time loop -- Anon Guest
[AN: Link leads to a looping video featuring temporal paradox. Very clever editing]
"Drink to become... something... immortal," read Thygrun the Powerful. He didn't need to think, he popped the cork and raised it to his lips.
"Don't take it," warned Thygrun the Powerful, yelling at him from across the room. "You'll regret it forever!"
Thygrun had taken one sip already. "What? Are you meant to be me?"
"Yes! The potion doesn't create eternal life. It creates a loop of time that will have you going around in circles. It's taken me too long to learn this! You have to believe me! I've been a hundred years trying to break this curse."
"Immortality means a curse will never land," said Thygrun, and downed the rest. The world around him spun, twisted, warped... His body twisted and warped, taken far away to a place unknown, with three other Thygruns, each of them looked up from... studies.
One of them swore. "Youngest, you're teaching the new youngest how to read properly."
One of the other Thygruns moaned. "It's going to take a solid decade just to convince me. I hate being this obstinate."
"We learn to be better," said the apparent leader. "To be brief, even though you won't believe you, you are in a timeless palace and you have a hundred years to work on and with yourself to try and break the eternal loop. In a few hours, my time will be up and I have to try and warn the next iteration to attempt to break the loop."
"What happens to the last me who tried to break the loop?" asked Thygrun.
"That would be me," said Thygrun, behind him. "The potion, when imbibed, takes you back to the start. All of you. Pros, there's more of us to work on the problem."
"And the bad news?" said the Thygrun who still held the potion.
"You can't stand you." The last one through joined the conference table, "I failed. Obviously. What other words can convince me?"
"We already know that explaining what 'effectively' means doesn't work," said a Thygrun.
It wouldn't take a decade for Thygrun to learn that Hell is not other people. Hell is an infinite iteration of yourself. Viewing every single flaw in oneself from the inside and the outside all at once. Forever.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / badmanproduction]
If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me. Or share them with your friends!
Send me a prompt [52 remaining prompts!]
