Arthur left the house shortly after breakfast, a backpack slung over one shoulder. It was packed with everything he needed: a portable scanner, his journal, a prepaid flip phone, and a USB drive that contained folders meticulously labeled from past loops—Weather Patterns, Tire Reports, Traffic Cams, Mark Jenkins, and Accident Variables.
To anyone else, it would look like the gear of a conspiracy theorist.
But to Arthur, it was survival.
The streets of his town were dressed in autumn's softest lies: golden leaves on sidewalks, cozy decorations in windows, neighbors raking and waving. It was the kind of town people called "quiet" in articles about tragedies. He wondered how many headlines had already been written about the 24th—how many versions he had read. It didn't matter. None of them told the full story. Not like he could.
He made his way to the public library, a red-brick building with ivy creeping up one side. It was early, but the place was open. It always was on the 23rd. A kind of consistency the loop seemed to respect.
He walked in and nodded at the front desk clerk, Ms. Henley. She smiled at him, her lipstick a little smudged.
"You're early, Arthur. Big paper due?"
"Something like that," he said.
Same exchange. Every time.
He made his way to the computer terminals in the back corner. They were outdated, running Windows XP, but he didn't need speed—just access. He logged in and opened the same set of bookmarked tabs he always did: news archives, obituaries, public records, accident reports.
He moved through them quickly, not out of urgency, but familiarity. Every detail had been memorized, and each time he read them, it wasn't to learn something new—it was to search for the missing thread, the invisible flaw he might've missed.
4:17 PM. Route 7. A patch of standing water. A tire failure. A semi-truck. Rain. Death.
And the constant: he was never there.
That guilt, that hollow, unrelenting ache, had once paralyzed him. Now, it sharpened him.
He opened the "Mark Jenkins" file and pulled up the address he'd painstakingly narrowed down over the course of more than fifty loops. Jenkins wasn't a bad man—just a tired one. A long-haul trucker with a divorce, a daughter he barely saw, and an addiction to energy drinks and talk radio. Distracted for just one second, one fateful moment, at the exact point the Taurus lost control.
Arthur leaned back in the stiff library chair, exhaling slowly. The clock on the wall read 10:43 AM.
He had just under six hours until it all started to go wrong again. But not this time. Not if he could finally alter enough variables to tip fate in his favor.
He opened his journal, flipping past pages filled with sketches, maps, and notes written in looping, desperate handwriting.
Today's plan was already written:
Objective: Control the tire variable.
Purchase four tires. Brand: Michelin HydroEdge (best rating for wet weather, 2008).
Pay in cash. Use dad's plate number. Mechanic: Barlow Tires, South Elm Street.
Schedule morning install for 10/24. Pre-open slot.
Use a soft cover story: surprise gift. Don't mention trip.
His pen hovered over the final bullet: Don't let them know you're scared.
Arthur stared at it for a long time before he closed the journal. Some parts of the plan were easier said than done.
He rose from the chair and left the library, his mind already leaping ahead to the tire shop, to the carefully rehearsed interaction he would soon need to pull off again. It had worked in previous loops—but too late, or with too much suspicion, or not enough time for the tires to be installed. The precision of the loop was a cruel thing. Anything could break it. Everything had to be just right.
As he walked, he passed the corner store and paused. There was a boy inside, no more than eight, buying candy with two crumpled dollar bills. Arthur didn't recognize him from his earliest loops, which meant the boy had never made it into his memory's long-term archive. But now he noticed.
In the past, he hadn't had the luxury of noticing anyone else. His world had shrunk down to just two people and one fatal stretch of road.
But something about the boy stuck with him.
He didn't know why.
And that unsettled him.
Arthur turned away and kept walking, the quiet tap of his shoes against the pavement a metronome counting down to catastrophe—or, maybe, to change.
He had time. Not much, but enough. Maybe.