The television displayed in the background, showing the electoral college numbers, a landslide victory. Jack Norton switched it off.

"Initiate voice recording ..."

"I cannot believe he won! The civil unrest will be cataclysmic. He'll invoke marshal law and transform this country into a dictatorship. The fate of the world is unstoppable. But I have my workaround ..."

"I'm setting a time loop for one year. While the machine will flip me around within nanoseconds of the present, I'll re-experience that year for eternity. I've programmed it to reset time but keep my brain in a temporal bubble. I'll progress in mind and memory, but my body will loop within the rest of the universe. I've also set the machine to loop itself in time, rendering it indestructible."

"Alright, I've packed some survival equipment, food, books, and medication ... Not that they'll matter, whether I get sick or die, I'll just reset."

"For when to set the time? I could go back 10, 50, or 100 years, but there's still political strife, wars, injustice, and inequality, even back then. Come to think of it, no matter how far I go back to this nation's history ... Oh, right, I have a better idea."

Jack Norton arrived around 1392 AD ...

He faced harsh weather and warring tribes for countless lifecycles while being the hunter and prey of wild animals.

He also learned all the tribal languages and engaged in friendship and romance with the locals. He dealt with the human struggle of jealousy, tragedies of sickness, and the deaths of many friends and loved ones, which he knew modern medicine would have cured.

Eventually, Jack migrated to and fro, avoiding battles and severe weather, as he knew what was coming. He played a seer of truth and prophecy several times, amassing a significant cult following. Word of his uncanny predictions had spread across the land.

Jack's timeless immortality started to bore him. He knew most of what would happen within the travelable region, as if omnipresent. Since time around him looped, no matter his actions, the state of his universe always reset.

One year, Jack forged materials and built another time machine in hopes of overriding his previous effort.

He jumped into the future and saw himself watching the election and then voice dictating.

"Stop!" Jack shouted.

His future self yelled, "Intruder!" Then he pulled a gun out of a drawer and shot Jack.

The future Jack inspected past Jack's dead body and discovered a note.

"You mustn't do this. You'll live in an eternal hell. I plead with you to dismantle the machine. Live for the future!"

Future Jack did just that, and for the rest of the year, he isolated himself from the riots, the pandemic, and all the social chaos, while writing a book on temporal mechanics.

As Jack laid down his pen after a long evening of writing, he glanced at the desk's clock-calendar. It struck at the hour and one year mark of what would have been—but everything went black.

Jack awoke lying atop of wet soil, under a starry night sky, with chilly air and crickets' chirping along with the trickling of a flowing creek. An insect crawled over his right hand, in which he held onto his survival pack.