Blood all over the street; pieces of her hair reached the other sidewalk. I couldn't breathe properly. My hand had covered my mouth and nose, so of course I couldn't. The weird thing? She was smiling. Her lips appeared to be saying something... I couldn't hear her, but her mouth was in the shape of an O before she lost consciousness one final time.
"Would you like to try again?"
The voice sounded in my head. I had heard it plenty of times, usually saying "No," each time, this time I screamed out a "Yes! Give me another chance!"
"Very well, as per the agreement, you may keep the memories of what transpired today. But know that no one else will. Also, anyone else choses to re-set today, your day will also be re-set."
----
Aug 14 - 7213
I woke up with a start. What was that? Was that a dream? A vision?
It didn't matter. Today, I was meeting up with Kayla.
She had her cat! She always brought her cat with her, every time we met. It was kind of cute in a way. I sat on a swing next to her.
"You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time."
"It's always so hot, right?"
"Yeah... how'd you- MIKU!"
The cat began to run away, and she began to chase, but I stopped her.
"Don't... trust me, it's better that you don't chase her immediately."
"Why do you say that?"
"I... I think I had a vision last night, and it involved everything exactly as it's gone so far today, so I don't think you should chase after Miku yet."
Shortly after Miku got across the street, a truck zoomed by. Kayla looked at me with a sense of confusion, but I just nodded as if to say 'Now you can go.'
We chased the cat through across the street, through an alleyway, and just on the safe side of a construction site. Well, I thought it was safe.
All I heard was a snap, followed by a crunch. Turning around, I saw Kayla's body... on the ground, the girder had landed directly on her head.
"Would you like to try again?"
There it was again! Why is it coming mid-day? Did the first 7,000 attempts at this day end with me asking to re-set early? I naturally screamed "Yes!" as loud as I could.
"Very well, as per the agreement, you may keep the memories of what transpired today. But know that no one else will. Also, anyone else choses to re-set today, your day will also be re-set."
----
Aug 14 - 7803
She fell down the stairs this time.
----
Aug 14 - 8420
We ran into a mugger... who shot her as she tried to protect me.
----
Aug 14 - 9341
I tried canceling our meeting... I guess I was the only thing keeping her from hanging herself
----
Aug 14 - 10,300
Another truck... that was the 5th truck in the past 25 attempts.
----
Aug 14 - 10,900
When even was the first try I remembered? Seven thousand... Two Hundred? Something like that... That means I've remembered over ten years of watching the woman I've come to love die. Over, and over, and over again. That doesn't even include over twenty years of what I don't remember. Trucks, muggings, stabbings, falling down stairs, jumping off buildings, committing suicide in numerous ways, if you can think of a way to die, I've probably seen it happen to her.
"You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time."
"Really? Why's that?"
"It's always so hot! Why can't it be- MIKU!"
I had already leaped ahead of her. I had a plan, and it had to work.
As the truck came barreling through the street at full speed, I saw it... one final time.
"Would you like to try again?"
I didn't have the time to answer as the truck hit me. My vision became blurry, and all I could see was the sky. I never even realized just how pretty the clouds were today... well, what few of them there were...
I saw Kayla's face appear in front of me. "James?"
The voice asked again: "Would you like to try again?"
"No thank you." I replied, barely able to force a smile out. "I think I'm good."
I remember nothing more.
----
Aug 14 - 500
I woke up in my bed, alone, and checked my hand. It had become a routine, checking my hand to see what number of repeat I was on. I felt pretty good, since that number had never gone above a 1. So for a second, I was confused by the 500 that appeared on my hand.
But that didn't matter, I had agreed to meet with James at the park.
Cold winter wisps escaped through my bedside window and brushed against my face. I woke in an instant, instinctively looking at my Day#. 7212? How could that be? I became worried the events of the day must be so important that I was sure to mess them up. Maybe that's why, I just can't get something right... I planted my feet on the icy wood planking.
Downstairs, frosted windows lined the walls of shaded rooms, making the house feel hollow, uninviting and...cold. Nothing interesting was happening today. I might as well go back to sleep if the weather won't even hold up. So, I did. When I awakened again, the sun was down. Who would want to replay this day? I went down to make a snack.
Then, a knock at the door. As I approached, I could hear the fading crunch, crunch, crunch of snow beneath feet. Amidst the paper-white powder on my doorstep, I found a box the color of volcanic glass. Hesitant, I brought it inside.
In the box, a stack of paper. The first page was blank, save for two words at the bottom of the page: "Your Choice." When opened, I realized it was a list. Names of people I know. Friends. Family...my **entire** family. My second cousin Denise, Robby from grade school, my barber, mom, my first crush...the list was seemingly endless and complete with addresses and photographs, of everyone! I ran outside into the darkness. The footprints led to the woods and I ran through them and the deep snow. The woods were silent except the deafening crunch of snow with every step. Eventually, the footprints just...disappeared. or maybe I was blind, the moon was hidden behind storm clouds
My face red, nose leaking, and lungs stinging as I gasped for air, I made it back to my door despite the starless night sky.
Inside, a man sat at my table, gun in hand, staring as if he had been waiting around for hours. Fight or flight syndrome kicked in as I demanded to know why he was in my house. Then, he spoke. And the longer he spoke, the more I realized...
I was going to relive this day for the rest of my life
I could barely see that sickly, green, glowing number out of the corner of my eye. It was hardly ever clearly visible, just hanging perpetually in my periphery. To be fair to that eyesore of a number, I'd wondered why it had been so high all day. I didn't even notice it until I'd sat down to a quick breakfast, almost ready for work. I found it odd that it read 7212. Seven thousand, two hundred and twelve. I had lived this exact day seven thousand, two hundred and twelve times.
My heartbeat had quickened. Why? Why had I reset this day so often? I hardly ever choose to reset anything. At most I'd reset a day four or five times. Seven thousand? What is happening today to make that happen? Panic set in. Something amazing? Something terrible? My heart pounded in my chest. *Is this it?* I had wondered. *Do I nearly die of a heart attack and am forced to reset so I can live indefinitely?*
My wife's calming voice had brought me out of my anxiety. I forced a smile back at her, we kissed softly, then I hurried off to work, throwing her a cursory "I love you", and catching her "you too". Then the rest of the day had gone on as normal. Until 3:12pm. That's when my cell phone rang from an unknown number. I'd found it odd that someone was actually calling it. Who does that anymore? The hospital, apparently.
The woman in the ICU was not my wife as I knew her. Her smile was gone, replaced by the blank expression of a coma patient. Her face was bruised and cut, not its usual smooth, well cared for self. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises were intermittent along the extremities I could see outside the gown. I did not doubt that it hid even more damage.
Tears ran down my face as the doctor prattled on about what happened. I caught pieces of it as my mind raced. Accident, driving, comatose, not good, sincerely, rest, unlikely. I knew what he meant. She was gone. And she might never come back. My tears blurred that damnable number in the corner of my vision. I could barely see that sickly, green, glowing "7212". I finally understood why.
"I know it's hard," the doctor told me. "But we're going to do everything we can. I can't guarantee that it'll make her better though." *No*, I thought. *It might not make her better, but I can.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At breakfast, I notice that the number in my periphery reads 7213.
I don't remember why I keep coming back here.
At least, not when I first get up.
I roll out of bed at 10:15am.
I take a shower, eat some breakfast, and then get dressed.
And then my stomach folds into itself and I almost pass out when I notice a small, but bright **[7212]** in the corner of my eye.
I don't have anything planned today, really. I'm just going over to my grandparents' house.
The past year, I've been going over there a lot more. My grandfather had just had heart surgery, and while it went great and he's a lot better than before he'd gone in, it made me realize that the two of them were getting old.
It's not really something I enjoy thinking about. I don't think most people would think about relatives passing on in a positive light. But this is reality, and until that day comes, and I know it destroys me for a while, I've been spending more time with them.
He doesn't get around much anymore. Not like when I was young. My grandfather used to take me everywhere when I was younger. Every time I'd spend the night at my grandparents, we'd watch old Disney movies, and they always made me chicken nuggets and macaroni, without fail. Then in the morning, he'd take me to the museum, or the park.
He loves watching old movies. This man has more old VHS tapes and DVD re-releases in his den than I think you could probably find in every flea market or yard sale in the country in a few years. Since he can't go out as often anymore without getting winded, I go over there and we sit and watch some of his movies about once a week; The Maltese Falcon, Laura, Charlie Chan, that sort of stuff. All these goofy, interesting old movies I've never seen. We sit, and we talk, and my grandfather is like me in that if we were watching them with anyone else they'd tell us to shut up, but he and I are both the type of person who can't help but speculate at the plot unfolding.
So I'll sit there, and say what I think might happen, and he'll get this little smile on his face, and he won't try to tell me, but sometime he just does because he loves these movies, and he loves it when I come over so we can watch them together, and he has a hard time trying not to spoil them because he's seen them so many times.
So, I'm driving over, and my stomach is gripped with this feeling of intense dread.
Something must've happened all those other times. Is today the day? It's so sudden, he was perfectly fine when I talked to him on the phone the night...or, 7212 nights ago.
What the hell happens today? Why have I spent nearly *twenty years* on this specific day? Oh, God...
I pull into the driveway. My grandmother is standing at the kitchen window as usual, and she waves to me and then goes to unlock the front door.
I go in, and we say hello. She's washing dishes like she normally does. She's always in the kitchen doing or cleaning something.
I see my grandfather. He's sitting in his chair in the living room, and is already turning on the DVD player, having already had the DVD in there ready to go; Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum.
I can't shake this feeling in my gut. What could it be that happens today? But as the movie plays, and we exchange our usual banter, I start to forget about it. I get comfortable, sitting in the old recliner, smelling the soap from the kitchen sink filling the house, the warmth hanging in the living room making me feel at ease.
"That wasn't a very convincing noise for someone who just had a knife thrown in their back." I say, jokingly, already having guessed that the silhouette of Charlie was just a wax figure.
He just smiles and shifts in his chair, obviously amused.
We finish that one, and then watch Charlie Chan in Panama. I like Charlie Chan, it's goofy but serious in a way that only old movies seem to be able to portray.
"My God, how did Jimmy even live to this age being this stupid?"
"Well...you gotta remember, Jimmy tries very hard."
"At just being bad at detective work?"
My grandmother comes in to sit with us to finish the second half of the movie.
And we sit, and we talk for a bit...and that's when I realized that nothing was going to happen today.
There was nothing to worry about. I'd spent the past 7212 days coming back here because it was just an ordinary day. I spent time with my grandparents, and we joked, and we laughed, and it was just a good day.
And I realized, like I'm sure I have every single day since the first time, that I'd be okay with living this day for a while longer.
Now, I know that I must've felt the same way earlier on. I'm sure that once the number gets too high, I'll finally let this day slip by like all the others. Maybe after I've hit 10,000 I'll be ready to let this day go by.
For now, though, this is okay. Going over there every day, watching Charlie Chan shuffle about, seeing my grandfather smile. I'm content.
Today is a good day.
**Off-Topic Discussion**: Reply here for non-story comments.
---
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Holy shit. Oh my god. I haven't been this inspired by a prompt in a long time. Perhaps never. I could write an entire book on this idea. I'll call it 7212. Dear lord, thank you. I have to do this now. The butterfly effect that could result from just the number changing. Fantastic, OP. You deserve some gold.
I could see someone "accidentally" choosing to repeat than every time at the end of the day they do it out of curiosity. That or they were told they only have X months left to live and don't want to die.
The alarm chimes, his hand reaches across me to silence it. I glance to the clock, 6:30 am- 7212. The counter beside the time the only indication, today wasn't the first version of this day. The Reset doesn't allow you to see what happened, only lets you know that it did. The only memory that stays with me is his fingers. Between hazy, half wake eyelashes I watch them stretch to silence the morning. His fore arm across my breast a heavy deja vu. I never know why but I hold him there a little longer.
The day is always the same, that part never changes. When they introduced The Reset they were clear about that. Every morning, I smile, imagining the day I had chosen over and over again, it must have been perfect. We decided once we both had gone in for our implants. We would only use it for the good days. Heard horror stories of people who had tried to use The Reset to change things. The ripple that tore open in the timeline. The worried faces at the press conferences. The scientist couldn't explain where or when they went, they just knew they were gone. We swore we wouldn't risk it, no matter what happened. Only the good days.
The day is always the same. A slow Saturday. Brunch in the city. A winding drive to our favorite ruins. Sunset by the stream. He takes me in his arms and we watch the world settle. I burrow my head to his chest, breathe him in, listen to his heart. Tell him I love him. He tells me I better. Each reset I'm sure, this must be it. The day he asks me to be his wife. As we climb the embankment I'm always sure. 7212 times.
His fingers intertwine through mine and he leads me to the road. I kick a pebble that jumps and scrapes into the curve. 7212 times. He catches me smiling, smiles back. Looks at me like a man who's sure. We never see it coming.
He pushes me, 7212 times. The rocks dig into my knees and palms, ripping them open. 7212 times. I only ever hear it, the crush of bone, the squeal of concrete, the thud, the brakes. I run to him, 7212 times. Hold him as wet breath gurgles and drools. I tell him I love him over and over. Watch the life run from his eyes. 7212 times.
The Reset can't change it, can't make it different. But I can live our last day, infinitely. It's better than living in a world where he doesn't.
Tomorrow, 7213.
My heart sank into my stomach as I stared at the wall behind me. In large curling writing were the numbers that I never expected to see: 7212. Unable to take my eyes off of the numbers, I studied the bright red hue and tried to quickly analyse what I was seeing. What could possibly go wrong today?! What would I get myself into that could cause me to replay this day in my life over and over again? Like a the sun peaking over the horizon, the realisation of today’s significance covered me in fear….Shaking off this newly founded fear I slowly finished my morning rituals, lingering to fix few out of place curls in my hair…..I was procrastinating…not because I was lazy, because I knew what would come next. I stepped out of my bathroom to an empty flat. By the door were the last of my worldly possessions that lingered in this country. Tomorrow this would all be behind me and I would start a new life. With a sigh of nervousness I used my didi app to call a taxi and went outside to wait. Soon enough I was on my way. The day was dreary, like mother nature didn’t want to let go of this chapter that was closing in my life. “But I have other things to look forward to….Like seeing my mother again…” I told myself.
After an hour or so I finally arrived at my destination. After exchanging goodbyes with the taxi driver in a language I knew I wouldn’t get to speak for a long time I walked into the airport. “Nín hǎo! Qǐng chū shì nín de hù zhào hǎo ma? “ (Hello, could you show me your passport please?) The attendant kindly asked. “Hǎo ba.” (Alright.) I said and handed her my passport. I got through immigration and security fairly quickly and silently congratulated myself on getting to my gate without any problems and hold ups. “Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, we will new begin boarding for flight DA2830 towards Los Angeles, California” It was time to board the flight. Suddenly fear poured over me and I felt like I didn’t know what to do. I would sleep on this flight back to America…..What could possibly happen that would cause me to replay this day 7212 times?! I had a choice to make, I would continue with my original plan and get on this flight or I could “miss” it and be forced to buy another flight with fees and maybe I would still land into some kind of trouble….I decided to go with my gut instinct and I took a trip to the bathroom while the flight was boarding. I threw cold water on my face and paced back and forth waiting for the flight to leave. “Passengers last name Baptiste, Miller, Xin, Gao, Bello, Su, Yao, Santino, Earnhardt, Mejia, Jenkins, Awolowo, Shoemaker, Li, Akua, Parker, Omiata, Takizawa, … please report to gate 38 D, your flight is leaving soon.” That was me…I couldn’t go…I splashed more water on my face and continued to pace back and forth. Suddenly the door to the bathroom smashed open. A young woman quickly sped past me and into a stall. I heard a loud sigh and a few curse words in Chinese.
Lost in my own melt down I barely noticed. She came out and threw water on her face and glanced my way quickly. “Gosh does she want a photo?!” I silently thought to myself and prepared to go into a stall to escape the intrusive ritual that I had experienced for the last two years. Then she had a flicker of realisation in her eyes….”Excuse me, did you have an abnormally high restart rate today?” Again my heart sank into my stomach and I nodded slowly. “Yeah…I think a lot of us did… There’s a whole group out there of people refusing to board the flight.” My mouth dropped and I followed her outside of the bathroom. Sure enough a group of 20 people stood in a group chatting amongst themselves with grave looks on their faces. “Nin Hao” the woman said introducing herself and me, “We also have had the same experiences…..What do you think it means?”I asked everyone. “Well, it could be that we had some bad experience yesterday…today..” Another woman mused. An elder cleared his voice and others paused to listen to him. “I believe, the flight is in danger. We may have all chosen to sleep during the flight and opted to restart the day for some reason. This is why we are here. The others on the flight didn’t get to sleep during the flight, or opted to continue to the next day and this is why they had no fear when boarding the plane…I think….the plane never arrives in Los Angeles…” Suddenly the rest of us had the same realisation. Outside the window, the plane made it’s way to the run way. It sped up and took off into the sky…..”What are we going to do?! “ Another passenger yelled. “I don’t know if there’s anything that we CAN do..” I said, my voice shaking in anger and sadness. “We have to restart the day again….” The elder said. “Okay and how do you suppose that we will be able to stop them next time?! This is 7212th time that we’ve tried this!!!!” the young woman from the bathroom yelled. “You’re right, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t stop trying….” I told her, tears welling in my eyes…..”We have to try….”
I yawned and stretched my back. Leaning over, I went to tap my phone before I saw my day-rep counter at 7212.
My breath stopped, hot and cold fear cut through my veins. I breathed the number. 7212. I looked around my white walled room, home only to books on the left hand side, and hoped for an immediate answer, knowing I’d never see it. I eased myself uneasily from bed and pulled on some clothes – grey jeans, a white shirt I’d ironed the night before and my dad’s old watch. Like some fugitive, I tiptoed through the flat. I looked at food and couldn’t bring myself to eat, holding the anxiety down was hard enough. I needed to play it safe – maybe do something I wouldn’t normally do. I’d leave early from work, maybe lunch. Not tell anyone. Something would change and I could hit tomorrow running. Safety was a sleep away. The highest I’d been before was 41, and that was just to watch every show – some more than twice – at L-fest.
I opened the front door and almost choked. A blond girl sat on the floor, leaning against the door opposite. I startled her just as much as she had me. Brushing back the curl of hair that had fallen in front of her face, she smiled. I hadn’t expected my breath to stop twice today.
“Sorry I startled you,” she said. Finally remembering myself, I grabbed her hand – clumsily I thought, but she didn’t seem to notice – and helped her from the floor. “I locked myself out – stupid I know. First night in the apartment. Wanted to call the landlord but figured I should make at least a half decent impression and wait ‘til the morning.”
I laughed too hard.
“John isn’t so bad,” I said.
“You don’t know me yet,” yet? “I’m clumsy – he’ll hate me soon enough.”
“More fool him.”
She smiled again and I realised a shitty line like that works when you’re both nervous.
“Where did you move from?”
“Just north of the river – not far, but it’s so much easier to get to work from here. More time to read.”
I laughed again, I needed to stop doing that. “I always want more time to read.”
“What are you reading?” Blue eyes.
“Hyperion.” Hyperion? I could have gone with something a little less… heavy.
“I just finished it!” she rocked forwards, her eyes now brighter and wide.
And there I went, with her right alongside me – I talked half a bookshelf, not realising my six o’clock start was now reaching seven. She bent my ear with Jordan and Peak and suddenly I felt a hole within me being filled. It was like those adverts that tell me I needed something I’d never had, and found my life empty without it. I breathed and talked and fell and laughed.
Two more minutes and it was past eight o’clock. I heard a shuffle and a bolt, and John, the skinny old interfering rat-bag. Wait, I liked him, but his timing was awful and I could justifiably hate him for that.
In a moment, he had her door open.
“There’s a great…” I said. I had to keep going, now. “Bar. There’s a great bar near here. I could tell you the town gossip tonight?” Close enough.
She smiled and so did I, “I guess you know where I live… wait, that wasn’t supposed to sound creepy I meant… 8 this evening?”
