najbeb2

[najbeb2]

The World's Most Boring Time Loop

For the past few lifetimes I’ve focused on chess. It’s a fun game with a lot of depth and it gets really popular when the pandemic hits. My main goal has been to surpass the World Champion, but it has not been an easy ride. My influencer experience has definitely saved me when it comes to positioning myself in the space and last time I led a pretty comfortable life.

I’ve found winning the lottery to be more hassle than it’s worth most of the time. Too many people hang around you wanting a piece of the pie, too many regulations about how much you can put where and when and how much you can take with you to any given country. I do leave my parents a ticket whenever I leave at least. I’ve always felt you have to show gratitude where you can.

I don’t like moving before I’m 18, there’s a sense of comfort I get from reliving those same sights with news goals for the first 13 years. It used to bore me, but mundanity has its charms. The same friends, the same school, the same problems. When we grow up all that changes but in school it’s all so simple: you wake up, you turn up, you go home. I do have the advantage of having the curriculum memorised, though not by choice, but even if I didn’t I’d still feel this relaxed. The world is complicated, far too complicated for a single person to navigate the whole thing. I need a reminder as to how simple it can be. I’ve found the loops where I don’t take this time to be the hardest.

Mentally I know I’m not all there. I still love and cherish life, that’s the thing I’ve always focused on. If I ever lose that I know there’s a dark future awaiting me. I’m definitely a little unhinged though. It usually starts in my 40s, when I’m far enough away from my childhood that reliving it doesn’t seem so bad. That’s usually the thing that keeps me from doing stupid stuff. The older I get, the more reckless I become. Not in some nihilistic way, it’s just. Every action has some inherent risk to it and we’re always weighing those risks against the benefits. In my case there’s less risk the more willing I am to start over and the more novel the experience.

Naturally at this point I’ve got every experience you could think of under my belt. Every country, every dish, every mountain, every fish. None of it on a clock, and most of it unplanned. Usually I just pick a country and go there. If it’s third world usually I’ll do some charity work for 15-20 years before settling down. I try to not leave but sometimes it’s inevitable. The Middle East is always in some sort of turmoil, usually US led, but I make it work. Working as a pro bono smuggler is always fun. Well not fun fun, but fun. Running an operation like that takes a lot of work and I’ve gotten pretty good at logistics. Well it’s not like outsmarting US Border guards takes that much effort.

I go back and forth on the morality of bringing people to a place that won’t accept them, not fully. I’ve tried a few times to staunch the flow of fascism into America but I always feel like I’m too late. Being born in 2000 means it’s pretty difficult to get to the US fast enough and with enough capital to stop Trump before his rise, and no matter the influence I amass it just doesn’t seem to be enough to move the needle. After my last failed attempt I decided to not worry about it for a while. Killing those idiots was fun though. I knew it would martyr them, but part of me just wanted to see if I could get away with it. I could, knowing exactly where they’ll be and when makes the whole thing pretty simple.

I’ve toyed around with killing CEOs like I’m wielding the Death Note, but that level of planning would take decades and I know it wouldn’t move the needle. I don’t know how to move the needle, that’s the reason I gave up on trying to fix the unfixable. Systemic change isn’t one person killing a hundred awful people, it’s those one hundred people somehow renouncing their evil ways. I thought about becoming the ghosts of Christmas but that’s a bit too silly, even for me.

I crashed the stock market a few times, but the only people that really affects are the working class. You crash the almighty stock market and for some reason it isn’t the bankers that pay, it’s the breadmakers. The gears of capitalism still spin, unerred by my machinations. I think maybe it might work if I combine all these things, if I get boots on the ground and people I trust and spend several lifetimes making the perfect plan.

Then I think about what comes next, am I supposed to usurp power and institute socialism across the globe? Even if I do succeed, what then? When I die I’ll just have to start over, a life well lived, but just one of infinitely many. These loops killed the part of me I loved most, the part of me that hoped for a better tomorrow, because even given the power to stop all the injustice in the world, it’ll all come back eventually.

Instead of worrying about all that I decided to become a chess champion, for now at least. I reached Grandmaster in my past life and with a bunch of notes about how I should study up I feel like this’ll be the run I can dethrone that Norwegian bastard.

My baby sister looks at me with uncomprehending eyes as I tell her all this. It’s usually the first thing I do when I start over. She’s my chosen anchor point, an eternal constant in my immortal life. I tuck in her blanket, a little tighter than mum does. Not for her, but for me.

[najbeb2]

Different

"It can't be easy living like that," she said.

"It's impossible to manage," I replied.

"Surely you've picked up a few tricks though right?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Shortness."

"The shorter the phrase the harder it is to change?"

