[3:31:20]

“Shitty timer.” James mumbled, cursing below his breath.

“What was that?” Jake asked, looking up from his phone.

“Don’t worry about it.” James said, stealing a look at his rear-view mirror the same way he’d been doing for the past hour. The looper was trying to make sure his gauge of other cars were correct, and that no one was too close or too far from him besides Hugh, chugging along in his Hilux behind them.

“Did you say something?” Hugh asked through the radio. James had rigged it just below his steering wheel, right next to the compartment he kept a spare Glock 17. There was a Beretta 92 in the glovebox as well, beneath a false bottom.

James had learned to install the false bottom after Jake had gone rummaging in boredom. Explaining why you had a gun in your car was hard. Explaining it in Australia was basically impossible.

“No, I was just mumbling.” James clarified. He spied a look at his fuel gauge, then asked over the radio. “How’s fuel looking on your end?”

“Still got two thirds of a tank left.” Hugh answered amidst munching. James could see his father chowing down a pie through the mirror, which explained why he wasn’t so grumpy anymore. “What about you? Need a pitstop?”

My tank’s halfway but I’ve got enough gas to drive to Perth and back. Or make a really, really big fire. Whichever arose first.

“I’m good. I’ll keep you posted if we need to stop.” James said, and the radio went silent a moment after.

This is the easy part.

The drive had been smooth. Not the smoothest James had ever had, but much better then he’d been fearing. Having two car’s complicated things more than the looper would’ve liked. Hugh was the best driver James knew besides himself, but the looper still struggled to completely trust him to keep his wits about him in the coming crisis. Still, his father was the best man for the job.

Getting out of Melbourne was the part that worried James the most. Mainly because they’d been just a little late. But a little late was a lot late when you’d been living the exact same day over and over. James knew how little changes could drastically affect the day. Case and point was Jessica, who had decided that they should pretend to be interested in each for the sake of settling tension.

From what he had gathered, Jess was trying to put on a front to convince Amy that she’d agreed to come along for fun. With James. Instead of the truth that she was scared shitless by the system and for whatever reason trusted James.

It has to be her Source. James was sure of it. She wasn’t the type of person to just believe people unless there was something concrete behind it. Or something magical, in this case. Their relation to each other was not healthy in the slightest because Jess had decided that clinging onto James was her best option.

And it was, but that was not a good dynamic between two people.

I can’t worry about that now though. A small problem against the veritable tsunami of them that was coming their way.

The greatest of James’ concern besides the timer had passed when they’d got off the freeway and onto country roads almost an hour ago. Country roads had a far, far less likely chance of clogging up in the case of emergency. Especially when you were in the vehicle the Landcruiser, which was designed for offroading.

One of his bigger worries was the idea of too many Invited Sparks being in one area. He knew there were not a lot in the country currently thanks to the C.S.O information he’d pulled out of Dupont’s head. But he had no idea if that would change.

As morbid and depraved as it sounded, James was more than certain he could murder everyone in Mt Beauty if it came to it, rendering the problem mute for the near future.

The next problem was very simple. Exhaustion. James' body, for the most part, was identical to what it’d been before the Loop. While he was a master of meditation and likely had the most bodily awareness of any human past or present, Jamse still got tired. Repetition was what built up a tolerance to that sort of thing and try as he might James knew he’d only be able to hold out for roughly 72 hours.

That was his estimate. That was how much time he had at the absolute upper limits.

And that’s assuming I take the cocktail of drugs I cooked up. He was hesitant to do that. By the nature of the Loop, it was easy for James to discover which drugs worked well with him and which did not.

But the aftereffects?

He only ever lived one day. Call it a blessing or a curse but James wasn’t precisely sure how his Battle-it-out cocktail would affect him afterwards.

The biggest disadvantage of being on country roads was that with so few cars, and such a wide landscape, everything blurred together. Making focus harder than it would be on a freeway. That said, the views were beautiful.