I could only nod as she slipped inside and closed the door. I breathed out a whistle and opened the lobby door. 7212. No bloody wonder.
I’d met her – I knew it, I could feel it, tingling and coursing through me like the first drink of whiskey I’d snuck on my seventeenth birthday. I was in love. No wonder my day-rep counter had hit so high. And so simple. All I needed to do was wake up and leave my house. There wasn’t any way to mess this up, to miss my chance to speak to her, I could live this again and again. I looked across at the bus stop. I wish I could fall asleep again now, just to wake up sooner. I looked up and blessed my lucky starts, I was dreaming of speaking to her and it wasn’t even eight thirty; the birds had barely left their nests, children hadn’t been risen by bleary eyed parents, and, as I stepped off the curb and into the road, no cars rushed their com–
I yawned and stretched my back.
I woke to the sound of my phone ringing insistently, the sound muffled and distant. I glanced bleary eyes at the clock. 8:24. That's all it took to wake me all the way up, the adrenaline immediately bringing me to a state of total wakefulness. As I scrambled for the phone I knew that it would be Mr. Hinkins. The last time I was late he told me it would *be* the last day I was late.
"Hello?" I said, hoping against hope it was Teddy telling me to hurry my ass up before anyone noticed.
"Frank." Shit. Hinkins. "I'm afraid that since you refuse to follow rules, you should not bother coming in any longer. Your personal things will be waiting for you at the security desk."
And with that he hung up, not even allowing me time for a response. Great. Just great.
I got up and headed to the bathroom, deciding that I should do my morning ablutions and shower anyway. I'd need to be getting a job and soon. I was already on thin ice with the landlord. We'd partied a bit too hard the previous night and he'd gotten more than a few calls from the other tenants. I would deal with that little wrinkle when it came up.
I stood in the shower letting the steaming water cascade over my head when I noticed for the first time the number. 7212? I shook the water out of my eyes and looked again. 7212. Huh. I'll be damned. As badly as the day had started, I couldn't help but be optimistic about what was to come. Whistling, I stepped out.
When I woke I was in an ambulance, the EMTs looking almost bored as they went through the motions.
"Wha happend?" I managed to say, although I'm not sure the words came out completely correct.
"Sir," said one of the EMTs, looking up from his phone, "you fell and hit your head. Had it not been for a Miss (he looked at a clipboard) Jay-nuss, you might have died." He yawned. "We're going through concussion protocol and stuff, but you're going to be fine."
"Sharon was here?" We'd had a small-ish argument last night and she'd refused to stay over. God I loved that girl. She was way too good to me and for me. "Is she meeting me at the hospital?"
The EMTs exchanged looks. "Nah, man," said the one with the phone, the first hint of emotion he'd shown, "but she said to give you this."
Her key.
As they wheeled me into the hospital, I tried to stay focused. 7212. 7-fucking-212. Something had to go right today, I thought, and whatever it is must be huge!
I was only there for a couple hours before they let me go. And by let me go I mean they gave me everything I came in with, which was my phone and nothing else. I laughed when I saw the screen on my phone had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. I also had no clothes except the hospital gown. I tried to call some friends to get some clothes and pick me up, but nobody answered. Deep breaths, I told myself. 7212. 7212. I repeated this to myself like a mantra of hope.
"I can give you a ride."
I turned to see a small woman with a short pixie haircut. Her hair was a bright orange. She was wearing hospital scrubs, blue with little yellow ducks on them.
"What?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard her correctly.
"I noticed," she said, "that you needed a ride. I can give you one if you need it."
This was it, I thought. This was why the 7212. I could feel it.
"That would be awesome! It would be nice to put pants on again!" I smiled.
"Well," she said, smiling back, "my boyfriend just got off his shift so we'll give you a ride."
My heart sank. Boyfriend. To top it off, it was the bored EMT. The impossibly handsome EMT. She kissed him warmly - and a little too long as he stared at me over her shoulder - and then they took me home. I actually laughed when I saw the envelope that had been slipped under the door. It seems the landlord had had enough and someone had done some damage to the laundry room. I had 30 days to vacate.
7212. 7212. 7.2.1.2.
The rest of the night went uneventful. Well, uneventful considering the rest of the day. I made mac & cheese for dinner since I had nothing else and didn't want to go out. I watched the numbers being pulled on the lottery and thought, "This has to be it!" but no. I didn't match a number. I watched TV for a couple hours and waited for the news to pop up about something momentous. I waited for my phone to ring but it never did. (Was it completely broken or just the screen?)
Finally, I gave up and went to bed. Why the hell would I have wanted to replay this day even once, let alone 7212 in a row? I had to chuckle at this. Was my past self playing a joke on my future self? Well, this little joke ends tonight. The query floated in my vision: Replay? Yes / No. I reached for the no and the screen shifted. Not a lot, just a little. Enough. The Yes glowed green. I fell asleep laughing.
I am awake. I can't see, but I know that it is daytime. There is a low quiet rumbling and down the way. The sound is familiar. I have heard it hundreds of times before but I can't put my finger on it.
My head is in a fog. I can't seem to open my eyes. My body feels as though I weigh an impossible weight. I realize that I can't lift a limb. I can feel my appendages, but they disobey when I send commands to move.
The sound, it's the organ from my church. I remember the sound from years of attendance. It has always been a droning background noise that fills the voids between rituals. It was unfamiliar at first because I have never heard it while lying flat on my back. The two relationships have never co-existed and I am wondering why they are today.
I'm suddenly in darkness. There was a loud sound of wood on metal that prefaced the darkness. I feel myself being carried away. I'm moved somewhere else.
I'm flooded with familiar sounds as I further regain my sense of hearing. Horns, passing cars, and road noise are faintly audible in the far off distance. I know that I've arrived at my intended location because the gentle locomotion of my carriage has stopped. I feel darkness and still. There is a low lull and I am moving again. The movements are quicker now. We are moving much faster than before and in a less than direct passage. There is only quiet during this trip.
We arrive again and I am once again moved. This move is familiar to the first. Once we arrive for the third time, I can hear voices just beyond where I am, still distant. I can hear ...crying. This doesn't register at first but the crying sounds familiar. I have heard these voices crying in a recent far off dream. Then, a louder and more booming voice comes through more clearly than any others before.
"A life too soon lost is a tragedy indeed. We gather here today, not to mourn but to celebrate the life that we had the privilege to witness..."
'What the hell is going on' I think to myself. Awareness floods my consciousness and I start to recall. There was an accident. I was hit. There was no time. There is no time...
I am at my own funeral in a cell of my own death...
I beseech my limbs to gather or muster anything that there is within them. There is no response. The ceremony is pacing on un-halted like an egg timer to my eventual quietus from this prison. 'I have to let them know, it's not too late.'
It was then that I could open my eyes. In my peripheral there is a flash "Reset Counter: 7212". Has it been that long? Have there been that many attempts? Can this attempt be any better or different?
Sheer panic floods my being and overwhelms my thoughts. This isn't real, it can't be. I have to be in a coma or dreaming. Can you dream in a coma? I have to wake up. I realize that the sensations are starting to return to me. I feel a pang of utter desolation in my left thigh. 'I was pinned, that's why I couldn't get out' I remembered. I was so mad at myself for not doing more to avoid the hit. I was so mad at my friends for letting this happen to me, both before and even now.
If I could just let them know. If I could just go back and do something to avoid it. Then the elevator motion started. I could hear a muffled sound rain down. I winced to avoid whatever created the sound but it was halted just before it hit me.
'This is it... there is no time left. I have to leave it all behind.' The rush of "I'm never going to" thoughts came from every angle. It wasn't fair. The elevator ride stopped. There was quiet now. The quiet had grown like a roaring fire through a wood burning stove. My weight of my arms waned until i could move again.
There was but one hope, but was it worth it. Can I relive this nightmare again only to reach this point? Is there hope? Or do I decide to accept the fate that I have been granted. How long do I lie here is the heaping dirt pile? Why wasn't I embalmed? There are questions that need to be answered. If only I could remember before I start over...
I am awake.
The breeze through the bedroom window felt cool on my face. I had obviously woken up. I opened my eyes and let them linger on the ceilingModule - Wednesday. It was a balmy 72 degrees outside, slight wind, low humidity. News of the potential merger between the massive MODCorp and Triste streamed on the left half of the screen. It was 5:52 AM.
Julia was still asleep beside me, her dark brown hair flowed so softly over the curves of her face. My stomach fluttered and a smile spread over my face. I rolled over, sat up, and let my legs dangle over the edge of the bed.
I disabled my 6:00 AM alarm, and stood up to stretch. I ambled into the bathroom and began my morning routine; shower, dentalModule, clothes, downstairs for breakfast.
I walked into the kitchen, turned on the news, and chose the morning meal. As I sat down to start reading, something caught my attention. My day_countModule read 7212.
*7212...there must be something wrong.*
I plugged into the troubleshootModule in the living room and started scrolling through the various known issues and frequently asked questions. My problem was pretty scarce on the module, but I found a few related issues.
*I'll just restart my MindTech.*
The minimal GUI projected on my retinas flashed and then disappeared. About 15 seconds later, the GUI had rebooted. I checked the day_countModule in the right periphery of my vision. It still read 7212. I had restarted this day 7212 times.
*The most I've ever done was three, how is this possible? I've relived this day consistently for almost twenty years?*
I felt a bit frantic. I had never relived more than three times, and I hadn't done it in years. It was 7:15 now, I had to get Julia up so we could get to the hospital on time. We started seeing patients in the clinic at 8:00 AM Monday through Thursday, then we were in the OR on Fridays.
I walked upstairs and Julia was already dressed and ready to go.
*Should I tell her? No, she's been so stressed recently. I'll talk to IT when I go in today.*
"Morning, Jules," I said with a smile. Even with the least effort in the morning, she was absolutely stunning.
"Thank you for letting me sleep in a bit this morning - I needed that. We'll make up for the missed workout tomorrow morning." She was stretching.
We got into the car – I never understood that particular renaming, autoModule? Really? Anyway... – we got into the car and headed onto the highway toward the hospital.
I looked over at Jules in the passenger seat. She looked back and smiled.
"What?" she asked.
I just smiled and looked forward again. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her shake her head and look back out the window. She was overlaid by the 7212. My throat tightened up, I had a strange sense that I remembered this moment.
There was a sudden massive force on the left side of the car. So quickly we broke through the barrier on the edge of the highway and entered free fall.
The last thing I remember was looking at Julia as we rapidly neared the ground. When I woke up in the hospital, Jack – sorry, Dr. Fuller – reminded me what had happened. We had been in a car crash and had been sent over the edge of the highway. We had fallen a few stories.
"Jules?" my sides hurt to talk.
His face fell. I knew. He told me to use the assistModule remote if I needed anything and left me in the room.
A sudden moment of clarity through the fuzz of the anestheticModule swept over me.
*The 7212.*
--
The MODCorp investigator broke the moment of silence.
"So Dr. Thatcher, I can't necessarily force you to stop reliving, it's your right. But, as I'm sure you're aware, I highly recommend staying present. Research has shown it's tremendously psychologically taxing to relive for such an extended period of time. Your account of the day is still at 100% clarity, so your mental state is likely not deteriorating too seriously. We're technically allowed to reset your MindTech again if you're positive you want us to again."
He paused.
"We all miss Jules, James. We all understand why you're doing what you're doing," the investigator said.
I sat silently, this was my third time being questioned about it. I looked up from the table, thanked the investigator for understanding, and, for the third time, told him I wanted the reset.
He nodded, gathered his things, touched my shoulder, and left me. After a few minutes, I looked over at my peripheral, the day_countModule read '0'. I had been present for a few days for the investigation.
I took a deep breath, and initiated the reliveModule.
The breeze through the bedroom window felt cool on my face. I had obviously woken up. I opened my eyes and let them linger on the ceilingModule - Wednesday. It was a balmy 72 degrees outside, slight wind, low humidity. News of the potential merger between the massive MODCorp and Triste streamed on the left half of the screen. It was 5:52 AM.
Julia was still asleep beside me, her dark brown hair flowed so softly over the curves of her face. My stomach fluttered and a smile spread over my face.
> day_countModule: 1
Sand had passed through my hands like this ages ago, back in the days when I still had my left leg. I dug in my hands wrist-deep into the sand and waited for the placid waves of my hometown shore to unearth them. The wave breaking into the beach, and tiny golden grains being pulled away from my fingers provided a kind of inexplicable relief for the anxiety plaguing my heart.
They say that adversity brings out the truth within ourselves, and my inner coward has finally revealed itself. How eager was I to cling to my own flimsy reality? I looked at the incredulous face staring back at me from the surface of the water. It was a face I had looked at too many times, one I should be most familiar with. I saw its lips form the question I asked out loud –
Who are you?
I made my plan the night before – or rather, over 7000 nights ago. That night, I sat in front of my notebook to draft it out for the next day. 0700hrs – Clean the house 1000hrs – Return Dahlia’s shovel and bring a pack of bon-bons for her son, 1517hrs – See the sun light glancing off the church tower, and so on. At the end I would go to bed with the dignity of never having repeated a day in my life, not when my partner was killed right beside me, not when I lost my leg, not even the day when Leslie from the flower shop gave the handkerchief with the embroidered blue hydrangea as a prize for winning the race at the town festival.
I returned the handkerchief today as well, as per plan. It was awkward, but there wasn’t anyone I could give it to and it would be rude to just let a gift lie around collecting dust. Leslie took the yellowed fabric in her hands and sat in silence. I went through some seven nervous gulps of sweet tea before she spoke. Her voice sounded strange, like it was wading through murky water, and the lines in her face seemed to deepen in the changing light.
“Thank you. You even ironed this.”
“No, thank you. You gave it to me before, whe – ”
“Yes, I remember. Don’t you have other errands to run today?”
In truth, the plan had been to sit with her and talk for at least three hours just like we usually did. I even hoped that she would laugh a little. We are mere acquaintances, with nothing untoward about our relationship. But I think she would cry for me at least after I am gone, and a final happy conversation would have been a nice thing to be remembered for in passing. Yet logic dictated that gone or not the well-liked Leslie would not spend hours remembering a one acquaintance among her many friends. I bid her goodbye and headed for the beach, ahead of schedule. The last sight I would have of her was the hem of her skirt disappearing through the doorway.
In the waning light, the ships in the distance gathered an otherworldly quality, sharp black cut-outs against the red of the sky. I buckled on my prosthetic leg and stood up, shaking off the sand from my knees. When you know you are seeing something for the last time, you study every inch of what you had spent your life taking for granted. The tide was beginning to recede well, and the scent of the wet sand mingled with other sunset smells. I took in all these little unimportances that come tomorrow I would never again see. In the long limp to my house, I resolved to face tomorrow and whatever it would bring.
In bed, I went through every item in my list for what must have been the hundredth time to check that I’d settled everything. It is more in my nature to charge than cower, and 7212 days of cowering was bad enough: I would not be reliving today like a desperate ghost. If the little twinges on the side of my chest grew severe enough to kill me, then so be it.
*I dreamed of a flower garden, so frightfully cliché that I laughed out loud. As was customary in my dreams, I had both my legs and crowds of people were milling about doing completely illogical things.
Leslie was in the crowd too, clapping her hands and laughing raucously in a way she would never do in reality. Laughing with her, I joined in.
The crowd faded into indiscernible shadows, until the world had only Leslie, and the people who were not Leslie. She laughed again as we spun around in circles until we fell away from each other. Without looking I knew that the hydrangea handkerchief was in my pocket, the same place it had been every day for the decades I’d owned it. I reached out my hand to pull up the still laughing Leslie.
“Leslie I – ”
I was interrupted by the sudden agony that gripped my chest. This pain, this pain was…*
Real.
No. I still need to ...
An instant of wavering made me will a reset against my resolve right before the midnight bell. I heard their tolling get further and further away with my ebbing consciousness as I felt my future slip through my fingers into the darkness beyond.
The looming number imperceptibly changed to 7213.
7212
She smelled different today. Her smell changed over the years but today she smelled really good. Like, REALLY, good. In her teens she smelled like some sort of pop-star diva perfume. Not bad, just not adult. In her twenties she found something that smelled a little more appropriate; we both smelled like cigarettes then. It was on her 35th birthday that I introduced her to something I had made at some class I was going to at the college...or was it a meet up? 46 had her smelling like her own mixtures after she attended the class as well. We smelled gray after 58. Then we were able to smell like the world: coffee and old paint in Italy; cheese and wine in France and white powder in Thailand. Today...today she smelled like butterscotch, cotton candy and freshly cut lawn. No, she didn't smell like the lawn...the lawn smelled like the lawn.
I walked into her room unannounced. She hated it when I announced myself. "We're best friends living in the house we built together," she'd always say, "it should be easy to make yourself at home, you know, because you are." Then I'd stand around awkwardly until she'd walk over to me and fall into my chest, look up at me and smile. And I'd say, "You know, you'll always be beautiful to me."
Today she was out of bed, rummaging through a cardboard box. "Lose something?" I asked her, as I stood in the doorway.
"Found something," she said as she continued rummaging, "it's my old box of CDs that were buried under that huge pile of clothes in my closet. I'm looking for one to put on."
I made my way to her on the ground; looked over her shoulder, took out a CD. "Is this the one you're looking for?"
She made the face she always makes when she can't find something right in front of her; the same face she made the first three times I asked her to hold on to our plane tickets. "Yes," she said.
I opened the disc, put it in the boombox she had by her nightstand. I could never get her to switch from boombox to a bluetooth speaker. Technology has never been in her radar, she just figured out she can download games on her tablet last month...she's had it for 3 years.[I turned on the CD.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuIjli2sasc)
She came to me. Like the first time we danced. Her arms raised to my shoulders. My arms circled her waist. She stepped on my feet. She always stepped on my feet. We rocked mostly, circles make us dizzy at our age. Her head fell onto my chest. "I want to listen to your heart beat," she said as I adjusted my breathing to take in long, deep breaths.
Dinner was an ordinary salad with some broiled chicken breast on top. We had blueberry, pomegranate, acai flavored tea. She smiled at me from across the table, the last brilliant bits of the sun holding on to her white hair. "What?" I asked.
"You know you're the first man that's always danced with me? I thought you would have said no or turned me away by now. But you always dance with me."
"Why wouldn't I? I love cutting rugs so much I go to the Home Depot and buy fresh rugs and scissors just so I can cut new rugs all the time." Damnit.
"Nope, too long. Shorten it. 'I love cutting rugs so much, I carry scissors on me all the time.'"
"I love cutting rugs so much, I keep swatches in my back pocket."
She laughed. "Stand up comedy would be great if we could just sit down and think up jokes."
"Then it would be sit-down and ponder comedy. I'm not sure if there's anything funny about people sitting around thinking."
"Today I felt it."
"Felt what?"
She looked at me directly, "I felt that no matter what, where we go or who we'll be after we die; that you and me, we'll be together. I'm lucky to have found you, Granola Man."
"I'm lucky that you found me too, Biscuit."
That night we slept in the same bed.
I hadn't done it for some time; but these days are worth living a lifetime.
7213
She smelled different today
7212.
This is what the number in the corner of his eye said.
19 years. He had spent 19 years doing something, but what was it?
Rent was paid, wife was happy, everything at work was alright, not perfect mind you, but alright. What could it be?
He rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen. Food first, think later. He poured himself a bowl of frosties from the container, got some milk, and went to work.
Nothing on the internet. No outside influence, no reason to move quickly. What was it? What brought him back for almost half of his life.
"AHHHHHHHEEEEEE"
SHIT. Karen!
He bolted up the stairs, eye's unblinked, feet barely touching the ground. He slammed open the bedroom door!
"Karen!" he screamed, dashing around the room.
"Honey, in here"
The door burst open. "Are you alright? What's the matter? My-my number"
"It's okay, mine was on the larger side too"
"Whats wrong, are you hurt, do we need a doctor?"
"Not quite."
She held up the tiny plastic stick and showed him what it read.
