понедельник, 4 августа 2025 г.

The Loop That Births Itself

(a fragment from a paradoxical chronotext)

He was born an old man. His skin was like the papyrus of time, inscribed with words no one had yet spoken. He did not cry—he sighed, as if weary from a life he had only just begun.

With each year, his body grew younger. His arteries cleared, his vision sharpened, his gait quickened. In the mirror, he watched a face drawing ever closer to youth, but behind the eyes lived the gaze of an old warrior, tired of battles yet to come.

When he became a man, he met a woman. She was as strong as a stone. And as tender as a memory. He fell in love because he recognized something deeply his own in her—and only years later did he understand: she was him.

From this love, a child was born. The infant he held in his arms did not cry—he smiled. He knew: he would be sent back again, to the beginning. To that orphanage where a cradle stood in the corner, ready to receive the one who had already been.

And then he understood who he was:

— I am the mother, the father, and the child. — I am the criminal, the savior, and the executioner. — I am the fire that ignites itself. — And I am the ash in which the fire is born.

And again: He put on an agent's uniform. He tracked down the criminal. He fired. He died. He was born. He returned to a point where there was neither beginning nor end. Only the loop. The loop that births itself. And each time—a little younger. And each time—a little more tired. But never—any different.


Excellent. Let's begin the story properly—with literary breath, a cohesive tone, and a full-blooded atmosphere. Here is the first part:

The Loop That Births Itself

A Science Fiction Story

He was born old, with wrinkles on his forehead and a web of lines around his eyes, as if years had lived in him long before his first breath. His skin, thin, almost transparent like parchment, held within it what he did not yet remember. Or perhaps, did not wish to remember. The doctors exchanged glances, silently signing papers, as if what was happening required not so much medical conclusions as philosophical commentaries.

His name was Elian—a name as if struck from all books, but preserved in every cycle. He appeared in an orphanage with no records of his parents, with a mark in the shape of a half-forgotten infinity symbol etched on his chest, as if the very world he came from had marked him: "this one is special."

While other children were learning to walk, he sat silently in the corner, observing. He did not play, did not cry. Only sometimes, at night, he would whisper words in his sleep that sounded like echoes of long-faded conversations. The caregivers attributed it to his old man's face, too unusual for an infant, and tried not to look him in the eyes. There was too much knowledge in them—and too little hope.

With the years, he grew younger. But this was not growing up, but a reverse flow of time. First, his stoop disappeared, then his wrinkles smoothed out. His bones became hard, flexible, and resilient, and his gait—straight and confident. At thirteen, he looked forty. At twenty—twenty. And only his eyes did not change: they still looked as if they had already lived more than one life.

People in the town whispered about him. They said he was a shapeshifter, a demon, a messenger from another dimension. But he was neither. He simply remembered the past and the future.

He remembered the woman he met once when he stood on the threshold of youth and maturity. She was strangely familiar. Not by the features of her face, not by her voice, but by an inner feeling—as if in her presence a chain, long begun, was closing. He fell in love with her—with that special love one feels not for another, but for oneself, reflected in a mirror. Their connection was swift, almost phantasmal. In her eyes, he saw his own reflection—and understood: she was him. That part of him he had once left behind, having lost not only his body, but the essence of his being.

Their love could not be long. Not by the will of society—by the will of time. She aged, like everyone else. And he grew younger with each year. Their trajectories intersected at only one point—the point of blossoming. And at that point, a child was born.

He held the infant in his arms—and knew he was holding himself. He needed no confirmation, sought no logical explanations. Everything was already written. Everything had already happened. Everything would yet happen. His own face—the face of the old man he was at birth—was already looking at him from the swaddling clothes. He did not cry. He simply smiled.


CHAPTER TWO. RECRUITMENT

Where a man enters the service of himself, not yet knowing who he will become, and who he has already been.

He left home early. Though "home" was a difficult word for a building whose walls remembered more tears than voices. No one there asked questions, because everyone knew: there were no answers. He disappeared like shadows at dawn: quietly and permanently.

