Chase’s cheek was sore.

To be fair, he’d done everything but literally ask for it. Flippantly tempting fate after injecting a fresh dose of terror into an already tense situation was a great way to come away with a slapped face in the resulting chaos. He was just lucky only Jess had gotten a hit in; Tom had been building towards an explosion when Kayla had barged into the room demanding to know what the hubbub was about. She had masterfully ignored Chase’s pleading eyes and whispered pleas for help as Tom and Jess convinced her to track down Miles and Ellie, that there was something the whole group needed to know. Now there was no shield from the two pairs of eyes glaring at him, but at least they had relocated to the dorm’s common room and its comfy couches.

The door opening was a welcome reprieve from the eye-beams of blame, and Chase immediately focused on the new arrivals. Kayla was first through the door, her purple bangs and resting bitch face on full display. Granted, the scowl on her face could have been intentional rather than resting, based on the slightly nasal voice of Miles that followed in her wake. Miles was a study in contradictions - sharp, aristocratic features and a weedy build just made his full-sleeve tattoos stand out even more. He shuffled into the room half-turned to the last member of their group, Ellie. Her almond-shaped eyes flitted around the room, quickly taking absorbing details while her usual slight smile remained on her lips.

“Alright, the gang’s all here. Now will you tell me why you were smacking Chase around and if we need to join in?” Kayla began with all of her usual subtlety.

Chase groaned. “Speaking as the Chase in question, please don’t. I’ll be seeing Jessica’s handprint in the mirror for days.”

Jessica huffed. “Well you deserved it, scaring us like that.”

“Scaring?” Ellie asked. “What was Chase doing that was so scary?”

Tom and Jessica shared a look, then turned to Chase expectantly. He quirked an eyebrow in response. “Really? You want me to explain it? Are you just looking for an excuse to slap me again?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.” Jess replied.

“Sadist.”

“So,” Kayla interrupted. “We gonna get that explanation or are y’all just gonna weirdly flirt with each other?”

“Right,” Chase said, stubbornly ignoring the mental images that implication conjured up. “Okay, no idea why those two are leaving this to me, but here goes. You’ve all noticed the general weirdness around our new home sweet lab lately?”

“No,” Miles drawled. “I hadn’t noticed we were trapped and excluded from any chance at coming up with a solution. This is what you interrupted me for? I was this close to getting Ashok to take me on as an assistant!”

“Miles,” Ellie chided. “I do not believe Jessica and Tom would have insisted we all meet if it were not important.” She turned to Chase, eyes assessing. “You have noticed something beyond the obvious?”

“Mmhm. Well, there’s a few things. I was just trying to get your impressions first, y’know, unbiased perspective.”

“I see.” Ellie looked pensive. “It has certainly not been easy losing access to the internet. Though from the way you are asking, that is not what you are referring to. I admit I have been rather distracted by the obvious aspects of our predicament, so I cannot say anything has left an impression on me outside of that.”

“Same.” Miles said. “I’ve been trying to map the fluctuations of the light sphere to look for patterns, but I haven’t found anything conclusive.”

Kayla scowled. “This place is clean. That’s all. I know it’s a new place, but this many people all living here at once and only a couple custodians? Feels like it should be getting grimier. That weird enough for you?”

“Actually yes, that’s perfect.” Chase said. “We noticed that too. Like, when was the last time any of you washed your clothes?”

Miles blinked and looked down at his shirt. Ellie looked mildly horrified, and Kayla crossed her arms as her scowl deepened.

“So that’s your big news? That we all stink?”

Chase met Kayla’s challenging eyes. “Do you though? I bet your clothes feel just as clean now as they did on day one.”

Ellie was pinching the sleeve of her cardigan, examining the cream fabric as closely as she could. “I believe you may be right. I spilled coffee on this sleeve the first morning we woke up here, yet it shows no sign of that stain now. Curious.”

“So what does that mean? Our clothes are being cleaned without us knowing about it somehow?” Miles was frowning, but he looked more thoughtful than frustrated.

Chase leveled finger guns at him. “Essentially, yes. Jess, Tom, and I first noticed it with the pantry. I thought Tom was being the responsible guy that he is and making resupply runs for us, but turns out I was giving him too much credit. Out of curiosity, any of you three gone to grab us more food since we’ve been here?”