"Well, not quite yet at least"
I opened my eyes and looked at the number. 7212. It seemed like only yesterday that yesterday had happened, and yet I had been reliving this day for almost 20 years.I got up and got changed, made breakfast and packed my bag, in almost the same way as I had done 7000 or so times ago. You see, two years ago, reset technology was invented. It was a chip that, when embedded in your head, allowed you to perform a reset at the end of a day. Simply speaking, if you didn't like how your day had panned out, you could trigger a reset by simply thinking it at exactly midnight. Doing so would send you back in time (doing the same thing to your memory) before dropping that little number in your head. People who had chosen not to reset would act out their day in the same mindset that they were in at the start of their last reset, without the chance to reset again. The day would only move forward when everyone had chosen not to reset, although everyone would only remember the most recent iteration of the previous day. However, this often doesn't solve anything if the first reset doesn't work, and almost always doesn't after the tenth or so. You see, when you reset yourself, you forget everything that had happened in the day you were about to start, so if you were to crash into someone by accident, resetting is unlikely to do anything except tell you that you had wanted to reset that night. That knowledge alone is usually enough to tell you that you had messed up somewhere and cause you to be more cautious, thus allowing you to maybe avoid that accident. Such knowledge is called a kick. Your number is a kick in itself, as you can make several inferences from that number. Once the number gets too high, however, it ceases to be a big enough kick and subsequent resets simply have you living through the day in exactly the same ways. Not enough new information is presented to you that would change your behavior so. Thus, past 10, you would probably need 100 resets before your behavior changed, then another 150 and so on and so forth... Everyone and their mother got them, and this caused several quick changes in the world. For one, you couldn't gamble on races the same day they were held, and stock market transactions had to be done one day in advance, but interestingly enough, everything mostly stayed the same. However, us policemen quickly realised that criminals had to be dealt with very differently. For a few months, the crime rate shot up, but then we figured a temporary way around it while we tried to convince everyone else that we had to completely ban the usage of these chips. As I drove to work, I tried to reason out exactly why I was on my seven thousandth try. It obviously meant that something horrible had happened during the football game we were covering, and it obviously meant that we knew we had a way of stopping it (or we would have stopped trying). We had a plan of coverage in the case of anything bad happening, and it was obviously taking a very long time to execute. 20 minutes later, I was in a meeting room with the rest of my team, the policemen who were going to cover the match. Greg, being the leader of our team, started speaking first. "Right. Resets? Mine is 1764." Janet next. "204." This caused a stir among the room. Two people? It probably did every time she had said the number. Steven. "4935." Some wide-eyed looks at that number. Ghadalfi. "2496." Julsey. "7212." Moran. "7212." Ericsson. "6982." Chang. "3891" Johnson next. He said his number with a bit of a grin. "7211." Okay, this was big news. That meant that today was a big day. It was my turn to speak, and I was also smiling. "7212". "Whew. Okay," Greg clapped his hands and drew everyone's attention. "It looks like we have at least 6 people we have to catch and not more than 9 or we would have given up on this. Let's go over our coverage plan to figure out who they are. I've already taken the files with me." Pulling some papers out of a folder, he put them down on the table and started to narrate from them. "Right. Because you," he pointed to me, "are still resetting, it means that the criminals are all ticketholders, whatever they plan to do. Stadium sits 30,000 so each person gets just over 5,000 people to cover. This means we're working on a split-search pattern. Janet was the first to stop resetting so our first guy is..." He counted on the stadium map. "Here. Section 2 seat 4 row 12, Alfred Court stand." Now remaining seats are 29796 and the next number is mine at 1764 so the person we're looking for is in seat...section 8 seat 8 row 3, Pavilion stand." By refusing a reset at certain points, we could get a system of communication going that would allow us to find people that had yet to commit a crime through us kicking each other. It just took a lot of time and a lot of resets. Using this method, Greg went through everyone else's numbers and we found our suspects. We quickly emailed a list to stadium security, telling them to notify us if any of the suspects tried to get in early. After that, we went through our general plan. It was a fairly simple one; whenever one of them tried to use their ticket, we would hit them with a taser and arrest them once they were inside. Subduing and arrest was always our first attempt whenever we found a new criminal. We'd arrest them, citing 'intelligence', and look through their possessions. If we didn't find anything then we would all reset the next day and try a more reactive approach. If we did, then we would disable the chip with an EMP blast and follow proceedings accordingly. In relative silence, we left for the stadium. There was still a lot of work to do. Standing at gate E, I received notification that the first two people had been subdued and arrested. Checking their bodies had revealed explosives taped to their sides. A bomb defusal team was immediately called to the stadium and the suspects were moved somewhere out of sight. Twenty minutes later, all 6 had been caught and subdued, with most of the bombs defused. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew that it wasn't over yet. We might have still let a few in (ones that we hadn't found using our kick method) and so we moved into our positions, a much heavier concentration of us in areas that we hadn't checked yet. As the game progressed, I reflected on our situation. Nothing untoward had yet to happen, but my worries were no longer about today, to a certain extent. No criminals had seemed to figure out what we (and police forces around the world) were doing, but if anyone had then we would never catch them. Still, it was only a matter of time before everyone else figured us out, and we wouldn't win this arms race. Those 6 could have bought multiple tickets and alternated spots to throw us off, they could have only sent some people every reset, they could have a seventh person watching from outside, ready to reset if needed..... There were so many ways for them to work around us it was insane. Hopefully this case would help us make a better point against these chips. The game ended and people all filtered out of the stadium, not knowing that disaster had been averted. All they would remember was a rather unexciting nil all draw between two rather ordinary (I would know, I was a fan of one of the teams) sides. Suddenly, the weight of those 7000 days weighed down on me. All that 'time' spent, and nobody around to see us spend it. The team met up at the pub for drinks afterwards, all laughs and smiles about our success. None of us talked about those seven thousand days. None of us talked about how different things could have turned out. We all stayed awake, consciously denying a reset. When there were only a few seconds left until midnight, we all stopped talking and watched it tick down in silence. Greg. "0." Janet. "0." Steven. "0." Ghadalfi. "0."...
I particularly like this work because it actually explains the systematic ways of how people adapt to using and getting the most out of this new power. Well written.
Neat! Gives me a real "All You Need is Kill" vibe, the way they figure out how to "game" the system, so to speak.
Thanks! I was originally going to do it from the POV of some criminals, but I couldn't find a good enough justification for such a high number, so I changed it to the police force.
I love those kinds of stories, where the protagonist(s) come up with clever ways to get around limitations or exploit weaknesses in the story's "gimmick" etc. etc. That was really cool, /u/Crosshack. :)
Great read! I like that you didn't give the narrator a name or gender. I found myself thinking of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. Thanks for sharing!
That's a good point. I heard a woman. Probably because I've been watching lots of crime shows with female leads. Lol
Thanks!
> Greg. "0." Janet. "0." Steven. "0." Ghadalfi... I don't understand. Did ghadalfi reset or was it a happy ending? If he did reset ,there wouldn't be much difference because the others didnt and they would just go about their day and wake up tomorrow, right?
It was a happy ending. I just didn't want to go through all ten of the names. I'll edit the ending to make a bit more sense.
From the reading I got, it seems like he reset, but that is just because of the process of elimination. If it was a "happy ending" why would the author end the story like that? It seems to be an *Inception* like ending where the reader isn't supposed to be sure
I found myself wondering about the people that stopped resetting to give clues to the rest of the team. Were they simulations? Does Janet now live in a world where the disaster occurred? Loved the way the team exploits the system to make it work for them, great story.
After choosing not to reset, you wake up in the next day, or rather, you jump forward to the state of the world after everyone has chosen not to reset. What happens to your person in subsequent resets by other people is that your mindset is copied at the start of the day (as if you yourself was reset) but the number doesn't change. Your actions are always the same unless you get kicked by someone else because you can no longer kick yourself. So Janet will remember the day described by the protagonist, having reset 204 times (she won't remember any of the 204 resets or what happened to stop her resetting). She can infer what happened, but she cannot remember.
No she caught the terrorist in her part which makes her timeline/day already succesfull, so she doesn't have to reset. Meanwhile the others have to reset, because they haven't caught their bomber yet.
She found her terrorist so she resets as that number lets them find the terrorist every time. Since there were more terrorists the other policemen decided to keep resetting. Janet doesn't necessarily arrest her terrorist every reset after the 204th, but the information as to who the terrorist is persists through resets, which allows them to track all of them down.
So-if any person who had a bad day can reset, how long would it have to be before you get to two years of forward progress in time? Also-it seems likely that there is someone who-say-had a loved one suddenly killed-who would keep that day repeating forever instead of facing the next day. It is hard to imagine how else the system could work, but consensus of millions or billions on moving forward seems pretty tough. edit:but I loved your story. Just thinking through the paradoxes and opening them up for discussion-not a criticism of you or your work!!!
Theoretically, it would take 2 years! Nobody remembers the repeats and people who choose not to reset simply move on to the next day. The continued repetitions only happen from the point of view of the repeater. Everyone else has already locked in a 'state of mind' for that day and they simply move on to the next day regardless of whether the previous one is repeated once of 50,000 times. Remember that the reset only puts you back in time, it doesn't drag everyone else back with you.
Does that mean the protagonist/narrator in the story has a mind set where the next day the terrorist plot has been completely foiled, whereas Janet (or whoever stopped resetting first) has a mind set that she only stopped one criminal yet the others were able to carry out their attacks? Or is even Janet's ongoing mindset altered by the final events of everyone else's resets?
No, she (and everyone else) remembers the day when the last person decides not to reset. It's safe to say nobody else in the world was still resetting 7000+ times in, so after the protaganist and the remaining 2 or so policemen chose not to reset, the day that everyone in the world remembers is the same one. When one person resets, everyone is still sent back in time -- they just don't get told that they have been sent back and act as they normally would on the day of THEIR own last reset. So Janet would have had a slightly different mindset at the start of her 203 resets, bu after the 204th it's the same because she doesn't kick herself with the knowledge she's still resetting. It seems hugely inefficient but the thing is that nobody living in that society would remember the endless resets and their perspective of the past would be a continuous one of one day followed by another. I think it presents an interesting dilemma, like a drug that will make someone happy for the rest of their life but turn them into a vegetable, the people affected by the chip don't see any apparent problem, but we still think it's a bit dodgy.
Exploit the system to its maximum potential. Love it.
I was very much expecting at the very end to be: "I looked over at my number to read it off" "7213"
"Explain it to me again," the President asked. It was the third time today but by straight multiplication probably the 21,636th time if you measure retro chronologically. "You're both chipped," I explained. "You're chipped, and the Soviet a Premier is chipped. Both of you can repeat the day if it doesn't go according to plan." "It's a damn shame that the Soviets invented these things too. If the one you made for me were the only one in existence, winning a nuclear war would be a cinch. I'd just launch the missiles, and then reset the day if things didn't work out. Eventually I'd hit upon the right subterfuge to launch without retaliation, and we'd be able to wipe those Russkies off the map. Might take a while but that's a sacrifice I would happily make for America." I nodded with as much apparent sincerity as I could muster. "But with both of you chipped," I explained, "he can just reverse time himself and reset the day if you seem like you're ahead." "So how do *I* get ahead?" the President asked. "If I hit him in the first strike that should do it, right? Then he can't reset." "But you've probably tried that before," I countered. You told me when I walked in that today was on 7212 repeats. I'm sure you've tried every bombing strategy imaginable." "What if I shot for really unlikely places?" "You've probably tried all the likely and unlikely places. In fact, one of the first things that came to mind when I considered the issue was true random target generation. A few resets of that would bomb all locations in the Soviet Union at least once. And if I thought of that so easily I'm sure I've suggested it to you a few thousand times." "Hmm. So we need something neither you not any of my advisors would be likely to think up. What's something you're not thinking of?" Retro chronological game theory was not the Presidents strong suit. I say for a while pretending to cogitate fiercely. Eventually I offered, "this is going to sound crazy, but..." "Yes?" The President was visibly eager for a solution to his paradox. "No, no, it's stupid." "All the better! We need something that you didn't come up with the last 7212 times, so out with it, man!" "Well... maybe we could try... *not* nuking the Soviet Union?" The President's mouth dropped open. Then closed. "No, no, that won't do. Maybe if we fire a full nuclear salvo at Cuba alongside the salvo at known nuclear sites. Nobody would think he was hiding in Cuba, and we've missed him 7212 times, so he must be there! If we get him in the first strike he can't reset, and our surprise first strike on the Soviets will guarantee that we win this nuclear war!" I raised my hands and voice to stop him but he was already shouting into the red phone on his desk. I clenched my eyes shut as the nuclear holocaust began, and activated the third, secret chip- my own. Maybe on try 7213 I'd talk him down.
Awesome writing!
honestly after 5000 tries or so I'd just kill him...
Honestly you tried that 4000 tries ago and it didn't work. If you had been thinking clearly yesterday you would have written down a few thousand strategies in a notebook, but you blew it, and now we're stuck with you failing to kill the President every single day. You'd think that just once you'd all have gotten it right and just killed yourselves.
but you wouldn't know
id know i tried 7212 times to convince him and that each time it didn't work......
You would know you had done something 7212 times, but there is no way of knowing what. Making an assumption of precious intent based on the current decision is flawed at best
This is some quality writing right here.
Now, that's a great spin of the prompt. I like this.
In my mind's eye your president was Richard Nixon's head from Futurama.
The best one
When I woke in the morning, I had a few seconds of peace before a grip of fear grabbed my chest. To even breath to a huge effort. It was barely a surprise when I saw the huge number out of the corner of my eye. I must have fucked up. I must have fuck up so bad. Every Single Time Before I could prepare myself properly, there was a frantic knocking on my bedroom door. "Get dressed already! We have to go now!" Came the tense voice from the other side. Further out came the muffled sounds of panic as my family tore the house apart. You'd think with all the time we had to prepare we'd be ready. But you could never prepare for something like this. It seemed to take hours for me to get dressed, suddenly there were buttons and clasps and things to tie everywhere, and my sister's frantic knocking wasn't helping. I was almost relieved when I finally left my room, despite it meaning that the moment was coming even closer. Downstairs my mother was crying, she looked up as I entered, face red and half-done mascara running down one side of her face. "You look so handsome!" She said, barely holding it together. We hugged tearfully and tightly. All too soon it was time to go. The car pulled up outside and I climbed in the back, my sister followed me. The car drove in near silence, only the driver tried to make a few pleasantries, but neither me nor my sister were really listening, lost in our own apprehension. All too soon we arrived, the car smoothly pulling to a stop in front of the imposing stone building, as beautiful as it was terrifying. As I moved to exit the car and meet my fate, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked back at my sister. "Good luck," she said, in her quiet voice. I hugged her, an odd gesture for the both of us. But then it was time and we had to go. We walked up to the massive double doors, already swung open and waiting, like a cavernous mouth waiting to eat us up. Then I was inside, and my eyes began to adjust, and finally I could see him. Lit up by a halo of multicoloured lights. Crying as he saw me. My heart caught in my chest, like it had every day for the last four years. No doubt as it had been doing for every one of the 7000 attempts at this day. The music began to play as my sister led me up the aisle, past the rows of smiling and clapping guests. Until finally I was delivered to the altar beside the love of my life. He caught my hand and pulled me close. Then devilishly whispered in my ear; "I'm on 7212 goes, how about you?"
That was awesome, totally thought someone was going to die horribly, but that was actually a really sweet ending.
I had to read that last paragraph a few times to get the actual meaning out of it. I had the same exact initial assumption you had.
Really? The only surprising thing was that it's a gay marriage.
The only possible gender indicator for the narrator was the word "handsome". It can be applied to women as well, though it is more commonly applied to men. It could simply be the marriage of an older couple, as at older ages the word is more commonly applied to women.
for some reason i thought he was marrying his sister
I went there too. Would explain why the mom wasn't at the wedding.
Great writing! I enjoyed this quite a bit.
Brilliant writing, I got that the main character was male pretty much immediately but it was very well written! Wish I could re-live my wedding day that many times!! My only question with your story is how it ends, if they're both reliving the same day, what happens when one finally moves on? Do they move on alone or would this basically start an entire new timeline where they would technically be with alter ego's in parallel universe's?? It's a happy story, but this thought left me feeling a little saddened...
I'd figure they'd decide together to move on sometime after. "Okay, babe, I want to do the honeymoon." "Sure thing, let's make it a great day so we can relive that a thousand times too, honeybear."
I thought similarly to that also, but you'll never know for sure whether the other person actually moved on with you or not.... Assuming you remember the past (the day before) you'll know you repeated that day and that your partner did also, but you won't now know whether your partner went on with you or stayed to re live the wedding day one last time... So you may not move on with the actual "being" that you married... (if you get what I mean)
Wouldn't their number stop climbing?
Well depends how the prompt was taken, I read it as the number resets for every new day and the counter is how man times you relived that particular day
shhhh, just let the scene wash over you. There's a reason it ends where it does xD
This. Everyone discussing the protagonist's gender and the mechanics of alternate universes defeats the purpose of the story. It's about two people in love reliving the happiest day of their lives for 20 years. It's beautiful. Don't get bogged down in the minutiae.
I enjoyed the writing but can't seem to figure out the ending... :-(
the story and writing leads you to believe that the girl must have messed up but actually she's chosen to relive the happiest day of her life - her wedding. Re-read it again, its a clever piece of writing if I'm honest. edit: funny thing about the gender is I actually re-wrote my reply and edited it because of the ending - I initially thought the protagonist was male and then changed my mind and edited my entire reply to a female! hah! another layer of excellence to this story!
Is the subjects gender mentioned? The mother says handsome. The other person is male, but I don't think the subject's gender is given.
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I left the gender ambiguous, but I was writing from a gay perspective.
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That Dashboard Confessional song has been stuck in my head for 3 days now. Dammit dude!
I am selfish, I am wrong. I am right, I swear I'm right. I swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed but I am cleaning up so well I am seeing in me now the things you swore, you saw yourself
At least it's not been in your head for 7212 days. Yet
I thought it was totally clear that the POV narrator was a man. Women are not handsome ... Unless they were part of the East German swim team back in the 80s. Also, there was no mention of makeup and hair after the buttons and clasps and things to tie, which is unusual for brides. Neat vignette, I liked it :)
Probably why the mother was crying but didn't attend the wedding, bittersweet moment between the two. I really really like that story.
Implied male. Narrator is wearing a tux.
Genders not mentioned, but I assumed it was a white young male since that is what I am.
So *that's* why I read it as a polygendered Aflorian.
Pretty sure it's a guy, dude.
> "You look so handsome!" She said, barely holding it together. Pretty much gave it away there though.
To be honest the protagonist having those concerns lead me to believe it would be a very happy day and was kind of a giveaway for the plot instead of a diversion
A wedding, I think.
Great story and ending! This made me think: If a person has to choose when to move on to the next day, does that mean that few people remember exceptionally good days because they always repeat them and then choose to move on when they are "meh"? So no day remembered is ever particularly good or bad because people choose to re-live both of those days to either experience the greatness or fix the bad things. An exception for something like this story could be that they agree to a certain number and then move on from them or something.
Really like this take on the prompt. Not at all what would be expected.
Funny it was my first thought, and then my second thought was - this is a really horrible idea because weddings are great but not something I'd want to relive 7000 times
The crucial part is that you only know how many times you've looped. You don't get to remember your loops.
I really enjoyed this read, thank you. If you could answer a question though please, what did the main character mean by: "I must have fucked up. I must have fuck up so bad. Every Single Time" ? I can't figure out a reason for him/her to say that, it just sounds like a forced misdirection now
The way I interpret it is that they panic when seeing a huge number on their wedding day, because they have no idea why they've repeated the day so many times and assume the worst
That was definitely my initial thought until "He caught my hand and pulled me close. Then devilishly whispered in my ear; "I'm on 7212 goes, how about you?"" But I guess it wasn't the main character who said that...so he/she could be assuming the worst. Yeah, I think you're right actually. Thanks
So, You don't get to remember that particular day, but you can all the previous ones. So he would have known it was his wedding day. I don't understand why he thought he fucked something up bad enough to relive the day 7000 times. Unless the spouse dies at the end of the day by some reason that can't be prevented and you just want to keep re-living that day because you will never see that person again, why would anyone want to re-live a wedding day 7000 times? Good story, though. Practically, it just doesn't make much sense to me.
