Learning to Love Time Loops Without Going Insane

It was several years into the loop before Cal sat everyone down to discuss his future plans. He wanted to give his friends and family time to cement up their lives. This meant it wasn’t until late two thousand six that he had everyone gathered around the dinner table at Stan’s house. He had chosen his dad’s house because Jen was still recovering from the recent birth of Camden. Stan didn’t have a lot of spare time to leave the house as he was taking full care of Christopher and the newborn while she rested from the ordeal.

“Hello everyone. Thanks for coming to the first meeting of the new round table.” Cal was smiling as he thanked the group.

“Cal, son, the table is square.” Stan shook his head as he spoke.

“The details aren’t important here dad, it’s the symbolism.”

“I agree with Stan, if it’s the symbol that matters, the actual symbol should be correct.” Andy laughed while he gently made fun of his friend.

“Alright, alright I’ll work on our team name and our symbolism. But it’s important we get down to business. We only have seven loops, including this one, before we lose future Andy and Barron. And while I’m sure Andy’s loss is understandable I think my little spirit buddies all deserve a chance at life.”

“Cal be nice, I gave future Andy a talking to last time I saw him, don’t make me do the same to you.” Bug glared at Cal with her best serious face.

“I promise I’m joking Bug, I really do want to save Future Andy as well. That’s why I’ve got you all here. We need to discuss what has to be done and how we are going to do it. There is one huge issue, but I’ll get to that after we cover the initial information.”

Jen walked into the room and pulled out a chair. “I heard you from the other room, and I want to help anyway I can. We need to save this world for families no matter what it takes.”

“Welcome to the team Jen.” Cal walked over to his step mother and extended his hand for a hand shake, she instead pulled into an embrace.

“Thank you Cal.”

“I’m just happy we have another woman here, Bug and I were getting outvoted too often.” Ethel was also smiling as she said this.

“So here what future Andy and I believe is happening. Some of this is speculation, some of this we are sure of, but for now this is the scenario we are going to use for our planning. The Gryalth are here to drain our planet and then probably our universe of its natural resources, for their own war efforts. At some point people on this planet became at the very least aware of their existence and some of their activities. Based on information from Ethel on her parents we can assume the Agency that represents these interests has been around for at least a hundred years. At some point after their arrival the Gryalth began to hunt down natural mana wells around the world. This led to a war between Many Legs, her allies at the time and the Gryath’s bear monsters. Many Legs lost the war and she was the only survivor. After capturing the pools they then spend several decades slowly corrupting the waters and moving the energies into their own device. This is the brightstone that most of us have seen from Alaska, we can safely assume from the notes of future Andy that similar stones exist across the world.

Alongside these stones exist a set of four gravity generators that the Agency managed to build using energies from a proto void spirit. Sometime around twenty-twenty-one, two years before the end of the loop, the Agency acquires at least four of the stones and places them in research labs with the four generators. The removal of the stones always seems to trigger a Gryalth event within two years. This is what happened in the initial loop. At future Andy’s research lab, specifically one of the Gryalth fired into the engine, causing it to go critical and start to implode. Caught in the implosion were the entire research lab, the stone and future Andy. Due to how the gravity generator was built, this triggered implosion events at the location of the other three as well. This triggered something on a quantum string level starting the loops.

For a very long time, so long that future Andy himself no longer knows, he was trapped alone in these loops, only able to act in the last twenty minutes or so. He spent this time learning about every single person in the building and determining who he knew the longest. This is where he discovered me. At that point I spent most of my time in a run down apartment playing video games and scraping by on food delivery gigs. This meant I was at the building delivering food when the attack started. Andy then started an experiment to increase the amount of void essence I had been exposed to until eventually he fully brought me into the loop. The reason he chose me was because due to the tools he had available he could only extend the person’s awareness to the day they first met. This is why both Bug and I become aware at the same time. We met Andy for a few hours when I was twelve.

This leads us to now. We have to find a way to get the to get all the generators from the labs they are currently in, to the one Andy will work in. The big issue here is we have limited loops to do it in and we have to do it the same day the loop ends, probably in the middle of the invasion itself. Our destination goal is Dallas. The other three are located in New York City, Boston and Seattle.”

