NOVEL NEXT Loop 0
“Hey there, can I get your name and reason for your visit?” asked the lady behind the receptionist's desk without making eye contact. She was distracted by something on one of her monitors and made no effort to hide it. He could hear voices coming from the headset she was wearing, but they were too muffled to catch anything being said.
“Cal Marshall, food delivery for research lab number seventeen,” replied Cal, pointing to the cart with several stacks of pizzas. “The name on the order is Robert Smithe, if you need that.” She nodded, her eyes still fixed on the monitor.
“Head through the lobby right there,” she pointed behind herself close to the direction of the nearest door, “and take the elevator to floor nine. Follow the green line hall to lab number seventeen. Just ring the buzzer, and they should answer.” She finished rattling off her directions having never looked up from what she was watching.
Impressive security, Cal thought as he pulled the cart through the door into the lobby. He glanced at the TV in the room and quickly read a few scrolling captions about a building lockdown in Dallas. Oh good, this mass shooting is local; Cal was starting to regret taking this order and getting out of bed today. He tried to reason with his brain. We’ve just gotta finish this delivery, and then we can head home and quit worrying about things outside for the rest of the weekend. He tried convincing himself to ignore the newest crisis as he boarded the elevator. As the elevator doors neared closing, Cal saw two men in monster masks enter the lobby through the same door he used, but before he could get a better look, the doors shut, and the elevator started its ascent to floor nine. Cal spent the remainder of the ride wondering if the receptionist had managed to look up long enough to appreciate the quality of the masks or perhaps question the presence of men in masks in the building. He doubted it. She hadn’t struck him as someone particularly interested in doing her job, not that anyone could blame her. He certainly wasn’t happy about delivering food at thirty-seven.
As the elevator passed floor eight, a loud alarm started blasting through the speaker, and Cal felt the elevator decelerate quickly. The emergency lights began flashing all around him, and the alarm noise changed into a robotic voice instructing him to remain calm, and please exit the elevator as soon as possible. On cue, the elevator stopped entirely at floor eight, and the doors opened. “Dammit,” Cal muttered, annoyed he was a floor short and picturing trying to wheel the cart of pizzas up a flight of stairs as he stepped off the elevator. Looks like it’s wandering time, Cal thought as he couldn’t find a stairwell or any directions in his immediate vicinity.
He spent the next twenty minutes pulling his cart through winding corridors full of locked doors and no signs of people. He tried knocking on a few doors, but after no response from any of them, he was getting worried that he was the only one on the floor. Deciding he was tired of the corridor exploration, he pulled out his phone, planning to Call the front desk. He spotted the no-signal icon and sighed loudly. “Hey, if anyone can hear me, I’m just trying to deliver food. The elevator stopped working, and I’m now very lost and could use some help,” he yelled down the hall, and to his surprise, he heard a door bang open in the distance. He grabbed the cart's handle and started in the direction he heard the noise, glad he was about to be free from this afternoon of liminal halls.
Turning what Cal hoped was the final corner, the building rocked as something exploded nearby, possibly inside the same building he was in. Cal couldn’t tell, and he doubted his only real experience with explosions, having been in fireworks, movies, and video games, made him any kind of expert on judging locations. He decided that once the delivery was finished, and the second he managed to find the stairs, he was heading home. In no way was a ten-dollar tip worth this. New warning alarms started blaring, interrupting his mental rant about the gig economies. There was another loud boom. This time, it had enough force to make his ears ring. It hit him at the exact moment that two figures entered his vision, walking into his current section of the hallway one hundred or so feet ahead of him.
It was the two weirdos in masks he had seen earlier in the lobby. He looked them over and realized that they weren’t just masks; they had on full cosplay outfits. No, that didn’t seem quite right. Something was off. He looked at their hands, and the fingers seemed off. They were smaller and longer and too many. Yeah, he was sure of it now. One of the creatures had seven fingers wrapped around something that looked like a crowbar, and it was starting to glow.
“Hey guys, you wouldn’t happen to know the way out of here, would you?” He managed to get the words out through his growing fear.
