Halloween 2022 - Rewind
#4 of Snippets
Ever feel like you're stuck?
Rewind
Halloween 2022
Dawn shook her head as she saw the flashing lights ahead.
"No, hell no. Not after I've made it this far. No new details and no time to hide any," she muttered to herself.
A glance at her watch showed 8:55 PM. Could she make it in five minutes? No reason to not try. But this'd been a bad day. She had the detail packet hidden in her home, so she should've gotten an early start. Everything had gone against her. It was five before she found the packet. She considered repositioning the packet, but it was a crap shoot either way. Too obvious and it'd be found and destroyed. Too hidden and she might not find it.
Not finding it herself was the least bad option. She could always try again as long as she had her packet. But were it to be destroyed, she'd have to start from scratch. She had no idea how long it might take her to even get a first hint.
There! There was the building. But... she had no idea where inside it. Her watch showed 8:59 now. No chance. She sat and hung her head, shaking it and fighting an overwhelming urge to sob. Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the day. It had to.
Tear-filled eyes watched the seconds counting up. 58. 59. Nine.
Dawn woke at five, just as the sun was starting to brighten the sky outside her home. She yawned and stretched under the covers. Tossing them off was as quick as every other day, and her feet hit the plush carpet of her bedroom as she stood and stretched again, ready to face the day. A quick...
What was that?
She bent over to pick up the small, glowing object on her floor. The moment her fingers touched it, the sensation was overwhelming. Knowledge and information flowed into her mind. Memories. HER memories. From all the prior days that she'd gathered them and stored them in this thing, so they would not be lost when the day - and her mind - reset.
From the very start, years ago, when she first found this by accident. Every day was the same day, but her actions were not set in stone. Every night at nine, the day ended and she woke up at five in the morning. It was not the next morning though. It was always the same day.
This device allowed her to add her memories from the day to it, and then she could hide it. Even though the world was the same day, the memory crystal she held stayed to the next copy of the day. If she could find it like now, she'd be able to escape this looping hell, or die trying. Didn't matter if she died. She'd awake the next morning with no recollection of it. Until she found this crystal again. One time. One memory of dying with the crystal in hand. It'd been a bad, bad day.
But now she had the details. She knew where the building was. She knew that in that place, there was a way out of this. She also knew that she'd had four crystals before, and if she didn't hide them well enough, they were gone when the day reset. Like something went through and found them and took them.
She also knew that she'd hidden this crystal much better when she hid it. Behind the soap in her shower, hoping that her propensity for morning showers would persist. Yet here it was, sitting on the floor in plain sight.
"Is this a trap now?" she asked herself softly.
"Of course it's not. It's just education," a voice said behind her.
She spun to see a man standing with an odd device. It looked rather like a red toy gun. Her lack of clothing was not among her worries as he leveled the red gun at her without much care for aim.
"The memories are locked until they're in you. Now we'll..."
He shouldn't've taken the time to talk. Her stored memories included months of training to give her an edge. Her hands lanced out and grabbed his hand and the gun as she pressed to the side, using his own train of thought as a distraction against him.
The gun went off with a strange woobly sound, the shot zinging past her to the side as she removed the weapon from his grip, flipped it around, and pulled the trigger with much better aim in his direction. The same sound, and then he was suddenly... not there.
Neither was her bedroom wall. Or the majority of her house. Her floor and furniture, and even the doors were still present, but the walls and roof? Gone. What the hell was this? What hell was this? She didn't care right now, and she didn't wait around to find out. No time to get dressed. No time for anything but getting out of this.
Though surprise and catcalls followed her naked run through the city, she didn't stop. Somehow she managed to avoid even spotting anybody that looked like a threat. The building loomed ahead and she realized that she'd never gotten this far before. She didn't have a plan, or even an idea of what she was looking for inside.
There was nobody trying to stop her outside. A featureless building. No windows, just solid concrete walls. It looked like nothing special. On a hunch, she successfully removed the front door with the red gun as well and headed inside.
The whole building was just a shell. The interior had lighting, and an upright ring, partially set into the floor like a gateway. Something that definitely couldn't exist in reality filled the ring. That had to be it. She didn't stop to think. She just ran through.
"Excellent, that was very productive. Seventy years of repeated days in five minutes and 43 seconds."
"Definitely. This system works much better with real human minds uploaded instead of AI. Start the new simulation."
Dawn woke at five, just as the sun was starting to brighten the sky outside her cave...
What's next?
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