"Oh," the first one says. "I died."

"Yeah," the second responds impassively. "We did."

She looks around. "Is this the afterlife?" A sigh passes her lips, which form into a dry smirk. "I guess I screwed up by being an atheist. Should have spent more time talking to Ophelia instead of listening to Kam lecture me during every free minute."

"You could think of it as a kind of afterlife," the second replies, "but only in like, a loosey-goosey metaphorical way. So not really."

"Oh. Where are we, then?" The first frowns, glancing around with a disoriented expression. "I can't really make anything out. It's all sort of... Empty, not even white, just..."

"You don't know how to conceptualize it properly," she tells her. "The human mind can't understand it, but if you know enough about its purpose and get a handle on moving around, you start to associate certain ideas with the stimuli. Like feeling around a new room with your eyes closed, or, well, something like that." She glances around the area herself. "But to answer your question, it's a 10-dimensional plane that serves as a blank slate for creating 3-dimensional spaces. A 'stage', basically."

"Is that what it looks like to you?" she asks. "A stage?"

The second hesitates. "Uh. No."

"What does it look like?" She pauses for only half a moment, not even giving time for a reply. "It looks like a beach, doesn't it?"

"...yes."

The first Utsushikome laughs. "As soon as you said 'blank slate', I had a feeling you would see it that way."

"You're being more flippant about this than I thought you would be," the second responds, looking annoyed. "Shouldn't you be more interested in the 10-dimensional space thing, rather than just getting a chance to prove you understand your own complexes?"

"I probably should, but it's strange. It feels hard to take anything seriously," she replies, strangely relaxed. "Almost like I'm dreaming."

The second considers this for a moment, seeming put-off. "Hm. Well, if that's how it is for you, then I guess you're lucky." She looks out at the ocean. "It means you'll probably forget all of this."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"I thought we established that a second ago," the second says flatly. "I'm you."

"When I was thinking this was the afterlife, I thought maybe that meant you were Shiko for a second," the other says wistfully. "And that maybe we'd finally separated in death, or something. ...but if you were Shiko, you wouldn't be preoccupied by the same imagery as me. So what are you? You might be 'me', but obviously you're not me, because I can't hear your thoughts. So are you a duplicate? An aspect of my subconscious?"

She clicks her tongue. "Why don't you tell me, if you're in such a deductive mood?"

The first pauses for a few moments, thinking. She looks upwards, at the sky. "Well... Let me see." She closes her eyes. "If this was a time loop... You're probably the 'me' that remembers all this, aren't you? All the other times this has happened."

"Show your work."

"It's nothing ironclad or anything," she confesses. "I kept feeling that things had happened before, but sometimes slightly differently. Then, suddenly, a patch of my memory disappeared altogether, and after that I didn't feel that way any more. And just now I found out that I got a book from Samiun that supposedly allows for the alteration of memory. It's not too hard to form a theory from that." She takes a breath. "What probably happened is that I mastered the book over the various loops, but tried to suppress those memories on this go-around for some reason. But I did a bad job the first time, and over the course of the night, it started to come back to me, probably culminating in when I got the book from Samium. That's why I was acting strange and subdued afterwards at dinner even though I should have been devastated."

"The critical detail is how I felt right before everything started, when I became aware of myself up in the bedroom on the second story of the Order's headquarters," she continues. "'Became aware' being the opportune phrase. Because I didn't 'wake up' in the normal way-- There was just a gap in my memory, and suddenly I was there, with only a little disorientation. So that was probably right after I suppressed the memories again. Am I right?"

"...yeah, more or less," the second replies tiredly.

She nods passively in reply, not even seeming to be proud of the accomplishment. "I guess it probably helps that I've read a few mystery novels with controlled amnesia as a plot device, though."

"You're blurring fiction with reality, now?"

"Well, yeah," the first admits. "In a situation like this, I thought that went without saying. But regardless, even if I can say that much, there's a limit to how much I can speculate without really knowing the metaphysics of what's going on here. I know what makes us different, but I can't really guess what makes you an altogether independent existence, or if you even are." She bites her finger analytically. "Balthazar said that the versions of us inside and outside the loop are different people. Is that what's going on? Is one of us a copy and the other real, and if so, which?"