The city met him with caution. There was already something of a youth in him—energy, movement, a desire to believe in the future—but his eyes, his gaze, and his gait spoke of something else: it was not he who walked towards fate, but fate that walked towards him, with baggage containing clocks broken by time.

The recruitment did not happen to the sound of pathetic fanfares, but in a gloomy, windowless room. They asked no questions there. They offered him a choice—politely, almost with sympathy. And he, as if remembering what he had not yet experienced, agreed. They handed him a device. At first glance—nothing special: a glass cylinder in a metal frame, light, simple. But it was this lightness and simplicity that were most unsettling. With it, he could cross the boundaries of time. But there was one condition: never use it for himself. He smirked: "And what if I am everyone?"

So he became an agent. But his work was not about chasing suspects or criminals. It was a palimpsest: he rewrote the traces he himself had left. He returned to different years, met criminals, many of whom he already knew. And each time, the same question echoed in his head: was it not I who led them there?

Among the targets he monitored was a woman. The same one, but each time she was different—a different name, face, different habits. But her essence remained unchanged: she was a part of him. Sometimes literally, sometimes emotionally. He felt something more for her than love or attraction. He felt a challenge. She would disappear before he could make a move. Slipping away, just as he did—through age, roles, through definitions.

But the real target he was assigned was someone known only by the nickname the Mirrormaker. He planted bombs not where it was strategically advantageous, but where their explosions altered biographies. He did not destroy cities—he destroyed destinies. They called him a madman. A prophet. But the agent felt: somewhere deep down, under the mask, it was him.

In one operation, he saved a child. An infant—healthy, surprisingly quiet. He had to be evacuated, and according to protocol, he had to choose a moment in the past where the child would be accepted, raised, and where no traces would remain. He chose an orphanage. The very same one. The infant did not cry. He just looked—straight into his eyes, as if recognizing his savior. And then the agent understood. Not thought, not guessed, but truly understood: he had taken himself. And it all began again.


CHAPTER THREE. A STORY THAT CANNOT BE TOLD

Where one person becomes everyone at once, and still remains misunderstood.

He sat before the agent, arms crossed, not breaking his gaze. There was a hint of defiance in his posture—like those who are tired of the world but not yet tired of speaking their truth to it.

"You want to hear a story," he finally said, "the one that can't be told to anyone?" The agent nodded but didn't expect what he was about to hear. No one could have expected it.

"I was born... not like the others. I was seventy when I turned one year old. Or the other way around. You see, my life went backward: when others matured, I only grew younger. With every day, with every year. At first, I thought it was a disease. Then—a curse. Not a mistake, not a glitch. This is the order of things."

He spoke calmly. There was no hysteria or pathos in his voice—only weariness. He had been both the beginning and the end for too long.

"I grew up in an orphanage. I had no parents—though perhaps they existed, they just hadn't been born yet. I watched the others, their joys and sufferings. I envied them because they were going where they had never been. And I was going where I had already come from. I had no future. Only a past. And even that—was shrinking."

He fell silent, clenching his fingers. The agent did not interrupt.

"And then I met her. Or him. It's hard to say now. It wasn't just attraction. It was a collision—like two mirrors aimed at each other, suddenly converging at the same angle. We fell in love. Our souls and bodies merged in unison. It was as if a wave had crashed over us. It seemed that time had no power over us. Soon I realized: the child in her womb—it was my child. Ours. He is me."

The agent's lips trembled almost imperceptibly. He already knew. Even before his interlocutor spoke the next phrase, he guessed what his counterpart would say: "I gave birth to myself."


CHAPTER FOUR. THE FRACTURE OF TIME

Where a person gives birth to themself, loses themself, and for the first time realizes they are not one of many, but many in one.

"The birth was strange," he said, exhaling wearily, as if the memory stopped his breath every time. "The doctors were alarmed, but tight-lipped. Someone said, 'A unique case,' someone else, 'An anomaly.' And one, the most honest one, just turned away. I saw him tremble."

