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 the void.
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 exact song he had heard the past five mornings.
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!”
The riser-and-shiner was perfectly awake. He slowly sat up in his bed, looking around in his room. Nothing seemed to have changed…and he knew this was the last of Nova’s efforts. When he was pushed back, he felt the void.
In an hour, the world will end. He failed. He began to drown in dread.
“Jeez Brown,” Saki said as he finished tying the other of his shoes, “you look like you stole Skyber’s wine again.” The boy chuckled, although the lack of reaction from his best friend got him worried. “…you didn’t actually do that, did you?”
“Huh, wha?” Brown finally snapped to it. “Uh…no, no. Sorry, I’m just sorta out of it. I didn’t sleep too well.” He figured he shouldn’t trouble Saki with the end of the world anymore. Even though he hated the guy an hour ago, he couldn’t stay mad at him like this. After everything he did to him the last two loops, the least he could do is let him spend the last hour of his existence with his girlfriend in peace.
“Anyways, I have a date with Pearl today! On Leap Day! Do you realize how epic it is to have a date on a day that doesn’t exist every three out of four years?”
“…You know what? That is pretty cool. Hope you have fun.” Brown soberly smiled. Just as the duo finished dressing, there was a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” Brown said.
He opened the door, and there stood his taller, buffer third roommate with his indigo hair slicked back and his leather jacket scuffed and well-worn.
“Just the guy I need to—God, you look awful. Ever thought of actually sleeping at night?” Xander commented, handing Brown a small note. “The mummy freak paid me five bucks to hand this to you, now move.”
Brown stepped out of his way, and Xander nonchalantly marched inside. He failed to acknowledge Saki, crashing face-down on his bed instead. Saki scoffed.
“Fine,” he said, “I didn’t wanna talk to you either, Xander.”
The sarcastic quip fell on sleeping ears.
“Ugh, whatever,” Saki gathered his things and exited the room. “Brown, lock the door behind me. I’m gonna be late for my date. Catch you later, dude!”
Brown couldn’t respond to that, knowing what would await them at 9. After that, there would be no “later.” He walked out of the dorm behind Saki and locked the door, watching his best friend disappear behind the corridor. This was it. The last time he’ll see him. He wanted to apologise for what he did, for how much of an asshole he became by ignoring his sense of consequence. But he knew it’d fly over Saki’s head since it didn’t really happen. Yet, it left him with a sour taste in his mouth regardless.
With a deep sigh, Brown made his way down the hall. He wiped a tear coming down his face. Skyber’s words echoed in his thoughts.
Am I going to look on my last words with pride…
The world didn’t end quite yet, but it might as well have. He already knew his answer to that question. His train of thought came to a halt as he walked into Lucas in the hall.
“…you know what? That didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.” The impact wasn’t strong enough for Lucas to drop his books this time.
“You don’t have to bring those books every time. There’s not even a use for them anymore.”
“Hey, sure there is. I need—wait a minute. These aren’t my biology books. These are quantum physics textbooks from last year. Why do I even have these? I don’t even go to that class.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment.
“…Sooo… from an unapologetic badass to a whimpering mess, huh? I guess that’s what they called getting Skyber’d.”
Brown looked up to Lucas with an unamused stare. “Skyber is not a verb. And nobody says that.”
“Depends who you ask, really. Say, now that it looks like you gave up and all that jazz, mind listening to my idea?”
The boy huffed. “Fine, not like I got anything better to do in my last forty-five minutes of existing. Go ahead, Mr. Optimistic Luke Hiyo.”
“Aight. As I was trying to say last loop,” Lucas started, stopping when he noticed he was still holding his books, only to drop them on the floor immediately. For consistency sake. “The time machine sent Nova exactly one hour into the past, yeah?”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Alright, so hear me out: We’ll use the machine and send Nova an hour into the future. If they were sent an hour into the past and that caused all this mess, sending them an hour into the future should get them back where they started before this whole mess even started. Y’know, M for mini, W for Wumbo?”
Brown blinked. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to risk our lives, on our last chance, based on a Spongebob episode?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely. Skyber did say we should be proud of our last words, or actions I guess, didn’t she?”
The looper threw up his hands. “Fine. Is this what we’re doing? Fuck it. Let’s go out with a meme.
“That’s the spirit. Come on, let’s go potentially kill ourselves.” Lucas placed his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, letting Brown take the lead towards Ernst’s lab.
Brown opened the door to the lab for what might just be the last time. He and Lucas stepped inside. Ernst was the one sitting next to Nova’s bed, his hand on Nova’s forehead, constantly healing them as Skyber paced back and forth, embers following her every step as she grumbled in an inhuman voice. The room itself felt like a sauna. And Nova… definitely looked the way Brown didn’t want them to look. Their fur was pitch black, no light reflecting from it. Looking into it felt like looking at a black hole. Their skin was barely seen, the closer it was to Ernst’s healing touch the more corporeal it was, and the further… felt like a look too close to nothingness.
