Groundhog Apocalypse (short story) - EN




- 1 -
Vid_30180_21
August 8, 2018, 7:34 AM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_21.mp4
Duration: 4:30

“He … hello, to everyone who’s still watching. I can see there are around 1,400 online. Much less than yesterday and I’m not rea … really surprised …
So sorry. I’m completely at the end of my tether. This is the first time I’m crying live on my vlog, but many of you are probably feeling the same way like I do. And because there are still so many of you following my stream, I can see that not every single person out there went crazy. We gotta support each other, simple as that. Do what you can do, barricade up at home … Jannick has … Jannick has bared the door with our bed and couch. We are doing this for three days now. And until now nobody tried to get in here. I didn’t know if I was able to do another stream again, the whole situation is only getting worse. It’s like a horror movie. First I thought, okay it gotta go on someway, but everything went south so quickly. For three or four days we only hear people screaming and gunshots outside. Screaming over and over. And no cars anymore. The streets are empty. We even don’t look outside the window, so nobody notices we’re actually at home. I read about all those horror stories on social media all day. All these sick sociopaths, even filming and posting it online. And there are so many people making comments -
I’m so sorry, I’m so wrecked because of all of this … I can’t be online no longer …
I’m just scared … what is going on here? Why the hell is …
Thank you my loved ones …
Thank you so much for your nice words and I really hope from the bottom of my heart, you guys are all okay and your loved ones too. I’m still seeing in a lot of comments we should share information how we can protect ourselves. Already yesterday I received a comment from SpartanPlayz. I’m going to post the name later too. He said he got a gun and he is waking up at six in the morning and he is living in Biesdorf, East Berlin and if you guys send him a PM he is trying to come to you and help you. Or if you know anything about those sick scumbags out there, address, name or anything, he said he would go there and stop them, as many times as necessary. In case you know anybody else with a gun, connect to each other and help each other. Make sure you memorize the contact information. Maybe, if we work together this will end someday. Honestly, I don’t know if I can keep up to all of this. It feels like this fear is driving me crazy. But it can’t go on like this forever. It can’t be. It has to stop. I’ll be in touch with you guys later.”

- 2 -
Vid_30180_22
August 8, 2018, 12:58 PM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_22.mp4
Duration: 5:22

“Hi guys, welcome to my vlog as always. This must be episode 2,613 … well … about seven years and two months since everything has begun. Yaaaay. And, surprise, surprise, it’s still Saturday. I know, it’s getting old. How many times did I say this? Did anyone count?
           Ryn Jv7: I did, exactly 445 times :D
“Haha, nice Ryn. Okay, today something new happened. You do remember this guy from across the inner yard I told you about the other day, right? Who jumped out of the window every noon? Well, it did start pretty early with this guy, I think already after a few weeks. That was why I asked him one time before he was about to jump, why he is killing himself every single day. He said, if you recall, because he has cancer and he couldn’t stand the pain no longer caused by his chemo he got the day before. So far, so boring. Anyways, I didn’t left my apartment today as early as usual, but stayed at home. And I felt that something was odd, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Until I noticed that there was no sound of this guy hitting the ground in the inner yard anymore. I got so used to that, becuase I didn’t go out at first when all of this started, that at some point I learned to overhear the impact. And we’re talking about a fourth floor impact on concrete. So I got out this morning to go to that guys apartment, kicked in the door … please don’t laugh at me, it took me a couple of times considering my graceful legs, but eventually I got in and found him in his bed. And … well yeah. He almost didn’t react, when I talked to him. I had to shake him up. And then he wasn’t really there like he still was half asleep. You gotta help me out here guys. Why is he like this? The last time I talked to him he was pretty wasted, but fully responsive. I had this strange feeling he couldn’t get up no more by himself.
           RockinFoxi: Maybe he just took some sleeping pills or so …
Oh, yes. Thank you for this Foxi. I didn’t think about that possibility. Lots of love for you. But strange anyway that he is switching from suicide to sleeping pills. He could have done this earlier, couldn’t he?
Anyways … my dear ones. Change of subject. I’m reading your questions the whole time about where I am. Haha. Well, I’m turning my cell for you … you see this? Right, the state library. Cozzzz, I got a plan. Ha! You’ll never guess. I’m going to read every book. Yip. Damn right. And to do that, I need you sweeties. How should I proceed? Alphabetically, thematically, chaotic … send me your suggestions or what you think would be best. FinExZero says I will quit at tax law at the latest. Haha, Fin, maybe you’re right. Anyways, send me your suggestions and I will get back to you in let’s say 30 minutes with the results, what you voted most for. Lots of love, see you then!”