"That's not it," I said, inflecting the it, to help express a different point.

"It's kinda comprehensible I guess, that inflection makes it way more confusing though," She thought about it for a second, "but doesn't it just...add a negative to everything you say?"

"No, and yes. Perspective. It doesn't have trouble with some opposites. Yang yin. I am a man, you are a woman."

"Well those aren't really opposites."

"Perspective."

"Wait so you believe they're opposites?"

"They are?" I ask.

"Pretty sure they're completely different things. It's not a binary."

"Perspective," I say again.

"This conversation is getting weird. Gender isn't real so you can't really 'be' a man or a woman."

"That's what I think."

"Yeah but if you don't believe that, then how come you don't swap the two around? Do you think people can be agender?"

"No, that doesn't seem possible."

"The mechanics of this are just weird."

"You have to accept it. It's just not weird."

"I feel like its proving that gender essentialism is bullshit."

"If you think that," I shrug.

"Shouldn't that be the opposite?"

"'If you don't think that' is the opposite, so its inverted. It's about the word, it's not about the meaning."

"Couldn't you come up with something that does invert the meaning."

"It doesn't try to mirror my words exactly, I understand why."

"Maybe you're not smart enough to reverse it," she said with a cheeky grin.

"Very impossible."

"You're not supposed to agree with me when I say that."

"I guess. It's not the conclusion I've come to though."

"Kinda hard on yourself."

"I...don't push people away. It's not exhausting dealing with me."

"Yeah I get it but, it's just the way it is right? Surely your family and friends understand that."

"They didn't understand, at first. The longer I'm not around, the harder everything isn't."

"I mean it's a little confusing to track and you might need to clarify every now and then but it really isn't that bad."

"Maybe they just loved me. Maybe I don't deserve to be alone."

"I'm not really in the mood to throw you a pity party. If they didn't want to be around you then they just suck. It's cruel to just abandon you, you deserve better than people like that and you aren't supposed to accept that the way they treated you is the way its always going to be. So what if you're a little different? Doesn't change what you as a person deserve."

"Why aren't you kind?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't know."

[najbeb2]

"What do you mean you're weak?"

"I'm weak, not sure how else to put it."

"In what way are you weak little hatchling?"

"I just can't. Anything. I want to cast spells but nothing but sparks ever comes out."

"You have aptitude then. You cannot be weak."

"Did you even listen to what I said?"

"You create sparks, that is enough to say whether or not you are capable. If you could not then the magic potential I sense in you would be wasted and I would have to find another."

"I don't really get it, if I can't cast spells then how could I possibl-"

"You can cast spells. You create sparks."

"That's semantics."

"It's the truth. You will cast your sparks for me now."

"I don't se-"

"You will cast your sparks for me now hatchling."

"Alright alright I'm doing it." She brought her battered old wand up to chest level, concentrating harder than she'd ever concentrated before. She focused on the thing that always made the sparks flicker from the end of the wand: her anger. The pit of red hot emotion bubbled away at her insides, scalding her whenever she got too close. Tapping into that well she felt her vision cloud as the energy inside surged up looking for a release valve. Traveling up and out her extended arm it found the tip of her wand, but instead of the intense torrent she always felt should come out only a few sparks emerged, disappearing into the cold night air. "Happy?"

The toothy grin plastered on their face was unnerving. "I am pleased. What emotion did you use to conjure those sparks hatchling?"

"Anger, that's the only way I can get it done." The dragon considered her answer far longer and far more deeply than she'd expected.

"Not shame? Or envy?"

"What do I have to be ashamed or envious about?"

"You do not covet what others have? Dream of a world where you are more?"

"If I am to be more then I will be that while being myself through my own power."

"Interesting. Have you learnt that anger is the weakest emotional catalyst?"

"I'm not allowed to attend lectures."

"Yet they ridicule you when you produce 'only sparks' as you put it. Such a desolate place my academy has become."

"What do you mean weakest emotional catalyst?"

"Humans start their magical journey by emphasising emotion. Magic is a soulful thing, and emotions tap into that energy quickly. Positive emotions bring out more pure energies than negative emotions, this is the first lesson of magic that we are all taught. Joy is the greatest emotional catalyst and conversely anger is the weakest. No mage in history has had enough latent potential to wield anger as a catalyst."

"But I could onl-"

"Make sparks yes little hatchling, you could only achieve a feat thought impossible. I still am not sure I truly believe it myself. If I am right, and I am always right, your potential is immeasurable. As always I am glad to have taken the trip down from my nest." The enormous azure dragon beckoned her with their neck; an invitation to ride on their back. It was a choice with an obvious answer and an uncertain future, a choice that needed to be made. So she made it.