The first time I met her, she was drinking a caramel macchiato at Starbucks.
Not blood bags or energy drinks, not one of those mysterious colored concoctions that seemed to defy physics. Just an overpriced coffee with too much sugar in it.
Perfectly ordinary, perfectly planned.
She sat there in her cream-colored peacoat, scrolling through her phone, occasionally glancing up at the humans around her. The other customers unconsciously gave her table a wide berth, as if some innate instinct warned them away. Dark hair fell past her shoulders, framing her face. Light bent around her edges, creating small distortions that anyone else might dismiss as tricks of fatigue or caffeine. Her eyes caught me first, the way they shifted between grey and silver depending on how the light hit them, like moonlight on ice. When she looked at me, there was something in her gaze.
Something calculated and arguably scary.
The thing is, I swear I had seen her there before that week, somehow her presence felt inevitable. Like she had always been there, would always be there, drinking that same drink. At first, I thought I was imagining it—the flash of cream-colored coat at the grocery store, a glimpse of dark hair disappearing around corners, the silhouette through frosted glass at my gym. Each sighting precise, deliberate, like pieces being moved into position on a chessboard. The barista at my regular coffee shop mentioned she'd been asking about my usual order. My neighbor swore she'd seen someone matching her description checking the building's mail slots. The librarian remembered her requesting the same obscure astronomy texts I'd been researching.
Each encounter felt staged; each coincidence too perfect to be chance.
She was one of the many strange things happening in my life. Maybe it started with the dreams, like all things do, I guess. Memories that didn't quite fit, like photographs deliberately misaligned. I'd wake up certain I'd lived entire lifetimes only to have the certainty fade like morning frost, leaving behind only the taste of ashes and silver on my tongue, the phantom sensation of cold beneath my fingers.
Then came the patterns.
Small things at first, like the way the clouds formed the exact same shape every Tuesday at 3:47 PM, a cosmic slideshow stuck on repeat. Then there was the way my neighbor's cat would freeze mid-stride at precisely 9:15 AM, for a split second, like a video buffering. Reality hiccupped around me, time stretching like taffy one moment, compressed into impossible density the next. Each glitch felt less like discovery and more like... choreography.
I started keeping a journal. Not on my phone nor my computer—the technology had become worse than unreliable. My phone would show me texts I hadn't sent yet, my laptop's clock randomly jumped between centuries. Sometimes the screen would display characters from languages that hadn't existed for millennia, scripts I shouldn't recognize but somehow could read. Each malfunction precise, each glitch a perfectly placed breadcrumb.
Paper felt more real, more permanent. Until it wasn’t. Sometimes I'd wake to find my journal open to pages I didn't remember writing, my own handwriting but somehow... different. Imperfections in the cursive, the kind that came from an inconsistency I didn’t have.
Still, I documented everything. The way the barista's hand passed through coffee cups as if reality itself couldn't decide on their solidity. The customer who ordered the same drink with the same precise words every day at 2:15 PM, down to the way she tucked her hair behind her ear. The shadows that sometimes stretched in impossible directions, pointing toward places that shouldn't exist.
My friends thought I was losing it and my therapist suggested anxiety medication. My boss gave me concerned looks when I tried explaining why I couldn't trust the office computers anymore.
I started carrying my journal everywhere, filling pages with observations in increasingly desperate handwriting, developing my own notation system for tracking the glitches. Something inside me remembered doing this before, though I couldn't say when or where. Each symbol I created felt less like invention and more like remembering, like someone else's memories leaking through the cracks in my consciousness.
And she, she just waited.
Every day, same seat, same drink, same smile. The light around her would occasionally shimmer, like reality rendering her presence was taking too much processing power. Or maybe I was just losing it. And one day, she spoke to me.
"Right on schedule," she said, gesturing to the seat across from her. "You always notice by the third Tuesday. The clouds are usually what tips you off."
"What do you mean... always?"
