For a whole month after that, Andrew pondered over the encounter between him and the Goddess. He no longer doubted her legitimacy, but he questioned her actual authority. Andrew came to the conclusion that if she was a Goddess, she must stand pretty low in the chain of godhood to not be able to stop a meteor. If that woman actually knew how to save the world and was so eager that she rewound everything so many times, she would have told him.

He recalled the formulas and drawings he had drafted for the Antimatter Gun from the previous time loop. While thinking, he muttered, "Can't use the Antimatter Gun. . . need to find another way. . . I got it!"

When the idea surfaced, Andrew immediately jumped into work. After a year of winning lottery tickets and working reasonably hard, he finally completed his latest project. The moment he finished, he jumped in joy and shouted, "Behold! The Antimatter Cannon!"

The Antimatter Cannon was slightly bigger than an Antimatter Gun. Actually, much bigger, enough to warrant a different name. It was as big as a washing machine and was so heavy that Andrew had put wheels on to push it to the balcony. But as long as it was called a cannon, it wasn't a gun.

Finally, the fateful day came. When Andrew heard the familiar lines from the weather forecast once more, he knew what he had to do. “The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and a giant fucking meteor his heading towards Earth. HELPPPPPPPPPPPP!"

Andrew thrust the clunky cannon to the balcony, placed the muzzle on the ceiling and pointed it skyward. The phone in his pocket vibrated like the seven times before, but he still refused to check his messages.

Just then, that meteor appeared once again.

"This time, my plan will work. I will outsmart the gods," he muttered, proud of himself for his galaxy-sized brain.

Right as the blotchy spot appeared in the sky, Andrew fired the cannon. When the bullet reached that giant rock, it swallowed the rock whole and both disappeared in an instant. Soon, the sky was a cloudless blue again. The people cheered in joy, clapping and whistling at Andrew. Andrew looked at his watch and realized that he'd actually gone three seconds past the previous loop. He raised his hands to the sky and shouted. "Who's the smartass now, Goddess? What are you gonna do about this, huh?"

As he just finished shouting, thousands of meteors sprouted in the sky, each of them the size of the meteor Andrew just destroyed. The asteroids' shadows cast the Earth into total darkness as they blotted out the sun.

"W-what?" Andrew frantically maneuvered the cannon and shot down a few meteors, but there were just too many of them. "What is this cheating bullshit? There's more of these things than blackheads on my teenaged pizza delivery guy's face!"

The world was destroyed again, and Andrew woke up in his studio.

This time, the Goddess had already been waiting by the side of his bed, folding her arms as she clicked her tongue. "I've told you that an Antimatter Gun wouldn't work."

Andrew pointed at her face. "It's you who've done this to me! Why do you keep playing with me? I'm sick of this; all of this! I don't want to wake up in this loop again!"

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In a fit of desperation, Andrew rushed out into the kitchen, pulled out a knife, then held it above his neck.

"If the world is going to perish, then I shall perish before the world! Farewell, life, for this is my only salvation."

Andrew plunged the knife into his throat. Blood spurted out of his neck, and the world in front of him darkened. As he laid on the cold, hard ground, his tears overflowed at the thought of eventual freedom.

He took in his last breath. Then he woke up in the studio.

"FUCK!"

Now Andrew learned the truth. The greatest suffering of man was not death, but the denial of death.

The Goddess appeared in front of him, neither angry nor irritable. She just looked at him with pity and said, "I'm sorry. The only way you can get out of the loop is by getting it right. You are the Chosen One, but if you can't find the way out, the human race will endure this tragedy hundreds, maybe thousands of times. You don't want that to happen, do you?"

Andrew now knew fear. He knelt before Goddess, his voice quivering. "I won't ever make the Antimatter Gun again! P-please, tell me. . . how I can save myself?"

The Goddess sighed and turned away, hand grasping her cross. "I will tell you the truth. I can control everything in this world within the territory of the Earth, except for you."

"What do you mean?"

"That means you are an anomaly. You are what's wrong with this world. Did you think I toyed with you or something? I too have tried everything to save the world from meteorites, but it's not within my power. That's why I have to rely on you. Everything you do shifted reality a little. Last time you happened to create a thousand more meteorites, but that just means you have the power. But I don't know what you have to do exactly. That, in a year, you'll have to find out yourself. "

"If a Goddess doesn't know, how can I know?"

The Goddess stood. Blinding lights engulfed the room again, so Andrew knew she was about to disappear.

"Stop disappearing! At least give me some pointers!"

He could no longer see her, but could still hear the echoes of her voice. "I can only stay on Earth for no more than five minutes. If you didn't waste time committing suicide, we would have had more time to talk. See you next year."

Before he could say anything back, she was gone. He arched his head to the sky and shouted.

"A FIVE-MINUTE RESTRICTION? WHAT KIND OF USELESS GODDESS IS THIS? JUST GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE, METEOR! KILL ME NOW!"

The sky darkened in an instant. He rushed to the balcony only to find a familiar 'friend'. The meteor.

"WHAT THE FUCK? I'VE ONLY BEEN REVIVED FOR TEN—"

The meteor hit the ground again.

***

A year had passed since Andrew's eleventh resurrection. He had tried everything within his power. He'd contacted the police and the government many times, but failed always. He sought out niche religions, memorized chants to ward off evil spirits, but in the end, those chants only drove cockroaches and mice out of his studio. He suspected that the cause might be related to his loved ones. He hadn't visited home since the day he moved to Dinosaurland for college.

He visited his father, mother, friends, and even his neighbor Jeff. However, the outcome was still the same.

There was no escape.

When the day came again, Andrew was already waiting on the balcony. There was a protective suit on him, no gun beside him, no blueprints. Only empty bottles of whiskey and half-burned cigarettes. As the black blotch appeared in the sky again, he rubbed the dark circles around his eyes and grunted.

"Fuck you. . . I give up. . . Grant me my deathless death. I'll just live my life next year and not give a shit. . ."

The phone in his lap vibrated again. How annoying. He was about to throw his phone off the balcony, but suddenly, he realized a very important fact he'd overlooked so many times.

He'd never checked the phone.

A wave of chill ran up his spine, and his fingers shivered. "N-no. . ."

He picked up the phone, but his hand shook so hard the device almost slipped. As expected, he received a message. However, that message came from someone he never wanted to contact again.

Anne Machosiwicz (nicknamed Pink Anne), his ex-girlfriend. He started dating her because she seemed normal. But she wasn't. She was anything but normal.

Dying was better than breathing the same air as Anne.

It's just a message, Andrew told himself. You won't die from reading a message. If you do, you'll just live again.

What if this was the missing link all this time?

Thousands of possibilities ran through Andrew's head. He knew Anne was an oddball, and the message could be about anything. In the last loop, she'd threatened through text that if he didn't come back, she would set his house on fire, but eventually, he won the lottery and moved his entire family to Canada. Then one day his residence in Canada combusted for no reason, and he was fairly sure why. Luckily, nobody was at home at the time.

As he glanced through his message, beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. This can't be a coincidence.

The message read:

—Hey sugarbear. If this whole world was going to crash and burn in a minute, would you come back to me?—