text: \ “Jesse, Would you die for me?” “Again?” I looked at Clarissa, she had a serious look on her face. A question like that meant only one thing, something had gone wrong, and there was no way out. We were crouched in a small broom closet, the faint sound of alarm bells echoed throughout the large corporate building we were currently locked in. “Do you have a marker set?” I sighed, I have known her long enough to trust her, and this mission was too important for things not to go perfectly. Clarissa gave me a stern look, the slightest hint of sadness was in her eye. “I need to hear you say it.” Clarissa whispered. “Always, no matter what.” I closed my eyes and began to focus on my last marker, pretending it would be easier if I didn’t watch. Even then, I could hear Clarissa open her holster and raise her pistol towards me. She pulled the trigger and fired, I felt an intense pain form in my head before spreading to my whole body. It felt like I was on fire as if each atom in my body was being ripped apart. Then everything went black. It always started with a falling sensation. Then a rainbow of colors formed into a vibrant tunnel as I felt my consciousness reform. At the bottom of the tunnel, I could see a small cot in a windowless metal room with my own sleeping body laying on top of it. I fell towards it, my senses returning one by one, becoming fully formed once I reached the bottom of the tunnel and I watched as I slammed into my sleeping body. My eyes opened and I checked the clock. August 3rd, 2243, 11:50 PM. 24 hours ago. I slowly gathered myself and approached the door, looking at the two buttons, one to mark if this was the first time, and the other to mark if it wasn’t. I stood at the door, and pressed the 2nd button, causing the door to side open, leading to a larger planning room, with a table in the middle. The walls were covered in computer monitors, weapons and equipment, all things we had prepped for the coming mission. The one that had gone wrong, 24 hours from now. I looked up to see Clarissa, she looked at me, then she looked above me to look at the colored light above my head, and saw it was yellow, meaning the mission had gone bad, and she had to trigger a reset. Clarissa knew what the light meant, and she knew how much the process hurt. Before I could speak, she ran over to me and gave me a tight embrace. Whenever this happened, she always said the same thing to me. “Thank you, and hopefully you never have to again.” It was always the same sequence of words before and after every reset. Whether she knew it or not, I would probably never know, but it was the point of consistency in my weird and ever changing timeline. I sighed, before approaching the planning table. A timeline slider of the whole mission appeared on the screens. “Mark error point, minute 25, laser grid almost tripped” a marker appeared on the timeline. “Mark error point, minute 30, camera not disabled.” Clarissa stood silently, simply soaking in the information. I lived through each attempt, she had to process all the mistakes every single time. “Mark error point, minute 42, equipment failure due to rushed use.” Minutes passed, I listed every error and mistake I could remember. Eventually I got to the end. “All error points marked. Mark attempt number...” I paused, sometimes I would lie about how many times we had gone through the planning process. Clarissa knew how much I hated going through the reset process, she let out a sigh, then looked at me. “Listen, one last job. Then we can be done with all of this. I promise.” I looked her in the eyes, “Okay, let’s do this again.