Not Again!

Renowned scientist and quantum physicist Angela Bartlett was incredibly bored in her office. She had fallen asleep while trying to calculate a way to keep niobium-steel alloy from collapsing under immense pressure, and now that she was awake she found herself unable to return to work.

The lack of a productive drive didn't bother her. She was used to the usual burnout that set on after long hours of formulating and theorizing. What did rub her the wrong way was the sudden onset of boredom.

This particular genre of boredom was an odd mixture of malaise and restlessness that made little sense for the hour of unneeded sleep she just logged. Angela spent nearly another hour trying to analyze exactly what the root of the feeling was, which only made the situation worse when she couldn't come up with an answer.

If she had thought about it for 3.898 seconds longer she would have realized that there was an unusual sense of deja vu lying beneath the surface of her boredom; a dreadful awareness of a paradoxical monotony in her actions, thoughts, and feelings that had never been repeated because they were only just now being done, thought, and felt.

But Angela didn't take the 3.898 seconds to discover this because her inability to quantify her own emotions irritated her so deeply that the aggravation was all she could focus on.

Since she was a renowned scientist and quantum physicist you'd think her brain, which was considerably bright, would be able to find a way to stimulate or entertain itself. But no, it still managed to succumb to the same human affliction that ailed bartenders, traveling circus clowns, and everyone else whose brains were considerably less bright than hers.

"Stupid brain." She mumbled to herself. With a deep sigh, she rubbed the sleep out of her tired eyes, which shouldn't have been tired, and elected to go check on the Hyperlight Battery.

The Hyperlight Battery was the newest and most anticipated project at ENER-CO, the world's leading research institute in developing alternative energy. They were also the world's leading research institute in employee mistreatment, questionable business practices, and unethical research methods.

Under most circumstances Angela would never be caught dead wearing an ENER-CO uniform, a fact she made abundantly clear to Roger Hammond, the CEO of the company, when he approached her at the University of Oxford where she taught.

With a bright smile and eyes of glimmering greed, Hammond worked the same magic that got him fast-tracked to CEO in record breaking time. "You're right, of course. ENER-CO has... an intricate relationship in regards to it's own inner workings. I won't lie to you, there's a lot that needs to change. But we're on the cusp of something revolutionary and I need good, honest, revolutionary people to not only achieve making history, but to push the company into a better way of being afterwards. However, I see you're content to grade thesis papers for the next 12 years, so I'll be on my way."

To this day, Angela still had trouble figuring out what exactly it was that changed her mind. Was it the words Hammond said? His elegant, well-fitted Armani suit? The fact that she really hated grading thesis papers? Whatever it was, she obtained an academic sabbatical immediately and was on a private jet chartered for the lab before she could say, "Wait, Angela. Maybe take a moment and consider what you're doing."

Now, as she walked down the winding, poshly decorated corridor towards the Battery, Angela found herself wishing that she had given herself a chance to take a moment and consider what she was doing.

The hallway, which usually was very well kept and tidy, was an absolute mess. It looked like a herd of horses, rhinoceroses, elephants, walruses, or any other animal that engages in stampede-behavior had torn through it.

Almost every article of furniture was overturned. Paintings either hung cockeyed or had completely fallen to the floor and there were strange markings all over the walls. A few of the potted plants were keeled over, the plants themselves looking horribly trampled on. This upset Angela quite a great deal since she was the one who routinely watered and looked after the plants.

What struck her most however, was the odd assortment of clothes and shoes strewn across the floor. From where she was standing, a swath of lab coats peppered with the occasional leather moccasin and gym shoe covered the carpet leading all the way up to the entrance of the testing facility. Turning around, she saw the same extending down towards the exit.

Once again, even with a mind that could correctly calculate advanced thermodynamic equations without assistance, Angela found herself profoundly stumped about what was going on. Simultaneously, she knew exactly what was happening only she had no idea that she knew at all, which intensified the anger bubbling in her chest.

She bent down and examined one of the coats. The name tag read: P. DAVIES. Preston Davies, the resident mechanical engineer. She grabbed another. This one belonged to Ingrid Blom, Sweden's best nuclear physicist and Angela's best work friend.

She went down the line like a kid following breadcrumbs. Lab coat after lab coat. By the time she was only halfway down the hallway she had already found the names of every person working on the Battery, and there were still maybe twenty or thirty more left.

Her heart suddenly pounded in her chest and her blood went cold. "No! Stop! Don't do it!" she screamed. Her hand shot up and covered her mouth.

Why did she say that? Why was she so afraid? It didn't make any sense. Sure, the hallway and the lab coats were disconcerting but that gave her no rational cause to feel how she was feeling.