As hot as it was, Australia’s country was a thing to be admired. Long fields of crop further than the eye could see cutting into empty rocky terrains and sprawling mountains that extended beyond the eye's reach. The blend of nature and civilization easy to see. All backdropped by a sun that shined too bright for mid winter.

And that was without mentioning the wildlife. The rainbow parakeets skating from branch to branch and the critters burrowing by the sides of the road. If the circumstances weren’t so dire, James might’ve stopped to appreciate it.

As things were, the start of worldwide system integration was in twenty minutes. They were fifty away from Mt Beauty.

Thirty If I drive like I mean it.

[3:23:59]

A voice came over the radio.

“Jamesy. Where did you say we were staying again?” A light voice asked with the faint hint of an English accent. Mindy’s voice. His eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror again and saw she’d wrangled the radio out of Hugh’s hands.

“It’s a place I found on Airbnb. Two minute drive from the town.” James responded, hoping that would be enough.

It wasn’t.

“Your father said we were going camping?” She questioned.

“We are. On the property.”

“Well, I’ve been looking on Yelp while we were driving and there’s a lovely camping ground much closer to town.”

“I’ve already booked it, Mindy.” James said resolutely.

There was a long pause before eventually the radio sounded again. “Fair enough. Whatever makes you happy Jamesy.”

James felt a long sigh that’d been building up ever since his father had started dating Mindy try to make its way out but he capped it. The woman was as sweet and smart as she was overbearing. To say he didn’t want her to come with them wasn’t the case because she made Hugh happy, but she fell into the same camp as Jess.

Both their presences created more work for James.

As they got closer and closer to Mt Beauty the roads became much more windy and precarious. To the point that caused even James to slow down. Half because he didn’t want to risk it and half because his mind was thoroughly distracted.

[3:12:36]

The change starts soon. His heart was beating faster. Not much faster, like a drum in his ear. But it quickened a little every time he looked to his side and stared out to the cloudy dusk horizon. His hands kept gripping the steering wheel harder even when he told them not to.

Sweat laced back in a way it hadn’t for a long time.

This time was so different from the first. James had done everything he could to make it so and still there were shreds of doubt. Because he truly had no idea what would happen after the system arrived. All he could do was stick to the plan until the moment it would no longer suffice, then adapt to the changing circumstance.

There was fear in the thought of permanence.

“Whatcha lookin at?” Jake asked, leaning against the window. He’d caught the glances James was taking out his window as they drove up the steep mountain.

James wondered how he was meant to answer that.

“Do you know what rain smells like?” James said, countering his own question. It caught his girlfriend's attention.

Amy leaned forward from the backseat where she’d been idly playing on her phone, pulling Jess along with her who’d been peacefully reading. She’d equipped herself with a purple puffer jacket and a white beanie to stave off the potential cold.

“I love the smell of rain!” She said, grabbing onto his question. “It reminds me of such cozy memories.”

Her eyes lingered on Jake long enough that the man started scratching his neck in embarrassment. There was a story there, but James felt too swept up in the domino effect that was about to precede around them too ask.

“You're talking about that twitch on the edge of your nose. Like the sense in the air before a storm, right?” Jake said, catching onto his meaning as well.

“That’s a nice smell.” Jess added, half in the conversation and half absorbed in her book.

“Have you ever had the smell tickle your nose, in the middle of the field dripping wet on a cold winter night?” James asked, letting a part of his thoughts leak into his words.

A collective “No” resounded from his passengers.

Good. Because that's how most of the world is about to feel.

But not them. He had made damn sure they were going to weather the storm. The world at wide may not have been ready for what was about to happen. But James was. Sixteen thousand years in the making.

“The meteor shower should start soon.” James said, switching topics.

“Jake, we're going to miss it.” Amy said playfully, bouncing her fists against his shoulder. Then she turned her attention to James. “Weren’t we meant to be there already?”

