The Infinite Vacation

Micah’s days had blurred into grayscale. The blinds in his apartment stayed half-shut even at noon, letting in just enough light to remind him it was still happening, that life hadn’t stopped, just his part in it. He worked from home now, writing meaningless lines of code for a logistics software company that didn’t care if he wore the same hoodie three days in a row or if he ever brushed his hair again.

Since Claire left, Micah’s life had been a long, colorless blur. Not quiet.. empty. It had been three years. Claire had met someone new a year after the divorce, and within five months, they were married. He tried to move on. He really did. Therapy. Long walks. Drinks with friends who meant well but didn’t understand. Everyone said time would dull the ache, but for Micah, time only deepened it. He lived in the past because it was the only place where love still felt real. He knew he shouldn’t. But he didn’t know how not to.

He played old memories like reruns, especially the week in the Bahamas, the turquoise water, the quiet smiles, the way Claire rested her head on his chest in the hammock as if the world would always be kind. If he could freeze any time in his life, it would be that.

But there were no freezes. Just the loop of guilt and insomnia and coffee and code and scrolling. Always scrolling.

The Darknet had started as a curiosity, then a habit. It was easy, download Tor, connect to a VPN, follow Reddit threads into deeper rabbit holes. He wasn’t looking to buy drugs or guns. He was just… looking. For anything. Something strange enough to feel something. He wandered through encrypted message boards, clicking on dead-end links and surreal services: dream interpreters who claimed to use AI trained on Carl Jung, therapy bots with hypnotic voices, memory-altering sound files.

Then one night, he saw a thread titled:

“Anchor Loop. Relive the best week of your life. No edits, no consequences. $8,000.”

He clicked. A plain page loaded: white text on a black background. No graphics. Just an address to message through a .onion site and a single tagline: Rewind your joy. Every other week. One year access.

Micah typed:

"Is this a game?"

The reply came a few minutes later.

"No game. One week. You choose. Must be a place you’ve been, a date you lived. You will live in that exact body, same time, same surroundings. Nothing you do will change the present. But you will remember. You can live it over and over. Every 14 days."

It sounded ridiculous. But so did his life.

They arranged to meet in an old parking garage downtown, public enough to be safe, forgotten enough to be anonymous. Micah almost didn’t go. He told himself it was just for the story of it.

The man was already there, leaning against a rusting pillar, smoking a cigarette down to the filter. He was in his late forties maybe, hard to tell, thin, haunted eyes, long black coat like a stage magician who stopped performing.

He handed Micah a small black case the size of a wallet.

“This is the Loop,” the man said. “One button. You press it, your consciousness is pulled back to the week you chose. You'll be you - then. Same thoughts, same clothes, same heartbeat. You’ll remember everything when you come back.”

Micah studied the device. It was smooth and cold. No branding. Just a faint pulse of red light on its underside.

“And when I come back?”

“Nothing changes. No butterfly effects. No time travel paradoxes. This isn’t about fixing the past. You’re just a tourist in your own memories. Every other week, for a year. But you can’t pick a new week once you start. One choice.”

Micah hesitated. “Why are you selling this?”

The man’s expression didn’t change. He dropped the cigarette, crushed it beneath his boot.

“Because it ruined me,” he said. “It’s all I did. Over and over. I stopped living forward. You think you want the past. But the past becomes you. Like a drug you think you control.”

Micah blinked. “So why would anyone use it?”

The man looked at him for a long time. Then he said, “Because it feels good.”

Micah paid in Bitcoin. A single transfer. No receipts.

As he walked away, Loop case in hand, he didn’t feel scared. He felt… lighter. He already knew which week he’d choose: that trip to the Bahamas with Claire. The way she smiled back then. The color of her voice. The lazy sun. The illusion that they were okay. A free vacation every two weeks. A perfect week on repeat. Micah smiled for the first time in months. This was going to be good.