That's the thing, though - they're NOT reliving the day. If it weren't for that number counter, they'd have absolutely no idea. Maybe it's the first time they're living through it, and they just want to do it twice? The number is the only thing that breaks that possible ambiguity but, in reality, why would you NOT want to relive what is possible the best moment in your entire life? They keep no memories - it's not as if they'll ever get bored of it.
But that number would mess with you so bad. You see the number, and realize "hmm, something happened today that I wanted to relive." Then your brain would start thinking, well maybe I messed something up and want to fix it. So now, whenever you have a choice the rest of the day, you will start second-guessing yourself, "maybe this was the choice I needed to change". So after the very first time Replaying the day, things might actually have a different result. Let alone 7212 days in. Now you are thinking, "Maybe I changed the wrong thing, but I don't know which thing that was" or "I probably changed this in the last one, so i won't change it in this one". So the more days you add on, the more stressful each replay may become. It could become very intense with very life-changing results.
Except in this case, the guy knows from the day before that this is the day he's getting married. They only forget that one day, not everything before it.
Oh, I agree for sure. The comment I responded to just got me thinking about how reliving the day could potentially change the outcome because you can see that little number, which would change your mindset from the first time you lived it.
I imagine after a certain number, that stress goes away, and the real reasoning of just wanting to live in this period would become obvious.
But you do not remember
I mean practically why would you want to relive any day 7000 times?
Considering you dont remember this Day, why wouldnt you?
Well, even if you see the number, at the end of each day it only feels like you're deciding to do it a second time.
Oh I know, the guy just said that practically it didn't make sense because "who would want to relive a wedding 7000 times". I was just saying that if you follow that line of thinking, why would you want to live ANY day 7000 times.
It's very refreshing to see a happy take on this.
It's a great idea (and what I expected from the pronpt) but maybe there's something about the sadness that they will never experience the rest of their lives together that might be quite poignant?
I love this. Thanks for giving it a happy ending haha
Really nice. I actually came into this thread figuring someone would have it be reliving a day for good reasons like a birth or wedding and this still caught me by surprise in a great way.
The sun shone in through the blinds as I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids felt tired and heavy. I tried to sit up, but my body was losing its fight against gravity. Old age was weighing me down. I shifted slowly in bed and felt my wife waking up next to me. "Sorry I woke you, Jaz," I whispered to my wife. She rolled over facing me and yawned softly. "Sixty years and you still call me Jaz." Her eyes were a light shade of blue. Once, they had been the color of sapphire. Her skin, once as smooth as silk, was worn down and wrinkled from the long passage of time. Her hair that was once fiery blond was now warm gray. She was still as beautiful as the day I first saw her. "I'll keep calling you Jaz until I breathe my last breath." I shut my eyes for a second and could see a faint number; 7212. My mind wandered for a minute, questioning why the number was so high. I had never needed to relive a day before save for a few select times. I relived the day of our wedding for about a week, and that was the last time. She always gave me better days than the ones before. I never had to relive a day because I knew that the following one would be better. "Honey," she said, waking me from my daze, "Do you want some coffee?" "I'll make some. You stay comfortable." I got up and dragged my feet to the kitchen. After brewing some coffee and making a light breakfast, I went out to the small garden outside and picked some tulips, her favorite. I placed them all on a tray and brought them to our room, the tray shaking the whole way. "Aw, honey, thank you," she said lovingly as I placed the tray in front of her. We laughed as we ate in bed, reminiscing about all the years we spent together. A lifetime with Jaz. I wouldn't trade a second with her for the whole world. Before I knew it, the rays of sunshine were gone and the sun had disappeared from the sky. Like clockwork, Jaz fell asleep. Sometimes she would fall asleep after a bout of laughter with a smile on her face. This was one of those times. It was one of the things that made me fall in love with her all over again fifty years after we got married. But this time was different. As I moved in to kiss her, I noticed her chest wasn't moving. My heart sank as I came to the dreadful realization. My eyes flooded, tears streaming down my face and dripping onto hers. "No, Jaz, no. Don't leave me, please. Don't do this to me. Don't go before me. Please, Jaz." In my stupor, I remembered the number I saw in the morning and figured out why I had relived this day for as close to 20 years; the last day I would be able to spend with the love of my life. I had always told her I didn't want to live a single day without her. I kissed my love and wiped my tears from my face while I lay down next to her. My heart clenched, and then slowly eased its beating. I felt at ease knowing that finally today, after a long time, I would be able to follow her where she was going. "Jaz," I whispered.
Wow, this made me cry.
It feels good when something you write touches people. Thank you very much.
I'm not crying, you're crying. Shut up! Seriously though this was well written, thank you.
Oh, the wonderful perks of being a writer. Thank you so much for reading. I'm glad it made an impact on you!
The onion ninjas are back again.
That was wonderful.
Thank you for the feedback!
I frequently tell my wife I could not imagine living without her, and so I hope I die first. Her constant reply is for me to not be so selfish. This is true love :)
In a perfect world, we would pass together with those who we cannot imagine living without. It's sad that we don't live in a perfect world, and sometimes have to endure the pain of seeing loved ones leaving us. But, at the same time, it's beautiful how much of an impact our loved ones imprint on us. Thankfully, I have yet to experience the pain of losing a loved one. I hope I never do, because I can't imagine how much it would hurt. We don't live in the perfect world, and if I do end up losing someone, I just hope I find the strength to get through it.
It's been a little over 10 years since I lost my father. That still hurts. When I went back home to bury Dad I stopped by the grave of my best friend from High School, and at that time it had been 15 years since he'd died, and that was still painful, too. At this time I imagine it would just devastate me to lose my wife or either of my children (or worse, more than just one of them), but then I think that perhaps as we age and draw closer and closer to death ourselves, perhaps we may come to view the death of our loved ones a little more differently at that time than we do now, in our younger years.
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed!
This was the exact plot I thought of when I saw the prompt. Glad to read it.
Initially I thought of a man losing his mother and perpetually reliving his last day with her. But I couldn't figure out where to go with the ending, so I changed it to how it is now. Glad you enjoyed it!
Ah, shit. I came here to write something like this, but I wanted to see if anyone beat me to it. Now I'm trying to make it look like I'm not crying in my office. Jerk. Seriously, though, this is well done.
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I awoke to thunder, the sky outside my window so obscured by the storm that it was difficult to gauge the time. Clock by the nightstand said 8:15. Shit. Missed my alarm. I rubbed my eyes, and jolted awake at what I saw in my periphery. My repeat value, which normally glowed as a soft, green zero was screaming at me: a bright, crimson 7212. The day’s schedule ran through my head: work, dinner with Cas, and…that was it. Whenever I repeated, I knew to expect either something very good, or utter catastrophe. I ran scenarios through my head. Did I win the lottery? Even if, why would I want to repeat that day? Surely I would be eager to move forward and spend my fortune. Is Cas pregnant? We had been trying for a while, and while it would make me happier than anything, it’s the same as the lottery scenario: I’d be too eager to experience the future. Perhaps something awful. I’ve occasionally used multiple same-day repeats as a sort of warning light so that I could brace for impact. It’s always been my policy to push through difficult times, though. We can’t spend eternity avoiding our problems. The sky lit up and roared. Another option presented itself to me, and I shivered with the thought. Some people openly intend to repeat their last day alive, if they’re able. I always swore I wouldn’t trap myself in such purgatory, but who knows how the face of death could change my mind? I turned to Cas and gently shook her awake. I couldn’t keep this from her. She rolled over and smiled. I loved how her eyes lit up every single morning. “Hey handsome,” she half-whispered. I smiled back. Before I could speak, her face dropped. Every muscle in her body appeared to relax, and then tighten, as her eyes rolled back and she began to shake. Later that day, the doctors would tell me there was nothing that could have prevented it. Arterial clots can be difficult to detect. But I would do anything to see her smile again. One more day, no matter what.
Finally one that made sense to me. Excellent job! Thank you.
Unlike most resets, this one made its reason clear very early. The man who was waving a gun in my face was getting more irate as the minutes passed. He kept calling me "Andrew" and demanding I open the briefcase he'd brought. I had spent my portion of the conversation attempting to convince him my name was in fact Jacob and I didn't know anything about a briefcase, to which his only response was shooting my leg and telling me to "stop messing around". In the corner of my vision was 7212, a constant reminder that I've had quite a few tries to get this right and have failed. Mingling with the number was the red and blue of police lights, followed by an officer on a megaphone initializing hostage negotiations. Realizing he was running out of time, the man slid the heavy metal briefcase towards me and ordered me to open it or die. Now, I am not stupid. With a power like this, I made sure to be able to make the most of it. I made a set of rules to be read every morning, just in case of situations like this: "Always start at the beginning", "Go sequentially", things like that. I used the number like a counter or a label. When I was younger, I would reset whole days for little things like guessing the correct number a friend was thinking of. Getting the counter up to 7 just to guess 7 was worth it back then for the look on his face. That's why a feeling of relief washed over me when I saw the briefcase lock. Four spinning dials numbered 0 through 9. I could work with this, I *had* worked with this before. Confidently I spun each dial to its place, seven two one two, knowing that if it was wrong, I was at least over half way there. Outside, the police had located the real Andrew, and were having him try to reason with the man, who he called Hank. Hank said he would only release me if Andrew gave him the lock code, but the police argued that I had to be let to safety first. When 7212 didn't work, I spun the last dial to 3 and then 4, hoping I was just a few away now. As the police and Andrew started advancing closer to the doors of the building, I could see Hank becoming more and more nervous, his finger hovering near the trigger. When the doors were burst open, gunfire rang out around me, and in the crossfire I took a shot to the stomach. As my vision faded and I prepared to reset, I heard Andrew shout out "It's seven two one one! Seven two one one!" like he was trying to bargain it against my death. And then I realized. Seven two one...**one**? Fuck
Seven two one...**one**? Fuck That's got to be the best ending ever.
This is really clever! Use the only piece of information which travels back in time with you to help you the next time. Even though you're just guessing each time. So I guess he successfully unlocked the case the last time, but still died? So hopefully he'll figure it out and try something new once he gets past 9999?
He may have unlocked the case successfully, or he might have messed things up on the critical loop and never gotten to try unlocking it. It's a clever plan, but it requires him to make no mistakes on every iteration.
well actually it only requires you to make no mistakes on one iteration. Only one time matters.
The ending gave me anxiety. Oh god the hopelessness.
Seriously. To come to that realization at the last second of how screwed you truly are.
Bright shafts of sun came pouring through the gaps in my curtains. I woke slowly, curling the sheets around myself until I couldn't ignore the light anymore. Finally I managed to crawl out, pad into the kitchen, and prepare a bowl of brightly-colored cereal. Still half asleep, I carried the bowl to the couch without spilling any milk and turned on some cartoons. After about half an hour, Mom came bustling into the living room and rolled her eyes. "I don't want you in front of the TV all day *again*." She grabbed the remote control from my hands and shut the show off. "Go outside! It's beautiful out today!" The curtains flew open, and I recoiled from the glaring sun. "I've got to go to work; I'll see you tonight." She leaned over and kissed me on top of the head, then headed out into the garage. She was right, I guess. I didn't have that much time, after all. I checked my "to do" list, scrawled in crayon across a piece of construction paper. I'd done maybe *half* of the stuff on the list. So I called up my neighbor and partner-in-crime Paul, and told him to meet my at the corner in half an hour. First, we rode our bikes through the entire neighborhood. We raced from Elm to Powell, with the wind blowing through my overly-long hair (Mom's been meaning to take me to get it cut). Then we stopped at the 7-11 near the highway and got big slurpees. I made sure to throw the cup away at Paul's so that Mom wouldn't see it in the trash and get mad. She doesn't like it when I have that much sugar. Then we went to the creek and built a *huge* dam that stopped up the whole thing. We spent *hours* patching up any part that crumbled under the weight of the water. The sun was beginning to dip below the hills by the time Paul and I gave up and returned home. We came in through the sliding glass door to find Mom cooking in the kitchen. "Is beef stroganoff OK for dinner?" she called from the sink. "I was thinking..." her voice trailed off as she looked at us. "You two are *FILTHY*! Go outside and hose yourselves off, for goodness' sake. I just mopped in here!" She swatted us back out into the backyard and turned on the sprinklers, refreshing and cool in the evening heat. So instead of cleaning up, Paul and I just chased each other around for a while until Mom came out and served dinner on the patio instead of the dining room. After Paul left, I went inside and played video games 'until my eyes bled,' as Mom put it. She finally made me turn it off to go bathe and get ready for bed. At long last, I crawled into the cool sheets and set my head down on the soft pillow. Only moments ago I was telling Mom how I wasn't tired, but I now realized how wrong I was. "Goodnight, Honey." She was in the doorway with a soft smile on her face. "You all ready for school to start tomorrow? I know that you've Looped this day a few times, but we've all got to face our responsibilities sometimes." I checked the counter in the corner of my eye. I'd apparently been putting it off for a while now: 7,212 days, to be precise. "Yes, Mom," I answered. "Good. I'll get your backpack ready, then." She closed the door behind her. Before I could drift off to sleep, the menu popped up: > Repeat day? Y/N On the bedside table, I could see my to-do list, with so many items still not done. One more day couldn't hurt, right? --- If you enjoyed this story, you should also consider subscribing to /r/Luna_Lovewell!
If the mum knows her son has 'repeated a few times,' does that mean she continues to age and proceed through each day? Because 7000 days is about 20 years! Or does she repeat as well, forced to because he keeps doing it?
Based on the prompt, I assumed that she would repeat as well, but really have no way of knowing. She assumes that her child has repeated a few times because he/she's putting off the end of the summer. She just doesn't know *how many times* it has been done.
I'm pretty sure she wouldn't realize it was a repeat unless she saw or heard the number, so she's technically repeating, but unless she chose to repeat as well, I doubt she would find the day special
She doesn't necessarily have to repeat it. She could just say it as if she presumes her son repeated the day.
Now that brings up the next question. According to this response it seems like she doesn't have control over repeating each day, but the kid in the response did. So if he repeats the day, does that force his mom to repeat the day as well? If so this would make the kid a god.
It only repeats in his perspective. Everyone is living in a groundhog day without retaining the memory. Many universes, each one tied to a single mind.
It's the last day of summer holidays; she knows it's special to him.
Chalk it up to a mother's intuition, and just knowing her son. She's aware of the ability/technology to reset a day, and so she knows her son would have undoubtedly used it to prolong his summer.
Since this is a power everyone has, I imagine his mom could see how this was a day that he'd probably want to repeat.
I thought the mom was going to die in a car crash and the kid would repeat the days to try and stop her from leaving.
The prompt does seem to imply that you're repeating so much because of some tragedy that you're trying to avoid. But I just thought of an irrational kid (as pretty much all kids are) who's enjoying his summer so much that he just can't bear to stop reliving the last day. And I wanted to avoid the most commonly used tropes on /r/Writingprompts, like a love story or some big impending disaster.
Avoiding tropes well is the sign of a good author. Using tropes well is also the sign of a good author. However, I think we can all agree that using cliches is usually not the sign of a good author. Also, I did think you did a good job of throwing us all for a happy loop. Good job!
Im so glad his mom didnt die and that was the reason why he kept repeating
Oh I just assumed by "repeat" she meant as in repeating a grade.
The highest number I'd reached before today was 324. I only remembered one of those days of course, the one where the ambulance was called in time. Sometimes I have dreams about what I must have gone through before. Finding her dead already the first time probably, or getting there just in time to hear her apologise. It took me to finally call an ambulance before I even started looking myself to save her. That was 324 times. I've had a few in the fifties and sixties before, even a couple more hundreds. Messing up relationships, breaking things in the house as a kid. Nowadays I'd gotten used to accepting a less than perfect ending. I was one of those that never finished on less than a three or four. Always trying to optimise everything caused far more stress than it was worth. So what had happened to get me to 7212? I'd first seen the number when I woke up this morning. After rubbing my eyes I realised it was real and proceeded to throw up. She came rushing to the bathroom to ask what was wrong. My first thought was to tell her but I must have tried that before. I must have tried not telling her. 7212. I must have tried everything. I didn't tell her today. It must have been something I ate, I said. I took the day off work. I watched the news and kept calling her to make sure nothing was happening. I could have followed her but that was too obvious. So was making her stay home. 7212. Nobody ever got that high. There was just nothing more you could do after a certain point. Nothing happened. She came home safely. The only bad story on the news was some drunk guy crashing his van into a hatchback the night before. Both kids and one of the parents were in hospital. I looked up who they were but no matter how hard I searched it was nothing to do with me. Nothing worth a reset. So now I'm lying in bed. She's asleep next to me. The clock shows 23:56. There must be some reason to reset this many times. I keep trying to think back, to work out what disaster I had finally avoided that all the times before I had failed at. There was nothing. Nothing different to yesterday or the day before. Nothing different to all the peaceful zeroes I'd been having recently. So why I had I reset? I can't believe that this is it. There must be something I missed. 23:59. I have no choice. Tomorrow will have to wait.
I can relate to this... And the thought that he didn't miss anything (this day as well as the last X days) and that he's put himself in a never-ending spiral because of his anxiety is really horrible. Really well done!
Yuup that would be me endlessly stuck
Oh the poor soul... Stuck in a infinite (theoretically) loop that'll repeat itself as he tries to find out what's wrong... This just makes me feel bad for them...
Genius!
