Loop 12


    When Myra had discussed the need to collect some data points, she had imagined they’d be like, ‘the star doesn’t move at all,’ or ‘the star moves’ or ‘the star disappears’. Things like that. At the tail end of possibility space, she had imagined like, ‘the star grows’ or ‘the star shrinks.’


    But ‘Roc interrupts her, intuits what she’s looking at, and attacks her in a furious rage’ hadn’t been on her list.


    Where do I even start with this one?


    Hell, what am I even gonna do this loop?


    On one hand, Myra felt like she could probably get more out of the murk bogs with another go at it, now that she had a much better idea what to expect.


    … But right now, she desperately needed a bit of a breather loop.


    ◆


    She went to the cosmology section of the library. The first thing I need to do is figure out if that supernova thing is a printing error or what.


    There were a few different publishers when it came to the sort of exhaustive reference book with the information she needed. The one she’d been using before was called Star Guide, published by Casire Scientific Press, a prolific distributor of textbooks and encyclopedias.


    According to Star Guide, ZK-1034’s supernova should have been visible 8650 days prior to the start of the loop, or about 23 years and 8 months ago; Shera said she had seen it 11 years ago.


    This was the exact same information she had read back in Loop 2. (Of course it was. What, did she expect the book to change from loop to loop? Maybe a part of her had expected that…)


    CSP wasn’t the only source available, though. Myra could cross-reference the information in CSP’s Star Guide with some other sources. Maybe she’d find that the CSP book made a mistake. She scanned the shelves for some similar books from other publishers and checked the same information. All of them agreed, though: ZK-1034’s supernova should have been visible 23 years ago, not 11 years ago.


    Maybe I should check an older edition. It still might be the case that all these sources are mistaken for some reason. Even if that’s the case, the editions from before the supernova would surely be different, labeling ZK-1034 as a ‘normal’ star rather than a neutron star.


    What she wanted to check was a reference from more than 11 years ago. All the books she’d checked so far were recent editions, published between one and four years ago. To her annoyance, there didn’t seem to be much available from earlier. She checked a couple more libraries but didn’t have any more luck. She even tried to book-searching spell but couldn’t find a single book mentioning the star that was older than five years.


    The star ZK-1034 disappears—well, moves, probably, I probably just zoomed in too much—but only at the very end of the time loop. All the other stars don’t show any sign of motion. Meanwhile, the historical record for the star disagrees with Shera’s memory, but it seems that this was true before the loop started. What are the fucking chances, the one star that moves in the loop is the one star Shera has an emotional connection to?


    The chances were almost nil, that’s what. Something she believed had to be bunk.


    Calm the fuck down, Myra. There’s got to be a logical explanation here.


    You don’t know that it’s “the one star that moves.” You’ve only checked 4 stars. That’s literally 1-in-4. Maybe 25% of all stars move.


    Furthermore, ZK-1034 is the only one we’ve checked in this part of the sky. I’m pretty sure this is the same part of the sky Shera was looking at the first night she saw the stars move. Even if she wasn’t looking at ZK-1034 at the end, I know she was pointed roughly that direction.


    So that had to be it, right?


    It made sense. The sky is under an illusion to prevent people in the time loop from observing the discrepancy. For some reason, the illusion fails right before the loop ends, but only in that one part of the sky.


    But why?


    Maybe the illusion is maintained by a handful of artifacts around the planet? And the one responsible for that part of the sky happens to be in Ralkenon, and gets destroyed?


    That doesn’t explain why the timing with the end of the loop is so tight, only a few seconds apart…


    Then again, it wasn’t so tight to be outside the realm of reasonable coincidence. It was unlikely to be so close by chance, but it wasn’t absurdly so. And if it wasn’t a coincidence, what the causation even be…? It was pretty doubtful that the illusion failure was the cause of the time loop, but it seemed equally doubtful that the time loop was the cause of the illusion failure.


    Put that aside for now. How’s this fit in with everything else?


    First, Shera’s discrepancy.


    Okay, so.


    This is anticlimactic but—


    It’s gotta be unrelated.


    Right? Shera either misremembers, or there was a data error that just… ended up getting copied everywhere. The fact that all the books had the same wrong information could just be because they all used the same erroneous source. It didn’t mean anything conclusive. Short of any concrete idea how to connect it to the time loop, this was still the only logical explanation.


    Right?


    What else could I be missing?


    Whatever.


    If it turns out that the neutron star really is the only star that moves, I can revisit this.