The one with the crowbar croaked and sputtered, and then Cal heard a weird grating voice around him. “Where is the…” the voice cut off abruptly as the glowing crowbar wielder fell forward, its head covered in glass and a bubbling liquid. A man in a white lab coat pushed the second one aside and ran past it.
“Come on quick, follow me and bring the pizza,” bellowed the man as he ran past.
Cal, at this point, felt overwhelmed and sick from a combination of the explosive ear ringing and monstrous voice followed after him as best he could. He even dragged the pizza cart along, any thought of questioning the orders currently nonexistent. The lab coat man ran down several halls, turning corners at full speed and dodging potted plants as though trained for this obstacle course. Every so often, he stopped and waited for Cal to catch up, each time yelling that they didn’t have much time left and that Cal needed to move faster.
Finally, after running for what felt like forever, but in reality, it had to have been less than five minutes, the man stopped and swiped a keycard, and a door that looked like solid steel swung open. “Inside now, quick,” he ushered Cal into the room. He then pushed some buttons on a panel inside the room, causing the door to slam shut and the room to light up. “Here, take these. It will help with the headache, and eat some pizza. That should clear up the weird unease you're feeling,” the lab coat man said, handing Cal some pills.
Cal grabbed a two-liter bottle of soda from the cart, downed the pills, and shoveled in two slices of pizza. To the lab coat man’s credit, he did feel better. With that feeling of health, though, came some mental clarity and some screaming, “What the fuck is going on? What were those things? Is this building safe? How do we get out? Is that what the receptionist was stuck on, some sort of alien invasion, and I just walked up here missing all the obvious signs.” as he continued, his screaming just turned into a steady stream of questions to the only person around.
“In order, I don’t know what exactly is going on yet. I think that, yes they are aliens, though why they are attacking random buildings across the world, I’m not sure. This building is not safe at all, and sadly, Cal, we will not be getting out, at least not in any normal sense of the word.” The lab coat man responded, surprising Cal as he didn’t expect answers to his questions.
Cal went over the answers he just received and came to a few conclusions: they were going to die, and the lab coat man somehow already knew this and that he hated aliens. Something else occurred to him, though, “Wait, how do you know my name?” he asked the lab coat man.
“What, you don’t remember me? And after we spent three hours together playing in my backyard twenty-five years ago. I’m hurt,” replied the lab coat man sarcastically.
“Any chance you could quit fucking with me and give me some real answers if you have any?” Cal pleaded in return.
“Sorry, I’ve found sarcasm is the best way to get you to listen quickly. Alright, so you want answers? The bad news is we have about five minutes before the experimental gravity reactor blows and takes us with it. The good news is I’m reasonably sure those were the final pills you needed. Also, I wasn’t lying before we really did meet about twenty-five years ago. My name is Andrew Thomas, though I think I was introduced to you as Andy at the time.” Andy answered.
“Pills for what? If we are just going to die in five minutes, what’s the point in any of this?” an annoyed Cal fired back.
“Four minutes and the pills are to bring you into my nightmare, which I am sorry in advance, but there wasn’t much of a choice here. I only had enough materials to do this easily once, and it’s best done on someone I’ve known the longest, and somehow Cal, by pure coincidence, that’s you. In three minutes, something we are researching here will interact with the gravity reactor during the explosion and lock me into a time loop. Annoyingly, I’m only able to control my actions differently during the thirty minutes leading up to the explosion. I have theories as to why, but right now, they are likely far above your head. After many short bursts, research, and my discovery of you, I’ve found a way to bring you into this loop. It has to be you because you are going to be stuck starting the loop the day we met. I haven’t known anyone else here longer than six months, which, while it might be enough time to alter the future, I think two and half decades is better than six months.” Andy rattled off.
“Great, so you’re insane, though I guess I can’t blame you considering the aliens.” Cal angrily stated.
“My level of sanity has no real bearing on the truth I just told you. I understand that you won’t believe me until you experience it. So, just remember, I’m researching gravitons and their interactions with an ore discovered in the mines under McCarthy, Alaska, two years ago. Try to keep track of my younger self after you meet and do your best to convince him that this is the truth, all of it, and maybe he can figure a way out of this. See you next loop,” Andy finished in a shout as the room began rattling.
Cal tried to speak, but everything just went white.