He didn't specify where it happened. And there was no need. It could have been any hospital, in any year, in any country—because what happened was not just an unusual medical event, it was a funnel in reality.

"After the birth... I started to disappear. Not figuratively, not psychologically, but literally. My physiology, unstable until that moment, suddenly stalled—as if something inside had jammed. The time within me, which had been going backward, suddenly collided with the biological necessity to move forward. And then my body seemed to start falling apart. It wasn't dying, just changing."

He looked at his hands. The hands of a young person. But in them—a trace of old age, as if death had once touched them, but he had never been able to wash away its traces.

"I underwent an operation. Or rather, a transformation. The doctors talked about hormones, organs, stitches. But inside, I felt that it wasn't just a change of form, it was a change of direction. As if I had become... bidirectional. As if two times now lived in one body. And each pulled me in its own direction."

He fell silent.

The agent felt that at the moment his interlocutor described, something more than a physical metamorphosis had occurred. It was a point of biological singularity. What could be called a change of gender, a change of identity, a fusion of genes—was in fact the fusion of two trajectories into one. Now he had neither past nor future. Only a kind of center between them—an axis around which time was supposed to revolve.

"I left the clinic with a different name, a different body, in a different time. And with empty hands. The baby was taken away before I woke up. Or he woke up. They didn't even let me look at my own child. All I had left were scars on my body. And in my soul."

The agent closed his eyes. He knew where that baby was. He knew because he had taken him himself. It seemed as if it had happened not at that time, not in that place. As if it was always happening.

"I started a new life. At first, in the shadows. Then I fought to win my place in the sun. Fought for my destiny. I became strong, smart, dangerous. But my every step, every decision was an answer to a question no one asked: why was I taken from myself? Who stole my destiny?"

He bowed his head. "And if you ask what I did after..." "I won't ask," the agent replied quietly. "I already know."


CHAPTER FIVE. RECRUITING ONESELF

Where a mirror becomes a door, and a person becomes a guide for themself through time.

He was sitting in a cheap diner on the outskirts of the city, as if stuck in a time when the past no longer warms, and the future has not yet invited one in. It was overcast, and the light from the neon sign reflected in the windows like a hazy warning. He was drinking black coffee, cold and bitter, like a memory that cannot be forgotten but is not worth remembering.

He wasn't waiting for anyone. That's precisely why he walked in. The agent.

He was tall. His movements—confident, but not sharp. Not like a hunter, but like someone who knows: everything has already happened. His gaze—cautiously warm, as if he saw not a recruitment target before him, but an old friend he had caught up with again in time.

"Hello," he said, and there was something too personal in that word. "Do I know you?" John asked. "I think so. But not now. Later. Or earlier."

He sat down opposite him. Two faces, two times—one body. One knew, the other did not yet. Or maybe both knew, but each in their own way.

"You're looking for answers," the agent said. "Why you? Why like this? Why didn't anyone stop it?" "And you came with answers?" "No. I came with a choice."

He took the device from his pocket—an elegant cylinder with metallic facets, glowing from within. He placed it on the table. John looked at it without touching.

"Is it a weapon?" "No. It's a key. To all doors. Especially the one inside you."

The agent told him everything. Almost everything. Or what seemed permissible at this point in the cycle: about the Patrol, about the travels, about the missions. About the right and duty to intervene when time itself cracks at the seams.

"Why did you choose me?" John asked. The agent smiled. "Because only you can walk this path." "And you?" "I've already walked it."

At that moment, John looked at the agent's hands. At first glance—ordinary. But their movements reflected neither old age nor youth: they reflected the absence of age. It wasn't just his hands that spoke of this. He didn't look old or young. He seemed to be beyond age.

And then, for the first time, John understood: he was looking at himself. Not in a metaphorical sense. Not as an image of the future. But literally. It was him. From the other side of the time loop.

"So, you came to recruit yourself?" he asked, smirking. "Yes. But you'll say 'yes' anyway." "And if I don't?" "Then I'll just sit here with you until you change your mind."