"Balthazar hasn't been involved in everything that much, so he only kind of understands the situation," the second explains. "It's not quite like that. For the others, it's more like they're copies of each other in a state of mutual affirmation. Like what Anna spoke about, the concept of 'mirrors' in computing."

"She wasn't Anna, though," the first remarks.

"You know what I mean."

"So was what I learned about the two versions of the sanctuary related to that, then?" she asks. "Does the second sanctuary copy us, after all? And then that's what makes up the time loop? I've kept questioning how that would work, considering it apparently starts before we even get into the sanctuary. But I guess if it's not some phenomenon of time, but an altogether false reality..."

"It's sort of like that," she admitted. "But does that really matter, now? The specific details of how it all actually works?"

"Not really. But I guess it's hard to tell what even matters, at this point. I suppose I'm just curious. It's all it feels like there's left to be." The first's eyes wander for a moment. "You said, 'the others'. Does that mean we're different? You and I?"

"Yes," the second says, with a nod. "We're different. We have a special role that means we have a more active connection, rather than simply being based on each other. A tether between this world--" she gestures to the surrounding area, "--and the ordinary one. It's also both how, and I guess more importantly, why we're here now."

"Why are we here?" She looks around. "If everything is already over."

"Because, before the end, I wanted to tell you something," the second explains, before letting out a sigh. "To be honest, I was kind of hoping you'd just be disoriented like you were earlier, so I could just do it and end this properly before you even really understood what's going on."

"You said a minute ago that I probably won't remember this," the first points out. "So why bother telling me anything?"

"I don't know," she replies. "It's probably not really rational. Maybe I feel like you'll remember it 'on some level', or whatever."

"Does that sort of thing actually work?" she asks skeptically.

She shrugs.

"If you want to tell me something," the first deduces, "that means that I'm still going to exist, after this?"

"Yes."

"In what way?"

The second looks increasingly exhausted, rubbing her brow. "The usual way. You'll see when it happens." She lowers her hand, making a flat expression. "Look. To be honest, I don't really want to be here. Obviously I understand why you're curious - even if you're not fully cognizant - but it's keeping everyone waiting."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone," she repeats. "So here's what we're going to do. You can ask me three more questions, and if it's something I feel like talking about, I'll give you some kind of answer. If not, I'll let you try again."

"Why only--" She cuts herself off sharply, blinking a few times. "Okay. Okay."

The two of them are silent once more. The waves continue to beat gently against the shore, the setting sun unmoving.

"Three questions..." the first repeats thoughtfully. "Hm. Well, I guess the obvious one is... Who was really behind everything? What really happened? If you remember everything, and know even more than Balthazar, then you should know."

"I can't answer that question," she tells her. "Try again."

"You can't answer it?" She looks put off. "Why not?"

"Is that one of your questions?"

"Yeah, sure."

The second Utsushikome looks doubtful for a moment, like she's considering whether or not to even say this much. But eventually, she nods to herself, seeming to have satisfied whatever internal disagreement was taking place in her mind. "For two reasons. The first is that one of the premises of your question is wrong, and no, I can't explain what I mean without going against what I'm about to explain now. The second is that we made an agreement."

"An agreement," the first says, being careful not to intonate in a manner that might give the impression this was a question.

"That's right," she states plainly. "It's a little fuzzy even for me now, but after a while, we discovered that the only way things could come to an end without attaining the proper 'victory condition', so to speak, was by unanimous consent. So to accomplish that and break the stalemate, we had to make a compromise." She fiddles with one of her braids. "One of the tenets of that was that certain information about what happened here should never escape to the outside world. And yes, I know I said you'll forget. But the tiny possibility that I'm wrong means that I can't violate the agreement."

"I see," the first says, holding a finger to her lip thoughtfully, as if she could possibly have fully understood what this meant. "That explains a lot, actually. I'd been wondering why you'd been suppressing my - well, your, our, whatever - memory in the first place. But it must be that some version of us is going to remember this last loop, somehow. And you're bound by the terms of this agreement to make sure that nothing 'unfair' happens. That also explains why my memory abruptly cuts off specifically at the point I noticed the figure in the hidden bioenclosure, rather than when 'I' actually started to remember everything. I'd probably seen something I shouldn't. That's probably why you left that weird message for me when I was buried under the rubble, too. Our memories came back from the trauma again, or... Something, but before you suppressed them again, you realized that I was about to see something I shouldn't. So you instructed me to wait there."

