Horror of Eternal Life: Mega-Thread

[integral]

This is some of my favourite type of science fiction where it plays with the concept of being stuck for infinity, and being unable to die.

It’s the only kind of horror that actually scares me.

[SwiftQuill]

I once read a story about a character stuck in a time loop. It was caused by a time machine that the protagonist had invented. It was supposed to allow for time travel but ended up forcing her to repeat the same day over and over - another Groundhog day clone. So she is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day, after only having used the time travel machine once.

The protagonist writes in a journal the events of each day. And what she plans to do to try to escape the time loop.

In one of the entries, she conducts an experiment with the time machine. She inserts an apple (biological material) into the time machine, to see if she can send it to the past or send it outside the time loop. Instead, the apple was destroyed (the time machine destroyed all the organic matter). This entry is foreshadowing.

So after giving up on using the time machine to escape the time loop, she attempts other things to break free of this "curse". But nothing works. She goes mad over time, even developing some sort of psychopathy due to the insanity of living the same day over and over.

Near the end of the story, the protagonist writes a final entry in the journal. She says she has exhausted all options to break free from the time loop. And that she has no motivation to keep living like this. She says goodbye, and that she plans on entering the time machine one (all her organic matter will be destroyed - she will attempt su*c*de).

But that's not the final entry. After that entry, she writes another one that says "It didn't work".

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

Over and over.

The only chance she thought she had of ending this nightmare would be by entering the time machine and dying. But that didn't work. She was forced to live like this for eternity. The concept of living the same day forever on repeat, and being so stuck in that limited, maddening existence, without even having death as a form of mercy, as an escape, I found it incredibly dark. To me, this might be the darkest ending I've ever seen in a story.

[FourCrossedWands]

There are some Black Mirror episodes about this subject. A character being stuck for eternity in his/her mind, or in an artificial body, etc. I recommend watching the whole series, it's incredible.

[Moon]

@FourCrossedWands Yess, specifically the “White Christmas” episode