Horror of Eternal Life: Mega-Thread

[integral]

This is some of my favourite type of science fiction where it plays with the concept of being stuck for infinity, and being unable to die.

It’s the only kind of horror that actually scares me.

[SwiftQuill]

I once read a story about a character stuck in a time loop. It was caused by a time machine that the protagonist had invented. It was supposed to allow for time travel but ended up forcing her to repeat the same day over and over - another Groundhog day clone. So she is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day, after only having used the time travel machine once.

The protagonist writes in a journal the events of each day. And what she plans to do to try to escape the time loop.

In one of the entries, she conducts an experiment with the time machine. She inserts an apple (biological material) into the time machine, to see if she can send it to the past or send it outside the time loop. Instead, the apple was destroyed (the time machine destroyed all the organic matter). This entry is foreshadowing.

So after giving up on using the time machine to escape the time loop, she attempts other things to break free of this "curse". But nothing works. She goes mad over time, even developing some sort of psychopathy due to the insanity of living the same day over and over.

Near the end of the story, the protagonist writes a final entry in the journal. She says she has exhausted all options to break free from the time loop. And that she has no motivation to keep living like this. She says goodbye, and that she plans on entering the time machine one (all her organic matter will be destroyed - she will attempt su*c*de).

But that's not the final entry. After that entry, she writes another one that says "It didn't work".

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

The next day, she writes "It didn't work..."

Over and over.

The only chance she thought she had of ending this nightmare would be by entering the time machine and dying. But that didn't work. She was forced to live like this for eternity. The concept of living the same day forever on repeat, and being so stuck in that limited, maddening existence, without even having death as a form of mercy, as an escape, I found it incredibly dark. To me, this might be the darkest ending I've ever seen in a story.

[FourCrossedWands]

There are some Black Mirror episodes about this subject. A character being stuck for eternity in his/her mind, or in an artificial body, etc. I recommend watching the whole series, it's incredible.

[FourCrossedWands]

On 8. 3. 2025 at 10:17 PM, Moon said:

@FourCrossedWands Yess, specifically the “White Christmas” episode

Or the one about a women being stuck inside a toy monkey.

[OBEler]

The movie Groundhog day comes to my mind.

[integral]

This one is pretty terrifying if you're in the right mood

[LambdaDelta]

That's also one of my favorite types of story, I like these ones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/cokl1l/if_youre_armed_and_at_the_glenmont_metro_please/
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/13ot7m0/my_patient_spent_eight_million_years_under_a/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfLry1eQ-oo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFqOA6p918

+ here's a collection of a bunch 
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GroundhogDayLoop

Most anything to do with infinite or extended lengths of time is very curious, it's often an easy tool for the writer to make their story scary, if someone's being tortured just say it's happening to them in a never-ending loop. Extending the time, ceteris paribus, is like amplifying a dimension. 

What makes it all the better is that it's actually true, that's what God is in a way. All alone, with nothing foreign to it, for all eternity, unable to not be itself.
If you happen to land in a state of consciousness where that's clear, but can't see the Love, which is basically guaranteed to happen over the course of any serious spiritual journey, you will not have a good time. Feels like being trapped inside a cage, except there's not even that, only your Mind. In a certain dark sense, Love is the infinitely potent copium that obscures this truth. That's part of the raison d'être of this reality. Ignorance and self-deception are God's mercy upon you. So, buyer beware, unseeing is not an option.  

Now, this has put me in the mood for some Ketamine 

 

[Cireeric]

On 7.3.2025 at 0:54 AM, integral said:

This is some of my favourite type of science fiction where it plays with the concept of being stuck for infinity, and being unable to die.

It’s the only kind of horror that actually scares me.

I had an direct-encounter with this exact horror in my most terrifying LSD-experience ever. At some point in the trip things went way too weird and otherworldly. My mind trying to make sense of it all concluded that this cant happen in physical-reality and therefore I must have died from the substance already and I am now stuck in some eternal realm of my own consciousness - where I will experience the consequences of this trip for eternity. This was the most horrific scenario I could imagine and thats probably why I actualized it into my experiene. I was very grateful that I came back from this horrific-experience without some form of PTSD or something. 

[LambdaDelta]

13 minutes ago, Cireeric said:

I had an direct-encounter with this exact horror in my most terrifying LSD-experience ever. At some point in the trip things went way too weird and otherworldly. My mind trying to make sense of it all concluded that this cant happen in physical-reality and therefore I must have died from the substance already and I am now stuck in some eternal realm of my own consciousness - where I will experience the consequences of this trip for eternity. This was the most horrific scenario I could imagine and thats probably why I actualized it into my experiene. I was very grateful that I came back from this horrific-experience without some form of PTSD or something. 

You know it. I had something very similar happen, a consequence of playing around in God-consciousness too much. Felt as though everything that made me alive was stripped away, yet the body still remained. Probably what it's like to be an NPC. Even a few hours of that was too much, so to make it stop I made a thankfully sloppy attempt to off myself. I was too weak to handle it then, but ultimately gathered enough courage and curiosity to go back, and it was recontextualized into something beautiful. 'Twas a rite of passage after which way higher stages of consciousness were unlocked. 
I now look back at that whole ordeal fondly, suffering is indeed a great teacher.  

[Cireeric]

1 hour ago, LambdaDelta said:

You know it. I had something very similar happen, a consequence of playing around in God-consciousness too much. Felt as though everything that made me alive was stripped away, yet the body still remained. Probably what it's like to be an NPC. Even a few hours of that was too much, so to make it stop I made a thankfully sloppy attempt to off myself. I was too weak to handle it then, but ultimately gathered enough courage and curiosity to go back, and it was recontextualized into something beautiful. 'Twas a rite of passage after which way higher stages of consciousness were unlocked. 

Yes, crazy stuff can happen on strong enough doses. Sounds like an interesting, but also very intense and disturbing experiene. Nice that you made it to the other side. I think often the darkest moments of a trip express the culmination of some psychological blockage/ some inner-conflict intensified and you get the chance to understand, resolve and break through into the light.

Edited March 10 by Cireeric

[integral]

Time loop short: https://youtube.com/shorts/B3RzNu5nSKQ?si=58jQFwfiAodt1qe_

So good