Save Point

I open my eyes and see the closing gate of the alien spaceship. It’s the typical design from bad SF movies: a saucer hull, gray paint. The aliens themselves are gray. The gate is only ten meters away — so near and yet so far. I’ve lost count of how often I’ve tried to reach it, how often I’ve stood beneath the departing saucer, screaming at it to come back. No reaction.

This time I do nothing, just watch the ship take off until it is only a point and then vanishes completely into the night sky. I know this sky: I remember every star, every flicker in the darkness. The changes in it are too small; only over time will they accumulate. I will see how things will fare this time.

I have many theories about what happens; there are only a few facts.

The aliens fulfilled my wish. They embedded a small device into my head and told me that, once activated, it would be my Save Point. I’d always wanted to go back whenever something went wrong with my life, and fix it. What they didn’t tell me was that death was included among things that could go wrong. Whenever I die, my consciousness is sent back to this time. And that includes death by old age. I can die, but then I wake up: same time, same place, same old body.

When I have waited long enough, I go back to the street. I know I can get to the next town in only three hours. I’ve taken this path often enough. When I reach the street, I find the ruins of my car.

I had seen E. T., and he looked similar enough, gray and small and helpless. So I helped him. A signal, he told me, just a small signal: if I gave him that, a wish would be fulfilled.

I can also activate the device through thought. At first I used it as often as possible, whenever I thought something had gone irreversibly wrong with my life , I jumped back. I don’t do that any more. I live every life until I die. I also have long since lost count of how often I’ve done this, of how often I’ve come back. It isn’t important.

Sometime I wonder whether I’m imprisoned in a universe of my own, whether it’s only my personal time line that’s looping around the Save Point and all of my deaths. Maybe all the other people in the external universe have gone on, and only I’m held back.

I wonder what happened to the real me in that external universe. Do I still exist in it? Or did I die my first death and was then transported into this personal universe that’s bounded by the Save Point and death?

Or am I completely wrong and is this the real universe, and whenever I die I push the restore button, to activate a save state of the universe at the time of the Save Point? I do wonder but have no way of knowing.

Once I had the idea that maybe I would get information when I could examine the device in my head. Three times I tried it. It always ended with my death; the device was too connected to my brain for me to live on without it. One time, some Men in Black jumped me and killed me while trying to get it.

And so I live. Live and die and live again

I’ve never won in Lotto. It’s strange, but no life is like the other; nothing happens quite the same. It’s as if, when my mind is sent back, all the randomness counters of nature are reset. The Lotto numbers are always different, and so are thousands of other small things. Especially small and tiny details are different. But other things are easier to use to make money, like the stock market. On the macro scale, history always looks the same.

But people’s lives are in the details; the macro scale matters only to historians. That’s why I haven’t gone mad: there’s always enough difference to make me go on, try new things, see how events play out a different way.

But I would lie if I said that I’m content. If I were, would I try to go back and stop the aliens from leaving? Would I, as I so often do, run screaming at the saucer before they take off? It’s no use: I’ve tried every imaginable way to make them stop, to make them hear me. Either they never did or never wanted to. They always go on their way, I and have to go on, whether I want to or not.

I’m on the street now, walking at a steady pace. I don’t stop when I reach the nearest town; my goal is elsewhere. The next university is farther away.

My life is bounded by the Save Point and death. I can’t manipulate the Save Point: I’ve tried to destroy it but I only kill myself in the process. And then I always wake up again. Our technology is just not advanced enough to understand or even probe it. But if I can’t beat the alien device and release myself from this loop, then I’ll have to beat it in another way.

For the last hundreds of lives I’ve been a scientist, studied DNA, human biology, aging. I’ve learned much and will learn more. If I can’t beat the Save Point, I’ll have to beat death, extending the loop that imprisons me for all time to come. If I extend it far enough, if I live long enough, people may have the technology to understand this device in my head, or maybe even travel to the aliens’ planet.

In the end, death doesn’t stop me. The only way to fail is not to try anything to escape this time loop. So I try.

Return to the Contest index