They sat for a long time. Silently. Between them—a silence, taut as a string. And then John reached out and touched the device. In that moment, everything happened at once: he remembered sitting at this same table—already an agent, remembered the taste of cold coffee, saw his own face looking at him from the past, and understood: this was not a choice, but an initiation ritual that must be repeated.

The loop continued.


CHAPTER SIX. HUNTING THE MIRRORMAKER

Where the pursuer follows a trail, he himself left. Where the aging one seeks the one growing younger. And both lose their orientation in time.

His first mission was not like an assignment. More like a pilgrimage. John, already accepted into the Patrol, received coordinates, a date, and a name: the Mirrormaker—a man whose actions caused cracks in the chrono-layer, as if he knew where and when to strike, not to destroy a building, but to shift its foundation.

He traveled to the mid-1990s, to a city that had been hit by a series of unexplained explosions: buildings were unharmed, but people disappeared, as if the bombs detonated not matter, but chains of destiny.

There, he was supposed to meet an agent who had been working in this zone for a long time. He recognized him immediately.

He was sitting in a park, like a random passerby. But his gaze—his gaze was different: no longer analytical, not observing, but... fading. Movements too light. Skin too clear. And a too-familiar curve of the lips in a half-smile.

"You?" John asked. The agent nodded. "Yes. But not quite me. Or not yet me."

He had become younger. It was obvious. His hands—unscarred. His voice—without weariness. Even his hair—thicker, darker. He was closer to the point where time ran backward, and now every day made him not wiser, but... cleaner, erased. John, on the other hand, was the opposite. He felt his joints no longer obeying him. His memory failed him more and more often, his thoughts getting stuck as if in a fog. He was aging. And the other—was disappearing, day by day, being erased.

"We're close," the agent said. "The Mirrormaker will be here in twenty minutes." "Who is he?" John asked. "Someone who knows us better than we know ourselves." "You knew him before?" The agent looked away, as if seeing himself somewhere among the trees. "I knew him. Later."

They watched the street. Passersby moved like drops of time, flowing into the unknown. And then he appeared—a man in a dark coat, with an uncertain but purposeful gait, as if walking along someone else's route, one that someone had once written for him.

John took aim. The agent stopped him. "Wait. Look." And then John saw. Not the face, not the gait, not the clothes. He saw a gesture. The way he held his left hand in his pocket. The way he tilted his head when he didn't want to be recognized. The way he changed the rhythm of his step if he heard the noise of time. He was looking at himself. At himself—in twenty or thirty years. At the man he had not yet become, but would become. At the one who, perhaps, had already been him and was now moving in the opposite direction—at the Mirrormaker.

"I..." John whispered. The agent did not answer. Because he knew. And because he knew that this knowledge would no longer stop them.


CHAPTER SEVEN. IN THE SHADOW OF ONESELF

Where missions become memories. Where the opponent is a step forward that can no longer be taken. Where the hunt is just a form of return.

He was left alone. Although it wasn't exactly loneliness—if you are your own company, past, and judgment. The agent had disappeared, as things with no future disappear. Simply dissolved at another point in time, taking with him the version that was younger, lighter, and almost pure. John remained in the space between the present and the past. He remained in a fold of time, where he himself became the structure.

Since then, everything went in a circle. Each new mission was… not new. He increasingly recognized places before arriving: streets, voices, smells. As if he had been here before—and not just once. The people he followed seemed too familiar. Some—like dreams: fleeting, ethereal, as if you know them but can't remember. Others—like mirrors in which you see yourself reflected—terrifyingly sharp and clear. He recognized their facial expressions, their habit of moving their fingers, the way they looked at their watches.

At first, he thought it was a game of imagination: overwork, stress—nothing more. Then he began to convince himself that he recognized faces too slowly, with a certain delay, as if memory and sight could not keep up with each other.

