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We Live the Same Day Over and Over

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Literally. October 23rd, 2018. The day starts at 6.00 AM PST. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world. The day goes for 16 hours, and then you fall asleep. When you wake up, everything is reset. Everything except your memory. Everyone gets to keep that.

For the first few weeks (can you count weeks though, when it’s the same day?) everyone was confused. Nobody could figure out what was going on. Most people didn’t think it was real. Then came the various theories. God was punishing us, of course! Then people moved on to other things. Everything from aliens to global warming to changes in the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies was blamed.

Scientists from all over the world worked hard trying to figure it out. But I guess it’s difficult to continue your work when everything keeps getting reset every 16 hours (including things written on paper or saved on disks). There are only so many complicated mathematical solutions one can memorize, I guess.

Some people started to live a hedonistic life, knowing that there is no tomorrow and therefore no consequences. Some people went the other way and killed themselves, only to be restored to life at 6 AM PST (they had no memory of the time they spent dead).

Eventually even the scientists stopped trying, or trying to keep track of the number of “todays”. People adapted and tried to make some sort of life with the idea of no tomorrow (and the virtual immortality that came with it). This worked out well for some people (especially the rich), and not so well for others. It was worst with people like me, who were “dying” before the loop began.

I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, and given two weeks to live. The pain is unbearable at times, and the analgesics don’t help that much. Most of the patients in my wing, and I’m sure millions of others with similar conditions, live in constant agony, with no hope of a cure or death to take away the pain. But I try to look at it more positively. Some kind of life is better than none, I think.

“Lights out!” says nurse Nooks (it must be 9.55 PM). She is one of the few people who still comes to work everyday to take care of people like me. Such an angel.

Some kind of life is better than none, I think again, as I wind the strange golden clock the mysterious woman gave me yesterday, and set the hands to 6 AM.

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