- 3 -
Vid_30180_21
August 8, 2018, 10:01 AM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_21.mp4
Duration: 6:52

“Have a wonderful Sunday morning and welcome to my Beauty-Channel once again. Actually I wanted to talk with you about something else, but somehow everything’s weird this morning. First of all the alarm on my cell didn’t go off; that’s why this whoosh-makeup today; and then I noticed, my MacBook’s thinking it’s Saturday … so crazy …
And guysss … what’s going on with you? Did you party too hard yesterday and are you still in your beds with a hangover or why are there so few people watching?
Oh, there are comments incoming, that some of you got the same problem with their computers. Is that a virus, guys? What’s happening here?
Haha, right MimiBlümchen, the machines are taking over the world.
Okay … guys wait a sec, it’s getting really weird right now. I opened Google News … it says … I’m going to read that out loud, Süddeutsche Zeitung four hours ago:
Mysterious occurrences Germany-wide: Inexplicable events in the early morning hours of this Sunday led to confusion and partially chaos across the whole of Germany. From a series of reports by airports around five in the morning it is known that airliners, which had departed yesterday, all of a sudden had reappeared on the runways this morning. Airport and airlines officials had announced there was no explanation at all how these airplanes had got back to airports they had left yesterday. Also there were flights arriving, which already had …
This gotta be a prank! They all just kidding, aren’t they? Well, you better read this for yourself, maybe something’s wrong here at my place. Everything’s about this. Like this:
According to an official note by the Bundesregierung an investigation of the situation was still ongoing and the government was asking people to remain calm. Further this morning the European Space Agency confir …
Oh my god …
… confirmed there was no doubt at this point that the position of the earth in relation to the sun had restored over night at approximately 4:15 a.m. for 24 hours, which means a complete rotation about its own axis … come to the conclusion … the correct date for today is Saturday, the …
What the …
… was providing an answer for the set back of all atomic clocks on earth as well on those in satellites in …
… from all over the world are baffled what the reason could …
Okay, things are really getting creepy. I wasn’t going to believe it, but I did notice some things being odd this morning. I mean, I was wearing the same pajama as I did on Friday and also the dishes were back in the sink … I thought I was just rattled …
Oh my god, what is going on here? Can someone please tell me this isn’t real? You gotta read this comment:
Kinga XD: I am sitting here right now with my husband and we can’t believe it either. I had a bad car accident yesterday morning and I can remember waking up in the hospital with a broken leg among other injuries. And then I woke up this morning at home in my bed next to my husband without a single scratch with our car entirely undamaged in the driveway. This is really happening! We are really scared …
I don’t know what to say. It looks like this is really happening. My Whatsapp is going crazy too right now. As I can tell so far my parents and friends are all experiencing the same thing. What does all of that mean? Is it just once? This is like this old movie about Tom Hanks living the same day over and over. Do you know what I mean?
It can’t be like this. I’m definitely dreaming and I’m going to wake up any moment.”

- 4 -
Vid_30180_24
August 9, 2018, 0:25 AM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_24.mp4
Duration: 10:02

“Hi and hello my dear ones and welcome to a new episode, namely number 1,355. And this time it’s a special one. Because I have a very interesting guest today, what makes me really happy, hello Holger.”
“Hello Josefina and to everybody out there.”
“We know each other for a pretty long time, but actually met today for the first time offline, because Holger here is a hitman; at least that’s what he calls himself. Would you explain to us what that means exactly?”