To this, the second Utsushikome gives only an ambiguous nod.

"But... If all that's the case..." she continues, "then that raises a lot of questions about what we even experienced. Since for a bunch of random events to follow the rules established in this compromise, everything would have somehow have to have been pre-ordained. Arranged. At least to a degree."

She nods more firmly, her tone impassive. "Yes."

"So... Was nothing real?"

"It was real," the second states. "More or less. The whole premise was that things would play out roughly as they did the very first time, except for a final change at the end... But unfortunately, a few outside-context variables spoiled that. The main one being, yeah, you ending up remembering too much. It couldn't be helped."

"So there was never a chance we'd figure out what was really happening," the first replies, looking away with a bittersweet smile. "We were doomed from the start."

"That's right. From the very first moment." She levels her gaze. "So, don't feel bad. You're not at fault for anything. ...well, you are, but there wasn't anything you could do to prevent it, so don't worry about it."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I guess I should be comforted, huh?" Her tone is flat.

The second gives another slight nod, her eyes wandering.

"But I suppose the natural question that follows," the first continues, is 'What was supposed to happen'? Why did it all go wrong?"

"That's two questions, but I guess it's fine," the second says. "In part because you can probably piece a lot of it together yourself, if you think about what changed as a result of you having those recollections and behaving differently." She scratches her head. "If you remember, the first thing you did when you came to the sanctuary was decide to take a walk on account of the deja vu you kept experiencing. That led you to run into Neferuaten, which in turn led her to take you on a tour of the grounds. That led you to learning about the pantry earlier than was accounted for."

"What was up with the pantry, anyway? Can I ask that as a side-question?"

"You're really pushing your luck," she replies, squinting at herself. "And no. It's too complicated to explain properly. I guess I can give you the hyper-abbreviated version: towards the end, Sekhmet and Eshmun ended up needing to fulfill a function related to the loop itself, and like Sacnicte explained, the engraving that runs through the pantry is mixed up with their own. They're not human, not properly 'actors', so part of them has to be physically constant for them to retain information between restarts. And that happens to impact the pantry."

The other nods. "I guess that fits with the speculation I'd been having."

"It's mostly a lie, but you'll just have to accept that," she tells her. "Anyway, you finding the pantry wasn't the main issue. Rather, it was because going through half the tour early meant that, when Kamrusepa came with you for the rest on the second day, you'd already seen enough to make it to the third floor before Neferuaten had to leave. And, since you'd got the note and shown it to Kam - what happens normally if there's nothing to derail things - that led to you finding the armory and the body at the bottom of the shaft. And that derailed everything."

"How?" she asks, frowning.

"In too many ways to even explain," she says. "If no one finds the armory, the Order never reveals it exists. They don't suggest going there to arm everyone when the plan is made, and just use what's in the security center instead. So less people have guns, which prevents things from escalating. But most pertinently to you, without the knowledge, Kamrusepa can't form her final theory-- The one that got everyone left killed." She snorts. "Though, you managing to stumble upon the hidden bioenclosure certainly didn't help, but that's a whole other can of worms."

"As for what should have happened... Well, it was always going to end with us here, obviously," she admits. "But still, the original plan would have left things on a better note. One that might have taught you something important." She attempts to smile, but the result is half-hearted. "But again, there's nothing for it now. I'm sorry it ended up this way."

"I still don't really understand," the first says, with a slight frown. "Was that what Balthazar meant? Was this whole loop somehow for me? Why would it be like that...?" She hesitates, her eyes bleary. "Sorry, I'm just thinking aloud. That's not my final question."

"It's fine. I don't mind talking about that in particular." The second looks at herself. "No, it wasn't all for you. It was mostly for something different altogether. It was just a request I made." She exhales. "As for why, it's because you'll be the only one who remembers this, if only this last time. So it was decided you deserved to be accounted for."

She blinks. "I'm the only one who will remember?"