“Wait, how can we possibly get one of these from New York to Texas in a few hours?” Ethel interrupted.

“I don’t know and I think I’ve covered just about everything I do know, so now it’s brainstorm time.” Cal responded.

Andy started to open his mouth, but before any words came out a small crack appeared in mid air above the table, it quickly widened and Albert’s head popped out. “Hello everyone, got a letter here from Ralth for you. Can’t stay, they will be able to track this if it’s open too long.” His head vanished back into the crack and a letter popped out before the crack itself turned back into empty air.

Cal grabbed the letter off the table and quickly scanned it. “Well, that solves that.” He then handed the letter to Andy.

“Solves what?” Stan asked.

“Ralth needs my future self, we can use these cracks to move the generators, but he needs help getting the schematics perfect, so I need to be in his caverns at the end of the next several loops.”

“Look at that, we’ve already taken care of the biggest problem. You’ve been a great war council, give yourselves a hand.” Cal looked at each of them as he spoke.

“Oh no, Ethel I don’t know to clap”

“It’s okay Bug, he wasn’t serious. I’m not entirely sure he knows how to be.”

“We need to move near the buildings that will house the stones and generators.” Stan tried to bring the talk back around to planning.

“Yes, but how do we want to do this? No offense to Bug, but her memories of details aren’t perfect enough for me to rely on her for information dumping at the end of the loop, and I can’t be everywhere at once. Andy has to be with Ralth. So that leaves you three.”

“Jen and I can move to Boston, she has family there anyway. We will keep detailed journals, all paper to make sure we don’t have any electronic spies. Jen you’ve got the better military training here, do you think we can gather enough intel this way?”

“For this loop, probably. Ethel can take one of the other two, Cal the last. We set up the capybaras to do journal drops to Cal as soon as we can, making sure to dump them all up to the last hour. This seems doable.”

“I think we should rotate locations each loop to try and catch anything anyone misses as well.” Ethel added.

“Good idea. I don’t want to spend more than three loops at this recon stage, because we are likely going to fail the generator acquisition stage at least once, and I want some wiggle room to get this right. Thank you, everyone for trusting and believing in me. I really mean that.” Cal added the last part after a brief pause.

“More importantly I smell dinner.” Bug yelled moments before the doorbell rang. “PIZZA!”

*

Ethel wanted Seattle this loop, so Cal took New York City. He sent Bug with Ethel to help her, and while he knew he’d miss her it was for the best. He had his spiritual friends to help him, Stan had Jen, Ethel needed someone.

Every few weeks a crack would appear in his apartment office and a couple journals would appear. They also all made sure to have regular phone calls, but kept any of the important parts over written words. Part of Cal’s goal in this loop was investigating computer encryption. He wanted to figure out a better way of transferring information in the future loops, in case anything needed to be done quickly.

For the first decade of watching the area, nothing huge happened. Each location functioned as a research lab, and seemed to have been in operation for decades prior to their investigations. Cal had assumed this was how it would go in this loop. Next loop they had agreed would be the time for infiltration. Everyone would try to get a job in the buildings and map them out as best they could. The final loop of recon was meant to be spent much more risky, actual information theft to gather whatever data they could.

Activity picked up at all three locations late twenty-twenty. It looked like they were preparing to house the generator and or acquire the stones. Large vans were seen going in and out of their parking bays at all times of the day now, culminating in a procession of two semi trucks and several large cans in early twenty twenty-one. This happened within a few weeks of each other at each location. Cal believed they now had the stone inside.

Nothing of note happened again until the final day of the loop. Cal waited patiently watching the building from his apartment. The capybaras had opened up a crack that would last the entire day in each residence. All a person had to do was think where it led and toss in their object to get it there. With the loop soon ending, they weren’t worried about any tracking, and Ralth thought it was also good practice for the coming needs.

Cal watched three vans stop in front of the building at around three o’clock and aliens started pouring out of them. They made their way to each entrance on the building and used their odd weapons to force their way in. As this happened several small notes started dropping into his apartment. He tried to read them as they came in. The same thing was happening at each location. When the Gryalth arrived, they removed any obstacles and started raiding the building.

Cal learned nothing else this loop as he waited for the white flash to start it all over again.