The Loop
Shaar slowly became more and more aware of herself. "What's happening?" she thought as a wave of unease flowed through her mind just as she realized she had arms and legs. Her mind was so sluggish. Like trying to run in a dense gravity field.
Shaar tried to move, but couldn't quite remember how to make a limb respond, or why she should. This whole experience was starting to feel familiar which was comforting. "It'll be all right," she thought. "I'll figure this out in a moment or two." If only she could remember where or who she was. Then it all came back with a flash and she screamed.
As the scream died in her throat and her mind climbed back into sanity, Shaar once more evaluated her situation and options. She had lived this same deja vu so many times. Fear filled, thoughts of insanity again flashed through her mind and were gone. Furiously, she fought for control and immediate action. Her hands scrambled for the computer console as plans and actions found order and demands in her mind.
The time loop reconstituted her body and ship to exactly what and where it was when she began the test. Her memory alone continued in linear time, each rerun starting where the last one had completed. No matter how many physical records she made during a loop they were all gone when the next one started. Computer memory, log book, note pads, camera images, voice recordings, even computer programs all returned to the precise condition they were in when she first reached the point of no escape. The only thing that did not return to the start was her memory. Each loop lasted precisely two hours, thirteen minutes and eleven point nine seconds, the exact time it first took her ship to go from the point of no escape to the event horizon of the black hole.
By this time she knew the drill precisely. She would be mentally alert until about thirty seconds before the end. During those thirty seconds her senses would grow duller and her mind would “fuzz” out until she lost all mental faculties. She became a consciousness with no input, no memory and no senses - a mental black hole. The reverse of the process at the start of the next loop brought on a massive surge of unbelievable fear as her senses and memory returned. Each time her hands whitened as the surge of fear closed her grip on the console a bit harder. Immortality in an unending cycle of a bit more than two hours at a time promised a maddening future. She often thought of suicide, but feared the outcome when she would be reconstituted in the next cycle.
Incredibly it was not the same experience each time, just the same point of restart. She tried countless strategies to break out of the loop using the main jump drives in every conceivable configuration. Frustration gripped her a bit more at each failure. It was doubly frustrating to realize that no matter how much power she used, the fuel charge was always back to 89% when a new loop began. She wondered if she was really cycling in universal time and if each new start was actually the same as the last. If so, how could her memory be linear? Her mind crawled with question of how and why she could remember clearly actions she took twenty, fifty or several hundred loops previous?
She tried sleeping once, but it had been an emotional disaster of thinking just why her memory continued for all of the two hundred and seventy-four time circles since the first. Shaar decided she didn’t need sleep, being in effect rejuvenated every few hours.
She thought about Kiaho and their daughter Minia’i and cried. Shaar volunteering for this dangerous mission was her response to the pain of their tragic deaths. She was given a fifty-fifty chance of survival by the engineers and physicists who designed this entire program to further black hole research. Theoretically, she was to “sling shot” around the black hole right at the point of no escape and be able to make it back. Things do not always go as planned and in the few minutes it was supposed to take the ship to “slingshot” around the black hole while avoiding the event horizon, disaster took control. Unexpected forces overwhelmed everything she did to hold the carefully calculated trajectory. Instead, she spiraled from the point of no return and into the event horizon in an almost infinite number of circumnavigations, each one a bit faster than the last. The hopelessness of her efforts in this gravity maelstrom ate at her mental control as she spiraled in to what she knew would be her doom. The first recycle started a growing mix of wonder, incredulity, frustration, fear and a thousand other emotional blasts which, by this time, ricocheted through her brain creating stabs of pain at each impact.
At the current moment she fought for mind control to train herself in setting up the computer to search for a way to break the loop. Each time she managed to be a bit faster, to get a bit farther. Infinitesimal hope grew and overpowered the demons of failure that dogged her as she drove her mind faster and faster. Maybe this next time she would succeed. Hope was all she had along with a generous dose of determination and grit. Holding all this information in her memory and planning for the next rerun was all she could do. She was learning and gaining, but the damning fear of impossibility clawed at her vitals.
She was now working at a frenetic pace, knowing the end of the current loop would soon engulf her in the unknown. Mostly, she was memorizing what she was doing so her effort would go faster and farther next time. Still, fear stalked her every step, no matter how she tried to empty it from her mind. The gnawing fear of being caught in this loop forever was a very real terror hiding just below the surface, ready to engulf her. She would prefer death, but even that might prove impossible.
Thoughts of what she might find if ever she broke out of the loop also plagued her. Would her world still exist? Maybe she would come out in a distant time and place. Even the death that type of scenario ensured would be preferable to living forever in an infinite time trap.
She was slowly making headway with her programming and training. If she could time a strong blast from the main control thrusters. close to the start of the loop, maybe it would move the ship far enough out from the event horizon that the main jump drive would work into the originally planned trajectory. Unfortunately, She would have to complete the entire sequence very close to the beginning of a loop. This meant coming out of that state of bare consciousness quick enough to enter the program from memory and execute it within the first minute or so. Each time she missed, she spent the two plus hours driving herself, training her mind and body to enter the program quickly without mistakes. She was desperately practicing entering the program when a slight fuzziness heralded the end of the current loop. Shaar wasn’t ready for that yet. “Damn!” she cursed, quickly faded into nothingness and became a bare consciousness once more.
Shaar slowly became more and more aware of herself. "What's happening?" she thought as a wave of unease flowed through her mind just as she realized she had arms and legs. Her mind was so sluggish. Like trying to run in a dense gravity field.
Shaar tried to move, but couldn't quite remember how to make a limb respond, or why she should. This whole experience was starting to feel familiar which was comforting. "It'll be all right," she thought. "I'll figure this out in a moment or two." If only she could remember where or who she was. Then it all came back with a flash and she screamed.