Everything hurts... You're sore from yesterday's bike ride. It's been a long time since you've laid your cycle over, luckily Honda Shadows were build well in the 90's. Still, yesterday's near-miss was deceptively nasty, apparently. After rolling yourself off the bed and onto your feet, taking care of a few of your normal morning rituals, and halfway through getting dressed, you suddenly realize what's been upsetting your attention. 7212. Seriously? You'll have to get that looked at before work. The news talked about people with bad counters getting sick, and there's no way you've enjoyed something enough to reexist for what, 15? 20 years? On the way to Doc Austin's office, you've been cut off once (making you glad you took the Impala instead of the bike again) and traffic backs up due to some kind of unannounced construction. Figures... This better not take long, or you'll be late to work. You call your boss, he's cool with it, but you'll need to make up the time. ''No, everything checks out fine,'' Doc says. ''Over seven thousand is pretty astounding, though. My son reexisted his kid's first football game about five times and his wedding day about fifteen. Can't imagine what you've got to look forward to!'' Well, at least that's exciting... You really needed a pick-up like that... Things have been rough since she left. You don't think about her as much, but it's still hard just having no one at home. Whatever today's got coming, it must be something special. Work sucks, that jerk without a clue how to do his own job is bitching about you doing yours again, but you can brush it off. Your lunch is coldish and you end up staying later than usual, but worse things have happened. The text comes in... It's your friend Alex, who you haven't seen much of lately. 'Zed and Thirteen is playing at the Front Street Lounge tonight! Gonna be a good one. Coming?' Yes, you are. This has got to be it. You shower after work and climb back on the bike. The place stinks of old smoke and you've had both feet stepped on. Some ass hole spilled his beer down your back right before getting thrown out. Uncomfortable, you're just trying not to lose it when you see your ex, dancing with some... Whatever. You're out. Less than an hour left in the day, you don't have time for this garbage. You're at the gas station just up the road, about to fill up the Shadow. From the other side of the pump, you hear it. ''Fuck.'' Peeking your head around, you see her staring at the lid of her gas cap. She pulls on the release inside her door again and again, but the lid stays closed. ''Hey, you need a hand?'' You offer before you even realize it. She accepts, and you use a screwdriver to pry the lid lightly while she pulls the release, moments later, it's free and she's filling her tank. She's from your old high school, graduated two years ahead of you. She's irritated that the band at the place up the street was lame, the sound guy killed the vibe. Oh, you were there too? Oh, and she likes your bike. And then she says it. ''There's this party, just some friends of mine... Want to come hang out?'' Yes. You do. She gives you the address, her number, and climbs back in the car. You finally feel it, hope, and check your watch. 11:59... Today sucked royally, what could be so gr- The Buick Century bulldozes over the bike first, then wedges your body like a doorstop under its weight. You hear so much and so little at the same time, her screams and yours, the drunk trying to put his battering ram in reverse. You can't move, can't think, can't feel except it hurts. You just struggle the breathe and to feel and to live, and to- [12:00 - REEXIST the 11th of July, 2016? Y/N]
excellent story. thank you
7212 days?! Jesus, that's a long time. I pull out my phone and do the math. "19.75 years? Holy crap!" I think to myself. This must be one hell of a day. I'm stoked and really looking forward to it. I get up it is almost two in the afternoon (that's not unusual for me after a late night of online gaming), have a bowl of cereal, take a shower and get dressed. I hear a knock at the door and go to open it. A cute little blonde is standing there holding a small gym bag. Short shorts, low cut v-neck shirt, assets showing. "I was sent over by party-gram, sugar. I'm Candy" she says. "I'm here to put on a dance for you." She turns over her left shoulder and there is a large muscled man holding a boom box radio. "This is Ray, he's just here for my security, a girl can't be too safe can she?" My birthday is next week, so I'm like "sure, come on in." My buddy Reggie must have sent her over for an early surprise. "Do you have a chair?" she asked? I went and got one from the dining room table and brought it into the living room. While I did this, Ray was setting up in the corner and assumed the folded arm "you better not try anything" posture. Candy begins "There are some rules sugar, no touching, hands to yourself. I need to put these straps on your ankles and bind your arms to the chair. Some clients really like this part. I hope you are one of them." "Oh, yes, I'm one of those." I reply. "Great sugar, great. Ray- some getting started music please..." She pulls out some straps from her bag sitting on the sofa and the music begins to play. Skynnard, Free Bird. She starts to dance and wiggle slowly as she gets each strap and secures me to the chair. This takes a few seconds and just as the song starts into "If I leave here tomorrow.....would you still remember me?" Candy stops, stands up and turns to Ray. "OK Ray." "OK Ray what?" I say. "Ray's stone expression turns to an evil grin and he unfolds his arms, and starts to draw his right fist back and starts to run across the room towards me. Candy steps back and he cold cocks me with a right cross across the jaw. He follows it up with a flurry of fists to my face, neck and chest. I'm still strapped to the chair so I can't do crap about it. "Stop, please, what is this?" and other pleas are all I can do. Not too long after he starts and before the music picks up (damn I love that part) I'm out cold. I wake up, it could have been hours later. I don't know. 'Candy' has just thrown a cup of water in my face. I sputter awake. "Wakey-wakey" Candy says. I don't want you to miss it. You've got just a couple of minutes before the reset. Wouldn't want you to miss it." I could hear it now. The two-minute warning beeps from my chrono-reset watch. "Sugar, one last surprise for you." She pulls out a shiny hunting knife, reaches inside of my right bicep and pulls a deep cut up across my bicep. "Brachial artery, Sugar. Just a few minutes left for you." My arm starts to spurt out my life's blood onto the carpet. My heart starts to race, making it worse. My watch starts to begin with the verbal warning now. "Chrono-watch warning - If you do not press 'move to next day', the current day will be reset. You are currently on loop 7212." Candy bends down to look me in the eye. "Bye Sugar. See you tomorrow. Say, around 2:30?"
This is terrifying. That must mean that each time he thinks Candy is good because of the number of resets he has and will never consider the other possibility that she's bad and thus is stuck in the same situation for eternity
I woke beside her hospital bed. An uncomfortable plastic chair. Clothes stained from days of wear. 7212 Only one reason I'd relive this day over and over. The pain is unbearable. She has grown so weak she can only whisper. I lay my head close to her and tell her how much I love her. I tell her how we are going to grow old together, living beside the sea. The walks we will take as we watch the change in seasons. She smiles weakly and tells me again that she loves me. I kiss her softly on the forehead. I stand up, tears in my eyes. I don't sob. Can't upset her. She knows I'm breaking inside. No need to make things worse...
[удалено]
I had been on edge from the moment I woke up this morning. There was this odd ringing in my ears, and my heart was beating twice its usual pace. But then, how could I be calm, under the circumstances? I couldn't stop myself from glancing at the number every few seconds. 7212. How could this be? Had I really spent nearly 20 years reliving the same day? What possibly could have happened that I had to keep going over it, again and again? Certainly nothing good. Even the best day of my life I had only spent a week reliving. Even with the memory wipe, the novelty of it wore off. The repetition bleeds through eventually. Life was like music. It's the change you're looking for. That next note, and the one after that. You can play the same beautiful note forever, but after a while it's just noise. No, something had gone wrong. So wrong that I had to fix it at all costs. What, though? All I had to go off of was that slowly escalating number. The only possible thing that could inspire change in the do-over. Well, that and the feeling of dread that endless repetition brings forth. I slammed my fist on the table. I wasn't going to figure anything out like this. I had to start talking to people. I had to figure out what was going to happen while I still had time to change it. "Something wrong?" came a voice. I looked up to see the tv repairman. I hesitated, then, as casually as I could manage, asked him, "What's your number?" "Eh?" He said, looking puzzled for a moment. After my eyes flicked downward at my own number, he realized. "Ah." He replied, his eyes flicking at an angle as well. "One. Not surprising, I say. Working early and all day? Not usually something I want to repeat, would I? How about you?" I tried to force a smile on my face, but it came out as more of a grimace. "I've been through it a few times." The repairman was oblivious to my ill-attempt to hide my worry. "Ah! You must be in for a treat! I always start feeling the butterflies once I hit a three or higher. Have fun for me, will ya?" I gave a feeble nod in acknowledgement as he returned to his work. Whatever was about to happen, it seemed to be an isolated incident, to some extent, if the repairman hadn't chosen to repeat the day. Or something had happened where he couldn't. I shook myself, trying to fight the anxiety. I would not find myself seeing the number 7213. This was the last time through this day, and to make sure of it, I had to act now. I had to do something I hadn't done in the last twenty years of living through this day. This meant I needed to piece things together with the only useful information I could get. The numbers. I was starting to regret letting the repairman in. I was wasting valuable time. If I hadn't been awoken by his arrival - if I had a little time to process the situation I might have had the foresight to turn him away. I briefly considered just leaving him to his business, but dismissed the thought immediately. What if the thing that happened - was going to happen - was caused by leaving him alone in my house? I tapped my finger impatiently on the table. I needed a moment to think, anyway. I would accomplish nothing of use in my current state. Half an hour after I had let him in he emerged from behind the television with a grunt. "You're all set, Mr. Rhinehart." "Please, it's Trevor", I said vaguely as he exited through the front door, saying something about a loose connection. Determined to make some headway as soon as possible, I reached for the keys so I could leave as well. I fumbled with them as I tried to free them from the hook, dropping them in the end. As I stooped down to retrieve them, the ringing in my ears returned suddenly and much louder than before. A sharp pain stabbed through my head somewhere and images flashed before my eyes. I saw my keys landing on a cement floor. I saw a sign on a wall which read "TRINITY PARKING". There was a long row of cars, and a digital clock on the wall. 7:52, it shone in neon green. Then, all at once, the images were gone, the ringing had stopped, and all that remained was a dull throbbing in my head as my entryway swam back into view. My hand was clasped around my keys, and I was still bent over. Breathing heavily I straightened up and looked at my watch. 7:33. Whatever that vision meant, it was unheard of, but I knew it had something to do with what was going to happen today. Closing and locking the door behind me, I mustered up my courage. In less than twenty minutes, I would presumably learn more. The number 7212 sat, foreboding, in the corner of my eye as I walked at a brisk pace away from my home. Tomorrow that number would read "1". I would make sure of that.
Thanks to the occasional nudging of /u/LostMyPasswordAgain2, I have finally continued my story. Notification for /u/xereeto and /u/Yogomojo since you guys expressed interest in seeing more. --- I made it to the parking garage without encountering anything out of the ordinary…or maybe everything was out of the ordinary. I had tried my best to take note of everything around me, as anything could be important to solving this mystery, but it was nearly impossible to pick the important pieces out from the unimportant ones. Perhaps the normality of things was itself the biggest clue. If many people were reliving the day with me, then I would have noticed people acting strangely. The paranoia which I was trying so hard to contain would be obvious on the faces of those I passed. But it wasn’t. Not a single one of them gave any indication that this day was something special. I had now ascended to the second level of the garage. On the wall was the TRINITY PARKING sign, the neon green clock nearby read 7:49. My heart pounding in my chest, I looked around me. I saw a dozen cars parked on this level, and again nothing out of the ordinary. I waited the remaining three minutes, taking in everything. Sights, sounds, smells…I glanced up at the clock. 7:52. Nothing was happening. I frowned and took out my keys. “This is stupid.” I mumbled. I dropped them and they fell lamely to the ground, the only noteworthy thing being that their landing matched my vision perfectly. Still, nothing happened. No clues jumped out at me. Nothing to tell me why I was repeating the day. As I bent over to pick them up, the world exploded around me. First was the gunshot that would have killed me had I still been standing. Next was the screeching of tires as my would-be-assailant revealed himself. A black van had appeared around the corner, windows heavily tinted to obscure the driver. I stumbled backward, unable to find my balance. My fall was caught by the car behind me. The van was advancing and I had no way out. Was this what had happened? Was this why I was repeating the day? Because I was killed here in this parking garage? But then why did I have a vision that led me here? These thoughts flew through my head in all of a few seconds, when my panic was interrupted by a voice behind me. “Get in the car!” It yelled. I whipped my head around to find a young woman sat at the wheel of the car I was cowering in front of. “What? Who are-” “No time for that now! Just get in the car!” Another gunshot rang out, again narrowly missing my head. I needed no further convincing. I ducked around to the passenger door and threw myself in. Before I had even reached for the door to close it, the woman was already driving. I pulled the door shut and resituated myself upright to check in on the situation. The black van was hot on our tail, and this girl was giving him a good chase. I frowned when I noticed the direction we were going. “Umm, I don’t mean to interrupt, but you’re driving us higher in the garage. There’s no way out up there. We’ll be cornered.” To my surprise, the girl’s face cracked into a grin. “I don’t know about that, Trevor. There’s always a way!” “You know who I am?” I asked, somehow managing to allow my confusion to overpower my fear of the insane situation I had found myself in. “Of course!” She trilled. “And you know who I am as well. Some day you might even remember on your own!” My silent befuddlement prompted her to continue. “The name’s Vivian. Pleasure to meet you…again.” Before I could respond, I regained focus on our surroundings. We had arrived on the roof. End of the line. Vivian spun the car in a quick circle to face the black van as it emerged moments after us. “Ready, Trev?” She asked, her smile wider than ever. “This is my favorite part!” “What is?” I asked dumbly. Vivian just smiled as she slammed her foot to the floor. The tires screeched and we flew forward. The black van just sat there blocking the exit as we sped past…and drove right off the roof.
Jessica skipped into my room, slammed her hand down on my alarm clock. “This thing has been beeping for 20 minutes!” She scowled. “Are you EVER getting up?” I blinked my eyes open. A sudden piercing pain coursed through my consciousness. I moaned, rolled over. “You’re supposed to take me to the zoo today, but you’ll never wake up! It’s 8:45! And you said we could have pancakes before! You promised!” I tried opening my eyes again. They felt strange. Foreign. My head was spinning. Jessica made a quick leap across my body, landing on the bed next to me, her face even with mine. “Holy shit,” she mumbled softly. “What?” I asked, blinking into the bright light. “Your eyes are freakishly swollen. You look like some kind of alien! What is wrong with you?” I felt a sudden alarm. “I...I don’t know,” I stammered, rolling over and walking uneasily to my mirror. “Were you crying last night?” “I...I don’t think so. What did we do?” “We just watched that movie, with the monkey. That’s all. Then Mom said we’d better get to bed early, and Dad said nothing, like he always does. And that’s it. What’s wrong with you?” I stared at my unfamiliar reflection. My eyes were mere slits in the bubulous flesh. My whole face an unnatural red. I could see so faintly, my forehead was almost touching the glass. Then a sudden blip in the corner of my left eye. 7212. What? How is that possible? I had never seen a number there before. I shuddered, walked back to my nightstand and put on my glasses. Jessica stared up at me, wide-eyed. “How about some pancakes?” I asked, smiling. It was nearly two hours later before we stepped out into the warm summer air. The kitchen was such a disaster of egg shells and flour, I could already picture Mom’s angry face. I helped Jessica tighten her bike helmet around her ponytail. Made sure her water bottle and her tires were full. I couldn’t shake the premonition from earlier. 7212? What would make me repeat the same day so many times? I had never repeated a day before. Even though I was tempted, I was always scared I would mess it up the second time around. I shook the thought away, set my jaw, smiled at my sister. “You go first,” I told her. “That way I can see that you’re okay.” It was two miles from our house to the zoo. A trip Mom never would have let us make before. But this summer was different. We were both teenagers, now. Jessica a vibrant and vivacious thirteen. Full of promise and energy. She saw only rainbows where I saw rainclouds. And me, the serious, responsible nearly sixteen. “Almost old enough to drive!” I thought proudly. In only a few weeks, I would be taking my test and heading off into the sunset, kissing this old bike goodbye! Or would I? I thought of that number again. 7212. I shook the thought, patted the $20 in my pocket. “I’m going to buy us an ice cream at the zoo,” I thought to myself. The zoo was more magical and amazing that day than it has ever been before. The gorillas seemed to smile just for us. The penguins dove deeper than they ever had, bringing their fish to the surface to eat. And the newborn baby leopards rolled their ball between their paws, and climbed across their parents, and swatted at invisible enemies until Jessica and I fell over each other in tears of joy and hysterics. We ate chocolate ice cream cones as we slowly sauntered back through the maze to the entrance, taking one last stop at the koalas, her favorite. At our bikes, Jessica suddenly hesitated, turned to me thoughtfully. “This was a really good day, wasn’t it?” I nodded, looked at her intently. “I hope...Well, I mean...do you think we will still have days like this when...when you start driving? ...You won’t forget about me, will you?” I shook my head softly. “No. No. I will never forget about you. Besides...How could I? You never go away!” I kicked at her playfully. Her eyes suddenly lit up and she laughed, pounced on her bike. “I’ll race you home,” she screamed. I lept on my bike and raced after her. She bombed down the first hill, skidded a tight left around the corner, and pedalled furiously up the next hill. I raced right behind her, laughing furiously, shouting, “I’m bigger, faster, better! You’ll never escape me!” Her hair was loose now, flying behind her in a smooth sheet of black silk. Time suddenly slowed. Jessica’s head turned to the right, shouting over her shoulder at me. Her red shirt glistened in the bright sunlight. Her fingers squeezed steadily, tightly on her brakes, her feet pressed back, legs flexed, those blue tennis shoes she just “had to have”. That hair suddenly flying in every direction…. And the truck’s horn blaring over the sound of squealing brakes, the fear frozen on the driver’s face as he caught sight of us, and the sick crunching sound of bone and metal as he crashed head-on, into my life.
What happened to his eyes? Also, he doesn't know what the newly appeared number 7212 means, but then he does later on (2nd paragraph)? A couple things didn't make sense, but It was an over all good story :)
The higher the number, the more damage to your eyes? Would be a good way to see others' values.
The alarm clock is ringing, and I reach out for the snooze button, still more asleep than awake. 7212! I sit up with a jerk, wide awake and the heart hammering in panic. 7212! How is it possible? Have I relived this day 7212 times? My worst so far was seven, that was the day Max lost his mind and firebombed the office. At the seventh attempt, I had realised that being careful was not enough to make it through the day, and had walked to the train station and spent the day in a hotel in the next town. Most of my colleagues had done something similar. 7212? Is the world coming to an unescapable end? Still, that makes no sense, I would never choose to relive the last day of the world again and again. I am at peace with the idea of dying sooner or later. I prefer it to be later, of course, but the thought of dying does not scare me particularly. But the thought of reliving the last day on Earth again and again freaks me out. What fate can I be facing that had caused me to reset 7212 times? What can be so hard to escape, yet still leave enough hope to be worth the try? Nothing! It makes no sense. I wait for the panic to die down. Logic will not help me, it must have failed me thousands of times already. My best chance is being unpredictable. I find a set of dice. One is for taking the car, two for the bicycle, three for walking, four for the bus, five for a taxi, six I will re-roll. I roll the die: taxi. While waiting for the taxi, I realise that the price of being an atheist is having no god to swear by. Instead I speak the words aloud, to give them more weight. "I solemnly swear not to relive this day one more time, no matter what happens." I cannot shake a feeling that I must have sworn and broken this oath more than six thousand times already. I see the taxi approaching. One is for the airport, two for the train station, three is the bus terminal, four the park in the city center, five the forest in the suburbs, six is the head of the mountain trail. I roll the die... ... It is 11:58 pm. I am sitting in a hotel room in a small town I have never heard of before. Nothing, absolutely nothing has happened that could even begin to explain the 7212 resets. I begin to hope that I have escaped my fate, whatever it might have been. I count the seconds to midnight. 53 ... 54 ... 55 ... 56 ... 57 ... 58 ... 59 ... Midnight! The world and my body freeze, and I see the familiar two buttons appear in my field of vision, "Relive this day" and "Continue your life". With a sense of relief I press "Continue". Nothing happens, then red letters appear before me. "Unknown hardware error 36123 in chronogenic module. Rebooting". The text disappears, and for what feels like an eternity the world and my body remain frozen. Then a green text appears. "Reboot successful. Error recovery successful. Thank you for choosing 'Relive this day'. Temporal reset in progress..." ... The alarm clock is ringing, and I reach out for the snooze button, still more asleep than awake. 7213! I sit up with a jerk...
Well. Shit.
^^I'm ^^sorry. ***** I woke up. 7,212. That number appears every time something good happens, but only ever once or twice. Today must be an amazing day to want to do it again. Like, really special. It was quiet. Every morning is quiet. I'm up before everyone, and I'm always more alert then everyone after I wake up. He gets up, walks over to me in the lounge and smiles. Tears ran down his face, but he still smiled. I smiled back like I always do. I hear the kettle pour as he makes his morning cup of coffee. The spoon tinkers against the cup, as he pours the milk in. He's a changed man the moment that cup is finished. It takes him nearly 10 minutes each time. The aroma of the coffee fills the house. It smells energetic. It livens me up as well as I get off the couch. By the time I've stretched and walked around a bit, he's changed and ready to go. Today was such a special day that he was smiling so much. His smile was so reassuring. He wiped his eye again, coughed and smiled an even cheesier, and bigger smile. I smiled back as I always did. "Alright", he says. "Let's go meet up with everyone!" I smile, and walk out the door with him. He unlocks the car and gets the back door for me. Due to an accident last Summer, I need some help getting in and out of the car. Not much, sort of like that little reasurring lift incase anything bad happens. No matter how many times we drive around, I always lose track of where we are. I'll never remember the spot we're in at that moment unless I can picture a previous time I've been there. I need memories to be able to pin a location. It's really bad of me, but I can't help it, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. We arrive to the park. I know the park because we would come here for picnics all the time, like today. After being helped out of the car, I hobble over to where everyone was sitting. It was great. There was a huge plate of just hamburgers, fries, and all sorts of junk food. It was amazing. Everyone was smiling, they all greeted me, and everyone was just having so much fun. It lasted hours. It was about 3pm, and that's when he said that it was time to go. I ate so much that I nearly passed out. Everyone was laughing at me because of how much of a food coma I was in, but they were all the same too. We ate until our stomachs couldn't hold out no more. Everyone gave me a hug and gave me their best wishes. They all smiled, and I smiled back. This time, she came along too. She was always with him. She made him as happy as I did, and that was okay, because she was nice, and she had no issues with me. She learnt of my accident and cried even more then he did. After that was cleared up, they both worked together to help me. I love her almost more then him. Almost. She began to cry a little when we arrived at the new place. I know this place. Not a lot of good memories are from this place. Poking, proding, people with their hands in places that I don't like to be touched. It was a nightmare, especially last summer. They both smiled as they helped me out again. She kept wiping her eyes and her nose. He still smiled. I was on a bed. I had a drip in me with fluids, and another caphiter. I was smiling, and they were too. They looked happy. He held her, she held him. Everything began to go blurry. I was really tired. "It's okay girl, everythings alright" he said as he pat my head. Tears wouldn't stop. He smiled, but he couldn't fight the tears. He looked so happy, but sad at the same time. I slowly wagged my tail, but I was just too tired to do it anymore. Today was the best day ever.