“Originally, a hitman is a hired killer. But I don’t get hired and I only kill to take out the dangerous criminals.”
“And how do you do that?”
“I’m on the road to get those sociopaths from precisely 4:13 a.m. of our time, when the loop starts, until its end, exactly 23 hours and 56 minutes later.”
“Every day?”
“Every day!”
“For how long are you doing that?”
“I guess it must be three years by now. I didn’t count the days. Further there wasn’t a moment when I decided, ‘okay, that’s my thing’, but it has developed gradually.”
“How did all of this come to you? Were there key reasons or did you just want to help other people?”
“Well, yes, I definitely wanted to help. At the very beginning everything has been about getting to my family of course. I was working as a cop before and my loop starts during my night shift I had back then. So I protected my family the first days. But later then, when I was sure my family is safe, I started to help friends and colleagues. Everything has been really bad at that time. You just needed to have a look on Facebook to find thousands of targets. And because I was a cop, it was easy for me to find out names and addresses.”
“And of course you did know what to do; I mean, you are one of the few people with a gun.”
“That’s right. Besides the weapon, the biggest advantage is that I’m awake at the beginning of the loop, while most people still asleep. So I got out and took out these sociopaths the moment I knew where they were, before they could even get close to harm other people. And I’m doing this every single day; doing my tour, until I bring it to perfection.”
“Your tour? That sounds like you were a mailman.”
“Haha, yes kind of. Everything’s about routine.”
“And how exactly do you take out these guys?”
“I just stab them while they are sleeping. At least most of them.”
“Stab them?”
“Yes, that’s quieter.”
“Do you kill them immediately or do you let them suffer?”
“Well, by now I think there is no much difference to let them suffer or not. Most important is they don’t hurt anybody else anymore. To be honest, I did let the most pervert ones … I mean those, who did that to kids, some of them for hundreds of loops … well, those I just stabbed into their stomach so they bled out slowly and painfully. But now I don’t do this anymore. I don’t want to become like them; that it is making fun.”
“How many do you take out on your tour?”
“128.”
“Wow!”
„Yeah, it’s quite a lot. And this is only my area in the west. There are two dozens of other hitmen in Berlin.”
“How many of these 128 do you get in their sleep? And what about those, who are not sleeping from the beginning of the loop, but are awake just like you?”
“Actually 127 out of 128 do sleep. At the very beginning it was hard to calculate the ideal tour, because, you know, everybody of them wakes up at a different time and of course you don’t know beforehand when exactly. I really don’t want to know, how the situation is in other parts of the world, where the loop starts in the middle of the day.”
“And the one that’s left, what about this one?”
“He has been kind of my personal Moriarty for a long time. His loop starts in a club near Warschauer Straße and that’s why he could get away at first easily and strike out everywhere. But at some point, when the hitman-community started to establish itself more and more, those guys then again began to go after us. He was the one who hunted me. And while it took me some time to fight him, I couldn’t take out the others, so there was a chain of reactions.”
“You mean, they tried to stop you and the other hitmen.”
“Correct. They have been connected very well long before, while we had to build up everything. In the end our advantage was that we outnumbered them. There were many, many normal people, who supported us. Eventually, that’s why I got him too. He’s the first one on my tour. The people around him keep him covered until I arrive and terminate him. By now he is not even resisting anymore, but sitting there torpidly for seven minutes without saying a word. Unfortunately it took a very long time until it worked out like it does now.”
“For how long do you want to all of that? More specifically what happens, if one of the other hitman is running out of steam? It is pretty the same everyday.”
“Yes, that’s actually a problem. I always say, I keep doing that as long as necessary, but yeah, of course we’re discussing the fact some of us considering to stop doing the same things every single day. I get them. So we started to switch offenders among each other or doing some competitions like who’s the best and so on to bring some change into all of this. But I don’t know for how long that is going to work. I’ll be for a while, that’s for sure. So for now there’s no reason to worry about.”

