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I believe I can see the future
'Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again, that might have been a dream
Elias Halberstram stirred gently. What was that? Music? Oh, it must be his alarm. He gently moved his pillow to get his phone out from under it. 6:30 AM, it said.
Then it all came back to him.
He sat on the edge of his bed for a long time that morning. What was he going to do about this? None of his usual methods of problem solving even came close to reaching his problem. Who would he talk to? He can't escalate a summons or submit an inquiry to a faceless shadow organization who have him trapped in a simulation, and he can't use an equation to… and then he started laughing. These dumb fucks. These absolute MORONS. They put the LEADING EXPERT on escaping extradimensional spaces… into a presumably extradimensional space… and they tried to keep him locked up there? Well, then again, 'leading expert' is probably a bit of a stretch. There was the patented Halberstram self-doubt again.
"Elias… people don't work with their brains; they work with their hands."
The boy looked down at his exam scores. He thought they'd have been proud of him; he thought they'd be happy…
"I know, Dad, but-"
"No buts. What do we do in the Halberstram family?"
"You're a locksmith."
He held a finger up. "Nuh uh. We are locksmiths. I'm a locksmith, your grandfather was a locksmith, and HIS father was a locksmith. And someday you're going to be a locksmith too, when you graduate high school. Because every time a Halberstram decides they're too good to work with their hands-"
"Dad, I know! Uncle Levi-"
"Your Uncle Levi was a scam artist, Elias. He thought he was so smart, with his degree, and look what happened to him. Federal prison. You don't need all that." Elias sniffled. He turned to walk away, but his father put a hand on his shoulder. "Look, son. All I'm saying is that bupkis about 'getting a degree' to get ahead in life is malarkey. I know my boy is smart; you give me enough lip to prove that. I'm proud of your work here, really."
"Really?" he asked, locking hopeful eyes with his father.
"Really." Elias's father leaned down to hug his son. "But I'm gonna start you the day you turn eighteen, wise guy."
"Dad! I just said-"
He held a hand up. "I know what you just said! You wanna go to stupid prick school to get a paper that says you're a brainiac. Problem is, stupid prick schools are a lot like your Uncle Levi. They'll nickel and dime you. I don't see you putting away any cash right now, and your mother's sewing is worth jack squat."
"Daniel!" shouted Elias's mother from the adjoining room.
"Esther, don't you get smart with me! My pants came apart at synagogue this morning." He held up a finger as if he was waiting for a response, but none came. "If we get you in on the operation, the business can take almost twice as much work."
"Almost twice?"
"Well, we get a lot of pervs. I'm not sending them to you."
Elias put his face in his hands while his father chuckled. "Daaaad!"
"We'll make twice the money, and we'll get you squared away. Plus, if it doesn't work out, you got a skillbase to fall back on. You with me?"
"Yeah…"
"Come on, don't give me that. I don't hear any other offers to get you into school. No 'full-ride scholarships' for 3.9 GPAs. Now gimme a hug."
He squeezed his dad tightly. "Thanks, Dad…"
"That's my boy. Now don't you go and get smart with me again, alright?"
Of course, the first thing he did when he went to college was 'get smart with Dad'. A degree in theoretical physics with a specialization in dimensional access was a fancy piece of paper for "wormhole locksmith". When he explained that, his father's strained expression told him everything he needed to know.
So, what was the game plan? He could start drafting equations… but none of them were practical. For starters, he was a theoretical physicist, not an applied physicist. Plus, there was nothing to suggest that the physical laws of this place even matched established information from back home. He would have to craft an entirely new base of knowledge on this place. A base of knowledge he would have to cultivate by using the resources at…
"Shit!" He glanced over at his phone, and it was already 6:45. He'd spent 15 minutes sitting there contemplating his situation that he hadn't even thought of what would happen if he didn't make it to school on time. Showering was out of the question. It was time to eat a half frozen breakfast sandwich on the bus.
He looked around himself at the other passengers, frightened out of his own mind. Eyes darting frantically from person to person, he must have looked schizophrenic, or high, or maybe both. He was glad he'd started this loop on a good night: if he'd been drinking the evening before, this looping situation would have been even more hellish than it was already. Or did he even have control in such a way? Did the people who kept him here engineer that? Did they let him run for a while before looping him? In either situation, what was the purpose? Or was there one at all? Perhaps he was here on accident, or he was some small component of the loop. An oversight that no one noticed. That seemed like the most reasonable assumption, after all. Why would someone want him in particular? He wasn't special or anything, he just-
"Dude!" Elias was shocked back to reality. The guy he'd accidentally bumped on the way onto the bus was grabbing him by the jacket, pulling him out of his seat. "Are you okay? You don't look so good."
