A soft ray of sunlight hit Brown’s eyelids. He lay motionless in his warm bed, his chest slowly rising up, then back down again. He was dreaming of losing his voice.
A shadow intercepted the light, looming over the boy. The figure leaned in and gently shook his body, bundled in covers. Suddenly, Brown awoke. Chel was the first thing he saw.
The feminine shadow moved back to give Brown room to sit up. His blurry, sleepy vision eventually found his best friend sitting on his own bed next to him, excitedly tying his shoes. The phone on his nightstand was playing the same song he heard the last two times.
Shareef don’t like it,
Rockin’ the Casbah, rock the Casbah!
Shareef don’t like it,
Rockin’ the Casbah, rock the Casbah!
The considerably more awake of the two boys looked up. “Rise and shine, Brownie!”
A flood of memories and visions flooded Brown’s mind, and he snapped out of his sleepiness.
“Oh my God,” he said aloud. “I’m in a fucking time loop.”
His friend stopped mid-tie, giving him a strange look. “Chill, bro, it was probably just a bad dream.
Brown huddled in a fetal position, clutching onto a pillow. He muttered incomprehensible things to himself, or at least incomprehensible things from Saki’s point of view. Something about machines. Voids. Time travel. Chel hovered over to console the poor kid.
There was a knock on the door. “You can sit there, bro. I’ll take this one,” Saki said. He got up from his bed and opened the door.
There stood his taller, buffer third roommate with his indigo hair slicked back and his leather jacket scuffed and well-worn.
“Where’s the other kid?” Xander said. Saki pointed to the guy in question, then came closer to whisper, “Hey, if I were you, I’d come back a bit later. He’s kinda going through something right now.”
The man exhaled sharply. “Your breath stinks.”
Saki gasped and covered his mouth. “I-it does?! But I have a date with Pearl today! On Leap Day! This day needs to be perfect! You don’t have any mints, do you?”
“Heh, you wish. I have this, though.” Xander handed him a piece of paper. “Give this to Brown. Got five bucks out of this little errand. Now move.”
Saki stepped out of his way, and Xander nonchalantly marched inside. He failed to acknowledge Brown, crashing face-down on his bed instead. Brown didn’t notice.
“Hey, bro?” Saki said slowly, “You gonna be alright?”
Brown stood up. His face was much more determined now. It was a face Saki had only seen once before, way back at the incident in the library basement.
“Trash the note, Saki,” Brown said, “I already know what’s inside.”
Saki and Chel shot a glance at each other and looked back at Brown. “Uh.. sure? Wait, how do you know what’s in the note? You literally just got up. Are you two messing with me?”
Brown ignored his friend’s questions, so did Xander. “You have somewhere to be, right dude? I’ll lock the door behind you.”
“Oh! Yeah right, Pearl, thanks man. See you later!” Saki said, he honestly forgot about it for a moment due to Brown’s antics. He grabbed his things and dashed out the door.
Brown sighed. “Not later enough…”
He put on a pair of pants and walked out the door, locking it as he left. He checked his watch as he jogged to the lab. 8:20AM.
Shoot, he thought, I wasted six more minutes than last time. He thought back to what time it was when Nova sneezed. I have to assume Nova’s gonna sneeze around 9AM, no matter what. That means I only have an hour per loop until everything resets again. And I wasted a third of that already! Damn! How am I going to break this?
His train of thought screeched to a grinding halt yet again as he bumped into Lucas in the hall.
“Ouch- damnit, I thought I missed you this time.” Lucas said, rubbing his shoulder that was violently bumped. The books he was carrying fell onto the floor, which elicited an annoyed “damnit” out of the blond.
“Sorry, Luke. Again. Look, since you’re here, do you have any idea how to stop this?” Brown took solace in the fact that for whatever reason, he was not alone.
“Stop what? I thought I died and went to Hell, doomed to repeat that one biology class until I go mad or something.”
“Might as well be Hell at this rate.”
“What’d I miss? All I can see is you just getting up in the morning and then I’m out to biology.”
“You can’t just skip it?”
“…Fair, not like I didn’t take that class twice already.” Lucas picked up and dropped the books to the floor, intentionally this time. “There. Now I should probably look for some clues as to what the fuck is going on. You go on ahead, It’ll take me awhile to catch up. See you around, 🅱️.”
“How did you… yeah, whatever.” Brown shook his head and sprinted to his destination. He didn’t have much time left.