“Relax, we’ll be at the top of the hill by the time it starts. Won’t we James.” Jake said, nudging him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, we will.” James replied. But we won’t be stopping.

Jake and Amy chatted excitedly all the way up the hill while James was forced the timer tick down slowly. There was a building sense of dread in him, mainly from the fact that nothing had gone wrong. Everything he’d planned had played out exactly how he’d planned it. Besides the slight mishaps on timing, the day was going perfectly.

What was worse, nothing felt off. James didn’t feel even a tinge of suspicion that something might be wrong. That in itself was worried him.

The car climbed the hill without passing a single other vehicle and the horizon beyond them became clearer and clearer as the height the road started to tower over the trees. James could see the stars start to shimmer in the sky. The small glimpse of night just starting to peek it’s head out.

Jake was watching his phone counting down with an online timer.

Amy was gazing excitedly out the window.

Even Jess had stopped reading her book to get a glimpse of the meteor shower, although her hands were shaking on the door handle as she did. She was the only one that had any clue that maybe something bad was about to happen besides James.

Occasionally James peered at the car behind him. Hugh and Mindy were both trying and failing to keep Michael from sticking his head out the window. His brother’s curly hair was smacking into his own face as he tried to get a better look at the meteor shower that was almost upon them.

When they finally got to the top of the hill there were cars lining it, that had parked so people could get out and enjoy the nice view. It wasn’t nearly as many as the park he’d died at for the first time, but the view vaguely reminded James of it.

All the people congregating together under one sight. One view, one sight that the world would impress upon them.

Everyone in one way or another was waiting in anticipation.

Humans were like that. When something as big and as magnificent as a meteor shower happened, people came together to bask under its radiance. At one time, during his first life, James had felt community like he’d never before while waiting with everyone for the meteor.

What the looper feel at that moment?

As everyone else looked to the sky and he just focused on the road. Trying to ignore the dread golden timer.

Is it loneliness? James wondered. Or resignation.

The feeling was a bitter one. Like in some way he’d been left behind. As if, he wasn’t a human anymore and had just become the looper. An entity entirely separate from the people around him.

That gulf between himself and everyone else had been plain to see in the Loop but somehow it felt so much more sad in the real world.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

And yet because of that, his friends and family would be safe. Was that price worth it?

It has to be. James concluded as he watched the timer on Jake’s phone rock down to zero.

There was a moment of emptiness in the air between everyone in the car. Of anticipation so thick it silenced all sound or movement.

Then, it came. The first ball of azure flew above them in the great distance, streaking down the sky like paint across a canvas of midnight black. Embers of azure dropped wherever they flew in the sky, sending sparks down to the earth below.

He could feel everyone watching in awe of the first brilliant azure streak. But then the next one whizzed past, then the next and then more flew past that one lighting up like sky with crawling fingers of extending azure.

Countless little dusts of fire burning like tinder in the atmosphere.

And one of the azure streaks crashing into a star. Instead of painting over it, the star started to fall.

Then another, and another until most of the stars in the sky were crashing down to the ground.

That’s when the air in the car took a sudden shift. The first star could’ve been an illusion. But all the ones that followed? None of his passengers were dumb. They were beginning to understand what they were seeing wasn’t a good thing and that feeling bled into the atmosphere like smoke.

Choking all excitement out and replacing it with fear.

Jake started talking after the stars began to fall. Slowly at first, almost mumbling to himself. Then it sped up as he grew more and more aware that this terrible sight was only getting worse. James could feel Amy trembling on the seat behind him. Shaking in silence as she watched.

Whatever false bravado Jess had carried crumbled in the face of something that was so much more terrible then what she’d been expecting. She seemed the most scared of anyone in the car. Maybe because she knew that she was a part of it.

James just watched. He felt no reaction in himself. The sight wasn’t new to him, nor was it unique.