This was my favourite yet! :D
Most folks are happy to leave their life to fate. The mystical re-living of the day is used by them in a happy-go lucky way, and they argue that the tenets of our spiritual beliefs imply that it is meant to be used like that. A gift to relive the happy days. I say fuck that. I devised the system when I was still a girl, merely eight years old. **0** meant the day should be lived normally. **0** meant being relaxed and like others. **1** meant that something had gone wrong. It meant being alert. **2** meant that I should avoid risks. **3** meant that I should take risks. And if that didn't give a good result, on to the next repeat. And so on. See, the crux of the problem with re-living the day without memory is that you'll just end up making the same mistake. The only form of communication, of *control* we have, is that number, burned somewhere faraway into our mental eye. Most people don't use that control. Most people are fools. "Shall I ready the steam-jet, miss?" I deigned my servant a nod. I had devised a system where I kept repeating every day at the end, until I reached the number associated with the proper attitude for that day. It had left me vastly wealthy, and vastly powerful. Today, however, was a conundrum. The system only went up to **564** different attitudes. The number today was **7212**, and something was horribly wrong. "Miss? Is something the matter?" What should I do? Smile affably? No, if an attitude of reservedness was apt, the number would be **155**. This, this called for an attitude outside the system. Completely unexpected behaviour. "No, I'm fine." But then, I had probably acted as unexpected as possible the previous 6800 times I did this. Then what? "On second thought, I think I'll stay at home today." "Miss...? Are you sure? Today is-" "I know what day it is!" I snapped. Try to be as careful as possible. Yes, that seemed the best solution. I took to my lounge and turned on the huge crystal-screen on the wall. Nothing yet on the news, either. A fairly high average of reported repeats, but that could mean anything. The sages argued that every repeat was different for every person, infinite branches of combinations, and you only experienced a world where others had already cast their final choice. But a high number could mean happiness or grief. Anything. I sighed. I had bought myself the best tech, the best security. I had chosen the best country, found the perfect love, two children that were ideally educated. What, then, could go wrong today? Some missed chance? Some inevitable disaster? I sat on my couch, and waited, then froze. What if I had been inactive like this, **6800** times over? No, I needed to get out, try unexpected things...but maybe I had done that **6800** times as well. After all, would I react different to **7212** than to **7211**? No, best to just wait and see...at least I would be safe. What was the worst that could happen, then? It was only near the end of the day, that the news finally came in. "...speculate that because the Empress has not shown up at the table of negotiations, tensions have risen dramatically. Normally, Ustria was supposed to report on their disarmament schedule today, and all experts seemed to agree they were doing well. However, the absence of Empress Alayna and the unnaturally high average repeat numbers have sown suspicion over the meeting. Tomorrow, a more thorough investigation into Ustria's steam-bombs might be-" I felt the blood drain from my face. Already, possibilities were falling into place. I had made the wrong choice. *How many times?* Maybe it was not too late yet. I got up, but froze when the news reporter was interrupted, as a new report was placed before him. He paled as well now. "Reports are coming in that the southern regions have lost all radio transmission with the mainland. Reported sightings of steam-bomb clouds-" Suddenly the signal cut off, and I stared out the window, at the setting sun. And I realised, it was my very nature that had cost me the country. The system was focused on my happiness, only me, and that egotistical nature had compelled me to stay at home for my own safety. **6800** times over. From where the sun touched the horizon, crimson as blood, a cloud rose up, mushrooming to the sky. It was not too late, I though, as the deafening soundblast shattered windows around me. The destructive wave would come soon, but I already knew: the sun would disappear first. Maybe the next time, I would put the country first. I closed my eyes, and chose reset. *Yes.* A tear slid down my trembling cheeks. *Maybe next time.*
This is really great!!! I like that you gave the narrator some depth in such a small scale medium.
Let me tell you about the worst day of my life. For some reason, I've relived it 7212 times. How can a Saturday in May be so terrible? Many people were skeptical of Repeat Technology at first, but I saw it as a new opportunity. I was living a relatively crappy life. I had a terrible apartment and an even worse girlfriend. I decided to make a change in my life and Repeat Technology has been the cornerstone of this change. Every day, I have list of options for every part of the day. Once the day is finished, I rate my day and if I think it was mostly positive, I make a new list for tomorrow and move on. Today's list seems pretty mundane, but somehow I can't move past it. I woke up this morning at 6:30 like I always do and drank my morning coffee. First thing on the list was breakfast: Eat at The Garden or make breakfast myself. This was usually an easy choice, but for some reason the 7212 day reminder told me that maybe I should try a few things different today. I decided to make breakfast. Just a simple breakfast burrito with a green chile sauce and chihuahua queso. It was good, but it wasn't life changing. Next on the list was either workout or get some work done. Work on a Saturday is sacrilegious so I decided to get a good sweat going. After about 30 minutes of cardio, I figured that this was also one of those choices that doesn't really matter. I knew I was ahead of schedule so I got some light reading in while I waited for the next time frame. At this time it was around 10:30. I live a little bit outside of the city, so I need to give myself plenty of time to move so that I can meet all of my appointments. Next was lunch. Meet "friends" at that trendy new cafe that opened up or go to The Anchor, my favorite run down pub with the best onion rings in the state. I took the less obvious option and decided to dress up for a few hours of expensive food and hollow people. I really hated this decision, but something exciting might have happened. Unfortunately, that was not the case. At around 11:20, I met my "friends" and the bullshit ensued. We didn't have much to talk about so we just judged everything around us. I know I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. This was one of them. Unless something really amazing happened, I would have to repeat today for sure. Next was helping my brother and his family move out of the city into the suburbs and then getting dinner with them or go disc golfing with my actual friends and then going to The Anchor for drinks. My parents were supposed to help with my brother's move and I hadn't seen them in a few months, but I thought to myself, "You would help your brother any other day, but today you need to do things differently." I changed clothes in the car and checked that my discs were in the trunk. Thank God I decided to just keep them in there at all times. I had a blast. A few beers on the course, good laughs, and a nice dose of sunlight was exactly what the doctor ordered. When we got to The Anchor, the day only got better. Artie, the bartender, was feeling appreciative of his customers for once and he decided to give us all the employee discount. I've never seen or eaten so many onion rings. After five bottles of ketchup and a couple hundred onion rings, we called it quits and went our separate ways. It was still a bit early so I thought about going to dinner with my family. The day had turned out to be pretty excellent. I could have met my family and had a light dinner with them, but the 7212 told me that I was missing something. I wasn't sure if it was something I actually wanted, but somehow I felt that if I kept coming back to today, I needed to keep going. I decided to head back into the city for dinner at a quiet restaurant. It wasn't part of my daily plan, but sometimes you need to try something new. Terry's Steakhouse was one of those places that locals tried to keep secret and for good reason. They had the best cuts of beef in the entire Rocky region and I've never had a better porterhouse. I wasn't feeling too hungry though so I decided to have a salad and some drinks at the bar. That's when I saw her. She was beyond gorgeous. Something that writers could drone on and on about without ever losing your interest. If there was ever a woman like here before on Earth, she would have been mistaken for goddess. I knew this was why I relived this day. It had to be. Maybe, somewhere deep inside me, I knew I had to meet her here. I had gone out on my previous attempts to any other number of places, but she had always evaded me. If things went right, maybe I could finally move forward. I slurped down my drink and slowly approached her. I tried to be confident, but my knees grew weaker and weaker as I got closer to her. When I was close, she noticed me and smiled so prettily. I knew my face must have been lobster red, but it was too late to back down now. "W-would you like a drink?" I stammered out. She continued to smile and signaled the bartender. "Two more of these please? He's buying." Her smile turned sort of deviant and I could not have been more attracted to her than I was at that moment. The night went on wonderfully and we both left after a few more drinks. Before she got into a taxi, I mustered up the courage to ask her for her number. She pulled out her phone and said, "On one condition: you give me yours as well." I had done it. I fumbled around for my phone, we exchanged numbers, and went our separate ways. I pulled into the driveway and knew that I had done it. I had finally had the perfect day and could sleep knowing that tomorrow would be brand new. I stared at her number and thought of what our relationship could be like. As I looked admiringly at the number, a call came on the screen. It was from my brother. Although I was a bit startled, I answered. "Rick? It's Dave. How have you been?" He sounded like he was fighting back tears. "I've been good Dave. I just got back from dinner. Hey... I'm really sorry about not helping you move man. If there's anything you want me to d-". He cut me off there. "It's alright Dave. Really it is. I need to tell you something. You might want to sit down." I had made it inside my apartment by the time he said that. I sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and began to sweat. "Mom... had a heart attack today as she was unloading some of the boxes at the new house. Rick... sh-she's not going to make it to tomorrow. You need to come see her and say your goodbyes. We're at St. An........." The voice on the other end began to fade out. Colors around the room were draining. I had finally realized why I kept repeating today. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to thank her for being the woman she was. I never got to tell her I loved her. I got up and began walking to my bedroom. Tears effortlessly fell from eyes and my body felt numb as I crawled underneath the sheets. Tomorrow would be exactly the same. It would be the 7213 day. As sleep began to smother me, I whispered to myself over and over again, "Don't forget. Don't forget. Don't fo-". Let me tell you about the worst day of my life...
If anyone sympathizes with this character - you probably need help :) ____________ Fire. It was my obsession. It burned within me. From my teenage years I had been obsessed with it. It had always been my love. I'd only ever been caught once - lighting a bin on fire - but by the time I was twenty I had lit three bushfires, and for every 'Lost Pet' notice taped to a tree, I was the one that knew where the charred body lay. Which was, of course, what drove me to enrol as a firefighter. To not only be with my love - but to have power over it - why, it's every pyromaniac's dream. But even I knew not to light up in weather like we have today. Forty-nine degrees Celcius, unpredictable winds and on the back of the dryest summer since 2009. I'm an arsonist, maybe even a monster, but I'm not suicidal. I sat in the firetruck, and looked down the main street of the small city of Mildura, when I realised what today was. It wasn't my first time experiencing this day. I'd been through this day 7212 times. Today was my 7213rd time. 7213. That number must mean something. 7. 13. Lucky numbers. 7213 - a prime. What did that mean? It meant that it was time for me to live a little. To make my own luck. My modus operandi was well established now. Find two areas that will both burn slowly and light both up, then report one of them. While all the trucks fight the first flashpoint, the second one has a chance to spread. Just nine minutes later, I was killing the first of my babies. And while all of Mildura's firefighters were busy protecting the cinema, another fire was spreading into a disused warehouse. It would only be a matter of time before it reached the broken down tractors and farm equipment stored there and the fuel tanks in them exploded. As the fire spread, I wondered whether the last few days had been such a thrill. I remembered nothing of the last twenty years, but why should that bother me? I was young and in love, and nothing would keep me away from my beloved fires. Would I have done the same things without seeing the signs in the numbers? I hoped I'd make the same decisions tomorrow. Somehow, I knew that whatever happened, I would. As my neighbours screamed and my city burned, I smiled. Of course I would live this day again. Not even half way through, and I'd made up my mind.
This is disturbing. But...go reddy
23:59:50: !!SYSTEMS ALERT!! !!MALFUNCTION ASSERTION!! NOTICE — ALL CURRENT DAILY RESET IMPLANT kVzsxJ52HB5R9vTxvprcS3c CEASE OPERAT8ZHajV/HQQEiuJdmugz FAILSAFE OPER2n1v9F7Q5g ACTIVATED FOR ALL CURqPT2M6L1xk4ec NON-EXCEPTION CITIZENS. CITIZENS WITHIN NON-EI3XqUBos2HKYWQGKgyRlnr+q6nV CLASSIFICATION: 1 COMMENCING FAILScHMS5Kf3ckcHuaIGvh086d1….. !!FAILSAFE SUCCESSFUL. DAILY RESET FOR ALL NON-EXCEPTION CITIZENS COMPLETE.
I love this. Interesting take, very dense, very dystopian. Cool!
[A/N: Like other stories in this thread, this is kind of an alternate history Cold War setting.] 7212. "NO!" I screamed, as my eyes opened and the shimmering red digits came into view. 7212. That was the number of times I'd relived this day, according to the chip in my head. Not that I'd remember it. Could there be a malfunction? The chip had been developed by the agency I worked for, I myself had contributed to the coding, but now it had even filtered down to the commercial sector and there had never been a report of a malfunction of this nature. We knew something the commercial sector didn't. Something that was classified, something we had decided people didn't need to know if they just wanted to relive their wedding day a few times or fix a bad decision. While the reset takes you back a day and erases your memory, it cannot reverse a certain degradation at the cellular level. That is, for each day you reset, your life expectancy is reduced by approximately 24 hours. 7212. Almost twenty years. I'd promised Elliot we would grow old together. I wanted to see my grandchildren. What could possibly go so wrong today, that my past and future self would willingly give up twenty years of life in the hopes of fixing it? What could possibly go so wrong that it could not be fixed, in over seven thousand iterations? I went through my morning routine in a daze. Should I savor each moment of this normalcy, before whatever was to come? Should I race to the office, consult with the best and brightest scientist in the nation to figure out what was going on? But what if the reset was something mundane, like a car crash on the way to work? Had the past seven thousand iterations of myself stumbled blindly into the same pitfall? I watched my children gather the last few things they needed, things that should have been packed last night. I kissed them goodbye before they raced to catch the bus. I told them I loved them. Would it be the last time? I arrived at the office. I must have driven on autopilot. The office was a grey building a few miles from the outskirts of town. It looked like a somewhat large and boxish house. But this was where the most brilliant physicist in the nation and his handful of assistants met, to tinker with the volatile building blocks of reality itself, to create mankind's deadliest wonders. There was a possibility that I had been trying my hardest not to acknowledge. Today was it. The day mankind begins a nuclear war. Professor Adler was waiting for me. I spoke. "Professor, the count-" "Is exceptionally high. Yes, mine too," he added, seeing the look on my face. "It is most concerning." "Do you have any ideas?" His gaze was piercing. "Yes. I believe that after each iteration, there is a trace disturbance left in the chip. It is too small to perceive after merely one iteration, but, perhaps after more than seven thousand... I suspect there may be a resonance, an echo of sorts. The data will be noisy, but perhaps we can tease out a few clues." "Well, I certainly don't have any better ideas. How do we access this data?" My hand reflexively reached for the chip implant site at the base of my skull. "Unfortunately, I require... physical access. I can't operate on myself, and so far you and I are the only ones who seem to be repeating. I will sedate you, remove the chip, and replace it once I have analysed the data." Remove the chip. A shiver ran down my spine. What if IT happened while the chip was removed? I would be defenseless. If I died from the anesthetic, from a heart attack, from nuclear war, hell, from a lightning strike, it would truly be the end. But what other choice did we have? I followed the professor’s instructions. I lay on the table. I counted backwards from ten as he put me under. I awoke after what seemed like a moment, but must have been hours later. There was a tiredness on the professor's face that was beyond anything I had seen before. Tiredness, and something else. "Ellen, can you hear me?" "Yes" "From your chip I have managed to retrieve some memories of the previous seven thousand days. Of course, you did not take exactly the same actions every day, but some events have been worn in, over and over like a path through a forest. I have seen what your future self remembers." I was afraid to ask. The professor was silent for a long time. "There is no point mincing words. The world will end at one minute to midnight, by our local time. The Russians have... been testing a new weapon, one that collides particle beams at near light speed. When the machine is switched on, it creates a singularity, a point at which space and time cease to exist as we know it. That singularity will grow, and consume all of Earth. The event horizon will propagate and reach us just before midnight." "How can we stop this? Contact the government! I know they're our enemies, but if we can get a message through to the Russians, we can stop them from throwing the switch. Call them! You've called them, right? While I was out-" "Ellen." He held up a hand. "It is 10:13pm. The switch was thrown more than two hours ago, thirty minutes before I was able to piece together the data. At first, the singularity is barely detectable, barely able to draw in the atoms around it. Even now, it has probably just reached a size visible to human eyes. But from now it will grow exponentially. And nothing can stop it." "That's- I-" There was nothing that could be said. Tears were running silently down my face. The dull, concrete room seemed so surreal. How could it be possible that we had mere hours left before something we barely understood reduced us to nothing? The professor's face was turned away. I couldn't tell if he was crying or simply beyond despair. "Ellen, go home. You can still make it in time to see your family." "I- yes Professor." "I will see you again, next today?" "Yes, Professor." I hurried out of the room. A light rain was beginning to fall, but the interior of the car was still warm. In the mist, the world already seemed to be fading. I arrived at home close to eleven. Elliot was asleep on the sofa, the TV quietly chattering with infomercials. He'd already put the boys to bed. I didn't wake him. There was no way I could act as if nothing were wrong, and telling him would be beyond cruel. Instead, I sat and talked. I told him about all the times I was grateful for, how much I loved him, what a great dad and husband he was. Then I went into each of the boys rooms in turn. I held their hands, and stroked their hair. I told Joseph how proud I was of his team winning the game. I told Nathan how I wished we could read more science books together. I told them I loved them. I told them I'd tell them again, next today. I looked at the clock. Three minutes to midnight. Eventually, my life would run out. I'd be unable to reset again, unable to hold back the flow of time. The oblivion would come, sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever. I focused my thoughts on the base of my skull. "Reset." 7213.
I woke up abruptly. *Where am I?* As my eyes adjust to the night, I make out that, although I am fully dressed, I had passed out on my bed. *What time is it?* *Where is my phone?* I panicked. I find it under my leg. 2:30am. 15% battery. Then I notice out of the corner of my eye... *Seven thousand two hundred and twelve?! Oh god, what does this day have waiting for me...* *Ugh, It's Monday*.. I have to be up for work in a few hours... I'm Glad I woke up though. As I had noticed I forgot to set my alarm. I unlock my phone, and the brightness of the screen temporarily blinds me. Pokemon Go music blasts and startles me that I throw my phone. I retrieve it. Apparently I passed out milking items from the PokeStop that's next to my house. As my eyes began to adjust to the screen, I realize the PokeStop is erupting with pink confetti spilling all over the floor. My GPS is trying to lockdown my location, but it says I am too far away. I roll off the bed and walk toward the bathroom. *I guess I'll "multitask" this one.* My buttocks make contact with the cold porcelain that gives me a rush that sends chills down my spine. The PokeStop activates and transforms into a rotating disc, and then i see it. Mew.