“Brown?” The doctor finally noticed the boy, his voice was devoid of his usual mad scientist energy. It seemed he had been trying to heal Nova since the morning. “Ah, yes, I completely forgot I sent you zat note. As you can see, I have been preoccupied. Ve have a…worrisome situation on our hands.”
“You should rather go elsewhere,” Skyber warned in a low tone, glaring at the two. “Spend your time doing something you enjoy, perhaps…” The goddess seemed defeated, yet she kept on pacing around, her mind boggled with what could have ever caused such a thing. “I won’t lie to you two. We are all likely to perish in the coming hours. Just…Leave. Live your last moments peacefully.” Skyber said, looking down only to slam her clenched fist into the wall in frustration, melting the crater she made.
“I would say more like, thirty minutes or so,” Lucas quipped.
Skyber took a stomp towards the blond with a sharp, mad scowl with held back tears clearly in her eyes, cracking the floor under her heel. “GET. OUT.” She warned as the tip of Lucas’ hair caught on fire.
Brown stepped in. “We would’ve a while ago if we didn’t have a plan. We think we know how to fix this.”
“Dude, cut to the chase, I’d like to at least try to save the world before being burnt to ashes.” Lucas nudged Brown after he hastily extinguished his hair.
“Yeah, I’m getting to that. Look, Skyber, this is how it played out the last five times: I explain we’re in a time loop, nobody believes me at first, you come in and say that time is a delicate concept and the process is far more-”
“Get to the point before I remove your head from your fucking shoulders AND SHOVE IT WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE. I AM NOT SPENDING MY LAST MOMENTS LISTENING TO YOUR HORSE SHIT.” Skyber yelled with gritted teeth, her patience at her limits.
“-And that’s when I bring up Ber-Ber under your top hat, since you knew you wouldn’t believe me in future loops,” he continued, unfaltering. “Then you believe me because you wouldn’t have shown me the plush just to fuck around. Now please, Skyber, stop making us fuck around and let us fix this loop before the clock strikes 9 and reality rips to shreds.”
Skyber looked at Brown and Lucas for a few moments with widened eyes and took a step back. Her gaze lowered as she stepped aside, crossing her arms and averting her gaze in shame. “…Whatever you are going to do, for the love of me make it quick.”
“That’s kinda the point,” Lucas said, him and Brown arriving to a shriveling Nova on the table.
“So? Vhat do you plan to do? I’ve been trying to heal zis…thing? Nothing? Vhatever, I was trying to heal zem for ze entire morning!” Ernst whined, his head dropping in exhaustion.
Across the table, Brown nodded to Lucas as a way of saying, “You sure you want to do this?”
Lucas nodded back. He already agreed to it when he woke up this morning.
“Schweinhunds! Quit ignoring me!” The doctor cried.
“Doc! Open the chamber door to the Zeitgeist and set it an hour forward!” Brown pointed to him.
“Vhat? You knew about ze past traveling capabilities und ze future traveling capabilities? AGH, it is impossible to keep a surprise zhese days!” Ernst got up from the chair and removed the cloth from the contraption. After throwing it aside and opening the door to the chamber, he went to the control panel and set coordinates for 10 A.M.
“Doctor, are you sure this will work?” Lucas inquired as he and Brown together carried Nova to the machine.
“HAHAHA, I have NO IDEA!”
The two looked at each other and shrugged, accepting there was literally nothing else to lose. They placed Nova in the machine and closed the sliding glass door, taking a step back from the time machine.
“Hurry and grab ze safety goggles from ze counter! Ze machine vill activate after about a minute of varming up!” The mad scientist said excitedly, being able to test his machine for the first time, and under such circumstances firing him up.
Seeing the ball of black, translucent fluff back in the machine, Brown took a gander at his watch. Six minutes left. This better be the shortest warmup ever.
And short it was. Lucas and Brown equipped their goggles and watched the machine closely as it began the process. The many dials on the machine and the information on the monitor flared up. The mechanisms jumbled about in chaotic synchronization, the pipes, tubes, and wires practically exploding from their confinements. Skyber and Ernst stared in worry and anticipation. The noise it made almost became unbearable, before it stopped with a white bright light and a calming “bing” sound.
Two minutes left.
Silence. The insides of the machine were fully covered in a void of white. The doctor looked at the goddess in what she could tell was a confused gaze, to which she simply shook her head slowly with raised shoulders.
“…what are you looking at me for? Was this not supposed to happen?” Skyber finally broke the silence, yet not being able to look away from the machine.
“PSSH, I zon’t know! You tell me, Ms. Divinity!”
She swiftly grabbed her pocket watch, opening it hastily, and looking at it with dread.
“Thirty seconds.”
Oh God, Brown thought, Please tell me we weren’t too late. Did the machine not work in time?
“Man I sure hope not,” Lucas replied, which would usually garner an odd look from the boy. But his mind was preoccupied on more pressing matters to elicit such reaction.
“Five seconds.” The dragoness spoke.
The light vanished.
Brown closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see what happened. He couldn’t face the end of the world with open eyes. All he could do was count the seconds.
Four.
Three.
Two…