The azure lit up the sky in a smouldering fury, burning the atmosphere itself. Rolling waves of blue fire washed above their heads.

Something was there, among the wave. A presence so mighty it made even the memories of the looper’s own mighty Spark feel small.

Slowly, the curtain of flame peeled back. Rotting away at the weight of pure, inescapable darkness. An inky nothingness took place between the rotting flame, forming into the shape of an accursed Sharp pupil.

Hey there Vog.

Where once he’d felt all consuming fear facing the eye of darkness, now James only felt a familiarity.

Even as he felt the eye judge him, the feeling remained the same.

However the golden words that burned into existence in front of his eyes were different this time.

[Your planet’s system integration has been completed]

[You may now view your status]

So the status function finally works. The moment he thought of the word status, James felt something click inside himself. Suddenly he was faced with something new that clogged his view of the road.

[Designation: James Matthew Groves]

[Age: 16,409]

[Race: Para-

Can’t see. Don’t care. I’ll worry about it later. James said, mentally unclicking the new button that had just formed in his mind an banishing the long list of words to the wayside. He’d swerved and almost driven into a guard rail when the veritable paragraph of information started blocking his vision.

Don’t have time to mess around with new things. Don’t have time to worry about a button in my brain. Just got to drive.

The Airbnb was ten minutes away. With a speed that was relatively safe, James could make it there before they passed past the point where his loop would reset.

“Do you see fucking see that man?” Jake mumbled, pointing his finger at the blooming flames in the sky. “What the hell is that?”

“The sky is on fire.” James assessed, checking his rear-view mirror for Hugh as he sped down the mountain. They were following at about the same speed and Mindy looked almost more freaked out then Amy who was hugging Jess and crying.

The small sobs weren’t James’ favourite sound but they were better then Amy getting freaked out. Freaking out wasn’t going to help one bit. In fact, it would likely accomplish the opposite. As scared as Jake was, James could tell his friend was doing his best to keep a level head.

Trying being the key word.

“This is some doomsday shit man.” Jake said, eyes stuck to the window. James would wager his friend hadn’t even noticed that Amy was crying, which said more about the sheer magnitude of the sight then it did about Jake. “What do we do?”

“Get to the Airbnb first.” James replied.

Before I stop knowing what's going to happen next.

“And what after that?” Jake asked further, in a whimsy voice. His best friend appeared to be borderline delirious.

“We try not to die.”

“And what after that- ow,ow.”

James flicked his friend on the side of his cheek hard enough to get his attention and hopefully bring him back to reality. Disaster shock was a dangerous thing. When humans were faced with problems that were far too big for them to solve alone, sometimes their brains just couldn’t compute that fact.

Couldn’t deal with the reality of helplessness. They would lock themselves in a cycle of wondering how to solve a problem they weren’t equipped for and fail to see all the little problems they needed to solve instead.

First of which for Jake was his crying girlfriend.

The moment of sharp but light pain gave Jake enough clarity to notice how his questions weren’t helping the situation better, and we're only making Amy more scared. While his best friend attempted to clumsily but earnestly comfort her from his front seat, James took the opportunity to get a read on how his father was feeling.

The answer.

Pragmatism.

“Keep driving James. Whatever that is, we’ve got to get away from it.” Hugh sputtered over the radio, and James could imagine his father’s hands gripping the steering wheel so hard they were turning white.

“We should keep heading to the house. If we stop there, we’ll at least have shelter and it’ll give us time to figure out what happened to the sky.” James said, and there was a moment of silence of the crackling radio.

“Shelter’s a good call.” Hugh replied with curtly, and James assumed that was his version of a yes.

If I don’t go faster, we’re going to be five minutes off. James realised as he watched the timer tick down. Five minutes of time between when they got to the house and when James foresight ran out. It sounded like a small gap but it wasn’t. That said, his speedo was already at one hundred and fifteen kilometers an hour.

The looper still put his foot on the gas.