- 5 -
Vid_30180_21
August 8, 2018, 6:30 AM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_21.mp4
Duration: 6:27

“Hey. Now we know. It happened again and it’s definitely real. One second ago … phew … well, one second ago … I was sitting in the doorway downstairs … you’ve all seen it … and the next second I wake up, lying in my bed. Like I was beamed up here. It’s 6:30 in the morning and the alarm for Saturday woke me up. It looks like everything is repeating. Everything is set to zero again in the middle of the night. Like it has been yesterday. I mean, the day before yesterday … I think I become insane. I just don’t get it. How long is this supposed to go on? Obviously, people, who died yesterday, are alive again. So that means, we all are immortal now? At least while this batshit craziness is going on. I still can’t believe it. Everything’s exactly how it was on Friday night. Every detail. I don’t understand, why everything is deleted, but we can remember it. And of course the Internet is going nuts. I already read apocalypse and god for a dozen times in the comments. Guys, is god drunk or what? Has he the hiccups? What is that good for?
… such a crap …
Now I’m sitting in my bed at 6:30 in the morning and making a video without any makeup. Aaaargh … if somebody was telling me that a couple of days ago …
Alright, my dear ones, what are we going to do now? We can basically do everything we want. There are no consequences. I think I’m going to eat chocolate today, only … yaiihh … who is with me? Somebody is asking, if I have the guts to jump off the roof. Oh … my … god … never. What if the day is not going to repeat itself tomorrow? But even if it does, I wouldn’t do it. I would just …
What … what was that? Did you hear that? That was on the street. Wait, I’m going to part the drapes. That was a nasty bang! Oh, can you see that? Oh no, that’s awful.
This car over there, it must have crashed into the other cars on the curb.
I think someone’s lying on the street!
Yes, someone’s lying down there!
I’m calling 112.
Okay, it’s working.
Hello? Yes, there was an accident. Somebody is hurt … what? What did you say? Hello? Hey! Hello?
Unbelievable! You couldn’t hear that. He said, they couldn’t do anything at the moment, because it’s nobody there. And then he hung up. What does that mean “it’s nobody there”? Aren’t they going to work anymore at the hospital? Who’s helping all those people now? Should go outside and help? I gotta go out. But it looks like he’s dead. He’s not moving anymore. I’m too scared to leave the apartment. They are all going crazy out there! This one guy was speeding so fast, you could hear him a mile away. And then he hit this poor pedestrian and crashed into those cars over there. A lotta people saying too I shouldn’t go out. I think I better bar the door, what do you think? I’m going to call some friends. I’ll be back later. Take care of yourself!“

- 6 -
Vid_30180_21
August 8, 2018, 1:00 PM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_21.mp4
Duration: 8:40
“Hi.
This is episode, ten … ten thousand and something …
It’s getting … it’s getting harder for me every day. What I can hear from you, everybody is feeling the same, more or less. To be honest, I’m not scared anymore becoming such a baloney brain. You don’t get anything at all anyways. For twenty years, I think, I’m passing by these people in their wrecked car on my way to the library. Guess I told you a couple of times. That’s a thing too. I don’t know anymore, if there is anything I did not tell you for a thousand times in this vlog. Anyways, it looked like this couple, pretty young, had on day minus one, the Friday, this accident. And every time I was going past them they were unconscious; at least I thought they were. Then, years later, there was a guy standing at the wreck, when I came along. It was the woman’s brother. And he told me, his sister’s boyfriend was fully conscious at the beginning. Sure, the first day they were rescued by the fire department and brought into hospital. But then of course, they weren’t, when everything went south more and more. The brother mentioned that he came to this place from time to time to talk the boyfriend, who has been in a lot of pain all the time. But the only thing he could do for him was giving him painkillers. He then told me this guy became a Vesty soon. Didn’t surprise me. It happened to most people in similar situations. The brain degenerates plain and simple over time. Once I went to the prison in Spandau and every inmate there was a Vesty too. No wonder nobody let them out and eventually they fell into oblivion. There must be millions of people sharing this fate. But there is nothing you could do about that. The doctor from the Charité I hosted in my vlog last year said those brain damages are irreversible and according to CAT scans it was very unlikely that they could sense anything. But I’m not sure. You can remember from before, those people waking up after being several years in a vegetative state. What I’m saying is, I’m asking myself for quite a time, if this could also happen to people like us. I mean people, who are not trapped in a hopeless situation, like in extreme pain, in their loop. Because I have this feeling, for years actually, that my mind … is gently languishing. It’s getting a little more boring every day. Always a bit duller. I’m biologically 27 years old, but I grew old in my mind. Not when it comes to skills, but how I react to stimuli. It’s hard to describe. Like I have already seen everything once. Nothing thrills me anymore like it used to be. I believe I noticed other people making the same experience. For instance I’m surmising there are less … less people around, when I jaunt out. Like they would simply stay at home. Further I talked the other day to a friend from India on the phone. He was a flight controller. And he told me he has been in the control tower at the airport after a long time and he noticed that every single plane was flying on autopilot. Heading noplace without exception. No destination. Never touching down. It actually looked like the pilots were lost too. They absolutely could have landed. He then said, it must have hit long-distance flights first. Those with more than five hours to go. And then gradually those flights that could have landed in less time. If you got to do the same thing over and over in the first two hours of your loop, it looks like it is enough to become a Vesty. The million dollar question is: how much time does it take until I become a Vesty. A hundred years? Thousand years? But some day it probably will be at that point. It feels like it, though.
Ouroboros1k says, his biggest problem is that there is no meaning. Well, yeah, I got to admit he is right. Everything became kind of meaningless to some extent. Aimless, at least. I can imagine Asian cultures dealing differently with the loop than we do in the West. That everything has to have a purpose, a telos, is a pretty western way to see things. Or maybe a monotheistic one. Nevertheless I never heard any Asian friend saying their situation would be significantly different compared to ours. Everything, we create, vanishes. Nothing remains, except for memories. And with us, everything dies, what happened since day zero. And it looks like our whole solar system is affected too. We know that since the first days, when it became clear the Voyager probes are looping with us, because their signal only needs 17 hours to reach earth. It probably goes even beyond the solar system. That would mean, there is nobody, who could help us. But how long should that take?
Now I had to smile again. Took me a while since the last time. I guess I started to think in astronomical units by now.