Back at the lab once more, Brown didn’t wait for an invitation in. Bursting through the entrance, he found Ernst, Skyber, and Nova—the third of which even worse off than last time.
“Brown, here at last! Took your time didn’t you? But don’t vorry, somezing elze came up!” The doctor said as he gestured to the table. Nova was laying down, their eyes closed and their fur almost lacking any color. Skyber’s face was lacking color as well.
Once the boy caught his breath, he walked over to the worsening Nova. He thought of something to himself. The loop must be taking its toll on Nova. They’re losing more and more strength every time they sneeze. If I don’t stop this soon, what’s gonna happen when they run out of strength entirely?
“As I was saying,” Skyber said quietly. This time Brown could barely recognize the voice that came out of the dragon—it was sorrowed beyond recognition. “They were like this when I woke up, this never happened to them before. They won’t do anything. …they won’t even look at me…” Skyber sharply turned away, her head lowered. It seemed the stress was getting to her. Dark liquid began to roll down from her eyes, what Brown could only assume was her tears. “I can’t lose them… not like this…”
Brown looked down to the floor, clenching his fists out of hopeless sympathy.
Ernst replied, “I understand, I really do! But both you and I saw my brilliant medical expertize had no effect! Nova isn’t exactly…human, on further analysis. I can’t make heads or tails of the data I get from my examinations!”
“The data won’t help you, Doc,” Brown suddenly stated. “We’re stuck in a paradox. You’re right, Nova isn’t human. And that’s what’s caused the machine to malfunction and put us all in a time loop.”
“VHAT?! You know about ze Zietgiest 3000?! But zat is impossible! I never activitied it! I called you all here to reveal it for ze first time! AND YOU SPOILED ZE SURPRISE!”
Skyber looked at the whimpering doctor. It managed to lift her mood somehow, yet she still had to wipe her tears from her face. The goddess turned to the supposed time traveler. “Brown, I appreciate you wanting to help but the concept of time is just that. A concept. The actual process-“
“-of getting back to the ‘past’ is a delicate procedure even you had trouble doing in your godhood days,” Brown recited, knowing now how to prove himself. “You said this before, Skyber. Twice! So believe me when I say I’ve done this song and dance before!”
Skyber had her raised finger lowered. Her eyes widened as she looked down to him. “By my horns… if what you’re saying is true then—”
The goddess quickly turned back to Nova. “No wonder they look like this. You said it already happened twice, correct? The energy required to pull this sort of stunt is immense. Only me or Nova could even dream of doing something like this, and not without its repercussions. Whatever that machine did to Nova, it is now causing them to reset time for… whatever reason. We have to break this loop before it’s too late.”
“You really think so?” Brown said sarcastically. “I’m almost as worried what the loop does to you. Sure you believe me now, but if we don’t break it by nine o’clock, everyone but me is just gonna forget what happened, and I’ll have to come and explain everything all over again. I can’t afford to waste that time again.”
Skyber placed her hand over her chin. “I’m not immune to the loop as it seems.” She dug into her chest pocket and took out a large golden pocket watch with her insignia carved into it. She opened it and took a deep glance. “And we don’t have enough time to discuss what to do. Nothing remains with you when you loop, does it?”
“Nothing but my memories of last time. At least I can keep those.”
Skyber looked down for a moment, contemplating for a few moments before letting off a deep sigh. She lifted her hat and pulled out a large black dragon plush. It seemed extremely aged, but it seemed Skyber tended well to it.
“Only Nova and Pearl know I have this. He is called Ber-Ber. Nova made it for me a good thousands of years ago. If you know I have it, I would most likely believe anything you say to me. I wouldn’t dream of showing this to you unless something went really wrong.”
Under any other circumstance, Brown would have been stifling a laugh. But now, he regarded Ber-Ber as a prophet from God Himself. Or in this case, Herself. “I’ll be sure to remember that name.”
He checked his wristwatch. 8:58. Only two minutes left. “Anything else?”
“I won’t have enough time to do anything about this, don’t come for me again unless you have a solution in mind. And… please hurry. I’m not sure how many loops they can handle. If they lose control over themselves reality will cease to exist, the void will consume everything. And since you are here as well, I’m certain the void will leak into your world with the link you established here and ruin it, too.”
Brown gulped. From the corner of his eye, he saw Nova’s body quiver. He saluted. Hope filled him for the first time today. “You just saved me twenty minutes. If all goes well, Nova too. See you this morning.”
Skyber nodded in silence with a hopeful smile and patted his shoulder.
“Good luck, Brown.”