Miles and Ellie turned to each other, then Kayla, who had sunk further into the couch. “Don’t look at me, I’ve barely done anything useful since we got stuck in this mess.”

“So it was none of us,” Ellie mused. “And from what you were saying, it was none of you either. Our pantry was being restocked by a third party?”

“A little creepy that they were coming around and none of us noticed.” Miles complained.

“It gets creepier.” Jessica muttered.

“Unfortunately, Jess is right.” Chase said, returning to some semblance of seriousness. “Might as well rip the bandaid off. Every night at 12:26 AM, there are 34 minutes that get skipped over. I was looking right at my phone earlier tonight when it happened. And check the date.”

Kayla had her phone pulled out the fastest. “April 14th?”

“That is not possible.” Ellie said faintly. “Our tour here, the day of the accident was April 14th.”

“Yeah.” Tom joined the conversation, nodding seriously. “Yeah it was. And we think whatever that accident did, it’s done more than just trap us in here. The date jumps back, food gets restocked, our clothes get cleaned. We think it might be a time loop.”

“Backward time travel is impossible.” Miles objected.

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“A month ago, I would have told you that psychedelic forcefields were impossible too.” Jess countered.

“It is not necessarily impossible,” Ellie muttered, barely audible. “Merely theoretical. Closed timelike curves are present in the Gödel metric, though that may not account for repeated looping… perhaps a Tipler cylinder? That would require negative energy, which has never been observed.” She trailed off, fidgeting.

Chase met Kayla’s eyes, as Miles and Ellie were still lost in their own thoughts. “Do you need a few minutes? It’s kind of a lot to process, but there’s still more.”

“You said you were ripping the bandaid off, don’t stop halfway.”

“Alright,” Chase took a breath. “There are some exceptions to the looping and resetting. I’ve been writing in this notebook every night, and everything I’ve written is still there. Tom made a new playlist last week that hasn’t deleted itself. It’s just a theory, but we think whatever is doing the looping, it’s selective. So far it seems like anything that keeps us healthy gets reset, while anything we interact with constructively stays constant. And there’s some things that are still off even if we are looping.”

“Such as?” Miles asked, voice trembling.

“Water and electricity.” Tom answered. “There’s no way the pipes already had enough in em to supply all of us that are trapped here, and the power is still working just fine with no sign that we’re using backup generators.”

“So what’s that all mean?” Kayla all but snarled. “We get to be nice and comfy and well-fed as we spin our wheels day in day out?”

Chase swallowed. It wasn’t any easier to deliver his theory a second time, and he didn’t dare try to make a joke of it to lighten the mood on pain of another slap. “Keep in mind this is just me spitballing. But imagine it from an outside perspective. You’ve got a sample that you’re studying, you’d probably want to keep it alive and in good condition, right? Mimic its habitat as closely as you can so your observations aren’t tainted by too much interference. Provide those basic needs and you have a pretty good experimental setup.”

Kayla was trembling, glaring impotently at nothing in particular. Ellie was still muttering to herself, but now rocking back and forth ever so slightly. Miles had completely deflated, staring at the floor with his arms hanging limp by his sides. Honestly, it was a better reaction than Chase was expecting. And he didn’t even get slapped this time! Progress!

“You - you think this was designed? That someone is playing with our lives here? How? Why? Who would even have the ability?” Miles sputtered.

“All good questions,” Chase said with a nod. “And right now we don’t have any answers. Like I said, it’s a hypothesis. You all are the sciency crowd, I’m just the journalism student in way over his head. So let’s design an experiment and start figuring things out.”

“Not like we’ve got much else to do.” Kayla grumbled, but there was a spark of life in her blue eyes. “Alright. Ellie, where do we start?”

Ellie started. “Why are you asking me? We are all in the same situation here, we are equals.”

Jessica gave a weak chuckle. “Ellie, which one of us has aced every science class they’ve ever taken and practically writes a senior thesis for every term paper? Face it, we’re following your lead.”

“Still don’t understand how you managed an A in Blanton’s class.” Tom added. “Man practically takes pride in cutting students down for not living up to his absurd professional standards.”

“Professor Blanton is - no, that is not the point here! What are we even supposed to test first? These questions are entirely too broad.”

“The blank 34.” Chase said. Ellie perked up at the lifeline and Chase shrugged. “It’s gotta be the easiest to test, right? We can try recording video when it rolls around tomorrow night, see if that actually captures anything. Start with the small questions and work up to the big ones, yeah?”

