James woke with a pounding headache and tried to look around the room. White sheets, white walls, blue tiled floor, white curtains, disturbing scent. A clock reads 4:46AM on the bedside table.
“Where am I? Is this a hospital?” The florescent light in the hallway illuminated a small rectangle in the middle of the floor, which began to spin. The pain in his head answered his questions with a swift return to unconsciousness.
James woke again at daybreak, the pain was still there, he looked at the clock: 6:25AM.
“Finally up? Although I guess this is the time we’ll always meet.”
James looked around for the source of the voice.
“Over here.”
A tall, blonde, mustachioed man stood in the corner looking at him.
“Who are you?” James asked.
The man walked over to James. He was well dressed, a sharp grey suit with an expensive looking watch poking out, small circular glasses, and a bowler hat. He leaned over and James looked into his deep green eyes, “My name is Arthur, James, and I’m going to be your partner for the mission the bureau has assigned us.”
“Mission? Bureau? Partner? How do you know my name?”
Arthur looked at him, bemused, “If you’re going to question every noun in my statement, there’s really no point to me stating it, now is there? As for your name, it’s written here at the foot of your bed: James Brighton. It also says you have a terrible head injury that you’ll never wake up from, among more irrelevant information.”
James looked at him confused.
“However that’s not the only reason I know your name: I’ve actually met you many times, although you’ve never met me. Starting an hour and a half ago, both of us became agents for the bureau and we are now expected to carry out a mission.”
“Ok, what’s the mission?”
“I know many things, James, but I do not know that. All I know is, or rather, all I know about the bureau is, or rather: Concerning our current predicament all that can be said is, no wait-“
“Holy shit man, just fucking tell me.”
“You and I were assigned a mission and are expected to complete it. The time limit is undefined. Every time we fail, we will return to 4:46AM today. The mission is currently unknown and, probably, incomplete.”
“Why would they assign us a mission without telling us what it is?”
“James, does it matter? Our commanding officers are obviously masters of time and space; we will have ample opportunity to discover what our task is. As your partner in this mission, you and I will meet countless times, and we will remember everything about every previous attempt we made, but we won’t be making every attempt together with the same amount of temporal displacement, i.e. this is my 13,734th attempt at this mission, while this seems to be your first. In fact, by the time the mission is completed, it is not even certain if we will have attempted it the same number of times. The philosophy of the bureau is that with infinite possibility and chance, .”
James blinked, “I’m sorry, how many times did you say you’ve done this?”
“13,734 times”
“13,734 out of… countless, seems like we’ve been making good progress.” James let out a groan, “Ok, well then, I’ll bite, what are we usually doing at around this time, good buddy?”
“We’re usually speeding out of Sutton in my car at this time.”
“And why aren’t we doing that now, then?”
“I’ve already accepted this iteration as a failure, so I decided I might as well fill you in on the details, in fact, our failure should be evident right about now.”
The door opened, and a tall woman in a long dark coat walked in.
“And who are you? Are you from the bureau, too? Finally gonna tell Arthur what the fuck you want him to do? Are you even wearing clothes under that?”
She looked at them coldly from behind her thick plastic frames and outstretched M1911, then pulled the trigger twice.
