The Second Cycle.
Bar East.
I was very drunk by the time the end of the fourth hour loomed large before us. We all sat watching the stage from our table just inside Bar East. (We had equipped our ballroom with two bars, the other was Bar West, obviously.)
Which was stupid. We forgot that the buffer was gone.
Tommy sat beside me, peeling the labels off his empty beer bottles.
“So, you think this is going to work, Tommy-boy?”
He looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there and had been sitting next to him for three and a half hours.
“Oh, hey.”
I tried to steady my vision so that the two Tommys I saw might coalesce into one.
“You ready for another,” he said, pointing at my empty martini glass.
I swiveled in my seat and checked the time.
“I guess not, Tommy.”
“Are you sure?”
I shook my head like he’d begun muttering gibberish.
“I’m just saying it might be your last opportunity. Remember, all of this is theoretical. Looping, schmooping. We don’t know what will happen in…one minute, thirty-eight seconds,” he said, eyeing the clock above the stage. “For all we know, we will simply cease to exist.”
Something about that struck me as the funniest and the saddest thing I’d ever heard. Twin impulses to both laugh and cry rose in my mind. I didn’t know which to choose, so I launched into a spirited undertaking to express them both. I laughed and cried at the same time.
“If this is it for us, I’m sorry about Tina. That sucked. I mean, who does that? Who ghosts someone…for an eternity?”
That did nothing to curb my crying or my laughing.
“Twenty more seconds,” someone shouted.
It was Freddie, a social media mogul.
I bet he wishes he could livestream this back to Earth.
But that was impossible. Earth wasn’t a far distance from us. To ask how far the Earth was from our bubbleverse was a nonsensical question. The distance was immeasurable. Our ballroom was in its own reality.
We’re about to learn whether Peterson was right.
Or not.
If she was wrong, we’ll relive the previous four hours forever.
Fuck. I wished I’d never met the engineer.
Switzerland. Memories of fine food, a beautiful woman named Giselle, and chocolate rush through my mind like they’re headed somewhere.
I will never again visit Switzerland.
Apartment buildings.
Or even a different building than the one I’m in now.
Some business deal. The engineer was there.
My memories were as shaky and as fuzzy as my vision.
“Thirteen…twelve…”
A group at the table nearest the entrance to the ballroom proper had begun a countdown. We all turned to face the stage and watched the final seconds of our first year.
Maybe we should consider it a day? Our little four-hour chunk of time.
“Eight…seven…”
I convinced the alcohol that was threatening to leave my stomach to stay put for just a few more moments.
“Six…five…”
Please, please, please!
“Four…three…”
Please, what?
It felt like a prayer. But I didn’t believe in any deity, not in our old reality and certainly not in this new one. If anything, we were the gods of this domain.
Well, that’s an unlovely idea. We are closer to monsters than gods.
A memory.
A planning meeting. Early in the project. Just months after we decided we were going to do this thing.
Someone had suggested we play Auld Lang Syne at the end of every cycle.
We shot that idea down hard.
“Should old acquaintance be forgot,” I sang off-key.
I hope I can forget you, Tina.
“Two…one…”
BANG!
The engineer promised me that there would be no sounds during or from a reset, but I heard something.
Our universe reset itself just as planned.
My vision swam.
I thought I would surely vomit then, but it wasn’t from the alcohol. My stomach was empty again. My sudden nausea was from the shock of being transported from my stool in Bar East back to my seat at table 1 in zero point zero seconds.
Where’s the alcohol? The booze that I drank?
It’s back in the bottles, of course.
I didn’t like that idea, so I took stock of everything.
My eyes floated away from the gold curtains on stage and the madness happening there.
For the second time, I saw Tina’s unopened letter. I’d already remembered every word in it.
I guess Peterson was right after all. We retain our memories.
Way to go, Paula!
Tina would be so happy.
Looking around, I confirmed that everyone was returned to where they had been 240 minutes before. Romantic fool that I was, I even scanned the room for Tina.
Pathetic simp!
The incinerator and brushbots powered down. The silence left in the wake of their departure annoyed me.
Damn, those robotic sweepers are loud.
The machines finished doing their job. Again.
I looked up again just as the heavy gold brocade curtain finished closing.
The room full of some of the wealthiest people ever, was quiet. Too quiet.
I heard a voice from the back of the room.
“Hey, you.”
I was sure she didn’t mean it to be heard by everyone, but Cynthia had a husky voice. I always enjoyed hearing her voice.
I turned to see who she was talking to.
She slipped into Teddy’s (38 Special) arms, and hugged him tight.
Well, that’s surprising after what he did.
But then I saw her do something. I saw her hand sneak oily smooth into Teddy’s left coat pocket. She moved like an inevitability.
She pulled the Dyson out. I remembered the comforting heft of its mass when I picked it up from next to his corpse just under four hours before.
Stepping away from him, Cynthia was a different woman.
“How could you, Teddy?”
She didn’t get the memo. Teddy is 38 Special from now on.
Teddy looked repentant, sheepish, ashamed.
None of us were ready for what happened next.
Cynthia raised the gun and shot herself.
Well this is wonderful. Our little project is just over four hours old, and we’ve already had two suicides.
I knew I was forgetting something.
You mean the suicides of the youth just across Forest?
I’d forgotten those, but there was something else as well. Those happened in a different reality. A place that is no longer accessible to us.
The lambs, then?
I’d forgotten the lambs.
Technically, those weren’t suicides.
The spiritual potency index takes a nosedive during a suicide. That wouldn’t have worked at all.
I still felt somewhat in charge, so I made my way to Teddy.
“She’ll be back. You two need to hide that…” I said, pointing at the gun still in her outstretched hand.
“But…”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said.
He was right, of course, but this was a new terrain we were in.
The inescapable truth was the gun would always begin each cycle where it was in the beginning– in Teddy’s left coat pocket.
In time, we would all come to remember that.
“Come on 38…umm, Teddy. I’ll buy you a drink. Don’t cry. Remember, she’ll be back in four hours. Then you can off yourself in front of her again. If you think that will help matters.”
I was joking, but I had a point. These two were behaving like children or worse–star-crossed, angsty teenagers in love.
“Scott, I think we fucked up. I think this was all a mistake,” Teddy said, waving his arms about.
You don’t say!
I sighed him forward, guiding him into Bar West. I walked him to a table and then went behind the bar.
“I’m serious, Scott. None of this is what any of us had imagined. Eternity is such a…long time.”
Oh, he’s gone already, and we’ve not had anything to drink yet.
I made two stout martinis and slid one in front of him.
“So, maybe we can cool it with the Dyson? Have you got it out of your system now?”
He nodded like he was thinking about how best to answer my question. I sipped my martini and promised to make the next one even stronger.
“Human psyches weren’t meant to last an infinite amount of time. Eventually, I truly believe, we will all kill and be killed by each other.”
Well, which of us brought a gun?
I wanted to say it out loud, but I couldn’t. It felt like kicking him when he was done, especially after what Cynthia did.
I was trying not to judge him. But I was rattled by his idea that we would eventually all begin killing each other. While I wanted to write his fears off as the ramblings of a lovesick middle-aged man (the worst kind of lovesick creature there is), I feared he was right. So, I ended my lecture and nursed my martini.
Stories by Shawn 