I took a deep breath and ordered my thoughts. Every loop was changing me more than its six hours could account for. I know at first I experienced a deep existential dread of the invasion of Not-me into my own mind, but now it felt less like an invasion and more like an adding on. What was before a set of questions and troubles was slowly becoming clarity.

I wondered if the shift was going in the other direction as well because Not-me had been uncharacteristically gabby these last few minutes, sharing the contents of the apocalypse, the war, future plans, and even going completely rogue, suggesting divergence from the original plan to stay close to the timeline. I wanted to question him, to ask my future self, "Why now? Why all of a sudden are you trying to tell me everything? You go from Mr. Clammed Up to sharing it all." But I had the deep suspicion that it had something to do with starting this loop luck positive. I had noticed it made a wild difference in how I was treated by people. Why wouldn't this apply to Not-me as well?

I had this feeling that if I brought it up, Not-me was just stubborn enough and just mean enough to realize the truth of what I was saying and change how he treated me. So I resisted my first instinct to call it all into question, to ask why now? Why the change of heart? My strong feeling was it would break the spell.

There was one more piece of information I needed to know before that happened. Not-me was staring from the other side of the mirror.

"Come on. We don't have a lot of time. Get moving," he said.

I nodded. "One important question first," I said.

"All right, fine, but you're going to have to hustle and go call Cece," Not-me said.

I nodded.

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It seemed that one way or the other, I was going to have to live with this specter of my future self, so I wanted to avoid directly lying. However, a noncommittal nod that—in my interpretation, meant I knew he wanted me to call Cece was not necessarily me saying that I would call Cece—felt safe.

"What happens if we reach the end of the day and we are far from the original day you lived?" I asked.

"That's simple," he said. "Your days go back to normal."

"No more time loop?" I asked.

"But it's not really a time loop," he began to explain.

I cut him off. "So you mean if I die tomorrow, I'll be dead?"

Not-me sounded impatient, "Yes, yes, you'll be dead for real. You've already gotten to experience dying far more than your fair share. What's the big deal?"

I shook my head, not wanting to tell him what I was thinking yet. "No big deal," I said. "So if we ended the day close to what your original day looked like..."

Not-me pursed his lips. "But we already determined that that's not what you wanted."

"Humor me," I said. "If we ended the day close to your original point..."

Not-me sighed. "Okay, if we ended the day close to the original timeline, I could move the marker forward. And yes, you could continue to experience your so-called time loops from a future marker point."

I thought about the experiment that I had executed with luck inside of the moving vehicle. I thought about when I had begun doodling the runes on my flesh. I thought about the fire and how it had consumed Mrs. Streep.

I looked at Kaye’s zombie form looking back at me from the mirror. Her dead flesh seemed to carry a sense of foreboding as I followed this line of thinking. Regardless of the fact that Not-me claimed it wasn't a time loop, there were some things that I could clearly grow in while here.

I suspected working out would be a pointless endeavor because I appeared to start the same loop in the same condition that I started it to begin with. I suspected if we moved the marker forward, as Not-me said, it would have the same effect. But there were so many variables that could go wrong, even if we were trying to live a day close to what Not-me had lived back when he was me—which was a weird thought. Back when he was my age—that felt better.

No, things were different. I couldn't let go of a tool like this. I had to stay inside of the loop for as long as I could. And I was beginning to value the changes that were being made in my thinking with each reset. I wondered what another long series of them would do. I noticed that forward-thinking and strategy were coming more easily to me.

I was intrigued about whatever Not-me was talking about with magic. Of course, I wanted superpowers. But the way everything worked in real life so far was there was a huge drawback or some sort of weird catch to anything I got my hands on. And so, I didn't have my hopes up too high.

What I knew, however, was I wanted to begin the loop as full on luck as I could. And I knew exactly how I was going to get it.

***