**WATTYS 2022 WINNER** Seventeen-year-old Evelyn Werth is on an endless flight from hell. She's the only person onboard Aloha Airways Flight 1333 who's caught in a 28-minute time loop.
During each cycle, four things happen:
1. The Internet goes out...
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Loop 321
"So let's just say, hypothetically, that you're stuck in a time loop..." I begin.
"A time loop?" Dekor Astor asks, skeptically. He eyes me like I'm a Martian.
I've tried this approach with Dekor countless times already, but he's never taken the bait. He's a philosophy PhD student from San Diego and I've sat beside him on many loops, trying to pick his brain about time and space, karma and luck, even moral quagmires. But for someone a few credits shy of a philosophy doctorate, he's got a shockingly limited imagination of the world at large. That, mixed with unfortunate fact that time loop scenarios apparently aren't his jam.
I always launch into these chats by pretending I'm a freshman at UCSD, and telling him I saw one of his lectures. I often add that I'm working on a paper, because it takes a genuine jerk not to help a student working on a paper. I used to never be able to pull off lying to someone's face. But in these loops, it doesn't feel like a lie. It's more like performance art.
"I still don't understand what this has to do with philosophy?" Dekor says, as if he's sussing out the credibility of my project.
Dekor is in his mid-twenties with tangled brown hair that's bleached at the ends. A surfing trip to Hawaii was the personal reward he gave himself for scoring a coveted student-teacher position. He hoped that if he traveled alone, he'd maybe meet a girl and have a little Hawaiian romance. Get lei-ed, as they say. It didn't happen for him but he got some nice surfing in, so he still considers the trip a win.
And now he's stuck talking to me, philosophizing about science fiction constructs that are scientifically impossible, except for the fact that it's actually happening. To me, at least.
"Philosophically," I begin, but honestly I'm not even sure what I'm about to say. I'm winging it and it's painfully clear I'm out of my league here. "If you had a stretch of time that you were forced to live over and over again, what would be the best way to approach it? I mean, there's been tons of movies and books about time loops. Some characters use it to grow to become better people. Some find true love. Some try to save the single woman in the back row and help the individual, while some try to save the whole plane full of people." Dekor's eyes flick up suddenly, and I shake my head. "I mean, the whole group of people, wherever they are. Not necessarily a plane. You know, micro vs. macro. The individual vs. the whole."
For the record, I've tried to slice this loop every way possible. The problem is I'm terrible at this sort of thing. I'm not a puzzle girl. I'm not the one who figures things out. I once went to an Escape Room with some friends and stood there helpless while the rest of the group solved the riddles. I was useless, just taking up space and getting in the way.
