NOVEL NEXT Expanding Into Yesterday 4/13
When Aaron found himself in the white room again he took a moment to decide if he was surprised. Until this incident the shortest time between two trips to the room was one week; the average was six. Eventually Aaron decided that while he hadn’t expected it, this second trip didn't surprise him. The time the room had saved his life was also the ‘one week’ trip he had taken. It stood to reason that Aaron’s life was in imminent danger. The only question was, what was the cause?
The butchery of his class was an obvious possibility. If this was the case Aaron had between waking up in the morning through 1 am the next day or later to remove the threat to him.
If it was something unrelated then it would take considerable effort to determine the cause.
In either case the best fix would be to solve the problem before his class could killed. The second best case would be before whatever happened to the rest of the dorm.
Now that Aaron had lived the day twice the white room seemed to allow him to know he could repeat the day as many times as he needed to fix the problem. He still wasn't sure it was safe for him to die.
The second fact seemed fair enough, not knowing if it was safe to die was a familiar notion. Aaron was less comfortable with an eternity trapped in the same day. Aaron couldn’t explain it in anyway other than by simply calling it a primal fear.
After spending an embarrassing amount of perceived time Aaron realised he was avoiding the matter. His first objective should be to collect information. His intended goal should be working toward preventing what happened to his classmates.
His presence at the scene seemed to have a major effect on the end result. In the initial loop he had been carried into the dorm, though he wasn’t sure he made it to bed before he lost consciousness. In the second loop no one seemed to have returned from the school.
Eventually Aaron decided that his best plan of action would be to follow his original schedule as closely as possible. In the next loop he would head to the school and ‘discover’ the scene as close to the same time as possible. His actions moving on from there depended on information he didn’t have and wasn't aware he needed yet.
Aaron went to the computer thing and woke up that morning.