____________________________________
Shaar tried to move, but couldn't quite remember how to make a limb respond, or why she should. This whole experience was starting to feel familiar which was comforting. "It'll be all right," she thought. "I'll figure this out in a moment or two." If only she could remember where or who she was. Then it all came back with a flash and she screamed.
As the scream died in her throat and her mind climbed back into sanity, Shaar once more evaluated her situation and options. She had lived this same deja vu so many times. Fear filled, thoughts of insanity again flashed through her mind and were gone. Furiously, she fought for control and immediate action. Her hands scrambled for the computer console as plans and actions found order and demands in her mind.
The time loop reconstituted her body and ship to exactly what and where it was when she began the test. Her memory alone continued in linear time, each rerun starting where the last one had completed. No matter how many physical records she made during a loop they were all gone when the next one started. Computer memory, log book, note pads, camera images, voice recordings, even computer programs all returned to the precise condition they were in when she first reached the point of no escape. The only thing that did not return to the start was her memory. Each loop lasted precisely two hours, thirteen minutes and eleven point nine seconds, the exact time it first took her ship to go from the point of no escape to the event horizon of the black hole.
By this time she knew the drill precisely. She would be mentally alert until about thirty seconds before the end. During those thirty seconds her senses would grow duller and her mind would “fuzz” out until she lost all mental faculties. She became a consciousness with no input, no memory and no senses - a mental black hole. The reverse of the process at the start of the next loop brought on a massive surge of unbelievable fear as her senses and memory returned. Each time her hands whitened as the surge of fear closed her grip on the console a bit harder. Immortality in an unending cycle of a bit more than two hours at a time promised a maddening future. She often thought of suicide, but feared the outcome when she would be reconstituted in the next cycle.
Incredibly it was not the same experience each time, just the same point of restart. She tried countless strategies to break out of the loop using the main jump drives in every conceivable configuration. Frustration gripped her a bit more at each failure. It was doubly frustrating to realize that no matter how much power she used, the fuel charge was always back to 89% when a new loop began. She wondered if she was really cycling in universal time and if each new start was actually the same as the last. If so, how could her memory be linear? Her mind crawled with question of how and why she could remember clearly actions she took twenty, fifty or several hundred loops previous?
She tried sleeping once, but it had been an emotional disaster of thinking just why her memory continued for all of the two hundred and seventy-four time circles since the first. Shaar decided she didn’t need sleep, being in effect rejuvenated every few hours.
She thought about Kiaho and their daughter Minia’i and cried. Shaar volunteering for this dangerous mission was her response to the pain of their tragic deaths. She was given a fifty-fifty chance of survival by the engineers and physicists who designed this entire program to further black hole research. Theoretically, she was to “sling shot” around the black hole right at the point of no escape and be able to make it back. Things do not always go as planned and in the few minutes it was supposed to take the ship to “slingshot” around the black hole while avoiding the event horizon, disaster took control. Unexpected forces overwhelmed everything she did to hold the carefully calculated trajectory. Instead, she spiraled from the point of no return and into the event horizon in an almost infinite number of circumnavigations, each one a bit faster than the last. The hopelessness of her efforts in this gravity maelstrom ate at her mental control as she spiraled in to what she knew would be her doom. The first recycle started a growing mix of wonder, incredulity, frustration, fear and a thousand other emotional blasts which, by this time, ricocheted through her brain creating stabs of pain at each impact.
At the current moment she fought for mind control to train herself in setting up the computer to search for a way to break the loop. Each time she managed to be a bit faster, to get a bit farther. Infinitesimal hope grew and overpowered the demons of failure that dogged her as she drove her mind faster and faster. Maybe this next time she would succeed. Hope was all she had along with a generous dose of determination and grit. Holding all this information in her memory and planning for the next rerun was all she could do. She was learning and gaining, but the damning fear of impossibility clawed at her vitals.
She was now working at a frenetic pace, knowing the end of the current loop would soon engulf her in the unknown. Mostly, she was memorizing what she was doing so her effort would go faster and farther next time. Still, fear stalked her every step, no matter how she tried to empty it from her mind. The gnawing fear of being caught in this loop forever was a very real terror hiding just below the surface, ready to engulf her. She would prefer death, but even that might prove impossible.
Thoughts of what she might find if ever she broke out of the loop also plagued her. Would her world still exist? Maybe she would come out in a distant time and place. Even the death that type of scenario ensured would be preferable to living forever in an infinite time trap.
She was slowly making headway with her programming and training. If she could time a strong blast from the main control thrusters. close to the start of the loop, maybe it would move the ship far enough out from the event horizon that the main jump drive would work into the originally planned trajectory. Unfortunately, She would have to complete the entire sequence very close to the beginning of a loop. This meant coming out of that state of bare consciousness quick enough to enter the program from memory and execute it within the first minute or so. Each time she missed, she spent the two plus hours driving herself, training her mind and body to enter the program quickly without mistakes. She was desperately practicing entering the program when a slight fuzziness heralded the end of the current loop. Shaar wasn’t ready for that yet. “Damn!” she cursed, quickly faded into nothingness and became a bare consciousness once more.
Shaar slowly became more and more aware of herself. "What's happening?" she thought as a wave of unease flowed through her mind just as she realized she had arms and legs. Her mind was so sluggish. Like trying to run in a dense gravity field.
Shaar tried to move, but couldn't quite remember how to make a limb respond, or why she should. This whole experience was starting to feel familiar which was comforting. "It'll be all right," she thought. "I'll figure this out in a moment or two." If only she could remember where or who she was. Then it all came back with a flash and she screamed.
____________________________________
Labels: Written: 1/19/07
posted by HoJo | 12:34 PM
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