It wasn't until she grabbed one last lab coat that she abandoned any notion of 'rational cause'.

This coat was covered with large, dark maroon spots of what Angela could only assume was dry blood, and the name tag read: A. BARTLETT.

Angela's anxiety, which before felt completely ridiculous and unwarranted, now felt incredibly valid to her as she stared at her own bloody lab coat. She dropped it and frantically checked the coat she was wearing but found no blood anywhere.

She hunted through the sea of flame-resistant cotton and found five more identical copies of her lab coat. Each one had the same exact blood splatters, perfectly matching down to the most minute details. The only difference was that with each coat she found, the blood got more and more fresh.

Angela was positive there were more copies of the other coats as well but she didn't bother to check. The overhead lights suddenly started to flicker and strobe above her. A sinister and electrical thrum grew louder and louder from the testing facility. Her heart dropped down into her stomach. That noise could only mean one thing.

Someone was trying to start the Hyperlight Battery.

Angela was up and sprinting towards the entrance. The whole time her body was screaming, begging, pleading with her to stop. She was barreling towards danger and every fiber of her being knew it.

She managed to save some time entering the facility since the keypad and door had been shot to smithereens by what appeared to be thousands of bullets. Lowering her shoulder, Angela rammed the door open.

The idea behind the Hyperlight Battery was to create a sustainable and eco-friendly energy alternative by utilizing a "jerry-rigged" particle accelerator, as Roger Hammond crudely put it, to create a massive anomaly similar to a wormhole. Then, the Battery would compress the wormhole and spin it. The energy created by the wormhole's rotation would, in theory, produce infinite energy for as long as the structure would last. And, considering that it was comprised of the strongest and most resilient metals earth had to offer, it would run for at least a century with proper maintenance. But that was only theory. The Battery was nowhere close to being tested, let alone fully activated.

And as Angela sprinted onto the diagnostic platform overlooking the Battery, she saw that the madness in the hallway had spread to the facility. Or rather vice-versa.

The Battery, a massive, hollow sphere of shimmering gunmetal grey, was now glowing a faint magenta that was too pretty for the sinister havoc it was about to wreak. The gold nodes and diodes hooked up to the exterior cackled from the millions of volts of energy coursing through them from long winding cables that snaked across every section of the main floor.

Every single member of the team was in attendance except for Ingrid. They were all positioned at their stations, and they had all gone quite insane. Preston Davies, the second most lucid of the bunch besides Angela, was sobbing hysterically at his monitor and ripping out fistfuls of his hair.

"I wanna go home!" Cried Preston. "I can't do it again!" The most respected mechanical engineer in America then went on to beg for his mommy before wetting himself and passing out.

The second most insane of the bunch, Mei Kitagawa, was the project's lead thermodynamic engineer, and she was presently attempting to eat a stapler like a hotdog.

The others were all similarly despondent and stark-raving mad. All the while, the Hyperlight Battery only grew louder and brighter.

"Ah, Angelas! We're so happy to see you!" Angela peeled her eyes away from the horrific scene below to face the single most insane person in the room, and maybe even the entire world.

Roger Hammond's Armani suit was riddled with as many bullet holes as the door and he was covered head to toe in blood both dry and fresh, despite being unharmed. His mouth contorted into a demented smile filled with agony and spread his hands out in a gesture of rapture. "Isn't it great?"

"Roger, you can't do this! The Battery isn't ready to test!" As Angela spoke, Hammond echoed everything she said in perfect unison before suddenly cowering to the ground with his hands outstretched above him.

"No! Don't shoot!" He howled. As he did, a hacking fit of coughs shook his body and three clumps of metal shot out of his mouth. He saw the metal and relaxed. "Oh. That's right," he said cooly. "I don't die for another three minutes." He checked his watch to confirm and then turned back to Angela.

"What the fuck is going on?" Angela demanded with a fair and reasonable amount of hysteria.

Roger nodded. "You're upset. That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. That's fair." This loop continued on for a minute before Roger screamed himself back to coherence.

"My apologies. No one seems to remember but I remember. I remember all of it. Every. Single. Time." He walked over to Angela, who was too paralyzed by fear to move, faced the Battery with her, and put an arm around her shoulder.

"The Battery worked. It works. It keeps working. Still working, always working. Our calculations were a bit off, or rather your calculations. But despite the complete structural collapse and anomaly-containment failure, I'd consider this a rousing success. Please kill me?"

Angela stared at Roger in abject horror. "Did you say-"

"Yes, structural failure and anomaly blah blah blah."

Angela delicately moved his arm off of her and gently took him by the arms. "We have to shut it down. If you're telling the truth, this could end the world."

