[World Building] Repeaters

[Kyle]

I want to write short stories (and have others write them too) in a world I've thought up. But I need help fleshing out the details and logistics of the world. Here's the basic pitch:

Imagine you woke up tomorrow, but it's not tomorrow. Instead it's 12 days ago. You are stuck in a 12 day time loop. Now imagine that it also happens to half the world's population.

Due to some scientific experiment gone bad, an accident occurred before the beginning of the time loop. As a result, half the world's population, seemingly determined at random, are now stuck in a time loop that repeats every twelve days-- these people are now known as Repeaters. The Repeaters remember everything from their previous loops, but Non-Repeaters start the loop completely ignorant of anything that occurred in other repeats- they only remember the day that occurred before the time loop starts.

The time loop cannot be stopped. No matter what any Repeater does during any given time loop, they cannot prevent it from happening or alter anything in a future time loop. After 12 days they start over from scratch. A complete reset. They are powerless to do this. If you kill yourself during the loop, you instantly begin the next time loop.

So what happens to the world during the first 10 loops?

What happens after 100?

What happens after 10 billion?

What factions grow, how do these new immortal Repeaters evolve and to what end?

[Kyle]

I have some ideas I've developed from discussions with Zombie, buckett and Pdyx, but I want others to share ideas without being influenced by what we talked out.

[Eliahad]

Read "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August."

[Kyle]

Thanks, I'll look at that.

[poorpete]

I think once they stop getting depressed, and after realizing that the good-deeds ala Groundhog Day won't last. I think they'll make games.

Lots of time trials, like how fast can they blow up the Earth. Or find out the easiest ways of getting into the news.

They would then experiment with society. What if half of the world came to work naked?

Then move on to experiments. They cure diseases. Maybe they'd find a scientific way to end the repeating? Am I going to far?

[Mike]

Except that you have a society of immortals who keep no permanent records. None. It's hard to cure cancer when you have to keep 50 years of (subjective time) research in your head. Plus, you can't do experiments on anything that lasts more than about a week. Also... to what end? After 300 cycles (10 years of subjective time), most repeaters will have given up on the idea that things are ever going back to normal. They will not be looking at curing disease or saving lives, because it will be irrelevant, except as a mental exercise.

Also (assuming it happens right now in present day), social media will become vital. You can't record anyone's email address or cell phone number, but there will be a pattern of mass communication that starts immediately after each reset. There are specific hashtags that help people connect. There are hashtags that people automatically retweet during the first 24 hours so that they can spread worldwide. If you want to physically connect with a person, there's this process of traveling to them every 12 days.

Right from day 1, you get used to the fact that the news cycle for the entire 12 days consists of equal parts secret and not-so-secret message as well as "Holy shit, is the world going crazy."

For most repeaters, non-repeaters will become non-entities. They are simply fixtures of the environment. At best, maybe they are like valued pets, but not much more. Repeaters will get quickly to a point where they can spot another repeater on sight.

There's no real law enforcement for the repeaters, and philosophically, is there really a need for any? Every action is essentially consequence-free, except for the social and emotional connections with other repeaters. Some serial monster takes this as his opportunity to freely rape and murder non-repeaters? Well, as long as they're non-repeaters, what harm is really being done? And what could we do about it anyway? Lock him up? Kill him? Make sure you race to his house every 12 days to kill him before he can wake up and escape?

There will be cases of people with permanent attachments to their non-repeater loved ones. The young parent who insists on taking care of their infant child forever, because it's the right thing to do, and what if some day the loop stops? There will be others who simply walk away from their families every 12 days and leave small children to starve.

Speaking of which... what happens to babies and toddlers who are repeaters? I think anyone who can walk and talk will eventually learn to get by, but what about the poor baby who is 200 years old but still doesn't have the musculature to lift their head or talk?

Some people have to break out of rehab every 12 days. Some repeaters are in prison and can't find an escape. Or else since it's half the world, do you have a prison riot in every prison every 12 days during which (hopefully for them) some repeater guards decide to just open all the doors before they walk off the job?

You've got half the world operating on this higher level, while the other half is reacting FOREVER as if the apocalypse is upon us.

This goes on and on. There's so much of this basic stuff to think about before deciding how it all settles out after 1000 years.

[Mike]

What happens to our infrastructure? Repeaters have an investment in wanting the lights to remain on, but when half of your power employees are repeaters, how motivated are they to stay on the job? How quickly does stuff fall apart when half the workforce is on vacation for 12 days? I think 12 days is short enough that things mostly hold together, but it's a rough life for those non-repeaters who have to cover for 12 days.

[Kyle]

[Kyle]

[Kyle]

buckett also pointed out that there would be musicians or composers that produce the greatest art that history has ever witnessed. Imagine having 10,000 years to perfect your instrument.

Here's another twist. I'm envisioning two books of stories. One from the perspective of Repeaters and the second from the perspective of the Non-Repeaters. Because here's the deal-- for the Non-Repeaters, after 12 days the Repeaters all disappear. Okay, okay, but I'm getting ahead of myself and we shouldn't really get into that yet, because you can't write about the Non-Repeaters until you've fleshed out the Repeaters' world.

[Mike]

[Kyle]

That's the point. Who knows how many have happened. After 10,000 years of repeating, are they even keeping track anymore? While in the book the numbers will be speculated wildly, I'm thinking somewhere around a million cycles. That would be almost 33,000 years for the repeaters.

Also remember- the repeaters, no matter what they do, have anyway of knowing what happens after day 12. I'd assume many believe that there is nothing because time keeps repeating.