She nods. "That's right. Again, it's another part of your role. The unique bond between 'us'."

"Is that the same reason I'm the only one who remembers the previous loops-- Or that you are, I mean?" She looks puzzled.

"Actually, you have it completely backwards," she explains. "Everyone remembers. It's just that they have to forget, and our role makes us bad at that. Though, not as bad as it is for some."

"Everyone has to forget? You mean, actively?" She blinks, considering the implications. "So--"

"Yes," she replies, with a nod. "It's always arranged. It's always a performance."

"Why?"

"It just has to be that way. It's not even worth explaining."

"So when you said 'unanimous consent'--"

"I meant of all of us," she explains. "The cast. The staff. And-- Well, the observer. The one this really is all for."

"The 'observer'...?"

The second sighs even more deeply, her whole body seeming to deflate. "It really doesn't matter. Can you just ask your final question? I'm so tired. I just want to see what happens next."

The first Utsushikome's face tightens. She oscillates between different expressions, though all still carry the mildness you'd expect for someone who feels they're in a dream; frustration, sympathy, concern, sadness. She pushes the hair out of her eyes. "What about the other thing Balthazar said? About us almost always being the culprit?"

She again looks wary, but ultimately answers. "It's the truth," she says. "At least insofar as on almost on every occasion, we're the one who physically commits most of the murders."

She frowns deeply. "Why? I don't understand how I could ever do something like that."

"Yes, you do," the second affirms, almost laughing. "It's because we're weak."

"Weak?"

"Yeah," she affirms. "Just like we were when we committed murder the first time. We're always scared, and that makes us cling to things when we ought to let go. To take easy answers, even when pursuing them hurts ourself and others. To lash out when things don't go our way, and to embrace self-delusion as an alternative to breaking down when faced with things we don't want to see. Yet despite all of that, we're good at focusing on a goal. Can you think of a better set of traits for a serial murderer?"

"I mean, okay," the first concedes. "But even if that's true, how does that translate into us murdering our class and a bunch of strangers? What possible reason could we have to do that?"

"Does it really matter?" She asks. "Can you honestly say that if, for example, someone told you that you needed to kill everyone who was at the conclave other than Ran to save Shiko, you wouldn't do it?"

The first frowns, saying nothing.

"This is why I wanted to talk to you, before this is all over," the second says, her tone growing a little sad. "A minute ago, I said that my memory was fuzzy about the details of the compromise. You noticed that, right?"

"Uh, well, yes," she says. "But you said I could only ask three questions, so..."

"Mm, that's what I figured," she said. "I won't try to pretend otherwise. A lot of what Samium said was bullshit platitudes, just like you're probably thinking. But he was right about one thing, and that's that there's a much easier way to forget things than hypnotizing yourself: Time. It erodes everything. Just like the sand on this beach." She takes a deep breath. "At this point, I can barely remember anything about how this all began. But I remember that at first, even trapped in this place, all I still thought of was trying to save Shiko. Even though I heard the same thing from Samium on the very first time that you did, I kept trying. I mastered the book. I read through all the volumes of Egomancy lore probably a hundred times. I tried using the Apega, even though it couldn't possibly have worked. I even tried using Zeno's invention. And those were just the rational attempts. I convinced myself the loop only existed for that purpose. I probably spent lifetimes trying to squeeze every last drop of drop of juice from the orange."

"When there was finally nothing left for me to try, the despair I felt was almost impossible to describe. While the others had accepted it a long time ago, I couldn't. I wanted to escape more than anything, but couldn't. I wanted to die, but couldn't. In the end, I cursed myself for ever having tried in the first place. I wished I'd died on that tree, or that I'd just been selfish, and not cared about Shiko at all. I wished I'd tried to be happy, or even just accepted being miserable. I wished for anything else. I can't even begin to explain. I internalized so many different, contradictory truths at different times, but though I moved the pieces around, I couldn't change the board. In the end, every part of me was worn down to a flat surface. Uniform. All I did was pursue this moment."

The first Utsushikome just stares, her eyes wide, not knowing what to say.

"I don't know what will happen now. Maybe there's a future for me, and maybe I'd disappear into nothingness the moment this conversation is over. And maybe, in spite of what the evidence seems to suggest, you'll die here, too. But I know this much: I will never be able to return to the outside world. But you might."