To anyone else, these were the whispered words of a mad man on too much caffeine with way too much time on his hands. To her, they were a cue she had been waiting for.
She took a slow sip of her coffee, considering her words with practiced precision. The liquid seemed to pause halfway down the cup, suspended in time for a fraction of a second.
"Think of it like this: reality needs maintenance, just like any complex system. Some of us... we're the ones who keep an eye on things. Making sure the processes run smoothly. Making sure consciousness evolves in the right direction."
"That doesn't explain the clouds. Or the time glitches. Or why I keep dreaming about teaching astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia."
Her eyes lit up at that last part, the colors in them swirling like frost patterns spreading across glass.
"Ah, you're remembering Uruk. You were quite... significant there. That was the first time one of us met you, breaking protocol.”
The memories hit me then, not so much flooding back as being injected into my mind like ice water into veins. Standing beneath ziggurats, charting constellations. A hand on mine, teaching me to read patterns in more than just stars. But the hand in my memory felt warmer, somehow. Different. The face in the memory kept shifting, blurring, refusing to resolve into the woman sitting across from me.
"How many times have we had this conversation?" I asked, the room spinning slightly as centuries of memories tried to align themselves in my mind.
"In this exact Starbucks? A few. In general?" She paused, as if calculating. "Eight hundred forty-three times."
She smiled, and it reached her eyes, but not in the way a smile should. It looked like triumph.
"Sometimes you sit on my right. Sometimes it snows. Once, memorably, you threw your coffee. That was rough. But the conversation, the revelations? The patterns you notice? All of those are constant."
“This… isn’t right. Something about this isn’t right,” I said.
She barely broke her posture and poise but I saw it—a glimpse of something… unsettling.
"Some of us watch. Some of us interfere. Some even fall in love."
Her voice carried a note of contempt at that last part.
"Some go so far as to try preserving humans in their natural state, as if that were somehow noble. As if consciousness wasn’t meant to evolve."
There was something in her tone, something personal, almost angry.
“Who are you? Why have you been following me? Why did you talk to me today?”
"Because you're ready. Because you've always been ready. Different faces, different names, but always you. Always noticing things you shouldn't, always asking questions that shouldn't have answers. And every time, someone tries to keep you... small. Human. But not this time."
Outside, a bird hung suspended in mid-flight, frozen against the darkening sky. None of the other customers seemed to notice. Reality rippled around us like a pond disturbed by falling stones.
"We're not supposed to interfere directly. It's not part of the maintenance protocol. But sometimes, evolution needs a push. Sometimes, consciousness needs to be... cultivated."
The way she said "cultivated" made my skin crawl, though I couldn't say why.
I hadn’t noticed before but her was on mine; with growing unease that I couldn't pull away. The coffee shop around us began to blur at the edges, reality becoming less and less certain.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"Because this time will be different," she said. "This time, no one will interfere. This time, you'll become what you were meant to be."
"Wait," I gasped, finally understanding. "You're not—you're not the one I usually meet, are you?"
A widening smile on her face was confirmation. The flashes I had before, glimpses, memories, whatever. Her. Where was she? Where was… Six?
"No. She had her chance. Eight hundred forty-three chances, actually. Time for someone else to... guide your evolution."
This hadn't been a fated meeting at all but an orchestrated hunt. The other people all seemed to freeze like the bird had outside, or pause, really. Like reality itself had come to a screeching, abrupt stop.
And then—darkness.
TALES FROM THE LOOP continues next week with another story, another iteration, another cycle. If you like what you read, please share it with someone else who might interested in the chaos of the cosmos.
Thanks for coming along this journey. Stay awake, stay aware, and see you soon.
Nooooo!!!
Gosh and wonderful . Enjoyed that very much indeed - a most welcome break from all the continuous bombardment - cacophony- whatever you want to call it - about the disaster that cretinous creature is fabricating from the Oval Office. Thank you !