First Loop

Micah sat alone on the floor of his apartment, the Anchor Loop in his hand. He had dusted off the old travel itinerary email from 2022 just to be sure. June 13th to 19th. Bahamas. The Eden Vista Resort on Paradise Island. The last time he and Claire felt whole. He held his thumb over the single button. No fanfare. No flashing lights. Just a soft click, like locking a car door. The world blinked. And when it opened again, he was there...

The hallway smelled like coconut oil and ocean breeze. His arms were leaner, firmer. His reflection in the mirror on the wall startled him. He looked… alive. No under-eye bags, no growing gut. His tan was even and fresh. He touched his shirt; it was one he hadn’t worn in years. Still new in this time. Then she turned the corner.

“Hey babe,” Claire said, tossing her beach hat onto his head with a smile. She looked radiant.. sunkissed cheeks, hair wind-tangled, eyes clear. His breath caught.

“Coming in?” she asked.

He followed her into the hotel room, heart racing, not from lust, but from the eerie, beautiful familiarity. The way she kicked off her sandals. The smell of sunscreen and perfume. The dull hum of the ceiling fan spinning above their bed. God, he thought, I forgot how warm it was to be near her.

For six days, he relived paradise. Snorkeling in turquoise waters. Rum cocktails under thatched umbrellas. Claire’s laughter cutting through the waves like music. She held his hand when they walked on the beach. She leaned her head on his shoulder at dinner. It was perfect.

But Micah knew it wasn’t just a trip. It was a loop. It was a memory.

On the seventh day, it happened. The thing he had almost forgotten. They were back in the hotel, packing lazily. Claire was in the shower, humming to herself, when her phone resting on the nightstand started buzzing.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Micah’s brow furrowed. Something stirred in the back of his mind. A distant irritation. He had noticed this call back then too, hadn’t he? But he never asked. She told him it was someone from work. Some emergency she had to deal with. The phone rang again. Claire came out of the shower, hair wrapped in a towel, and snatched it up.

“Just a sec,” she muttered, stepping onto the balcony and closing the glass door behind her.

Micah stood by the bed, staring at the closed door, her silhouette slightly warped through the glass. She looked tense. She spoke low, quickly. She didn’t laugh. When she came back in, she smiled.

“Sorry. It was Kayla. One of my clients had a meltdown about a missed deadline. I’ll deal with it when we’re back.”

He nodded. Just like last time. The same explanation, word for word.

There were only two hours left before the loop would end. He didn’t want to ruin them. He watched her dry her hair, watched her fold his shirt and place it neatly in the suitcase, watched her smile like nothing had ever gone wrong. And when the loop ended, it ended softly like waking from a nap on a warm afternoon.

Micah opened his eyes back in the dim apartment. The air was heavy. Quiet. He stood slowly. The mirror showed his older self again, hollowed cheeks, soft belly, sad eyes. He touched his reflection. It didn’t feel real. The Bahamas trip felt more real than this. More alive. For a few moments, he wondered if the last three years had just been a bad dream. If maybe Claire was in the other room, sunburned and laughing, calling out for him to pick a place for dinner.

But no. This was his life. Gray, still, and Claire-less.

And yet… Micah felt a rush of anticipation. In two weeks, he could go back. Back to the sun, the sea, her voice.

The Lie in the Loop

Micah had been counting the days. The first loop left him raw, shaken. But it had also filled him with warmth, color, life. Now, two weeks later, he was ready to go again. He gripped the Anchor Loop tightly, pressed the button, and closed his eyes. The warmth returned instantly. The sun. The breeze. Claire’s laughter just down the hall. This time, he met her with open arms and a knowing smile. He already knew she would trip slightly as she stepped off the elevator. He caught her before she fell and kissed her forehead, making her laugh louder than before.

He remembered every beat of their schedule. He made sure they weren’t late to their favorite show at the resort’s open-air theater, the one with the fire dancers and steel drum band. They had missed the opening act last time. Not this time. Micah was living his best week.

But when the seventh day arrived, the sadness crept in. The thought of going back to the stillness and the silence made his chest ache.