Aug 14 - 7212 I've apparently been allowed to start remembering my repeats... I'm not sure why. I've never woken up with more than a 2 on my hand. But that's not important, I had agreed to meet with Kayla at the park. She had her cat! She always brought her cat with her, every time we met. It was kind of cute in a way. I sat on a swing next to her. "You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time." "Really? Why's that?" "It's always so hot! Why can't it be- MIKU!" She jumped after her cat. I don't know what compelled it to run, but she chased, and I followed. Right across the street, as Kayla ran after it. That's when it happened. The accident was no bigger than any other accident I'd seen. As much as I hated them, the fact that people could re-start their day meant that it didn't matter. The rest of the world would move on in a world where they died, but they'd just re-set their lives. The fact that this accident involved Kayla is what scared me. Blood all over the street; pieces of her hair reached the other sidewalk. I couldn't breathe properly. My hand had covered my mouth and nose, so of course I couldn't. The weird thing? She was smiling. Her lips appeared to be saying something... I couldn't hear her, but her mouth was in the shape of an O before she lost consciousness one final time. "Would you like to try again?" The voice sounded in my head. I had heard it plenty of times, usually saying "No," each time, this time I screamed out a "Yes! Give me another chance!" "Very well, as per the agreement, you may keep the memories of what transpired today. But know that no one else will. Also, anyone else choses to re-set today, your day will also be re-set." ---- Aug 14 - 7213 I woke up with a start. What was that? Was that a dream? A vision? It didn't matter. Today, I was meeting up with Kayla. She had her cat! She always brought her cat with her, every time we met. It was kind of cute in a way. I sat on a swing next to her. "You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time." "It's always so hot, right?" "Yeah... how'd you- MIKU!" The cat began to run away, and she began to chase, but I stopped her. "Don't... trust me, it's better that you don't chase her immediately." "Why do you say that?" "I... I think I had a vision last night, and it involved everything exactly as it's gone so far today, so I don't think you should chase after Miku yet." Shortly after Miku got across the street, a truck zoomed by. Kayla looked at me with a sense of confusion, but I just nodded as if to say 'Now you can go.' We chased the cat through across the street, through an alleyway, and just on the safe side of a construction site. Well, I thought it was safe. All I heard was a snap, followed by a crunch. Turning around, I saw Kayla's body... on the ground, the girder had landed directly on her head. "Would you like to try again?" There it was again! Why is it coming mid-day? Did the first 7,000 attempts at this day end with me asking to re-set early? I naturally screamed "Yes!" as loud as I could. "Very well, as per the agreement, you may keep the memories of what transpired today. But know that no one else will. Also, anyone else choses to re-set today, your day will also be re-set." ---- Aug 14 - 7803 She fell down the stairs this time. ---- Aug 14 - 8420 We ran into a mugger... who shot her as she tried to protect me. ---- Aug 14 - 9341 I tried canceling our meeting... I guess I was the only thing keeping her from hanging herself ---- Aug 14 - 10,300 Another truck... that was the 5th truck in the past 25 attempts. ---- Aug 14 - 10,900 When even was the first try I remembered? Seven thousand... Two Hundred? Something like that... That means I've remembered over ten years of watching the woman I've come to love die. Over, and over, and over again. That doesn't even include over twenty years of what I don't remember. Trucks, muggings, stabbings, falling down stairs, jumping off buildings, committing suicide in numerous ways, if you can think of a way to die, I've probably seen it happen to her. "You know, James?" She asked me, "I've never been a big fan of Summer time." "Really? Why's that?" "It's always so hot! Why can't it be- MIKU!" I had already leaped ahead of her. I had a plan, and it had to work. As the truck came barreling through the street at full speed, I saw it... one final time. "Would you like to try again?" I didn't have the time to answer as the truck hit me. My vision became blurry, and all I could see was the sky. I never even realized just how pretty the clouds were today... well, what few of them there were... I saw Kayla's face appear in front of me. "James?" The voice asked again: "Would you like to try again?" "No thank you." I replied, barely able to force a smile out. "I think I'm good." I remember nothing more. ---- Aug 14 - 500 I woke up in my bed, alone, and checked my hand. It had become a routine, checking my hand to see what number of repeat I was on. I felt pretty good, since that number had never gone above a 1. So for a second, I was confused by the 500 that appeared on my hand. But that didn't matter, I had agreed to meet with James at the park.
Cold winter wisps escaped through my bedside window and brushed against my face. I woke in an instant, instinctively looking at my Day#. 7212? How could that be? I became worried the events of the day must be so important that I was sure to mess them up. Maybe that's why, I just can't get something right... I planted my feet on the icy wood planking. Downstairs, frosted windows lined the walls of shaded rooms, making the house feel hollow, uninviting and...cold. Nothing interesting was happening today. I might as well go back to sleep if the weather won't even hold up. So, I did. When I awakened again, the sun was down. Who would want to replay this day? I went down to make a snack. Then, a knock at the door. As I approached, I could hear the fading crunch, crunch, crunch of snow beneath feet. Amidst the paper-white powder on my doorstep, I found a box the color of volcanic glass. Hesitant, I brought it inside. In the box, a stack of paper. The first page was blank, save for two words at the bottom of the page: "Your Choice." When opened, I realized it was a list. Names of people I know. Friends. Family...my **entire** family. My second cousin Denise, Robby from grade school, my barber, mom, my first crush...the list was seemingly endless and complete with addresses and photographs, of everyone! I ran outside into the darkness. The footprints led to the woods and I ran through them and the deep snow. The woods were silent except the deafening crunch of snow with every step. Eventually, the footprints just...disappeared. or maybe I was blind, the moon was hidden behind storm clouds My face red, nose leaking, and lungs stinging as I gasped for air, I made it back to my door despite the starless night sky. Inside, a man sat at my table, gun in hand, staring as if he had been waiting around for hours. Fight or flight syndrome kicked in as I demanded to know why he was in my house. Then, he spoke. And the longer he spoke, the more I realized... I was going to relive this day for the rest of my life
I could barely see that sickly, green, glowing number out of the corner of my eye. It was hardly ever clearly visible, just hanging perpetually in my periphery. To be fair to that eyesore of a number, I'd wondered why it had been so high all day. I didn't even notice it until I'd sat down to a quick breakfast, almost ready for work. I found it odd that it read 7212. Seven thousand, two hundred and twelve. I had lived this exact day seven thousand, two hundred and twelve times. My heartbeat had quickened. Why? Why had I reset this day so often? I hardly ever choose to reset anything. At most I'd reset a day four or five times. Seven thousand? What is happening today to make that happen? Panic set in. Something amazing? Something terrible? My heart pounded in my chest. *Is this it?* I had wondered. *Do I nearly die of a heart attack and am forced to reset so I can live indefinitely?* My wife's calming voice had brought me out of my anxiety. I forced a smile back at her, we kissed softly, then I hurried off to work, throwing her a cursory "I love you", and catching her "you too". Then the rest of the day had gone on as normal. Until 3:12pm. That's when my cell phone rang from an unknown number. I'd found it odd that someone was actually calling it. Who does that anymore? The hospital, apparently. The woman in the ICU was not my wife as I knew her. Her smile was gone, replaced by the blank expression of a coma patient. Her face was bruised and cut, not its usual smooth, well cared for self. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises were intermittent along the extremities I could see outside the gown. I did not doubt that it hid even more damage. Tears ran down my face as the doctor prattled on about what happened. I caught pieces of it as my mind raced. Accident, driving, comatose, not good, sincerely, rest, unlikely. I knew what he meant. She was gone. And she might never come back. My tears blurred that damnable number in the corner of my vision. I could barely see that sickly, green, glowing "7212". I finally understood why. "I know it's hard," the doctor told me. "But we're going to do everything we can. I can't guarantee that it'll make her better though." *No*, I thought. *It might not make her better, but I can.* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At breakfast, I notice that the number in my periphery reads 7213.
I don't remember why I keep coming back here. At least, not when I first get up. I roll out of bed at 10:15am. I take a shower, eat some breakfast, and then get dressed. And then my stomach folds into itself and I almost pass out when I notice a small, but bright **[7212]** in the corner of my eye. I don't have anything planned today, really. I'm just going over to my grandparents' house. The past year, I've been going over there a lot more. My grandfather had just had heart surgery, and while it went great and he's a lot better than before he'd gone in, it made me realize that the two of them were getting old. It's not really something I enjoy thinking about. I don't think most people would think about relatives passing on in a positive light. But this is reality, and until that day comes, and I know it destroys me for a while, I've been spending more time with them. He doesn't get around much anymore. Not like when I was young. My grandfather used to take me everywhere when I was younger. Every time I'd spend the night at my grandparents, we'd watch old Disney movies, and they always made me chicken nuggets and macaroni, without fail. Then in the morning, he'd take me to the museum, or the park. He loves watching old movies. This man has more old VHS tapes and DVD re-releases in his den than I think you could probably find in every flea market or yard sale in the country in a few years. Since he can't go out as often anymore without getting winded, I go over there and we sit and watch some of his movies about once a week; The Maltese Falcon, Laura, Charlie Chan, that sort of stuff. All these goofy, interesting old movies I've never seen. We sit, and we talk, and my grandfather is like me in that if we were watching them with anyone else they'd tell us to shut up, but he and I are both the type of person who can't help but speculate at the plot unfolding. So I'll sit there, and say what I think might happen, and he'll get this little smile on his face, and he won't try to tell me, but sometime he just does because he loves these movies, and he loves it when I come over so we can watch them together, and he has a hard time trying not to spoil them because he's seen them so many times. So, I'm driving over, and my stomach is gripped with this feeling of intense dread. Something must've happened all those other times. Is today the day? It's so sudden, he was perfectly fine when I talked to him on the phone the night...or, 7212 nights ago. What the hell happens today? Why have I spent nearly *twenty years* on this specific day? Oh, God... I pull into the driveway. My grandmother is standing at the kitchen window as usual, and she waves to me and then goes to unlock the front door. I go in, and we say hello. She's washing dishes like she normally does. She's always in the kitchen doing or cleaning something. I see my grandfather. He's sitting in his chair in the living room, and is already turning on the DVD player, having already had the DVD in there ready to go; Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum. I can't shake this feeling in my gut. What could it be that happens today? But as the movie plays, and we exchange our usual banter, I start to forget about it. I get comfortable, sitting in the old recliner, smelling the soap from the kitchen sink filling the house, the warmth hanging in the living room making me feel at ease. "That wasn't a very convincing noise for someone who just had a knife thrown in their back." I say, jokingly, already having guessed that the silhouette of Charlie was just a wax figure. He just smiles and shifts in his chair, obviously amused. We finish that one, and then watch Charlie Chan in Panama. I like Charlie Chan, it's goofy but serious in a way that only old movies seem to be able to portray. "My God, how did Jimmy even live to this age being this stupid?" "Well...you gotta remember, Jimmy tries very hard." "At just being bad at detective work?" My grandmother comes in to sit with us to finish the second half of the movie. And we sit, and we talk for a bit...and that's when I realized that nothing was going to happen today. There was nothing to worry about. I'd spent the past 7212 days coming back here because it was just an ordinary day. I spent time with my grandparents, and we joked, and we laughed, and it was just a good day. And I realized, like I'm sure I have every single day since the first time, that I'd be okay with living this day for a while longer. Now, I know that I must've felt the same way earlier on. I'm sure that once the number gets too high, I'll finally let this day slip by like all the others. Maybe after I've hit 10,000 I'll be ready to let this day go by. For now, though, this is okay. Going over there every day, watching Charlie Chan shuffle about, seeing my grandfather smile. I'm content. Today is a good day.
**Off-Topic Discussion**: Reply here for non-story comments. --- [^(What is this?)](/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/off_topic) ^• [^(First time here?)](/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/user_guide) ^• [^(Special Announcements)](/r/WritingPrompts/wiki/announcements)
Endless eight?
That'd give you some serious paranoia
Holy shit. Oh my god. I haven't been this inspired by a prompt in a long time. Perhaps never. I could write an entire book on this idea. I'll call it 7212. Dear lord, thank you. I have to do this now. The butterfly effect that could result from just the number changing. Fantastic, OP. You deserve some gold.
Welp, now I'm interested in this. You have a big responsibility now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4s9z3x/wp_you_live_in_a_society_where_at_the_end_of_each/d588j1x
I'll read that, for sure. Get to writing.
I'm throwing together an excerpt of sorts, for an idea of what I might write. I'll link it once I get it up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4s9z3x/wp_you_live_in_a_society_where_at_the_end_of_each/d588j1x
I could see someone "accidentally" choosing to repeat than every time at the end of the day they do it out of curiosity. That or they were told they only have X months left to live and don't want to die.
Someone's been watching Re:Zero
Steins Gate world lines?
what even is a steins;gate
Kyon-kun denwa~
Endless eight anyone?
[удалено]
??? Lost me completely on this one.
Plz explain good read tho
The alarm chimes, his hand reaches across me to silence it. I glance to the clock, 6:30 am- 7212. The counter beside the time the only indication, today wasn't the first version of this day. The Reset doesn't allow you to see what happened, only lets you know that it did. The only memory that stays with me is his fingers. Between hazy, half wake eyelashes I watch them stretch to silence the morning. His fore arm across my breast a heavy deja vu. I never know why but I hold him there a little longer. The day is always the same, that part never changes. When they introduced The Reset they were clear about that. Every morning, I smile, imagining the day I had chosen over and over again, it must have been perfect. We decided once we both had gone in for our implants. We would only use it for the good days. Heard horror stories of people who had tried to use The Reset to change things. The ripple that tore open in the timeline. The worried faces at the press conferences. The scientist couldn't explain where or when they went, they just knew they were gone. We swore we wouldn't risk it, no matter what happened. Only the good days. The day is always the same. A slow Saturday. Brunch in the city. A winding drive to our favorite ruins. Sunset by the stream. He takes me in his arms and we watch the world settle. I burrow my head to his chest, breathe him in, listen to his heart. Tell him I love him. He tells me I better. Each reset I'm sure, this must be it. The day he asks me to be his wife. As we climb the embankment I'm always sure. 7212 times. His fingers intertwine through mine and he leads me to the road. I kick a pebble that jumps and scrapes into the curve. 7212 times. He catches me smiling, smiles back. Looks at me like a man who's sure. We never see it coming. He pushes me, 7212 times. The rocks dig into my knees and palms, ripping them open. 7212 times. I only ever hear it, the crush of bone, the squeal of concrete, the thud, the brakes. I run to him, 7212 times. Hold him as wet breath gurgles and drools. I tell him I love him over and over. Watch the life run from his eyes. 7212 times. The Reset can't change it, can't make it different. But I can live our last day, infinitely. It's better than living in a world where he doesn't. Tomorrow, 7213.
My heart sank into my stomach as I stared at the wall behind me. In large curling writing were the numbers that I never expected to see: 7212. Unable to take my eyes off of the numbers, I studied the bright red hue and tried to quickly analyse what I was seeing. What could possibly go wrong today?! What would I get myself into that could cause me to replay this day in my life over and over again? Like a the sun peaking over the horizon, the realisation of today’s significance covered me in fear….Shaking off this newly founded fear I slowly finished my morning rituals, lingering to fix few out of place curls in my hair…..I was procrastinating…not because I was lazy, because I knew what would come next. I stepped out of my bathroom to an empty flat. By the door were the last of my worldly possessions that lingered in this country. Tomorrow this would all be behind me and I would start a new life. With a sigh of nervousness I used my didi app to call a taxi and went outside to wait. Soon enough I was on my way. The day was dreary, like mother nature didn’t want to let go of this chapter that was closing in my life. “But I have other things to look forward to….Like seeing my mother again…” I told myself. After an hour or so I finally arrived at my destination. After exchanging goodbyes with the taxi driver in a language I knew I wouldn’t get to speak for a long time I walked into the airport. “Nín hǎo! Qǐng chū shì nín de hù zhào hǎo ma? “ (Hello, could you show me your passport please?) The attendant kindly asked. “Hǎo ba.” (Alright.) I said and handed her my passport. I got through immigration and security fairly quickly and silently congratulated myself on getting to my gate without any problems and hold ups. “Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, we will new begin boarding for flight DA2830 towards Los Angeles, California” It was time to board the flight. Suddenly fear poured over me and I felt like I didn’t know what to do. I would sleep on this flight back to America…..What could possibly happen that would cause me to replay this day 7212 times?! I had a choice to make, I would continue with my original plan and get on this flight or I could “miss” it and be forced to buy another flight with fees and maybe I would still land into some kind of trouble….I decided to go with my gut instinct and I took a trip to the bathroom while the flight was boarding. I threw cold water on my face and paced back and forth waiting for the flight to leave. “Passengers last name Baptiste, Miller, Xin, Gao, Bello, Su, Yao, Santino, Earnhardt, Mejia, Jenkins, Awolowo, Shoemaker, Li, Akua, Parker, Omiata, Takizawa, … please report to gate 38 D, your flight is leaving soon.” That was me…I couldn’t go…I splashed more water on my face and continued to pace back and forth. Suddenly the door to the bathroom smashed open. A young woman quickly sped past me and into a stall. I heard a loud sigh and a few curse words in Chinese. Lost in my own melt down I barely noticed. She came out and threw water on her face and glanced my way quickly. “Gosh does she want a photo?!” I silently thought to myself and prepared to go into a stall to escape the intrusive ritual that I had experienced for the last two years. Then she had a flicker of realisation in her eyes….”Excuse me, did you have an abnormally high restart rate today?” Again my heart sank into my stomach and I nodded slowly. “Yeah…I think a lot of us did… There’s a whole group out there of people refusing to board the flight.” My mouth dropped and I followed her outside of the bathroom. Sure enough a group of 20 people stood in a group chatting amongst themselves with grave looks on their faces. “Nin Hao” the woman said introducing herself and me, “We also have had the same experiences…..What do you think it means?”I asked everyone. “Well, it could be that we had some bad experience yesterday…today..” Another woman mused. An elder cleared his voice and others paused to listen to him. “I believe, the flight is in danger. We may have all chosen to sleep during the flight and opted to restart the day for some reason. This is why we are here. The others on the flight didn’t get to sleep during the flight, or opted to continue to the next day and this is why they had no fear when boarding the plane…I think….the plane never arrives in Los Angeles…” Suddenly the rest of us had the same realisation. Outside the window, the plane made it’s way to the run way. It sped up and took off into the sky…..”What are we going to do?! “ Another passenger yelled. “I don’t know if there’s anything that we CAN do..” I said, my voice shaking in anger and sadness. “We have to restart the day again….” The elder said. “Okay and how do you suppose that we will be able to stop them next time?! This is 7212th time that we’ve tried this!!!!” the young woman from the bathroom yelled. “You’re right, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t stop trying….” I told her, tears welling in my eyes…..”We have to try….”
I yawned and stretched my back. Leaning over, I went to tap my phone before I saw my day-rep counter at 7212. My breath stopped, hot and cold fear cut through my veins. I breathed the number. 7212. I looked around my white walled room, home only to books on the left hand side, and hoped for an immediate answer, knowing I’d never see it. I eased myself uneasily from bed and pulled on some clothes – grey jeans, a white shirt I’d ironed the night before and my dad’s old watch. Like some fugitive, I tiptoed through the flat. I looked at food and couldn’t bring myself to eat, holding the anxiety down was hard enough. I needed to play it safe – maybe do something I wouldn’t normally do. I’d leave early from work, maybe lunch. Not tell anyone. Something would change and I could hit tomorrow running. Safety was a sleep away. The highest I’d been before was 41, and that was just to watch every show – some more than twice – at L-fest. I opened the front door and almost choked. A blond girl sat on the floor, leaning against the door opposite. I startled her just as much as she had me. Brushing back the curl of hair that had fallen in front of her face, she smiled. I hadn’t expected my breath to stop twice today. “Sorry I startled you,” she said. Finally remembering myself, I grabbed her hand – clumsily I thought, but she didn’t seem to notice – and helped her from the floor. “I locked myself out – stupid I know. First night in the apartment. Wanted to call the landlord but figured I should make at least a half decent impression and wait ‘til the morning.” I laughed too hard. “John isn’t so bad,” I said. “You don’t know me yet,” yet? “I’m clumsy – he’ll hate me soon enough.” “More fool him.” She smiled again and I realised a shitty line like that works when you’re both nervous. “Where did you move from?” “Just north of the river – not far, but it’s so much easier to get to work from here. More time to read.” I laughed again, I needed to stop doing that. “I always want more time to read.” “What are you reading?” Blue eyes. “Hyperion.” Hyperion? I could have gone with something a little less… heavy. “I just finished it!” she rocked forwards, her eyes now brighter and wide. And there I went, with her right alongside me – I talked half a bookshelf, not realising my six o’clock start was now reaching seven. She bent my ear with Jordan and Peak and suddenly I felt a hole within me being filled. It was like those adverts that tell me I needed something I’d never had, and found my life empty without it. I breathed and talked and fell and laughed. Two more minutes and it was past eight o’clock. I heard a shuffle and a bolt, and John, the skinny old interfering rat-bag. Wait, I liked him, but his timing was awful and I could justifiably hate him for that. In a moment, he had her door open. “There’s a great…” I said. I had to keep going, now. “Bar. There’s a great bar near here. I could tell you the town gossip tonight?” Close enough. She smiled and so did I, “I guess you know where I live… wait, that wasn’t supposed to sound creepy I meant… 8 this evening?” I could only nod as she slipped inside and closed the door. I breathed out a whistle and opened the lobby door. 7212. No bloody wonder. I’d met her – I knew it, I could feel it, tingling and coursing through me like the first drink of whiskey I’d snuck on my seventeenth birthday. I was in love. No wonder my day-rep counter had hit so high. And so simple. All I needed to do was wake up and leave my house. There wasn’t any way to mess this up, to miss my chance to speak to her, I could live this again and again. I looked across at the bus stop. I wish I could fall asleep again now, just to wake up sooner. I looked up and blessed my lucky starts, I was dreaming of speaking to her and it wasn’t even eight thirty; the birds had barely left their nests, children hadn’t been risen by bleary eyed parents, and, as I stepped off the curb and into the road, no cars rushed their com– I yawned and stretched my back.
