LISTEN WHILE YOU READ: “Them Changes” — Thundercat
This is not a mystical scroll or a secret download from your spirit guides. This is a field manual. Straight talk, no lotus petals. If you’re caught in a time loop, you don’t need incense—you need instructions. Think of this as survival training for the hours that won’t stop repeating.
Listen, traveler: if you’ve ever stood in your kitchen, spoon in hand, realizing you’ve washed the same dish four times in one morning, you might not be failing at adulthood—you might be trapped in a localized time loop.
Society will gaslight you: call it déjà vu, “routine,” or “executive dysfunction.” But let’s name it plainly: you’re stuck in a pocket of recycled hours, a Möbius strip of human futility.
And since no one ever gave us the Boy Scouts Guide to Temporal Anomalies, consider this your badge-earning manual.
Identifiable Symptoms
1. The NPC Reset
Your co-worker listens to the same story for the third day straight, reacting word-for-word like they’re reading from a teleprompter. This is a classic reset pattern.
Field Note: If they laugh on cue, you’re not charming—you’re trapped.
2. The Eternal Coffee Cup
You finish the mug, set it down, turn your head, and suddenly it’s back to half-full. You are not sleep-deprived. You are being recycled.
3. Scene Replay
The same horn blares. The same bird crosses the same power line. You think, Haven’t I died here before? You might have.
4. Corporate Groundhog Day
Every Monday meeting is identical: same chart, same jargon, same dead-eyed nodding. This is not productivity. This is temporal captivity.
Spell-Break Protocols
Protocol A: Disrupt the Script
Ask a nonsense question: “Do you dream in algebra?” If they hesitate, the loop cracks.
Protocol B: Reverse the Ritual
Walk backwards across the street. Narrate yourself like a commentator. Loops hate improvisation.Protocol C: Ritualize the Mundane
Sing to the spoon you’ve washed five times. Treat repetition as liturgy, not failure. The loop loses its grip when you play along with intention.
The Soul Index of Time Loops
Micro-Loops: Losing your keys every day at 9:17 sharp.
Mid-Loops: Recycling the same relationship but with a new haircut.
Mega-Loops: Reincarnating as your own cousin because you still didn’t learn the lesson.
Mall-Loops: The endless parking garage hunt. That wasn’t a level—it was the whole game.
Glossary of Terms (Classified)
Code: LOOP FATIGUE
Severity: Moderate to High.
Definition: Exhaustion caused by repeated hours. Common in grocery store lines and Netflix binge cycles.
Risk: Resignation. Victims accept the loop as “normal life.”
Code: NPC RESET
Severity: Mild to Severe.
Definition: Non-Player Characters (read: coworkers, cashiers, relatives) recycling the same dialogue without deviation.
Risk: High boredom. Potential identity crisis.
Code: TEMPORAL CAPTIVITY
Severity: Severe.
Definition: Complete entrapment in repeating conditions (e.g., corporate Monday).
Risk: Soul erosion. Considered a Category 4 anomaly.
Code: LOOP-BREAK
Severity: Variable.
Definition: Any intentional disruption to reassert free will. Example: singing loudly in public, rearranging furniture at 3 AM.
Risk: Social embarrassment. Effective nonetheless.
Loop Detection Quiz
Q1: Do you say “this week flew by” more than three times a week?
Q2: Do strangers at the grocery store feel like they’re recycling dialogue options?
Q3: Have you ever sworn you saw the same cloud twice?
If yes: congratulations, you’re either cosmically detained, or just tired. Both count.
Time loops are not punishment—they are pedagogy. You are being forced to retake the soul’s driving test. Don’t just sit there in detention. Perform. Disrupt. Ritualize. Laugh.
And if all else fails? Wash the spoon again. But this time, whistle like you mean it.
Recognizing the modular nature of human experience and the way in which those modules repeat themselves is some extreme-level perceptive shit. There's a threshold to madness, you know? It's that fine border between genius and insanity that's at the center here.
Still, the practice of being tolerably insane is the balancing act of the century. You don't want it to backfire, nor do you want your reaction to reality to be in any way inappropriately sane.