Professor Halberstram looked around. Everyone else on the bus was staring at him. "Uh, yeah. No, I'm okay."
"This is your stop, you always get off here man. Do you need anything?"
He looked up at the electronic sign mounted above the driver. It read 'COMMUNITY COLLEGE'. "N-no, I'm fine. Thank you." Just like that, he was off the bus and into work.
His stomach rumbled as he made his way to his office, a small corner room with a view of the college zen garden that might have been considered premium spacing, except for the water drip in the corner and the extra filing cabinets that had been pressed into the free corners where there was no room for them elsewhere. He dropped his bag on his tiny, cramped desk, and sank into his old, comfortable chair. Fingers ran through what he still had of his hair, which was almost certain to start going even faster due to present circumstances. He pulled open the bottom drawer, the stiff one he almost never opened, and drew out the bottle of single barrel, small batch, cask bonded whiskey from his drawer. He looked at it for a second, thinking about it.
The top was still sealed, and he'd bought it shortly after moving into this office. It was a pit when he moved in, and although he took pride in it, it was always going to be. Nobody cared about this room, and nobody cared about who was inside. So he'd bought this as a promise to himself. When he finally got out of this office, he'd crack the cork and toast to moving up in the world. Except he wasn't ever getting out of this office, not really. He'd never get out of this college, never get out of that tiny little 1-bed 1-bath.
He'd never get out of this day at all.
"AAAAAUGH!"
Elias pitched the bottle across the room, where it smashed against a spare chalkboard, soaking the carpet in booze. He walked over, put his head to the board, and reeled back, smacking his forehead into it. Once, twice, three times. Harder and harder, until his head was spinning and he fell to his knees, cutting them on the shards of the bottle. He kept his grip on the board as he came down, and it spun around to it's backside. As his vision cleared, he looked up at the board, chalk clattering to the floor where it had been flung, still dripping with alcohol.
The back side of the board was covered with old equations Elias had been working on, nearly a year old at this point. He swallowed, standing up with chalk in his hand. He shook his head, working away the last of the fuzzy vision, and placed chalk to board.
He had work to do.
The alarm on his phone went off, and Elias blinked. He stepped away from the board, where he'd marked down any and all assumptions he could make about this place. Absentmindedly, he looked over at the phone. 1 PM; 5 minute warning for his class.
" Shiiiiiit… "
Elias brushed glass off his knees, grabbed his bag, and ran out the door to his class. It didn't take too long, it was on the same floor and in the adjacent building, but there were already students there waiting for him when he arrived. He unlocked the door, muttering a 'welcome, class' as he entered and got his laptop set up on the desk. He hadn't prepared anything for class today, but he had a backlog of solutions for this. Any time he'd had too much the night before, he had a few choice episodes of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil DeGrasse Tyson to throw on and a matching questionnaire to go with it. Elias despised DeGrasse Tyson for his flippant disregard for the true scientific process and his generalized conclusions about the nature of extradimensional spaces, but it was a familiar face to his students and he had to keep them engaged somehow. A more educational documentary might leave them bored enough to discover he has a hangover.
"Alright class, we're going to be doing a documentary questionnaire today…" he said, a collective groan quietly eking out from the audience. A hand shot up from the audience. "Yes, Mark?"
"Can I take one of those to go? I have to… study, for a test in another class, and I can watch this documentary later." He looked to Elias like he was going to pee himself or something.
"Uhhh… yeah. I'll just mark everyone as having attended today. If you'd like to stay, I encourage you to ask questions at the end, but if you need to go, the link to the video is going to be up on the Canvas, so…" he began, but several students all stood up at the same time in the middle of his sentence. "Take care, folks. Here's a sheet. Have a good one. Thank you." He handed each person leaving a pamphlet. There were only a few people left in the entire class now. Good, he had less suspicion on him. He would need to work through this period.
"Hey, teacher! I got a question." The voice came from the back of the class.
"Yes, Mister…"
"Joey? Joey Q?"
Elias's eyes widened. "See me outside, now." He pressed play on the documentary and watched the blond-haired kid walk down the stairs to the door, grinning at him. He threw finger guns up as the door closed, and Elias met him outside shortly afterwards.
"What are you doing here? You can't be in my class."
