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The Perpetual Feedback Loop
An unreleased short story from the book:
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality
Ethan had always been one for routine. His life, though mundane, was predictable, which, for him, was a source of comfort. He woke up at the same time every morning, brewed his coffee just the way he liked it, sat at his desk, and immersed himself in work. The monotony was something he had long ago learned to embrace, as it gave him a sense of control. But one afternoon, it all fell apart.
He had noticed it subtly at first, like a whisper on the edge of his consciousness. A small detail that didn’t make sense. A momentary flicker in the corner of his eye. At first, he ignored it, thinking it was just his mind playing tricks. But then it happened again, and again.
The first time it was simple: he had entered his office, sat at his desk, and begun to work on his report. His phone rang. He picked it up. Same old work call, same routine. He hung up, glanced at the clock—only to find that an hour had passed, but it had only felt like a few minutes. Disoriented, he shook his head. Maybe he’d been too focused. But when he checked his calendar, the meeting he had just been in seemed to have never happened. The report he had worked on was gone. It was as though it had all vanished into the ether, like a ghost.
A creeping unease started to form in the pit of his stomach. Had he forgotten something? Was he sleepwalking through his days? He couldn’t tell anymore.
The next day, it happened again. The same phone call. The same report. The same routine. But this time, it didn’t just feel off. It felt wrong. Like a glitch in a machine that was starting to break down. He couldn’t pinpoint when exactly it happened, but he felt… watched. The air around him was too thick, too heavy with something that wasn’t quite real. The fluorescent lights above him buzzed, their hum becoming louder, more insistent. The walls seemed to close in on him, constricting, making the space feel smaller, suffocating.
Ethan stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the city below. The same buildings, the same cars moving along the street. But something had shifted. The buildings didn’t look quite the same as they had moments before. The people on the street—their movements were too synchronized, too perfect. He blinked, and it was as though the world was resetting before his eyes. Time had rewound. His heart began to race.
His pulse pounded in his ears as the room around him shifted. He turned back to his desk and saw it. The report. The one he had just finished. And yet, it was back in its original, unfinished state. The clock on the wall read the same time it had when he first arrived. Hadn’t he already done this? Hadn’t this moment already happened?
He reached for his phone again, and this time, when he picked it up, the same work call came through. The same conversation. The same words. It was as if he was living in a constant echo, his reality repeating over and over, a cycle that couldn’t be broken.
He tried to scream, but no sound came. His mind was locked in place, frozen in an endless loop of his own actions. The panic set in. He ran to the door, but it wouldn’t open. The walls closed in, the space shrinking with each passing second. Each breath he took felt tighter, more suffocating.
No matter what he did, no matter how much he tried to break free, he couldn’t. The world around him would always reset. Always return to the same moment. His phone would ring, he would pick it up, the same conversation would unfold. The report would remain incomplete. The clock ticked the same few minutes over and over, every second a countdown to nothing. His existence was now bound to this cycle, a never-ending series of repetitions that slowly eroded his mind.
The horror was not in the repeating actions themselves. It was in the slow realization that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to change something, nothing could ever change. He was stuck. Trapped in the confines of his own existence, locked in a feedback loop with no end. The same conversations. The same moments. The same choices.
Days turned into weeks. The walls in his office seemed to blur, the edges of everything softening until they were just vague shapes in his vision. His body moved without him, mechanically repeating the same actions, the same movements. His own reflection in the window had become a stranger. His face, his expressions, his gestures—all of it had become numb, unfeeling.
His thoughts began to splinter. The moments of clarity became fewer. His mind was slipping away, unraveling with each repetition. Each time he tried to focus, to find something to hold on to, the ground shifted beneath him, and he was forced to begin again. He was being consumed by the loop.
He was losing himself.
He could feel his mind eroding, his grip on reality slipping further with every hour that passed. And then, he tried to break the loop once more, only to find that the harder he fought, the tighter the cycle gripped him. He was spiraling inward, descending into madness, unable to escape the pull of the system. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, no break in the cycle. No freedom. Only the constant return to the beginning.
The same phone call. The same conversation. The same damn report.
His desperation reached its peak when he realized he had no memory of who he had been before. No memory of the first time he had woken up. No understanding of how long it had been, how many times this moment had passed. He was no longer sure if he was even real. He wasn’t sure if any of it was. He was just… there. Existing in a fractured, broken loop, with no beginning and no end.
And all at once, the walls seemed to collapse around him. The world folded in on itself, twisting and contorting as if the fabric of reality itself was being torn apart. His mind shattered under the pressure. The loop, once tight and suffocating, had become a wild, spiraling vortex that pulled him in deeper and deeper.
Ethan was left screaming in his mind, trapped in the eternal repetition of his own actions. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t escape.
And so, he was lost—forever trapped in the Perpetual Feedback Loop.
And then, it came. The realization, slow and agonizing. She wasn’t trapped in the simulation. She wasn’t trapped in a world. She was trapped in nothing. She was the only thing left, lost in an endless abyss, with no meaning, no purpose, no way to make sense of her existence. She wasn’t even real anymore. She was a ghost in a broken system, a program that had malfunctioned and was left to disintegrate.
The isolation was absolute. It was a torture that had no end, no beginning. It was the worst kind of death—a slow unraveling of the mind, where every second stretched into infinity, and every thought felt like a wound in her soul.
Clara had thought she wanted to escape. But now, she longed for the simulation. She longed for the world that had once been so real to her. At least there had been life there. There had been meaning.
But now, there was nothing.
And she knew, with a sickening certainty, that there never would be again.
There was no end. There was only the infinite void.
She was nothing.
And she would remain nothing—forever.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality takes you on an unsettling journey through the dark side of technology, where nothing is as it seems, and reality is a fragile illusion. In this collection of chilling short stories, you’ll step into the shoes of characters trapped within simulations—worlds designed to mirror our own, but twisted beyond recognition. Each tale exposes the horrifying consequences of living in a world where the rules of reality no longer apply.
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