Then came the buzzing. Claire’s phone lit up on the nightstand. Micah narrowed his eyes. Claire had said it was Kayla, her coworker, the one covering her clients. That’s what she said last time. Exactly what she said. But the number wasn’t saved. No name. Just a string of digits. Would Claire really not save Kayla’s number? He looked away before Claire came out of the shower. She dried her hair, casually picked up the phone.

“Sorry,” she said, brushing it off. “It was Kayla. One of my clients had a meltdown about a missed deadline. I’ll deal with it when we’re back.”

Same line. Word for word. When he returned to the present, the joy of the vacation dissolved instantly. He felt cracked open. That number.. it ate at him. If only he could remember it. But he’d barely looked. And now it was gone. He started planning for the third loop the moment he returned.

This time, he wouldn’t just live the memory, he would watch it. When the seventh day came, he stared at the number as it rang. He repeated it in his head like a chant. 917… 802… He engraved it in memory like it was the combination to a safe that held the last truth about his marriage. Then he let it go. He smiled at Claire. They had two hours left. He wanted to enjoy it.

As soon as he returned to the present, he jotted the number down and picked up his phone.

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.”

Micah’s heart dropped. He called again. And again. Still nothing. He called the provider, but they wouldn’t release account info. Privacy policy. He even considered reaching out to Kayla, but it had been years. What would he even say? Hey, did you call Claire from an unsaved number during our Bahamas trip three years ago? She’d think he had lost his mind. And maybe he had.

By the fourth loop, Micah was obsessed. As soon as he arrived, he called the number using the hotel phone. Out of service. Again. How? he whispered to himself.

He called it several times. Every day.. Same result. He started to wonder if he’d misremembered. Maybe a digit off? He barely touched the sand. Barely smiled. He spent the whole week watching Claire. Listening. Looking for clues. For anything off.

It was the seventh day. Same number. Same call. Same balcony lie.

Micah left the room, walked down to the hotel lobby, and called the number again from his own phone, it had to be active now. Still disconnected. Fuck. He clenched his fists, staring at the phone like it had betrayed him.

That night, when he returned, he wasn’t just broken. He was angry. The fifth loop was pure hell. He sulked through the first few days. Snapped at Claire. Avoided the beach. He couldn’t fake it anymore.

Claire was confused, hurt. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” he muttered.

He was just waiting. When the seventh day arrived, the phone buzzed again. He grabbed it. Answered. A pause. Then click. They hung up. Micah redialed furiously. No answer. Claire walked out, hair damp, towel wrapped around her, and froze.

“Why are you on my phone?”

He turned to her. “Who’s this? Who the hell is this?”

“What are you talking about?”

They argued. Loud. Messy. She cried. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter.. none of it mattered. In two hours, the world would reset. And it did.

But he had reached his limit. He was spiraling. Consumed. So when the sixth loop arrived, he came prepared. On day one, he convinced Claire to send a video message to her sister. “Say hi, like, just be casual,” he said. “Say, ‘Hey, what's up,’ like you always do.”

She laughed and humored him. He clipped the video, kept just the "Hey, whats'up" part.

On the seventh day, 11:32 AM, the phone buzzed. Micah took it. Walked out to the balcony. He pressed play.

“Hey, what's up,” Claire’s voice chirped from the speaker.

There was a pause. Then a man’s voice, clear, irritated, familiar.

“Claire, I just got this number to call you. My wife is tracking my phone. I can’t risk my marriage now, you know that. Call this number only until the divorce is final. Then we’ll pick it up where we left off.”

It was Jonathan. Claire’s now-husband. The one she claimed she met a year after the divorce.

Micah didn’t speak. Didn’t even breathe.

When he returned he sat in the dark for hours. The silence wasn’t peaceful anymore. It was hollow. Everything he thought he had… was a lie. Not just the vacation. All of it.

The smiles. The glances. The love he thought they had. The years he spent wondering what he had done wrong. And now he didn’t even have his memories. The past had turned on him. The only safe place he had left was gone.

A week later, Micah posted the Anchor Loop for sale on a private board under the listing:

"Anchor Loop. 6 loops remaining. Go back to the best week of your life. Live it over and over again. $4000

Warning: It will ruin your life."