"I can't be? But I just was." A very cheeky grin.
"You know exactly what I mean by that. Why are you back?"
He scoffs. "Way to sound grateful, 'teach'. By the way, great cover. You're really selling it with the documentary."
"This isn't… I am a professor! It's not a cover story."
"Keep telling yourself that. Anyways, I got good news and bad news."
"What do you mean 'good news and bad news'? Is there a way for me to get out?"
"No. That's the bad news. What they're doing to you… it's unique to this zone. It's not something I've seen elsewhere, so I've fuck all on how to get you out of it. In fact, it might not even end up being a 'coding' problem at all."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, most things in this shithole are a function, controlled by the coders. The time reset, that's a function. It can be bypassed. The memory dumping, a function. But that boot… it's no function. It's built into the simulation."
"Which means?"
"Which means, 'professor', that this place was designed around you, fundamentally. So to get out, you're going to have to shut the entire thing down. It should just dump you out. More than likely. Probably."
"Probably!?"
"Yeah, probably. Stop beating me up about this, I don't know jack shit about this place."
"Bullshit, you don't. You're the one getting in and out. I don't see anyone else doing that."
"Dude, I'm like… a generalist. I just fuck around most of the time, okay? This is a bigger situation than I've ever been involved with."
There are a couple seconds of silence while Elias folds his arms and leans against the wall.
"So why are you involved? I thought you said the…"
"The Coders."
"Right, the Coders. Aren't they after you or something?"
"Yeah, they're always doing that. They take everything way too seriously. You build a giant immovable statue of a dick in the middle of their headquarters one time and suddenly you're their mortal enemy. Helping you isn't going to change that, and are they really going to look for me in one of their simulations? At least, as long as I'm not here when they are, and they're not here often."
"No?"
"God, no. They've got like… a dozen of these things running, at least. I suspect there's ones I haven't been to yet. They're very interesting, very divergent from what we usually see."
"Uh huh."
"We're talking about planned architecture, intelligent design. I mean you look at the greater Backrooms, and although you can kind of put a feeling on it, there's no coherence. Everything just kind of happens. But then you look at the simulations that the Coders are running, and they all have a mark to them that makes it clear that someone's doing this on purpose."
"Uh huh, uh huh." He checks his watch.
"They've got rigid rules, boundaries… it's honestly something I kind of miss from my time in the Frontrooms. This place reminds me of my campus. It's really eerie actually, because…"
Elias stares at him.
"Right. Sorry. Uh, the good news."
"Yes?"
"So that thing I did with your memory."
"The thing about the cache."
"That's the one. I didn't like… invent that on the spot."
"No?"
"No. I just repurposed existing code. Found it in the database. It's already being applied elsewhere."
"Who?"
"Not who. What." Joey points into the classroom through the window on the door, at Elias's desk.
"My laptop."
"Yes."
"The laptop I use for work."
"Every day."
"The one that has today's date on it."
"That's the one. It has today's date because it looks for a backup reference through Wi-Fi. It's been remembering every other loop."
"Why would it be set up that way?"
"I don't know. I just took the concept and applied it to all humans in this simulation."
"All humans? But wait…"
"Yeah. Remember how you were completely alone the other day? These are programs. Routines designed to fool you. The break day was to decrease stress on the system; it took out all the simulations that usually run. The bus, the town, the school. All of it."
Elias leans against the wall, undoing his tie a little. "So what, they're just not… real? What does it matter then? Couldn't I just… not show up?"
"Maybe. Or maybe they're all set up to monitor you." Elias thought back to the bus today, when that man had checked on him. He hadn't seen him in his life. How did he know who Elias was, and that he got off there every day? It was starting to crash down all around him. "That means that anyone we see is potentially a coder. Inside the simulation, they are everyone, and they are no one."
Elias snapped back to reality. "That's the Matrix. Morpheus said that. You stole that from the Matrix."
"Hey pal, look around. The Coders stole the premise first. You gotta ask them why."
"Why me?"
"Exactly. They put you in here. Why?" It sounded like a very leading question.
"You think you already know."
"Look at what you're doing, every day. You get up, you go to school, you come home, and then…"
"And then I work on the computer."
"You work on the computer. And you work on what?"
"Escaping extradimensional spaces…"
"And we're in an extradimensional space right now."
"Oh my god."
"The only thing not looping is your progress on that computer. And I know they've backdoored it; they have access to all your files. They're trying to figure out a way out, and they're using you to do it."