“That is the way to approach any new field.” Miles said. “But why are we determined to do this ourselves? There are dozens of people here who make their living running experiments. Why not bring this to the researchers?”

“Still trying to get on Ashok’s good side?” Kayla jabbed. “Let’s face it, none of them have given us the time of day since this all went down. Can’t exactly blame them, but I doubt they’ll start listening if we go off half-cocked and sound like we’re spouting nonsense. If we can prove something’s going on, then maybe they’ll start taking us seriously.”

“Kayla’s right,” Jessica said. “Right now all we’ve got sounds like a conspiracy theory. They’ll be able to brush it off as us cracking under the isolation. But if we can get some evidence behind us and present it in the framework they know, we might be able to get some of them to work on it from other angles. Divide and conquer.”

Ellie gave a tentative nod. “So, we must first test for the existence of these missing 34 minutes?” At the group’s collective nod, she continued. “Thus far we only have observations from Jessica and Chase. None of the rest of you have noticed this phenomenon?”

“Ever since we found out that the cell networks and internet weren’t working, I’ve barely used my phone.” Miles said.

“Only been using mine for music, and I’m usually asleep around that time anyway.” Tom added.

Kayla shrugged. “All the flashy weird shit that’s gone down, I never really went looking for the little things.”

Ellie nodded again, firmer this time. “Then we must gather further testimony and attempt to collect video evidence. This lab surely has security cameras, though I am unsure where the office would be and if we would be allowed to view them. However, if the security guards have kept to their routine, someone would have been monitoring them at all hours of the day. Therefore, they would be the most likely group to have observed these missing minutes. Chase and Jessica, would you two please ask them and attempt to view the footage?”

Chase nodded. “That’s fine by me, but why us?”

Ellie smiled. “You are a journalist, are you not? I know you would seek out such primary sources as a matter of course. Furthermore, you two are the only ones who have noticed this blank 34 out of our group. You would be more likely to notice any evasiveness on the part of those you are asking, as I imagine seeing it firsthand is a bit more shocking than simply hearing about it.”

Jessica grinned. “This is exactly why you’re in charge of experimental design, Ellie. Alright, what about everybody else?”

“I believe Tom and Kayla have spent a fair amount of time familiarizing themselves with the layout of the laboratory, yes?”

“I get restless and wander, so I guess I got a good idea of where things are.” Kayla said.

“Been keeping myself occupied helping the maintenance staff, it beats sitting around.”

“Excellent! You two may serve as our surveyors. You have already noted that only certain things seem to be subject to this nightly reset while others still function due to unknown means. We need to make more observations and see if there are commonalities between these exceptions. They may be due to an entirely different phenomenon, or it may be a different expression of the same underlying cause. We simply do not have enough information to make an informed hypothesis quite yet, so you would most help by being our eyes and ears.”

“So keep doing what we’ve been doing, but write down anything that seems weird?” Tom shrugged. “Easy enough.”

“So you and Miles get the video recording job?” Chase asked.

Ellie shook her head. “I believe all of us should attempt to record it; more data can only help. No, Miles and I are best positioned to talk to the researchers and secure ourselves a laboratory space. They will likely agree to provide one for us simply to avoid our persistent requests to assist.”

Miles groaned. “Banishing us to the kids table, that’s how they’ll see it. At least we can do something productive. I’m tired of begging for assistant positions.”

“Well,” Chase yawned. “That sounds like a plan to me. I dunno about any of you, but I’ve more than reached my quota of disturbing revelations and conspiracy planning for the day.”

“Don’t think we really qualify as a conspiracy, bro.” Tom chuckled.

“Bah, semantics. We’re close enough.”

“We should go to bed though, it’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.” Jessica said, getting up from the couch and stretching. Then, in a whisper Chase could barely make out. “Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep now without this hanging over my head.” Chase gave her a small nudge with his shoulder and she responded with a tired smile. Sharing and planning had done her a world of good; sometimes all it took to feel better was knowing you weren’t alone and having something to focus on. Chase knew that all too well.

“Let’s meet back here for dinner at 7 tomorrow.” Kayla suggested. “If we’re gonna do this conspiracy thing, we’re gonna do it with catering.”

“Still not a conspiracy.” Tom objected.

“Conspirators out!”