Mobius

"You found a bug, and you thought you could fix it."

"Yes, of course. That's my job."

It shook its head. Or, maybe, where its head was, probably. "When will you ever learn? What you do is not who you are."

I shrugged. Why didn't that bother me as much as it should have? "I'm not sure what else I've got. This is all I am."

"Another mistake. This is why you're still here."

I scoffed. "So that's all this is? You're going to keep knocking me over the head with your bamboo cane until grasshopper can bullshit his way out of this mess?"

"I suppose that's a start."



With a jolt, I open my eyes. That sudden elevator feeling of falling, or slipping, or missing a step. I'm back in my bed, again. I can't exhale a sigh deep enough to expel all the resignation I feel, or have felt, or have always been feeling. I'm not really sure what tense is appropriate here, and I apologize. I didn't get the best marks in atemporal grammar.

It's 3:14 in the morning. That's how I know I'm still here.

I toss off the blankets, make my way across the room, and peek through the blinds leaking twilight into my apartment. That sounds pretty good, I think. I'm not sure exactly when twilight officially is, but I'm better at being poetic than at knowing random trivia. It's passable, at least. Does anybody really know what time it is?

The city. Its silhouette is like the corpse of a god, barely stirring in protest, insisting that it's not dead after all. The first few hundred thousand times I saw it, I was at least a little impressed. For a while, I even got bored of it, before I made up ways to be interested in it again. Now it just reminds me that it's still today. That I'm still stuck in this recursive loop that I've written myself into.

While it is today, I return.