But one day, going up in an elevator, he mechanically turned to the mirror—and froze for a second. In the reflection, he didn't recognize himself. Or rather—not the self he knew. It was someone else, but painfully familiar. And at the same time—it was him. The same shadow under the eyes. The same weariness. The same posture. But he wasn't hunting himself. Although in some targets, he saw his distorted reflection. Not a double. But who he could have become if he had deviated slightly from the path. This was not a revelation. It was a warning.

Questions began to plague him. Not the classic ones, like "who am I?". He no longer asked himself that question, as he had long known there would be no answer. And he knew well why. He was interested in the answer to another question: "which version of me is the real one?!"

He caught himself in every episode. In every incident that, according to instructions, he was supposed to fix. He was becoming shadows of himself. Once he went to an abandoned house where, according to reports, a "parallel recidivist" was located. He found old things there: clothes, a notebook. And—his own name, written from left to right, like a mirror image.

Returning from missions, he was silent. He told no one anything. Not because he didn't trust, but because he knew: there was really no one else. Only him. Still him. And always only him.

Sometimes at night, he would sit in empty hotel rooms and draw timelines on paper: straight, curved, circles, spirals. He tried to fit himself into them—to understand when he crossed the line, where the glitch occurred, where he didn't become someone else, but became everyone at once.

And always—in the center of the diagram—he would leave a dot. Unmarked, unsigned. Just—a dot. The place where he would disappear, where he would become an infant, where everything would start all over again.


CHAPTER EIGHT. CLOSING THE LOOP

Where murder becomes a confession. Where the end is not destruction, but a return to the original design. Where a man kills himself to be born again.

He knew where and when it was all supposed to happen. Not from instructions or orders, but by feeling. Time no longer flowed. It had coiled around him like a snake, preparing to close its circle. All the previous days had been a preface, all the missions—rehearsals, all his lives—auditions for the role he now had to play: for the last time and the first.

He arrived in the city a day early. He took a room in an abandoned hotel where the walls held not echoes, but a future hidden in the cracks. He looked in the mirror—and barely recognized himself. There was little of John left in his face, even less—of Jane. He was no longer himself. Only a shell remained, which time uses when it is about to close the loop.

He felt himself growing younger. His body became lighter with each morning. The joint pain was gone, his vision cleared, his skin smoothed out, his brain worked faster. But this was not a return to youth. It was… a purification, a burnout. Like a star collapsing to its limit before its final flash.

That night, he waited. He knew where the one he had to kill would come from. The footsteps on the stairs did not surprise him. He did not get up from his chair, did not hide his weapon. He just waited. And when the door opened—they met.

The agent entered—young, tense, weapon at the ready. With the face of a man who still believes he is making a choice. He saw him—sitting calmly, silently, with a tired half-smile. And he froze.

"It's you," he said. "It was always me," came the reply.

They looked at each other for a long time. Like people examining their own reflection after a long illness. Not a drop of rage, not an ounce of terror. Only a gaze in which everything had already been said.

"If you kill me..." the older one began. "...I won't become you?" the younger one interrupted. Silence. "No. You already have. You just don't know it yet."

He fired not out of hatred. Simply because he had to. This shot was the completion of the cycle he himself had built. The body fell—lightly, like a discarded coat. The agent stood, trembling, clutching his weapon, as if hoping that now everything would stop. But nothing stopped.

And at that moment, he understood: he had just taken the baton. He had not broken the chain—he had become a link in it.

Nearby, the time cylinder beeped. It was active again, assembled. He knew what to do. Like the first time. He went out. Soon he would find the infant. Soon—he would leave him at the orphanage. Soon—he would direct the cycle to where it had already begun.


EPILOGUE

And the loop closes. Not to stop, but to live forever—within itself.

In the distant future—or past—a woman with tired eyes will open the door of an orphanage. She will find an infant. She will not cry. She will only lift him into her arms, press him to her chest. And say: "Welcome." And she won't even think to ask who he is. Because she already knew. As she had always known. Because it was him. That same infant. He is here again. Everything begins anew. 🔁

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