Elias sinks to the floor, back sliding against the wall until he sits on the cold linoleum of the hallway. He puts his head in his hands, and Joey kneels down beside him. "What are we gonna do?"
"I dunno about we, pal. I mean, I'm a lot more invested in this now that I think I know what's going on, that's for sure. But… I don't think I can get you out of this. Or even help that much."
"Fat lot of…" Elias starts. He was going to follow it up with 'help, you are,' but that wasn't fair. This kid was the only reason he was aware of anything going on at all. "Listen… you think of anything at all that could help… let me know? I don't have anyone else to depend on."
"Ugh, I hate this. Not you, but… obligations are dumb as hell. I don't like people depending on me; it's the whole reason I'm in here. I don't do stuff like this."
"Look, I get it. I wouldn't ask if I had another option. But…"
Joey holds both hands up, shaking them and his head. "Get back to class. I'm getting out of here before someone logs on."
"Right." Elias kind of stares at him for a moment. Should he shake his hand, or… fist bump? How is he supposed to end this conversation?
"Take it sleazy, P-Dawg." Joey gives him double finger guns before walking backwards into the wall. He puts his butt against a receptacle for a fire extinguisher and starts rubbing it back and forth vigorously. Elias's stare continues, eyes widening slowly. "No, this… it just kinda works if I-" Joey starts, before fading from existence slowly.
A few slow blinks from Elias, and he steps back into the room. He sees that the credits are rolling on the documentary, and the students are already getting up. "Okay folks, that's going to be the end of the class today. Hopefully we all enjoyed the day off, because tomorrow we're getting right into Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle." Yeah, right. No one would remember this class tomorrow.
One of his students approached as they were leaving. "Mr. Halberstram, I didn't really get a couple of things, so I just went with my best answer. Do you think you could… help me with them after class?"
He stared at Danielle, hoping she wasn't insinuating what he thought she was, especially over a 10 point paper. "Ms. Whitman, the pamphlet isn't graded. As long as you answer the question, whether you're right or wrong, you'll get full marks."
"Oh. Okay then. See you tomorrow!" Maybe she was just dumb then. Good. He didn't need the added stress of academic probation on his list right now. Then again… it wasn't in his interest to actually act on something like that, but it wasn't as if it mattered that much if he did. Nobody here was real, and the simulation reset every day. What other things could he do if the simulation really was a loop?
"This is some kind of trick." The TV croaked it out, but Elias could barely make it out. He raised the volume with his remote while eating cereal with his other hand.
"Yes, it's a trick. But maybe the real God cheats, too. Maybe God isn't omnipotent— he's just had a lot of practice," said Bill Murray.
It seemed as good a movie to watch given the circumstances, especially since he'd never even actually seen Groundhog's Day before. There were a lot of things he'd always put off doing. 'I'll get around to it later,' he told himself. Now he had later for the rest of his life. He eyed the computer he'd copied todays work into, hit Ctrl+S, and shut the lid. It was time to kick back.
I believe I can see the future
'Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a-
Slide, click. Phone alarm off. He tossed it across the room into his open briefcase; he knew where it was every morning by now. He leisurely took a few steps into the bathroom, dropping his clothes on the floor. No point in putting them in the laundry basket if he'd just wake up in them tomorrow. Shower, shave, shit, and a breakfast sandwich got him to the bus stop 5 minutes earlier than he usually was. He finished the meal and tossed the wrapper on the ground. Usually that litter would get swept away in the rain, end up in the ocean, and contribute to the garbage island the size of the UK. Instead it would be deleted from reality and reappear wrapped around a new sandwich in his freezer tomorrow. Elias smiled as the bus pulled up, happy about his life for the first time in a long time.
"Alright class, we're going to be doing a documentary questionnaire today…" said Elias, staring down at his laptop, a collective groan quietly eking out from the audience. A hand shot up from the audience. "Yes, Mark?" Elias mumbled, not even looking up to see who'd raised it.
"Oh… uh, can I take one of those to go? I have to… study, for a test in another class. I can watch this documentary later." Professor Halberstram simply waved him out. Several other students joined him, getting up and leaving. He moved over to the right web page and put the episode up on the screen.
"Oh, no Professor. We just saw this one." Elias snapped to attention.
"… what?"
Danielle Whitman looked confused. "Yeah, you put it on yesterday. Then you went out to talk to that blond kid I've never seen here before. Are you okay?"
