Lance slumped into his usual leather armchair, the worn burgundy upholstery creaking beneath his weight.

He'd lost count of the loops he'd experienced in this space. Dozens? Hundreds? The iterations blurred like watercolors in the rain, each reset bleeding into the next until individual moments vanished. Every loop returned him to this moment, this chair, with only his memories as proof of his temporal prison. The leather beneath him retained warmth from previous iterations, a ghost of comfort in his recursive nightmare.

Looking up, Lance noticed Lara from his Art History class nearby, her copper hair catching the afternoon light as she bent over her textbook. He'd never spoken to her in these loops, too focused on his predicament. The sound of her pencil scratching against paper provided a steady rhythm to the library's quiet atmosphere. Maybe a new human connection could break the cycle.

"Hey, Lara," he ventured, forcing casualness into his voice while his heart hammered. "That paper for Professor Chen giving you trouble?"

She looked up, surprise flickering across her features, green eyes widening at his unexpected interruption. "Oh, hey Lance. Yeah, these Renaissance comparisons are tough—" Her words faded as something else demanded his attention.

As she moved to tuck her hair behind her ear, her hand left trails in the air, ghostly remnants of movement lingering like smoke. The effect stayed, creating ethereal afterimages that traced her movement, each position visible simultaneously like frames from a film strip.

Frantically looking around, he saw the same phenomenon affecting everyone in the library—students leaving luminous trails as they walked between shelves, reached for books, or typed on laptops. Each movement created overlapping images, turning the quiet study space into a gallery of human motion captured in light.

He blinked hard, pressing his palms against his eyes until colors burst behind his eyelids. When he opened them, the afterimages had reversed direction. Everyone moved backward through their actions like a rewinding video. Time spun faster until reality snapped back with the force of a rubber band.

Lance found himself back in his chair, the book undisturbed in his lap. His fingers quivered as he tried to anchor himself amid the dizzying temporal shifts. "Well, that's something," he murmured, his voice threading through the library's quiet symphony—laptop fans humming softly, pages turning gently, fluorescent lights buzzing in the background.

He stared listlessly at the book in his hands. The words swam before his eyes, refusing to form meaning, letters rearranging like anxious insects. Was he losing his grip on reality?

Desperate for relief, he glanced out the window, hoping to ground himself in the familiar campus landscape. His breath froze in his lungs at what he saw. Instead of the familiar campus green, wooden scaffolding stretched toward the sky like the skeleton of a prehistoric beast. Workers in period clothing—rough wool trousers, cotton shirts with rolled sleeves, cloth caps—milled below, their tools glinting in the sunlight as they constructed the lecture hall he attended all week. The date "1873" was carved into a cornerstone, the stone fresh-cut, edges sharp and clean, unmarked by a century and a half of weather as it should have been.

Panic clawed at his chest as he watched Greylock being built through the window, the temporal anomaly stretching back centuries like roots through soil. His vision tunneled, breath coming in sharp gasps until—reset.

The next iteration began with Lance already unsettled, nerves raw from previous loops. He focused on the library's floor, trying to ground himself, but it seemed unstable under his gaze, forcing him to look away.

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Students from various decades studied around him, oblivious to each other in their temporal bubbles. At a shared table, a girl in a swirling poodle skirt and crisp saddle shoes sat beside a boy in bell-bottoms and a vibrant tie-dye shirt, while a nearby flapper in a glittering beaded dress worked diligently on her shorthand. Their attire pinpointed precise eras—the 1920s, 1950s, 1970s—overlapping like translucent images in a shared visual plane.

Library furniture cycled through styles before his eyes: heavy oak tables became sleek mid-century designs, then transformed into Victorian originals, surfaces showing wear patterns from different eras simultaneously. Books on the shelves moved, changed positions, or were replaced entirely.

The floor showed centuries of wear patterns that appeared and vanished like tide marks. Fresh-cut wood became worn smooth, scratched, damaged, then pristine again in an endless cycle. Lance's head spun as he tried to process the overlapping timelines, his mind struggling to reconcile the impossible images until mercifully—reset.

He opened his eyes to find himself sweating, heart racing before the loop properly began. Something felt different immediately, a wrongness beyond usual temporal displacement. The familiar sunbeam that usually warmed his shoulder was gone, leaving him chilled. Looking up, he noticed other students shifting uncomfortably, glancing around confused as they registered the change in light. The library lights still shone as always, but the sudden lack of sunlight through the windows was abrupt.

"What happened?" a girl whispered, her voice carrying in the unusual stillness.

The librarian frowned at her desk, consulting the clock then her watch, bewildered as she compared the two timepieces. "That's impossible," she muttered, her voice carrying in the growing quiet. "It's only three in the afternoon."

A sense of unease rippled through the room as students gathered their belongings, drawn to the windows by morbid curiosity. Lance followed, leaning to peer through the window beside him.

Students clustered at windows, faces pressed against the cool surface to stare at their transformed world. The campus beyond the library walls lay in ruins, centuries of decay compressed into an impossible moment. Ivy choked crumbling buildings, walls partially collapsed like broken teeth. The clock tower listed dangerously, faces dark and broken, hands frozen at different times. Trees forced their way through sidewalks, roots creating a maze of broken concrete and displaced earth.

"What happened?" someone whispered again, voice trembling in the unnatural quiet. "Everything was fine just a minute ago."

Lance studied the desolation, noting with horror that the library alone remained pristine. It stood like an island of order in a sea of chaos, its lights still burning, structure unchanged by whatever catastrophe had claimed the rest of campus.

"We should call someone," a boy suggested, pulling out his phone with shaking hands. But no one had a signal or Wi-Fi.

The group huddled closer to the library's entrance, none willing to step outside into the darkness that had swallowed their familiar world. Through the glass doors, they saw the border where normal library tiles met crumbling concrete, a sharp line between order and chaos. It was as if the building existed in its own bubble of time, untouched by whatever catastrophe had claimed the rest of campus.

"I don't understand," the librarian whispered, her professional composure cracking. "The building's systems all seem to be operating normally. Power, climate control—everything's working perfectly. But out there..." Her voice trailed off as she gestured at the devastation beyond their walls.

Lance felt the weight of accumulated loops pressing against his skull, a pressure threatening to split him apart. The library hadn't just become unstuck from time—it had taken them with it. They were adrift now, their sanctuary floating in a sea of temporal chaos, cut off from the normal flow of minutes and hours.

As the group stared out at their ruined world, Lance noticed something chilling. In the darkness beyond the library's lights, shadows moved with purpose. They flowed like liquid between the ruined buildings, gathering at the edges of the library's illumination. Waiting. Watching.

Was this part of the loop? Or something new, something worse? The library had become their ark in a flood of broken time, and the waters were still rising.

"What do we do now?" someone asked, their voice small against the vastness of their situation. The question echoed in the silence, unanswered and unanswerable.

Lance had no answer. He could only watch as darkness pressed against the windows, bringing the weight of countless possible futures and ghosts of unnumbered pasts. They were trapped in their island of order, watching as chaos consumed the world beyond their walls.

For the first time, Lance begged for a reset as he clutched the Great Gatsby to his chest.