Three Dates

This was the 300th time I’d woken up on September 25th. Yesterday, it was Mark that I had my third date with. Before him, Steven. After every third date, there’s a blinding white light, a loud buzz in my ear like a dying speaker, and then—boom—back to the start. At first, I thought it was amnesia. Then I noticed the patterns. The guy in the red shirt always drops his coffee when I go to the shop. The woman in the blue dress always orders an iced vanilla chai right after me. The only thing that ever changes is the man across the table on the dates. They’re new every time, yet when I see them after the reset, they look at me like I’m just another stranger in the crowd.

I start my day like I’ve started it three hundred times before. Get ready for work. At 8:10 am, three birds fly past my window, chirping exactly three times each—a perfect loop of audio I could hum along to. Then I reach for my right shoe. It’s exactly four inches under the couch, tucked behind the front left leg.

As I head for the door, Bert, my neighbor, is already in position. He’s watering his porch with a dry hose.

'Take an umbrella,' he says, without looking up. I used to thank him. Then I used to argue with him. Now, I leave it on the hook to spite the universe.

It won’t matter. At 5:02 pm, the sky will turn a flat, bruised purple, and the rain will start—smelling faintly of ozone and static. I’ll stand under the office awning, acting surprised, and the 'New Guy' will appear. He’ll offer to share his umbrella, and for him, it will be a cute meetup. For me, he’s just the latest guest in my cage. My three-date guy.

I arrive at the office just as Betty rounds the corner. Right on cue, her stack of papers begins to tilt. I reach out a hand and steady them without even slowing my stride.

'You have great reflexes, thank you!' she says, beaming at me before scurrying off.

'Morning, Cathy,' I mutter to myself, before she can even say it. I pull out my ergonomic gray chair—the fabric is starting to feel like sandpaper after three hundred uses—and plop into it. Another day stuck entering the same dummy customers into a system. Another day of the same 11:00 AM meeting, where the coffee is always lukewarm, and the jokes are always stale.

I’m just a prop in a cubicle, waiting for 5:02 PM.

And would you look at that—5:00 PM. That gives me exactly two minutes to get downstairs and prepare my 'completely shocked' face.

I stood under the office awning, clutching my bag and looking flustered, playing my part for the 300th time. The air smelled of ozone and that weird, metallic scent that always preceded the reset.

'Where are you going? We can share my umbrella.'

I turned. Another blonde this time. Tall, with kind eyes that felt a bit too wide, like he was trying to take in the whole scene at once. He was looking at the rain with a look of pure wonder, as if he’d never seen water fall from the sky before.

'I’m going to Astoria,' I said, my voice flat. 'You?'

'Me too!' he chirped. 'What a coincidence. Whereabouts?'

I gave him a fake address. It didn't matter. No matter where I said, he’d happen to be heading that way. He was the Lead Actor, I was the Specimen, and the sidewalk was our stage. I stepped under the black fabric of the umbrella, feeling the familiar, hollow weight of the next month beginning to unfold."

Throughout our walk, he’ll ask the same curated questions. We’ll share some hollow laughs, and then we’ll exchange numbers. At 7:15 PM sharp, I’ll get the text: 'I would love to get to know you better : )' I’ve tried everything to break the script. I’ve ignored the messages, only to 'wake up' mid-sentence across from them at dinner. I’ve tried to end it all, but the white light pulls me back to the 25th before I can even feel the impact. I’ve made a complete fool of myself, screaming nonsense in expensive bistros, but they just tilt their heads and find it 'charming.'

We went on our first date. The second. And now, here we are: the final third date. But as I walked out of my apartment, the script broke. A car pulled up—a sleek, black sedan that looked too clean for New York.

'Hey! Thought we could share a ride there.'

I froze. This was a first. In three hundred loops, none of them had ever picked me up at my place. I got in, my heart hammering against my ribs. The interior of the car smelled like nothing—not old air freshener or leather, just... sterile. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to wonder why the programming for this one was different.