A tittering laugh fell out of Roger's mouth along with more metal. "No, silly. Nothing ends, certainly not the world. The anomaly rubber-bands back on itself after it eats the power cells. The event horizon doesn't extend beyond the facility. Good for the world. Bad for you and me and we."

"How do you know?" Angela and Roger said at the same exact time.

"Because I just know!" He yelled viciously. His face turned a deep crimson and spittle flew from his mouth before instantly reverting back to normal. "Sorry, Ange. The repetition gets to me sometimes."

Angela didn't want to ask him. She so badly didn't want to know. But she knew she had to anyways. "How many times have we done this?"

"If I had to give you a rough estimate, I'd say we've done these past 15 minutes around 100 times. The only things that seem to reset are us. The same exact actions, same exact outcomes, over and over and over again. Our minds and bodies remember every single time before, even if we don't. Unchanging, unending, immortal. Speaking of which, here it comes!"

Just then, a hail of gunshots broke out behind Angela and the door swung open. Ingrid Blom stormed into the room with a large pistol, her eyes wide with simultaneous rage and confusion.

"Hey guys!" She said. "Does anybody know why I have a gun?"

Roger gestured towards the Battery.

Ingrid's eyes miraculously got wider as she remembered that, for the one hundredth time now, she was there to stop the Battery. She trained the gun on him. "It, off Roger shut now." She shook her head. "Roger, shut it off now."

Roger started saying things but Angela ignored him. She instead stepped between the gun and him, which oddly enough seemed to shut him up.

"Ingrid, wait! Killing him won't stop the Battery. We've already turned it on a hundred times. Don't ask me how I know, I just do."

Behind Angela, Roger's eyes started to tear up profusely. "Oh my god," he stared at her in awe, "you've never said that before." He went to hug Angela but in his deranged state this looked slightly suspicious, and through the lens of someone as disgruntled and filled with rage as Ingrid, something slightly suspicious could very easily come across as deeply threatening.

So when Ingrid saw Roger moving towards Angela, she assumed that he was doing so in a threatening way and reacted in a manner that she felt was reasonable given their situation.

The reasonable reaction of course being to shoot Roger six times in the chest, showering Angela's lab coat in his blood.

Angela screamed as Roger stumbled back over to the railing of the platform. His eyes didn't widen in shock. He didn't cry out in pain. He looked down at his chest then made an expression at Angela like he forgot something. "Oh," he drew the word out and then clucked his tongue. "No she did already say all that. And so did I! Bummer." Roger Hammond then collapsed dead for the one hundredth time in a row.

The Hyperlight Battery screamed like a jet engine now as the anomaly fully formed inside of it. The spherical hull containing it lasted for an impressive five seconds before it dented inwards and then completely collapsed, getting eaten by a swirling maelstrom of raw energy.

The rest of the scientists, while still mentally ruined, were not so far gone as to no longer recognize danger. Upon seeing the exposed anomaly, Mei jumped up and screamed, "Tea time!" which was a very elegant way of saying, "Run!" for someone who was trying to eat a stapler like a hotdog only a few minutes ago.

They all clambored up the platform and rushed past Angela and Ingrid on their way towards the exit.

Ingrid grabbed Angela and the two followed their colleagues. But before they could make it even a few feet, Angela stopped Ingrid.

She demanded to know why they were stopping. Angela told her, "We've done this a hundred times, Ingrid. We always reset."

"You don't know that!" Ingrid argued.

"Look at them," she gestured to the others, who had stopped escaping and were now having a lovely time throwing their lab coats at each other. "Look at this place. We're not making it out if we keep doing the same exact things over and over again."

Suddenly, a brilliant idea popped into Angela's head. "We always reset. The Battery resets. But the facility doesn't!" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a thick, cylindrical container of lipstick. "If we can leave a message for ourselves we can figure out a way to stop this!"

She ripped the cap off of her lipstick and ran towards the wall. This plan was going to work. It had to work. Angela frantically began scribbling in a large, red Y to spell out, "You're trapped in a time loop." It wasn't until she finished the Y that she saw them.

The symbols she saw earlier were a hundred other Y's all across different parts of the hallway. All the same exact size and written in the same exact way as the one in front of her.

Angela hung her head and let her lipstick clatter to the floor, joining the one hundred other identical copies that were already there.

She shuffled to the center of the hallway, stripped off her bloody lab coat and laid down. The layer of coats below her were surprisingly soft.

"Angela!" Ingrid screamed over the Hyperlight Battery, which was now cataclysmically unstable. "What are you doing?"

"I'll tell you in 15 minutes." Angela said bitterly. It was a very well timed joke because at that exact moment, the Hyperlight Battery exploded and every one in the facility was eaten up in a ball of blinding pink light.