"I... I don't..."

"Again, I don't know what will happen. I envy you right now, but maybe I'll end up pitying you down the line. It's impossible to say." She swallows. "For you, this will all have been a fleeting nightmare. But if you can take one thing away from it, I hope it's that you'll understand that things could be worse." She takes a step closer to the other her. "I won't tell you to try to be happy, because at best that would be condescending, and might even be asking the impossible. But do something. See new things. Experience things you wouldn't. Hate yourself in different ways. Mix with the world and grow into something unexpected, for both of us."

"If I can't save Shiko, then I have no right to keep living this life," the first Utsushikome says, with a dreary smile. "You know that as well as I do, regardless of whatever has happened to you."

"That's just an idea you have. It doesn't mean anything. Nothing really means anything." She looks almost pleading. "There is no way to fix this in the way you want. You're not a god. You can't reverse causality and make it so the shitty choices you made never happened. No one can." She speaks with as much intensity as she can muster. "If you want to live the rest of your life wallowing in guilt, fine. If you want to spend every waking moment trying to atone for what happened, then fine. Just do something. Don't just run away from reality."

"There's no life for me to live at all. I've already been dead for 12 years," the first insists. "I gave up my life the moment I made that choice. And if I killed her beyond all hope of resurrection in that moment too, if it was all for nothing... Then this body is just a warm corpse I'm squatting in." She shakes her head. "All I can do is give it back."

A moment passes. The second Utsushikome stares, her expression resigned. The first Utsushikome looks into the water at her own reflection.

"...I see," the former says. "In that case, then I think we're finished here. Good luck with whatever you decide to do."

"Wait," the first one says, holding up a hand. "I had a followup question."

"I said you could only have three," the second says, her tone now aloof again. She takes another step.

"This will be quick," the first adds hastily. "You said that we're the one who 'physically commits the most murders'. But you didn't say that we're the one behind them, and obviously we're not the one who engineered this situation to begin with. I know you said you can't say who was behind this, but was there a true culprit? A mastermind behind everything from among the people here?"

The second grunts with annoyance, and starts to raise her hand. "Yeah. There was."

"What was their motive? Was it intentional?"

"It was intentional. But as to the motive, I couldn't say," she answers, taking one final step. "I've stopped trying to think about other people. They just do things without even knowing why."

"One last question," the first says. "Balthazar said that the amount of notches in the pantry didn't per-se represent the amount of loops. And a minute ago, you said that Sekhmet and Eshmun only became involved in all this 'towards the end' you'd been trying to find a way to save Shiko for 'lifetimes'. Were you being literal? How long has it really been?"

For the first time, the second Utsushikome almost grins, though there's a sardonic, almost nihilistic edge to it. "You know, I was sort of hoping you'd ask that. I hope you'll retain just this, since it's the last thing you'll hear."

She reaches out to place her hand on the first's forehead. The forehead of both of them.

"This was," she states, "The 1,213,649th weekend I've spent at the sanctuary of the Order of the Universal Panacea. And thank the gods, it was the last."

"I hope that in the real world, the government blows it up, and the sea grinds it away until nothing is left."

The first Utsushikome's eyes go wide. The second Utsushikome touches her.

In an instant, they both crumble into sand, and with the next wave, are washed away by the tides.

𒊹

Darkness.

In the endless darkness, I floated. Formless, without sensation, beyond time and space. Like a piece of driftwood sunken to a bottomless chasm.

Was this the afterlife, I wondered? Was this all that remained, when everything else was truly and finally over?

It wasn't so bad. I felt peaceful. There was no longer anything I had to concern myself with, because there was no longer a 'me' at all. Were my thoughts even thoughts? What was thought, divorced from the reality that prompts it? Nothing more than meaningless sparks of energy. Stars swirling in the void with no will of their own, no matter their grandeur.

Maybe nothing had ever been real. Maybe my life, the world itself, had been nothing more than an idle fantasy. An illusion borne on the swirling currents, as fleeting a thing as a shadow in front of a flame.

Yeah, I thought. That would be nice.

And yet... Even as the rest of me seemed to fall still... Something persisted in my not-thoughts.