The sights around started to fly by as he accelerated faster and faster, only slowing to make sure he didn’t lose Hugh.

Three minutes left of foresight and they were only seven from the house.

Amy had stopped crying as some point, aided by Jessica who barely looked any better and Jake who was just worried about his girlfriend being okay even at the expense of himself.

Two minutes left of foresight and they were only five from the house.

Hugh was keeping up well. Enough so that James wasn’t worried either of them was going to slip off the road.

We’re close. So close.

One minute left of foresight and they only had three long roads to go down. Then they were done. The Airbnb was off the beaten path enough that there was no way anyone would be down there, especially with everything going on.

We’re past it. James realised belatedly as the final minute of his foresight ran dry. The world had ticked past the moment where the Loop had reset. It kept ticking past that point like the time wasn’t any sort of milestone at all.

Because it wasn’t any sort of milestone. Not to anyone except the Looper. To everyone else it was just a cursed second in a moment of disaster. But to James, it was the moment his life finally, finally moved on.

He got to exist in the moments after his prison. Moments James had feared he’d never see.

There was nothing special about them and it wasn’t like he could stop to celebrate. Yet in James' heart, he couldn’t deny that a part of him treasured the moment.

Right up until the system ruined it.

It started with the radio. The thing crackled to life with sound in the way it normally did, but neither James nor Hugh were the source of it. An almost ghostly, haunting sound of static oozed out the thing.

The echo of it spread through the car like a disease, latching onto Jake’s phone first, and then Amy’s and Jess’. They all dropped them to the floor in alarm but that did nothing to silence the audible plague that assaulted their ears.

“Throw your phones out the window.” James directed Amy and Jess in the kindness voice he could muster, lowering the windows and doing the same with his own and Jakes.

The blistering static noise kept blaring and ten seconds later Amy and Jess still hadn’t gotten rid of their phones.

“Phones.” James warned. “Now.”

That got them to listen. Unfortunately his efforts to drive and remove the radio were not going well. The ghoulish sound of static was a hollow as it was violent, creeping into his bones the same way Archive’s laughter had.

It was deeply unsettling for him. He couldn’t imagine how it made everyone else feel. When technically efficiency failed to destroy the source of disgusting static James resulted to brutality, smashing his fist repeatedly into it until the radio ceased.

My methods of communicating with dad are gone. Which somehow didn’t worry him. Because the looper sensed the noise blaring from the radio was far worse. He could hear it vaguely emanating all around them, but it resonated the most from electronics.

What is that? He’d never gotten this far before. James stuck his head out the window, trying to see if the noise had some origin point.

“Of course.” The looper scowled, gazing up at the giant eye of nothingness sitting in the azure sky. “It’s you.”

The sound echoed from the eye in the sky, infecting anything with the ability to replay it. A virus. A disease that seeped its way into every inch of the world.

But what for?

James found only moments later. Overshadowing Amy’s sobbing, Jess’ fearful whispering and Jake’s earnest attempts to try and calm everyone down, was a voice.

A voice in the static.

A terrible, grating voice that spoke in a tone that made one want to tear their own ears off.

Much like Archive.

James tried to focus on them, despite the horrible discomfort they instilled in him. Then he realised that new, golden words were burning themselves into existence with every terrible syllable the static spoke.

That's when James finally understood what was happening.

The system was speaking.

[Alert: To the denizens of earth old and young, your race has chosen ascendance of annihilation. Ascendance that comes at a price. One which will be inflicted upon you until you have proven worthy of your existence. You may not understand. You may be scared. You may wish for comfort. You may wish for understanding. You may wish for mercy]

There was a pause.

Jess could see it as well as James could and the looper had slowed his car in order to pay attention to the words he was seeing. They clogged up his vision same as the status and made it near impossible to drive.

James tried to wrap his head around what it was saying.

But then, the system made it very clear.