    Then finally, there was the question of Roc and his reaction, and…


    Myra didn’t have even the ghost of a clue on that one.


    ◆


    Myra had meant everything she’d said to Shera. But she also knew she couldn’t do another loop that way. I desperately need to find someone else to share the loop with.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    She knew who she wanted. The smartest, most emotionally secure, and highest-intuition individual in her university.


    “Psst. Iz!”


    Iz froze where she stood in the hallway and looked around, face scrunched up in confusion.


    She tried again, doing the biggest, most selectively conspicuous “psssst” she could muster up. Iz’s eyes finally flickered in the right direction, and she hesitantly walked to Myra’s hiding spot.


    “Myra, is that you?”


    “Shh. I’m not here!”


    “What you are doing in a janitor’s closet…?”


    “I’m in a time loop. I made a bunch of predictions to prove it,” Myra said. She slipped her friend a few sheets of paper through the crack in the door. “Check the newspaper each day.”


    “Myra, what the fuck are you—”


    “Just check the news for the week, okay? I’ll explain everything later! And don’t tell anyone I was here!”


    ◆


    Myra realized she didn’t really have to join the murk bogs to investigate the vault. It was a little difficult to do it on her own, but she’d learned all she needed to know by watching Roc closely. On the morning of the second day, she entered the vault in the usual way, made her way past the first few security layers, used the Klein bottle key, and reached the gargoyle liars puzzle.


    She didn’t even remember all the long-ass instructions from the last loop, so the first thing she did was make another copy. She didn’t even understand everything in full. The instructions said she only got 3 questions, but was that like… 3 per day? 3 and then you’re locked out forever? What if she used up the 3 questions and then the actual people who owned the vault couldn’t get in?


    After contemplating the puzzle a bit more and inspecting the gargoyles for some kind of weakness, she screwed around in zero-G a bit (for she had been too embarrassed to do that when Roc had been around) and eventually left. She put everything back where it should have been and teleported back out.


    There had been some risk, in this entire escapade, of running into the murk bogs infiltration team, so she was a little wary of teleporting back to the usual safe house. That was an annoying restriction since it was in a pretty good position for an outgoing teleport. Close by, not too close to get zapped by the redirection rod, and out-of-view. Still, out of an abundance of caution, she landed on a nearby branch instead. It was dark out, and it was far from the well-lit center of the city. Quietly, and watching for passerby, she hopped back to solid ground, or whatever passed for that in an Unkmirean city.


    Her heart almost stopped as someone she hadn’t seen bumped her shoulders. The other person yelped in a youthful, masculine voice, dropping a handful of notebooks.


    Myra was quick to apologize, but the other man didn’t respond at all. He just hurried to pick up the notebooks that had dropped to the floor, barely looking at her. Though it was hard to make him out in the dark, he didn’t look familiar.


    As he scurried off, though, Myra got a funny feeling. What is he doing all the way out here? They were on a public path, but…


    “Hey, wait!” she called out, impulsively, conjuring some light so she could see better.


    He was lanky, with soft and youthful features, with straight black hair tied back in a pair of braids and glasses. He wore a somewhat shabby Unkmirean mage cloak, had bags under his eyes, and held his books at his side with tense, white knuckles. He seemed to panic when Myra confronted him, and he teleported immediately.


    …


    Who the fuck was that?


    With little else to do, she decided to spent the next week doing some stakeouts. She hung out in the area and watched for anyone interesting or suspicious—boring, but somewhat stress-free, knowing that even if she ran into the murk bogs, they wouldn’t recognize her.


    But still really boring. Almost nothing happened. She never did see the lanky guy again, and though the murk bogs did show up once, it was almost a non-event. On Day 6, a small team—consisting of Roc, Geel, and one other guy named Perrin from Geel’s core group—entered the safe house where they presumably teleported into the vault. They left a few hours later, looking dissatisfied and irritable.


    ◆


    A few days later, she summoned Iz to an obscure cafe a ways off campus. It was a dingy one with small windows and poor lighting, a place that Myra had always avoided because of its dreadful tea and coffee. Cynthia had always claimed to like the burnt parts of their pastries, which she called ‘crispy’ and ‘sort of caramelized.’ Myra had always suspected she was doing some kind of bit. Anyway, the location was probably safe from the Bens of the world.


    “Soo… what’d you think?” Myra asked hopefully.


    “Well, it was… an impressive trick, whatever it was.” Iz sounded pretty unsure of herself, though. “How’d you do it?”


    “I thought you’d figure it out by now,” Myra said.


