Loop One: The Infinity Mirror

My ears are ringing and my eyes feel like they've been burned out of my skull. The ringing is the first thing I hear as my consciousness comes back to me. Where it's coming back from, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm here now. My skin is on fire, and there's a voice in my head calling out to me. It's telling me that I'm forgetting about something horrifically important. It keeps buzzing in the back of my skull, begging me to remember, but it won't come to me. My head hurts too much to think right now, and I try my best to get my

My senses start coming back to me. I'm on the floor, I think. It's hard, cold, and I can feel the grooves of the tile on my back through the lab suit I'm wearing. My vision is still a blur as I struggle to stand, and I almost fall over again before slowly shifting to my feet and finding my balance. My head is swimming, so I shut my eyes tight and take a deep breath.

As I finally stand straight, my sight slowly returns. My memories start to come back. It's April 2029, but I'm not sure of the exact date, which isn't that unusual. I'm in the lab, as I'd been for nearly every waking moment for the past few weeks. My colleagues and I have been trying to create a time distortion field to open mirrors into other worlds, and we've been it non-stop for nearly eleven years since we drew up our first real concept of the device. Today was our first test, and since I'd blacked out and ended up on the floor of the test chamber with my body feeling like it was burning from the inside out, something hadn't gone right.

"Well, that didn't work," I hear from a voice in my headset.

It's my partner, Sarah. We've been working for Nuvision Technologies on the device for almost a decade. She was the one who spearheaded the project and got the whole thing put in motion when we were still finishing grad school. I imagine that she must be pretty disappointed right now.

I reach up and pull the mask off my face and turn to her, looking through the glass into the observation room. I take off my mask and head out into the observation room. My headache is coming back, this time even stronger. I look at my tablet and see that it's 1:07 in the afternoon. It's just about time for lunch. Maybe some food will help me get back to normal.

"You okay, Geoff?" She asks me as I step into the observation room. "You look a little shaken up. What happened in there?"

"You didn't see?"

She just shakes her head.

"I was looking at the console monitor when it happened. I saw the flash and when I looked up you were getting up off of the floor. Is everything alright?"

I sigh.

"I'm fine, just a little disorientated, I guess. My head is killing me. Let's go get some food and we'll try again when we get back."

"Sounds good. We'll need a few hours for it to cool down before we can try again so we've got the time."

She grabs her lab coat and takes her keycard out, swiping it against the door that lets us out of the lab. The mirror is beyond top-secret. Nuvision is one of the largest companies in the world and there are maybe a dozen people who actually know the full details of the project.

We had to go through two sealed doors and a security checkpoint before we can even get to where our quarters and the elevators are. Nuvision spent billions on reaching the future, and they weren't going to let anyone beat them to it. The underground areas beneath the facility alone are usually manned by at least 50 armed guards at all times.

We make our way into the elevator and head up to the cafeteria on B6. It's the closest to the surface that I've been in weeks. I've been so consumed with our work that I've been having the few odd meals I did eat brought down by one of the guards for a few extra bucks. The slightly more colorful walls and din of my coworkers eating and chatting is a soothing balm for the desperation brought on by the endless monotony of the quiet and arduous days Sarah and I had spent all the way down on B23, busting our asses to get the mirror ready for a demonstration for some big-wigs up in the skyscraper above us before the end of the year. Another thing to worry about as soon as we finish eating, but I'll save that for then.

We grab our lunches (I got fish tacos, it was that kind of day) and sit down. We start reminiscing about old times, mostly because we can't talk about the mirror around anyone else and we have literally nothing else going on in our lives.

We talk about university and wonder about where our old gang got off to. One of the guys from back then, Gavin, works at Nuvision too, but neither of us has seen him in a while. We talk about how we should all get drinks together soon, but my headache getting worse and it's distracting me from the conversation.

Something just feels…wrong. I can't think of any other way to put it. Whatever is happening right now shouldn't be, but that's all I can get. I have a gut feeling telling me that everything was about to change and that I had to get out of there while I could. I've never experienced such a strong feeling wash over me in my life, telling me to run away. Run from what and go where? I have no idea. I just know that the cafeteria was a bad scene and that I need to be elsewhere and I need to be there soon.

Sarah is staring at me.

"Did something happen in that room, Geoff? You seem really out of it."

I try and shake it off.

"I honestly have no clue. Maybe it's the stress and the long hours, or maybe I just hit my head a lot harder than I thought back there. I don't even remember hitting the switch, just a flash and then being on the floor I think I'm going to go to the infirmary and get it looked at."

It's as good of an excuse as any to get out of there, and it's the only thing that I can think of on the spot.