I was still curious. Curious enough to hold on, a little bit.

'Why a time loop?' I considered.

Considering the absolute confirmation of the phenomenon, it became - as I had speculated earlier, but had refused to commit to doing so - necessary to re-conceptualize the entire crime from the ground up. To re-ask the question of 'what do I know, beyond any doubt?'

Over the course of the weekend, it had seemed like what was happening was a serial murder. A classic closed-circle whodunnit. We'd all secluded ourselves in a location removed from the world, and then we'd slowly been killed one by one by what was presumably a human culprit masquerading as a mysterious force of nature, unable to call for help. In a sense, it was a simple relationship. The 'culprit', regardless of whether they were accomplishing their goal directly or through pulling the strings of others, wanted us dead, with the possible supplemental goal of us dying painfully or ironically.

There were all sorts of reasons to want people dead. Greed. Revenge. Covering up your own actions. Simply removing individuals who were problematic for your own goals. Even fanatical, desperate love. It wasn't a difficult situation to understand.

But if time was looping, and we re-conceptualized the 'culprit' as the 'one who trapped everyone in the time loop'... Well, these motives all break down at the premise itself. Because the whole idea of a time loop is that nobody actually dies; that there are no consequences at all. Everyone gets back up in the end, like in a drama.

So... What? Was it just torture? That was the obvious explanation, but who would have the stamina to torment a group of people for practically 10,000 years? Like I mused earlier, hate is a frail emotional state. There's only so long it can go before it burns itself to bitter ash.

Had it all come about through some tragic mistake? No, the other me had said there was a culprit, and talked about a 'victory condition'. That implied intent. A person wanted this to happen.

As my thoughts drifted, they naturally turned to the framework through which I conceptualized everything important to me: Fiction. I unhinged myself from the complicated reality of the impossible physics it would take for such a thing to even be possible, and considered it like I would a story.

Why did people write mystery stories? Or rather, what was the appeal of a mystery story? From my perspective, I could imagine two facets to it. The first overlapped with horror; the thrill of being confused and shocked, and unsettled by the unknown, the tension that comes from being deprived of important information. The second was the 'interactive' element - piecing information together yourself to meet a challenge set to you by the author. ...though, a lot of people who read mysteries didn't even really bother with that, and were just there for a combination of that first appeal and the character drama. At least that was how it had seemed at my old book club.

Anyway, that was one thing. And of course I'd personally read quite a lot of mystery shlock, so my only real experience with time loops in fiction was when they overlapped, which seemed like a fairly common conceit, though I'd personally only read a couple of examples. Yet I had the feeling, despite that, the appeal was something very different.

Mysteries are occasionally power fantasies - the detective 'killing the monster' by banishing the ambiguity and revealing the truth in a way that encourages the reader to self-insert. But for a time loop story, the power fantasy element almost feels baked into the premise unless it's actively suppressed. Because what they are is, essentially, stories about someone mastering a system.

In the real world, we only ever get one shot at anything. Every day is different and filled with uncountable variables beyond our awareness, and we make our choices in the midst of this never-ending, chaotic storm. And it's frightening and upsetting, because it's natural to fear missing out on things, of taking the 'wrong path' and letting chances of our lifetimes pass us by, only occasionally even realizing it's happening at all. We can follow certain principles in the hope of reaching the outcomes we want, but 90% of our existence is ruled by fate. We're powerless. Gamblers at an invisible table, one where every streak is fleeting.

What a time loop represents in fiction, then, is a fantasy of that being different. Of a reality we can dominate and master in the same way as we can master a skill or a game, where we can learn every variable and optimize our actions to ultimately achieve the ideal outcome. Where we never stumble backwards, only march forwards. That's the path we see the protagonist follow, almost universally.

In other words, it's about agency. Control through understanding.

The culprit, then... Wanted to understand something. And through that understanding, optimize incrementally, even if they couldn't do so directly. To reach that 'victory condition'.

But then... What could that have been?

The Order had sought eternal life. An existence unlimited by time, and where loss and ceilings to growth do not exist.

And I'd sought eternal happiness, and was still searching for eternal meaning. A story for the world that would never break down in the face of reality.

So, then...

What eternity were they seeking?