    “I have no idea, Myra.” She sighed. “Though honestly, I don’t care about this.” She handed the predictions list back to Myra. “You disappeared for a whole week! I’m worried about you! Cynthia’s worried about you, Nathan’s—we all are—”


    “Wait, wait, Iz, I need you to let me explain.”


    Iz waited.


    “Here’s the thing. I’m in a time loop. I don’t know how it’s happening, but I keep living the same month over and over.”


    “Myra, what the hell are you talking about?”


    “You’ve gotta believe me! I’ve been trying to convince you, but you always think I’m crazy until the end of the loop, all I want is for you to believe me at the beginning—”


    “Myra,” she said sharply. “I know what happened to you is awful, and we’re here for you.”


    “Great, I really need your help!”


    “What do you need?”


    “Umm. I need you to help me investigate the massacre of the imperial family and a bunch of sages, mainly. I also need help investigating a mercenary group in Unkmire, and I need help escaping the clutches of a rogue time-looping upperclassman and his allies from some northern mountain cult. And—”


    She shifted uncomfortably. “Myra, I know you’re just joking around, but it’s kinda weird. C’mon, just tell me how you did the trick…”


    “It’s not a trick! How would it be a trick?”


    “I don’t know.”


    “Then you should believe me.”


    She shook her head. “I’ve been to nonmagic shows before, Myra. They always have these complex illusions that I can barely fathom, and when I was a kid I used to always think ‘they must have cheated, they must have really used magic,’ but there’s always some kinda trick, right?”


    “The Great Yonder was revealed as a hack, wasn’t he? He used actual magic.”


    “You know what I mean, Myra. Just because they pull tricks that seem impossible under the given constraints, there’s always some logical explanation in the end, usually subverting some other assumption you don’t know you’re making. Sometimes it’s sleight-of-hand, invisible wire, or whatever, sometimes it’s psychological.” She was speaking slowly and deliberating, like she was telling herself a story. “Misdirection, information theory… just straight up leaving things up to chance and having different scripts for different outcomes. So yeah, just because I can’t solve your trick, I’m not going to be convinced you’ve gone back in time.”


    Leave it to Iz to logic herself out of trusting her own logic—


    “Iz, can you trust me, like, emotionally, instead of logically?”


    “I don’t know what that means, Myra.”


    “Look,” she took a deep breath. “At the end of the loop, Princess Malazhonerra Raine and her friend Violet Penrilla are going to show up to a campus party. The princess is going to recognize you because she saw you at that puzzle competition in the imperial capital. She’s going to challenge you to a duel, and you’re going to ask for her bloodstone pendant as a reward.”


    Iz didn’t interrupt her, listening silently.


    “The princess is going to be really unsettled by this. She’s going to cheat and slash your stomach open with a tunneler. You’ll end up in the infirmary. Then the volcano blows and you die if I don’t convince you to evacuate. And you always do, because it’s easier to convince you at the end of the loop for some reason. But I need to convince you of this earlier in the group because I desperately need your help!”


    The bookish girl’s pitiful looks morphed into something else, something sadder and angrier.


    “Myra, this really isn’t fucking funny.” She stood up. “I think I know what you meant earlier, now.”


    “What?”


    “‘Trust me logically instead of emotionally’?” There was a hitch in her voice. “You might as well say, ‘Just let me manipulate you.’”


    “But—I thought the news predictions were entirely logical!” Myra hastily tried to explain, but Iz was already walking away, working to obscure her own face from Myra. “It’s your fault you didn’t believe me!”


    ◆


    There was no reason to not take the brute force approach. Because fuck this loop.


    She returned to the gargoyle room.


    With a series of carefully planned explosive spells, the kind that she had been trained to not use under any circumstances, she blasted open every single doorway in the room.


    Third row, sixth from the left. That’s where the doorway was. Great!


    Suddenly the entire world changed around her. Not visibly, but rather, the claustrophobia lifted as the bubble of space reconnected to the rest of the world. It was like a click, like fitting a jigsaw piece in place, and she could feel the universe again. Then a shrill alarm blared, and there was a loud bang that was probably the Klein bottle portal system shattering in the next room over, unable to sustain itself outside the simplicity of the isolated space bubble.


    It was only an instant more before she heard soldiers landing on the outside of the tree. She tried to teleport, but the air was thick with a new disruption field, powerful enough to make her nose sting and her eyes tear.


    “Damn it,” Myra cursed to herself, and as the police quickly closed in on her, she performed a Time Looper’s Exit and escaped.