- 7 -
Vid_30180_21
August 8, 2018, 9:10 AM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_21.mp4
Duration: 3:50:29

“… sss help me. If there is anybody, you gotta help me. Jannick didn’t come today … I … please, they’re in the hallway. Nobody answers my calls … they getting in, oh god please no, please help me, please, anybody …“
“There she is!”
“Don’t … get off …”
“Come here …”
“Get her over here!”
“Heeeelp … hel …”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Shut this sweetheart up!”
“Crank up the TV!”
“… and this is how, probably for now, the last Bundespressekonferenz ended. I will summarize it for you again and give you the news one last time; for all those, who tuned in, before … I guess this is how to say it, before we also go off air and return to our families. The Bundesregierung declared the state of emergency for the whole of the Bundesgebiet. This also applies to every other so called repeated days. The people should expect every federal institution such as police, fire department, military, jurisdiction, civil protection et cetera to be incapable of acting. Furthermore the Bundesregierung ascertained, according to international scientific knowledge, it cannot be assumed that this spatiotemporal loop can be breached. All Bundesbürger are called for good sense and moral responsibility towards their fellow citizens. In addition to that the Kanzlerin emphasized, in case the loop ends, there won’t pertain any amnesty to criminals. The Kanzlerin concluded the press conference with the words: Only god may help us now. I concur to that.
Pope Francis spoke out again in front of thousands of believers on St. Peter’s Square, that it was god’s plan, to impose hardship on humanity. While he reasserted that god was revealing himself once for all in the events of last week, he avoided to explain, why the dawn of the Last Days is differing from the portrayal in the revelation and why the fate of Christianity is not different from that of any other religious orientation. There was no guidance for the Last Day, Pope Francis said, except for believing in the faith to our savior Jesus Christ.
Worldwide reports of chaos and barbarism are looming in all nations and cultures. The Dalai Lama called the situation the biggest atrocity you can think of you could possibly do to humanity. You had taken hope from them; the only thing that was holding human civilization together. Meanwhile the Prime Minister of India threatened to use nuclear weapons against the Indian population, in case anarchy in the cities was not coming to an end.
In the same fashion US-President Donald Trump reinforced his plan of a ‘hard reset’, which consists of using all available nuclear weapons. Scientists describe this intention as pure desperation and guaranteed pointless. Whereas astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said, there was, based on human knowledge, no logical explanation for these events at the moment and every explanatory approach is total ‘bullshit’. However, said Hawking, he was confident about an artificial cause for all of this, which could find an end eventually.
Anyways, my dear fellow citizens, it seems we are trapped in this eternal repetition. I want to make confidence available to you that the ability to adapt is the greatest human trait. That is why I dismiss you with the words of Bernhard von Marwitz:
I would be hopeless, if I did not know that it is me, who has lost himself, but not the eternal, which work continues.”