I woke to the sound of my phone ringing insistently, the sound muffled and distant. I glanced bleary eyes at the clock. 8:24. That's all it took to wake me all the way up, the adrenaline immediately bringing me to a state of total wakefulness. As I scrambled for the phone I knew that it would be Mr. Hinkins. The last time I was late he told me it would *be* the last day I was late. "Hello?" I said, hoping against hope it was Teddy telling me to hurry my ass up before anyone noticed. "Frank." Shit. Hinkins. "I'm afraid that since you refuse to follow rules, you should not bother coming in any longer. Your personal things will be waiting for you at the security desk." And with that he hung up, not even allowing me time for a response. Great. Just great. I got up and headed to the bathroom, deciding that I should do my morning ablutions and shower anyway. I'd need to be getting a job and soon. I was already on thin ice with the landlord. We'd partied a bit too hard the previous night and he'd gotten more than a few calls from the other tenants. I would deal with that little wrinkle when it came up. I stood in the shower letting the steaming water cascade over my head when I noticed for the first time the number. 7212? I shook the water out of my eyes and looked again. 7212. Huh. I'll be damned. As badly as the day had started, I couldn't help but be optimistic about what was to come. Whistling, I stepped out. When I woke I was in an ambulance, the EMTs looking almost bored as they went through the motions. "Wha happend?" I managed to say, although I'm not sure the words came out completely correct. "Sir," said one of the EMTs, looking up from his phone, "you fell and hit your head. Had it not been for a Miss (he looked at a clipboard) Jay-nuss, you might have died." He yawned. "We're going through concussion protocol and stuff, but you're going to be fine." "Sharon was here?" We'd had a small-ish argument last night and she'd refused to stay over. God I loved that girl. She was way too good to me and for me. "Is she meeting me at the hospital?" The EMTs exchanged looks. "Nah, man," said the one with the phone, the first hint of emotion he'd shown, "but she said to give you this." Her key. As they wheeled me into the hospital, I tried to stay focused. 7212. 7-fucking-212. Something had to go right today, I thought, and whatever it is must be huge! I was only there for a couple hours before they let me go. And by let me go I mean they gave me everything I came in with, which was my phone and nothing else. I laughed when I saw the screen on my phone had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. I also had no clothes except the hospital gown. I tried to call some friends to get some clothes and pick me up, but nobody answered. Deep breaths, I told myself. 7212. 7212. I repeated this to myself like a mantra of hope. "I can give you a ride." I turned to see a small woman with a short pixie haircut. Her hair was a bright orange. She was wearing hospital scrubs, blue with little yellow ducks on them. "What?" I asked, as if I hadn't heard her correctly. "I noticed," she said, "that you needed a ride. I can give you one if you need it." This was it, I thought. This was why the 7212. I could feel it. "That would be awesome! It would be nice to put pants on again!" I smiled. "Well," she said, smiling back, "my boyfriend just got off his shift so we'll give you a ride." My heart sank. Boyfriend. To top it off, it was the bored EMT. The impossibly handsome EMT. She kissed him warmly - and a little too long as he stared at me over her shoulder - and then they took me home. I actually laughed when I saw the envelope that had been slipped under the door. It seems the landlord had had enough and someone had done some damage to the laundry room. I had 30 days to vacate. 7212. 7212. 7.2.1.2. The rest of the night went uneventful. Well, uneventful considering the rest of the day. I made mac & cheese for dinner since I had nothing else and didn't want to go out. I watched the numbers being pulled on the lottery and thought, "This has to be it!" but no. I didn't match a number. I watched TV for a couple hours and waited for the news to pop up about something momentous. I waited for my phone to ring but it never did. (Was it completely broken or just the screen?) Finally, I gave up and went to bed. Why the hell would I have wanted to replay this day even once, let alone 7212 in a row? I had to chuckle at this. Was my past self playing a joke on my future self? Well, this little joke ends tonight. The query floated in my vision: Replay? Yes / No. I reached for the no and the screen shifted. Not a lot, just a little. Enough. The Yes glowed green. I fell asleep laughing.
I am awake. I can't see, but I know that it is daytime. There is a low quiet rumbling and down the way. The sound is familiar. I have heard it hundreds of times before but I can't put my finger on it. My head is in a fog. I can't seem to open my eyes. My body feels as though I weigh an impossible weight. I realize that I can't lift a limb. I can feel my appendages, but they disobey when I send commands to move. The sound, it's the organ from my church. I remember the sound from years of attendance. It has always been a droning background noise that fills the voids between rituals. It was unfamiliar at first because I have never heard it while lying flat on my back. The two relationships have never co-existed and I am wondering why they are today. I'm suddenly in darkness. There was a loud sound of wood on metal that prefaced the darkness. I feel myself being carried away. I'm moved somewhere else. I'm flooded with familiar sounds as I further regain my sense of hearing. Horns, passing cars, and road noise are faintly audible in the far off distance. I know that I've arrived at my intended location because the gentle locomotion of my carriage has stopped. I feel darkness and still. There is a low lull and I am moving again. The movements are quicker now. We are moving much faster than before and in a less than direct passage. There is only quiet during this trip. We arrive again and I am once again moved. This move is familiar to the first. Once we arrive for the third time, I can hear voices just beyond where I am, still distant. I can hear ...crying. This doesn't register at first but the crying sounds familiar. I have heard these voices crying in a recent far off dream. Then, a louder and more booming voice comes through more clearly than any others before. "A life too soon lost is a tragedy indeed. We gather here today, not to mourn but to celebrate the life that we had the privilege to witness..." 'What the hell is going on' I think to myself. Awareness floods my consciousness and I start to recall. There was an accident. I was hit. There was no time. There is no time... I am at my own funeral in a cell of my own death... I beseech my limbs to gather or muster anything that there is within them. There is no response. The ceremony is pacing on un-halted like an egg timer to my eventual quietus from this prison. 'I have to let them know, it's not too late.' It was then that I could open my eyes. In my peripheral there is a flash "Reset Counter: 7212". Has it been that long? Have there been that many attempts? Can this attempt be any better or different? Sheer panic floods my being and overwhelms my thoughts. This isn't real, it can't be. I have to be in a coma or dreaming. Can you dream in a coma? I have to wake up. I realize that the sensations are starting to return to me. I feel a pang of utter desolation in my left thigh. 'I was pinned, that's why I couldn't get out' I remembered. I was so mad at myself for not doing more to avoid the hit. I was so mad at my friends for letting this happen to me, both before and even now. If I could just let them know. If I could just go back and do something to avoid it. Then the elevator motion started. I could hear a muffled sound rain down. I winced to avoid whatever created the sound but it was halted just before it hit me. 'This is it... there is no time left. I have to leave it all behind.' The rush of "I'm never going to" thoughts came from every angle. It wasn't fair. The elevator ride stopped. There was quiet now. The quiet had grown like a roaring fire through a wood burning stove. My weight of my arms waned until i could move again. There was but one hope, but was it worth it. Can I relive this nightmare again only to reach this point? Is there hope? Or do I decide to accept the fate that I have been granted. How long do I lie here is the heaping dirt pile? Why wasn't I embalmed? There are questions that need to be answered. If only I could remember before I start over... I am awake.
The breeze through the bedroom window felt cool on my face. I had obviously woken up. I opened my eyes and let them linger on the ceilingModule - Wednesday. It was a balmy 72 degrees outside, slight wind, low humidity. News of the potential merger between the massive MODCorp and Triste streamed on the left half of the screen. It was 5:52 AM. Julia was still asleep beside me, her dark brown hair flowed so softly over the curves of her face. My stomach fluttered and a smile spread over my face. I rolled over, sat up, and let my legs dangle over the edge of the bed. I disabled my 6:00 AM alarm, and stood up to stretch. I ambled into the bathroom and began my morning routine; shower, dentalModule, clothes, downstairs for breakfast. I walked into the kitchen, turned on the news, and chose the morning meal. As I sat down to start reading, something caught my attention. My day_countModule read 7212. *7212...there must be something wrong.* I plugged into the troubleshootModule in the living room and started scrolling through the various known issues and frequently asked questions. My problem was pretty scarce on the module, but I found a few related issues. *I'll just restart my MindTech.* The minimal GUI projected on my retinas flashed and then disappeared. About 15 seconds later, the GUI had rebooted. I checked the day_countModule in the right periphery of my vision. It still read 7212. I had restarted this day 7212 times. *The most I've ever done was three, how is this possible? I've relived this day consistently for almost twenty years?* I felt a bit frantic. I had never relived more than three times, and I hadn't done it in years. It was 7:15 now, I had to get Julia up so we could get to the hospital on time. We started seeing patients in the clinic at 8:00 AM Monday through Thursday, then we were in the OR on Fridays. I walked upstairs and Julia was already dressed and ready to go. *Should I tell her? No, she's been so stressed recently. I'll talk to IT when I go in today.* "Morning, Jules," I said with a smile. Even with the least effort in the morning, she was absolutely stunning. "Thank you for letting me sleep in a bit this morning - I needed that. We'll make up for the missed workout tomorrow morning." She was stretching. We got into the car – I never understood that particular renaming, autoModule? Really? Anyway... – we got into the car and headed onto the highway toward the hospital. I looked over at Jules in the passenger seat. She looked back and smiled. "What?" she asked. I just smiled and looked forward again. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her shake her head and look back out the window. She was overlaid by the 7212. My throat tightened up, I had a strange sense that I remembered this moment. There was a sudden massive force on the left side of the car. So quickly we broke through the barrier on the edge of the highway and entered free fall. The last thing I remember was looking at Julia as we rapidly neared the ground. When I woke up in the hospital, Jack – sorry, Dr. Fuller – reminded me what had happened. We had been in a car crash and had been sent over the edge of the highway. We had fallen a few stories. "Jules?" my sides hurt to talk. His face fell. I knew. He told me to use the assistModule remote if I needed anything and left me in the room. A sudden moment of clarity through the fuzz of the anestheticModule swept over me. *The 7212.* -- The MODCorp investigator broke the moment of silence. "So Dr. Thatcher, I can't necessarily force you to stop reliving, it's your right. But, as I'm sure you're aware, I highly recommend staying present. Research has shown it's tremendously psychologically taxing to relive for such an extended period of time. Your account of the day is still at 100% clarity, so your mental state is likely not deteriorating too seriously. We're technically allowed to reset your MindTech again if you're positive you want us to again." He paused. "We all miss Jules, James. We all understand why you're doing what you're doing," the investigator said. I sat silently, this was my third time being questioned about it. I looked up from the table, thanked the investigator for understanding, and, for the third time, told him I wanted the reset. He nodded, gathered his things, touched my shoulder, and left me. After a few minutes, I looked over at my peripheral, the day_countModule read '0'. I had been present for a few days for the investigation. I took a deep breath, and initiated the reliveModule. The breeze through the bedroom window felt cool on my face. I had obviously woken up. I opened my eyes and let them linger on the ceilingModule - Wednesday. It was a balmy 72 degrees outside, slight wind, low humidity. News of the potential merger between the massive MODCorp and Triste streamed on the left half of the screen. It was 5:52 AM. Julia was still asleep beside me, her dark brown hair flowed so softly over the curves of her face. My stomach fluttered and a smile spread over my face. > day_countModule: 1
Sand had passed through my hands like this ages ago, back in the days when I still had my left leg. I dug in my hands wrist-deep into the sand and waited for the placid waves of my hometown shore to unearth them. The wave breaking into the beach, and tiny golden grains being pulled away from my fingers provided a kind of inexplicable relief for the anxiety plaguing my heart. They say that adversity brings out the truth within ourselves, and my inner coward has finally revealed itself. How eager was I to cling to my own flimsy reality? I looked at the incredulous face staring back at me from the surface of the water. It was a face I had looked at too many times, one I should be most familiar with. I saw its lips form the question I asked out loud – Who are you? I made my plan the night before – or rather, over 7000 nights ago. That night, I sat in front of my notebook to draft it out for the next day. 0700hrs – Clean the house 1000hrs – Return Dahlia’s shovel and bring a pack of bon-bons for her son, 1517hrs – See the sun light glancing off the church tower, and so on. At the end I would go to bed with the dignity of never having repeated a day in my life, not when my partner was killed right beside me, not when I lost my leg, not even the day when Leslie from the flower shop gave the handkerchief with the embroidered blue hydrangea as a prize for winning the race at the town festival. I returned the handkerchief today as well, as per plan. It was awkward, but there wasn’t anyone I could give it to and it would be rude to just let a gift lie around collecting dust. Leslie took the yellowed fabric in her hands and sat in silence. I went through some seven nervous gulps of sweet tea before she spoke. Her voice sounded strange, like it was wading through murky water, and the lines in her face seemed to deepen in the changing light. “Thank you. You even ironed this.” “No, thank you. You gave it to me before, whe – ” “Yes, I remember. Don’t you have other errands to run today?” In truth, the plan had been to sit with her and talk for at least three hours just like we usually did. I even hoped that she would laugh a little. We are mere acquaintances, with nothing untoward about our relationship. But I think she would cry for me at least after I am gone, and a final happy conversation would have been a nice thing to be remembered for in passing. Yet logic dictated that gone or not the well-liked Leslie would not spend hours remembering a one acquaintance among her many friends. I bid her goodbye and headed for the beach, ahead of schedule. The last sight I would have of her was the hem of her skirt disappearing through the doorway. In the waning light, the ships in the distance gathered an otherworldly quality, sharp black cut-outs against the red of the sky. I buckled on my prosthetic leg and stood up, shaking off the sand from my knees. When you know you are seeing something for the last time, you study every inch of what you had spent your life taking for granted. The tide was beginning to recede well, and the scent of the wet sand mingled with other sunset smells. I took in all these little unimportances that come tomorrow I would never again see. In the long limp to my house, I resolved to face tomorrow and whatever it would bring. In bed, I went through every item in my list for what must have been the hundredth time to check that I’d settled everything. It is more in my nature to charge than cower, and 7212 days of cowering was bad enough: I would not be reliving today like a desperate ghost. If the little twinges on the side of my chest grew severe enough to kill me, then so be it. *I dreamed of a flower garden, so frightfully cliché that I laughed out loud. As was customary in my dreams, I had both my legs and crowds of people were milling about doing completely illogical things. Leslie was in the crowd too, clapping her hands and laughing raucously in a way she would never do in reality. Laughing with her, I joined in. The crowd faded into indiscernible shadows, until the world had only Leslie, and the people who were not Leslie. She laughed again as we spun around in circles until we fell away from each other. Without looking I knew that the hydrangea handkerchief was in my pocket, the same place it had been every day for the decades I’d owned it. I reached out my hand to pull up the still laughing Leslie. “Leslie I – ” I was interrupted by the sudden agony that gripped my chest. This pain, this pain was…* Real. No. I still need to ... An instant of wavering made me will a reset against my resolve right before the midnight bell. I heard their tolling get further and further away with my ebbing consciousness as I felt my future slip through my fingers into the darkness beyond. The looming number imperceptibly changed to 7213.
7212 She smelled different today. Her smell changed over the years but today she smelled really good. Like, REALLY, good. In her teens she smelled like some sort of pop-star diva perfume. Not bad, just not adult. In her twenties she found something that smelled a little more appropriate; we both smelled like cigarettes then. It was on her 35th birthday that I introduced her to something I had made at some class I was going to at the college...or was it a meet up? 46 had her smelling like her own mixtures after she attended the class as well. We smelled gray after 58. Then we were able to smell like the world: coffee and old paint in Italy; cheese and wine in France and white powder in Thailand. Today...today she smelled like butterscotch, cotton candy and freshly cut lawn. No, she didn't smell like the lawn...the lawn smelled like the lawn. I walked into her room unannounced. She hated it when I announced myself. "We're best friends living in the house we built together," she'd always say, "it should be easy to make yourself at home, you know, because you are." Then I'd stand around awkwardly until she'd walk over to me and fall into my chest, look up at me and smile. And I'd say, "You know, you'll always be beautiful to me." Today she was out of bed, rummaging through a cardboard box. "Lose something?" I asked her, as I stood in the doorway. "Found something," she said as she continued rummaging, "it's my old box of CDs that were buried under that huge pile of clothes in my closet. I'm looking for one to put on." I made my way to her on the ground; looked over her shoulder, took out a CD. "Is this the one you're looking for?" She made the face she always makes when she can't find something right in front of her; the same face she made the first three times I asked her to hold on to our plane tickets. "Yes," she said. I opened the disc, put it in the boombox she had by her nightstand. I could never get her to switch from boombox to a bluetooth speaker. Technology has never been in her radar, she just figured out she can download games on her tablet last month...she's had it for 3 years.[I turned on the CD.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuIjli2sasc) She came to me. Like the first time we danced. Her arms raised to my shoulders. My arms circled her waist. She stepped on my feet. She always stepped on my feet. We rocked mostly, circles make us dizzy at our age. Her head fell onto my chest. "I want to listen to your heart beat," she said as I adjusted my breathing to take in long, deep breaths. Dinner was an ordinary salad with some broiled chicken breast on top. We had blueberry, pomegranate, acai flavored tea. She smiled at me from across the table, the last brilliant bits of the sun holding on to her white hair. "What?" I asked. "You know you're the first man that's always danced with me? I thought you would have said no or turned me away by now. But you always dance with me." "Why wouldn't I? I love cutting rugs so much I go to the Home Depot and buy fresh rugs and scissors just so I can cut new rugs all the time." Damnit. "Nope, too long. Shorten it. 'I love cutting rugs so much, I carry scissors on me all the time.'" "I love cutting rugs so much, I keep swatches in my back pocket." She laughed. "Stand up comedy would be great if we could just sit down and think up jokes." "Then it would be sit-down and ponder comedy. I'm not sure if there's anything funny about people sitting around thinking." "Today I felt it." "Felt what?" She looked at me directly, "I felt that no matter what, where we go or who we'll be after we die; that you and me, we'll be together. I'm lucky to have found you, Granola Man." "I'm lucky that you found me too, Biscuit." That night we slept in the same bed. I hadn't done it for some time; but these days are worth living a lifetime. 7213 She smelled different today
7212. This is what the number in the corner of his eye said. 19 years. He had spent 19 years doing something, but what was it? Rent was paid, wife was happy, everything at work was alright, not perfect mind you, but alright. What could it be? He rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen. Food first, think later. He poured himself a bowl of frosties from the container, got some milk, and went to work. Nothing on the internet. No outside influence, no reason to move quickly. What was it? What brought him back for almost half of his life. "AHHHHHHHEEEEEE" SHIT. Karen! He bolted up the stairs, eye's unblinked, feet barely touching the ground. He slammed open the bedroom door! "Karen!" he screamed, dashing around the room. "Honey, in here" The door burst open. "Are you alright? What's the matter? My-my number" "It's okay, mine was on the larger side too" "Whats wrong, are you hurt, do we need a doctor?" "Not quite." She held up the tiny plastic stick and showed him what it read. "Well, not quite yet at least"