"I-… yeah. I'm… supposed to put on the next one." He squinted at her. How could she possibly-
ATTENTION STUDENTS AND FACULTY: THIS IS NOT A DRILL. PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. ATTENTION STUDENTS AND FACULTY. THIS IS NOT-
The alert made everyone in the room shoot up in their seats. Each student began quickly grabbing their bags and making for the door. Elias had no idea what to do. Was there really a drill? Something he'd done must have altered the time stream. Or he'd broken the loop. Danielle knew he'd shown that video yesterday, he'd done something very, very wrong. He snapped back to attention as the last of his class exited, and he got up to follow them. Right as he neared the door, however, it opened inward and two gentlemen stepped in. They wore matching black suits, and one pulled out a badge.
"Professor Elias Halberstram?"
Elias took a step back. "Uh, yeah?"
"Good. There's been a bomb threat called to this classroom, I'm Agent Morrison and this is Agent Kirkbride. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
His eyes darted around the classroom. Agent Kirkbride pulled out a device and started fiddling with it, while Morrison procured a document from his breast pocket. He showed Elias. "Have you seen this man?"
It was a photo of Joey, while he walked up some steps.
Halberstram gulped. "Never."
The agent put the photo away. "We have reason to believe he might be attempting an act of terror. Witnesses place him in your classroom yesterday."
The second agent pointed the device at Elias, running it down the length of his body, giving a chirp sound when he's done. He shows the display to Morrison. "Sir." Both agents look Elias dead in the eyes, and he makes a split second decision.
"Oh, Joey? He's over there," he says, pointing to the back of the classroom. As both Agents turn to look, he steps between them, out the door, and slams it behind them. They shoulder check the door as it shuts, but it's a pull door from their side. Elias puts his key in the door, locking it from the outside. The college, being the idiots they were, chose a Master Lock door hardware, a Tulip Style Bed and Bath Door Knob. It wasn't up to code, but it was cheap. Cheap enough to break and not let people unlock the door from the inside. He'd had to pick his way back out of the room after janitors had locked him in at night before, but he'd never replaced it because it wasn't a hassle for an expert.
He turned away from the window to the room and smiled. Under his breath, he whispered "Thanks, Dad."
It only took him a minute to get to the parking lot. There was a student sitting against his convertible's hood, chatting on his phone with his keys in his hand. "So yeah, I told him I'm not doing that, like who does he think he is? You're just my boss, you don't get to tell me when I come into work." Elias Halberstram bodychecked him, picking up his keys and hopping into the front seat.
"Sorry pal." He peeled out of the parking lot, leaving tire treads inbetween speed bumps.
"Hey, that's my fucking car! Asshole!"
He weaved through traffic, making his way home. It was a futile effort, really. He only had one chance. If those men really were Coders in disguise, he had to find a way to get his message across the loop when they found out about his freedom from the cache dump. Stupidly, he'd left his laptop in the classroom, and there was no way he could use that now. He raced up the stairs of his apartment, dropping his keys on the ground in his panic. Once he finally got them in the door and shut it, he heard the cars pulling up outside. It was over. He hurriedly locked the door and sprinted into the bedroom, locking that one, and into his bathroom, locking a third door.
Locking the doors in your house was supposed to make you feel safe, secure… but Elias had never felt more trapped in his life. It was over. They were going to wipe him, and there was nothing he could do. He'd be put back in the loop for god knows how long, and there wasn't a goddamn thing that could stop it. He looked at himself in the mirror for the last time, panting hard, fogging up the glass.
Wait.
The Agents bodychecked the bathroom door for the fifth time, finally taking it off its hinges. They found Elias sitting there on the toilet, laughing.
"Go ahead. Put me back in. It doesn't matter, I've already-"
That was all he could get out as he saw the flash of the muzzle and everything went black.
I believe I can see the future
'Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again, that might have been a dream
Elias fumbled for the phone on his bedside table to turn his 6:30 AM alarm off. He awoke to that stupid Nine Inch Nails song every morning, ever since he got his own dorm back at university years ago. He'd meant to change that stupid alarm tone a year ago, but he never got around to it. It was just part of the schedule now.
He rose from his bed, and walked to the bathroom to shower. He toweled off, ready to leave, but writing caught his eye. Elias looked over to the mirror, steam outlined words written on the glass.
YOU HAVE TO GET OUT, BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
Hmm. Weird prank. Did he leave that for himself drunk? Didn't matter too much.
Elias Halberstram went downstairs to fix himself a breakfast sandwich and a thermos of coffee.