[But our purpose is not mercy. It is not to help you understand. It is not your comfort. The system serves one holy purpose.]

The system spoke in a different voice, one that sounded almost fanatical.

[Your salvation]

The system chose another voice, this one much more restrained then the last, but still dripping with fanaticism.

[And with salvation, comes pain. Your first blessed Trial will begin after this holy communion. For those among you who have been blessed by He Who Came Before, an Invitation has been delivered. A glorious calling that you may answer with your wit and mettle. Zenith awaits, as will your kin]

The system’s voice changed again. Much more reserved this time, and far too close to Archive’s cadence.

[For those of you who have been blessed but remain without an Invitation, your Trial will be simpler. Conqueror. Defend. Annihilate. Restore. A boon has been gifted to you, and all that is expected will be that you use it. How you choose matters not]

The system’s voice changed once more. This time it was… colder. The humanity that had been instilled in the others was gone.

But there was something worse.

Something deeper.

The voice sounded like… hate.

It sounded like insanity.

It sounded like…

Me.

[And for you poor, unblessed, unforged moulds of flesh without even a Spark to hold. Worry not, you too can obtain salvation. The cost, simple. When the Trial of Zenith has been fulfilled, so too will yours end, along with the uninvited Sparks. You will be blessed with simplicity. For your goal is simple. One step.]

Then he heard himself laughing. The static laughing with his voice as it spoke its final decree.

[Survive]

[For that is all you without the power to create a Source your own can hope for. Do your best, prove yourself worthy. Because when the dust settles, half of you will be gone]

The radio went deathly silent with that last final decree. The world exploded into light. The light was so bright it was like being born. Like he’d been living in a dark world his entire life and then stepped into the sun.

Amy was screaming.

Jess was screaming.

Hell, James was pretty sure Jake was screaming.

Then it was gone. Not just the light. The eye in the sky, the azure streak, the whole curtain of flame had just disappeared. What perhaps was even more amazing was the fact that James had managed not crash after being flash banged by the system.

Hugh hadn’t crashed either, although the man looked incredibly shook by whatever had just happened.

Well that was new. And still not the strangest thing that had ever happened to him. James found himself almost alarmingly unbothered by the turn of events. The looper was more concerned about what the system had just said than any of the strange occurrences around it.

Particularly the parts about salvation and survival.

“Was that…” Amy started, croaking out her words. “...Just a weird dream?”

The sky being on fire was pretty out there for a weird dream, but James had a good grasp on the five stages of grief. Denial was pretty easy to fall into when things were looking as bleak as they were.

“I…” Jake started to say something, gazing at the not burning sky, but the words died in his mouth.

“We’re almost there guys.” James said, patting Jake on the shoulder. “Let's just try to focus on-”

“James.” Jake said, interrupting him. His hand gripped around the looper's extending arm, holding for dear life as his other hand pointed out the windshield to the sky above. “Do you see that?”

The looper blinked and focused on the sky for a moment, expecting to see another streak of azure. Maybe the sky wasn’t done with being on fire?

That wasn’t what he saw.

Instead he gazed at a perfectly normally starry night. Only, there weren’t any stars. They’d been stripped out of the sky by the azure flames. James had known that, but when he’d seen the shining balls of light, he’d assumed those stars had returned.

On closer expectation.

“Are they getting bigger for you too?” James asked, feeling a small chill down his spine.

“Yeah.” Jake nodded, shaking. “They are.”

The blots in the sky were getting bigger and bigger by the second. Tiny little balls of iridescent light that were getting closer to the ground every moment. Quite a few, heading straight towards them.

Half of you. The system said half will be gone.

And James could see now that it wasn’t relying on infighting alone to do it. As the balls of light got closer and closer, turning into burning meteors hurtling straight towards them, James' felt words leave his lips that expressed his true feelings. The rawest version of them.

“Oh for fu-”

An explosion of sound cut his words short, causing James to slam his breaks as hard as he could.