She gives me a reassuring nod and I stand up. Just then, I hear someone scream from the hallway outside of the cafeteria, followed by two loud bangs. The clatter in the cafeteria stops, and for a split second, no one moves. For just a moment, everything is still, and then, chaos.

A group of armed men in body armor storm the room. They look like mercenaries or some kind of professional soldiers. A wave of panic starts to flood the cafeteria. The armed men have assault rifles pointed at the crowd and they begin to circle around us. I look over at Sarah, the fear in her eyes must reflect my own.

Before I have time to say anything to her, a group of Nuvision guards come rushing into the room from the other side. And for one last time, just for a moment, there was peace. Then, without warning, the Nuvision guards start firing at the intruders. The intruders return fire and the world explodes around me.

A cacophony of noise erupts from the gunshots and blood-curdling screams of those caught in the crossfire. My reflexes kick in and I hit the deck. I scan the room for Sarah, but I can't find her. It's like a scene from a war movie. The people that I have known and worked with for almost a decade are lying in awful, contorted piles, covered in their own blood. It's so surreal that I convince myself for a second that it can't actually be happening.

Sarah calls out my name from somewhere. I turn my head to look and I spot her on the ground, maybe ten feet away from me, but with the chaos around us it may as well be ten miles. She's lying on her stomach, clutching it with both hands beneath her. I can see three or four holes in the back of her lab coat. The blood slowly pouring out of them is blending with the white of the coat, spreading out into an awful pastel pink as it goes.

I shout her name and she looks over at me. Our eyes connect. She's coughing and sputtering up blood, and her glasses are cracked. I start my crawl towards her, trying to block out everything else from my mind. Flashes of Sarah are running through it as I slowly make my way forward. I see when we first met in Physics class back in UCLA all those years ago, our first time hanging out, talking about our dreams for the future of technology and the desire to see how far we could take it.

The images of the woman I'd known for so long can't mesh with the terrified and dying person slowly sputtering her last ragged breaths on the linoleum floor of the cafeteria that I see before me. It just doesn't make any sense. This shouldn't be real. It can't be real.

After what feels like an eternity, I finally make my way over to her and grab her hand. She's not moving anymore, but I can't believe she's dead. We're in a lab that makes some of the most advanced technology on the planet, and that includes medical advancements that no one else has. We should be able to help her once the guards get this thing under control. We just have to survive until then, but who knew when that would be?

I try to look around to see what's happening, but there is so much going on around me that I can't focus. It looks like most of the Nuvision guards are dead and only about two of the fifteen or so attackers that I had seen went down. It looks like their all heading back to the elevators. The gunshots finally die down, and all I can hear are cries of fear and agony.

My attention finally snaps back from the horror show around me to Sarah. I look over to her and see that now she's lying on her back and blood is starting to come out of her mouth, dripping down the corner of her lips and staining her coat.

I call out to her quietly, my mind still in disbelief. If I don't do something now, then she'll probably be dead within minutes. It's time for action.

"Just hold on," I hear myself say from somewhere far away. "I'm going to find help."

The room is pretty much clear at this point. I get up shakily to my feet and start running over the shattered bodies of my fallen friends, following the green line on the floor to the infirmary. As soon as I break out of the cafeteria, though, I stop almost immediately in my tracks. Two of the armed men that I saw in the cafeteria are at the end of the hallway, staring me down.

This is it, the moment of truth. I can try and talk to them, or just dash past them and head straight for the infirmary. For all I know, these guys are just here to snatch something and run. They didn't start shooting until the guards did, so maybe I wouldn't have any problems.

With all this running through my mind I didn't even realize that they were pointing the barrels of their rifles at me.

"Fuck," I hear myself call out, "not like this."

Then, before I know it, searing hot pain rips through my body and I can't feel my legs. I crumple to the floor in a heap and try my hardest to breathe, but can't catch it. I think I'm choking to death on my own blood. It's not how I saw myself going if I'm honest. I was thinking something like a heart attack in my sleep sometime in my 90s if I was lucky, but I never pictured getting gunned down in a lab hallway for no reason.

The pain is immense, but it's starting to fade away slowly as my blood spills out around me. One of the men approaches me and puts the barrel of his rifle against my head. Just as he's about to pull the trigger, I realize something. This isn't new. I've seen this before, or at least I think I have.

What could this mean? How could this be possible? I don't have much time to think about it before the shot comes and the world starts to fade away from me. My life flashes before my eyes. I'm disappointed. What a waste. There's so much more that I want to do, and I'll never have the chance. My thoughts disappear into the void and the world slips away from me.