Dinner went as usual, for the most part. He talked about his divorced parents and his childhood puppy, Buster. But as he spoke, I heard it again. This voice, booming yet distant, echoes from the ceiling.

'The immersion is at ninety percent,' a cold, rhythmic voice whispered. 'The user is engaging with the backstory.'

I looked around the room, but the waiter was frozen, and the woman in the blue dress didn't move with her fork halfway to her mouth. My date didn't even blink. He just kept talking about how much he loved the 'Pre-Collapse' architecture of the city."

"Do you hear that?" I looked around in utter disbelief. This didn't happen the last 300th times.

“Hear what?” he asked. He looked around in confusion, but the confusion didn't reach his eyes. His pupils were fixed, reflecting the candlelight in a way that looked like a screen reflecting a room.

“The voices,” I said, my voice shaking. “The voices talking about ‘immersion’ and ‘specimens.’ And look at the waiter, he hasn't moved for three minutes!”

My date tilted his head. It was a slow, mechanical gesture. “Camilla, you’re just tired. It’s been a long month, remember?” He was trying to convince me.

He reached across the table to touch my hand. His skin was warm, but there were no pores. No fine hairs. Just a smooth, matte surface.

“Attention,” the booming voice from the ceiling returned, clearer now. “Session 301 concluding. User 'XYZ-7', please prepare for neural decoupling. Emotional satisfaction survey to follow.”

“What is that?!” I screamed, standing up. My chair fell back, but it didn't make a sound when it hit the floor. The sound file hadn't loaded.

The blonde man didn't seem puzzled anymore. He looked bored. He leaned back and sighed, and for the first time, he didn't look at me like a boyfriend. He looked at me like a man watching a movie that had just started to skip.

“The dialogue is looping again,” he muttered, but not to me. He was talking to the air. “I told you the personality core was degrading. She’s becoming self-aware.”

“Who are you talking to?” I backed away, tripping over the frozen waiter.

“Don’t worry, Elara,” the man said, using a name I’d never heard before. He reached up toward his own forehead, his fingers disappearing into the air as if he were grabbing something invisible. “You won't remember this in two minutes. See you on the 25th.”

Then came the buzz. It wasn't in my ears this time—it was the sound of the entire world vibrating. The restaurant, the wine, the frozen woman in the blue dress—they all started to blur into horizontal lines of static.

Gasping for air, I looked around.

It was September 25th. Again.

The sunlight hitting my duvet was the same pale, artificial gold. I checked the clock, 8:09 AM. In sixty seconds, three birds would fly past the window and chirp exactly three times. I lay there, my heart thudding against a ribcage that felt like it was made of plastic.

I remembered everything. The voices. The man who wasn't a man. The name he called me—Elara.

I sat up and looked at the couch. My right shoe was there, exactly four inches under the front left leg. I felt a surge of nausea. I didn't want to go to the coffee shop. I didn't want to see the man in the red shirt drop his cup. I didn't want to meet the next man under a fake rainstorm.

I stood up, but I didn't go to the bathroom to get ready. Instead, I walked over to the wall—the one with the "view" of the city. I pressed my palm against the wallpaper. It was warm. I pressed harder, digging my nails into the floral pattern.

There was a faint crackle.

For a split second, the wallpaper didn't feel like paper. It felt like glass. Cold, thick, impenetrable glass. And on the other side, just for a heartbeat, I didn't see the New York skyline. I saw a dark, vast hall filled with glowing blue lights and the silhouettes of things that were much too tall to be human.

Then, the image corrected itself. The skyline snapped back into place.

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

The birds had arrived. The show was starting. I heard Bert’s footsteps on the porch outside, getting into position to tell me about the umbrella.

I reached down and picked up my shoe. I wasn't Camilla. I was Elara. And if I were a specimen in a cage, I was going to stop being one.

I didn't put the shoe on. I walked to the window and looked directly at the spot in the sky where the cameras must be.

I flipped them off.

High above, in a room filled with stars that weren't stars, a red light on a console began to blink. Suddenly, some writing in red letters appeared.

WARNING: SPECIMEN CORRUPTION. REBOOT FAILED.