Elias woke up to the sound of the alarm.

"T-minus ten minutes to the Great Flattening," the computer voice droned.

Elias didn't panic. He had heard this voice ten thousand times. He knew exactly what would happen. He would watch the moon turn into a coin, he would feel the sudden, crushing weight of the dimension strike, and then he would wake up again to the sound of the alarm.

He was the prisoner of the Loop.

He didn't know how it had happened. Perhaps the "Civilization Seed" he had sent into the void had malfunctioned. Perhaps the universe had decided that his particular brand of suffering was too interesting to end.

In the first hundred loops, Elias had tried everything to stop the collapse. He had built shields, he had tried to negotiate with the higher beings, he had even tried to kill himself before the alarm went off. But the Loop always reset. He always woke up ten minutes before the end.

In the next thousand loops, he had tried to save other people. He had spent entire lifetimes teaching the survivors how to accept the end, or trying to find a way to preserve their memories. But they didn't remember. Only he remembered. To them, every loop was the first and only tragedy of their lives.

Now, in loop number 45,201, Elias just sat on the floor and counted the tiles on the ceiling.

"T-minus five minutes," the voice said.

He looked at the woman sitting across from him. Her name was Clara. In every loop, they fell in love. In every loop, they spent their final ten minutes promising each other that they would find a way to stay together in the next life.

"I love you," Clara whispered, clutching his hand. Her eyes were filled with the raw, fresh terror of a first-time death.

Elias looked at her and felt a wave of nausea. He loved her, too, but he loved the *idea* of her. The real Clara was just a recording, a piece of biological software that played the same script every single time. He was in love with a ghost who didn't even know she was dead.

"I know," Elias said, his voice dead and hollow. "I know everything you're going to say."

"What?" she asked, confused.

"T-minus one minute," the voice announced.

The sky began to stretch. The horizon folded. Elias felt the familiar, sickening pull of the dimension strike. He watched as Clara's face began to flatten, her expression of love turning into a two-dimensional smear of pink and white.

He closed his eyes and prayed for the void. He prayed for a real death. A permanent, silent, black death where there were no alarms and no promises.

But as the darkness took him, he felt the familiar, electric jolt of the reset.

*BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.*

"T-minus ten minutes to the Great Flattening," the computer voice droned.

Elias opened his eyes and screamed.

--- OTMES_v2_Code: [T11-10 | M1:10.0 | N2:0.9 | K1:0.8 | I:1.0 | R:0.0 | θ:45°]