- 8 -
Vid_30180_23
August 8, 2018, 4:04 PM
Path: /storage/5C7A-873B/DCIM/Camera/Vid_30180_23.mp4
Duration: 15:45

“Hey, great you all made it. Can you guys hear and see me?”
“Yes, Josefina, I think we’re all online.”
“Thanks, Viktor. For the record: This is day 44,805.”
“And it’s your birthday! Best wishes for your one hundred and fiftieth, Josi.”
“Thank you so much, Aiko! To all of you for being here today. Bad news first: Manuél did call me finally … he has found Zara. Unfortunately she is in second stage. The thing was, she went AWOL, and we did not know where her loop begins. That is why it took Manuél so much time to locate her. He is afraid we lost her. He said, he would travel to her the next days again, but it takes him four hours at least to get to Montevideo.”
“You can see how important it is, to be precise about your loops beginning.”
Yes, but I think Zara did not tell us, because it was too personal. Manuél just mentioned it vaguely. Viktor, how many are online today?”
“Around 110 million. My friend Vlad told me the other day: we had a decrease in numbers of 0.65% last year.”
“That is not too bad.”
“Amina, that is correct basically, but we are getting close to the limits of information intake. How much data are we distributing momentarily, Rufaro?”
“I think our latest calculation two weeks ago came out with 25 gigabit a day. Evenly spread to all participating Data-Keepers, we must be at 250 Bit per participant per day. Depending on the person, it takes them between 30 and 120 minutes to memorize their package of data. The problem is, all trends are working against us. We are mining more data every day, each Data-Keeper needs more time for the intake and there is less time for transferring data and running experiments. The more data we mine, the more errors we produce in transferring and saving it and finally, like Viktor said, we are losing Data-Keepers too.”
“What do you think for how long we can keep this system running?”
“Honestly, not for a very long period of time, Josefina.”
“How long exactly?”
„If I take all the latest developments into account … maybe another 20 years.”
“That is not good at all. Aiko, what do you think?”
“My predictions are similar. The physicists are aware of the situation, but we approaching full capacity. However, we are working on a program in another channel to re-valuate relevance of new data we produce in research.”
“How many bit needs this channel?”
Two Kilobit at the moment. In my opinion it is promising.”
“And I got to add, by this time we are risking to bore the Data-Keepers. The project is going on now for how long? Around 25 years? After 25 years of memorizing data every day, there are people who are under the risk of getting not enough stimulation.”
“Yes, I guess we cannot ignore this difficulty. Anyways, we don’t really have an alternative. It is the only way to generate progress. There are no other data carriers than our brains.”
“Do you have any news from the physicist’s frontline?
“The same as every day. All our hope is still on experiments we are doing in CERN. I talked to Stephen last week. He said it could go on like this for a million years or we could have a luck shot tomorrow that brings us salvation. I got to say by now, his theory seems more plausible to me every day. Maybe all of this is not about finding a solution. Maybe someone wants us to keep looking for it.”
“But in this case, we could stop instantly to see what happens.”
“Well, I think, we cannot create an artificial state of total entropy. The only thing to stop the experiment this way, is all of us becoming Vesties. I mean, when we stop sending information. Because I think, this is what all of this is about. And we only can become Ve-sties, if we actually lose our hope. But every one of us has proven sufficiently that we still have hope. So I do not believe we can get hopeless by decision. Only, when we tried everything, played through every single possibility; only then we will give up. Maybe we will come to that point, when the project fails. Or maybe it will be in millions of years.”
“So the only way out is to fail? And only, when all of us are braindead, we will have salvation? Or how am I supposed to understand that?”
„Or it is not about salvation. Maybe we are redeemed already. From all our pointless lives we lived. Now we finally got meaning. That is our eternal life, we allowed to life together. As long as we do not give up, we are living as immortals in paradise on earth.”