The Loop Of 4:13

The Loop of 4:13

Arthur sat in the dimly lit laboratory, staring intensely at a glowing blue syringe. His knees were stiff from sitting on the metal bench of the train station just moments before, yet now he was surrounded by computer screens flashing red. The air smelled of fresh rain, ozone, and old paper. He looked down at his left hand; he still held the broken brass pocket watch, its hands trapped forever at 4:13. In his right hand, the syringe pulsed with a fluid that looked exactly like the blinding white light of a dying star. He realized with a sudden, terrifying clarity that there was no train out of the city. There was only this room, the fracture in time he had created when the watch stem snapped, and the memories he was about to forcefully erase just to survive the paradox. He pressed the syringe into his arm.

The Event Horizon

CHARACTERS:

CAPTAIN VANCE (40s): The future version of Marcus, burdened by the past.

REI (20s): The engineer, who looks identically like Elena.

[SETTING: The bridge of a spaceship, collapsing under the gravitational pull of a black hole.]

[AT RISE: VANCE stares at a data pod on the console. It contains a single envelope with a broken wax seal and an ancient brass pocket watch.]

REI

The telemetry is locked, Captain! But the computer is reading an anomaly in the data stream. It’s a loop.

VANCE(Quietly, touching the watch face)It always was, Rei. The black hole isn't crushing us. It’s pulling us back to the beginning.

REI

What are you talking about? Look at the radiation readings. They match the exact chemical baseline of that mid-21st-century memory serum!

VANCE

Because this ship didn't travel across space. It traveled through the subconscious sector of a man named Arthur. A man who injected a serum at exactly 4:13.

REI(Panicking)If we cross the event horizon, what happens to us? Do we die?

VANCE

We don't die. We just wake up on a metal bench in a train station, holding an unopened envelope, waiting for the last call.

[The console alarm blares a rhythmic scratching sound, exactly like a janitor's broom.]

VANCE

Pull the fuse, Elena. Let's go home.[Rei rips the cylinder from the wall. The view outside turns blindingly white.][Blackout.]