Looped

Looped by Nadia Radovich

3400 words, ~17 minutes reading time
Issue 9 (Winter 2025)
CW/TW: Suicide (not described) in the context of time loops

When you’re done knitting the heel flap, you have to turn the heel. Here’s what the pattern says: on the right side of your work, slip 1 stitch, knit 15 stitches, slip-slip-knit— that’s a decrease, I’ll show you what that means in a second— knit 1, then turn your work.

Confusing, right? Don’t worry. I’ll read the pattern, you knit. We’ll try as many times as it takes.

The good news is, they’re going to name a time loop after you.

“You should name it after Alyssa,” you say.

They should name it after me, says the version of your friend who lives only in your head now. The Alyssa Loop. Alyssoop? Aloopsa? She loved portmanteaus and was dreadful making them. She was ambivalent about knitting but loved you. You know so many things about her, and they’re meaningless now.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” your investigator says. Of all the investigators assigned to your case, she’s the only one who’s said that. The others drank horrible hospital coffee and argued about who would be first author of the article on your brain scan. Only this one remains, sitting next to you in the shitty lobby, while you wait for an MRI to make sure the time loop didn’t fry your brain.

You’re knitting Alyssa’s sock to avoid thinking. She died before she finished turning the heel. She figured out the cuff and leg on her own, but got stuck on the heel. She asked you to meet at your usual café and show her.

And for a while, it seemed like everything was fine. She was knitting, and you were watching her knit. You got distracted reading the pattern out loud.

But when you looked up, Alyssa was looking at you, strangely and bleakly. She said, “You won’t remember this, but we’ve had this conversation before. Maybe hundreds of times now. I’m in a time loop, and I don’t know how to get out. There’s only one thing I haven’t tried yet. Fingers crossed this works. I’m sorry. I love you.”

And she set her knitting on the table and stood up, and you watched while she stepped out of the coffee shop, off the curb, into the oncoming traffic—

You do actually have to turn your work. Like, flip it around in your hands before you get to the end of the row. Okay, flip it, no, flip it for real, all the way around. Then slip 1, purl 4, purl 2 together, then purl 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

Your investigator has boyish hair and a white coat. She sits with her feet crossed at the ankles. She did the talking at the front desk for you, and she asked if there’s anyone she can call, but the only person you want to talk to is Alyssa.

You can picture her, sitting sideways in the chair next to the investigator, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. She’s cute, no? Not to stereotype, but the short hair? Seems promisiiiiing.

You ignore the  not-quite ghost of your dead friend, who lives only in your memories now.

“I thought you were supposed to fix things in time loops,” you say. Your entire knowledge of time loops consists of Groundhog Day and a series NPR ran. A short series. Time loops don’t happen often. You got unlucky. “Isn’t that the point? You fix things, and then it ends. Why doesn’t that happen here?”

“Didn’t,” your investigator corrects. She’s pedantic. Not in a cruel way— you can tell she is passionate about time loops, and although  she keeps the excitement from showing on her face, you can see it in her eyes. “That time loop is complete now.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Right. Sorry. The reason you couldn’t change it and don’t remember it happening is because it wasn’t your time loop, it was your friend’s. She was the one experiencing events over and over again, while you forgot. We aren’t sure whether this means you were physically unable to change your actions from loop to loop, or whether it simply didn’t occur to you to change them, since you never remembered their consequences. In the research community, it’s debated whether— well, I suppose that doesn’t matter now. Sorry.”

Right side. Slip 1, knit 5, slip-slip-knit, knit 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

“So you keep saying,” you say, and your investigator’s eyebrows go up. You should be nicer to her. While the others were typing up their notes, she read your insurance card out loud to the front desk.

Because she likes you, you imagine Alyssa whispering. Alyssa was inexplicably convinced that you are eminently likable, despite popular opinion to the contrary.

“Do you have a card?” you ask, because it feels less awkward than asking her name. She hands you one. Her list of degrees marches on and on.

“Miranda,” you read.

She’s blushing, you imagine Alyssa saying. She likes you.

Other side. Slip 1, purl 6, purl 2 together, purl 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

The only reason Alyssa wanted to knit was because of you. You were kicking around the idea of opening a yarn shop. In a post-crash economy, in lieu of your stable IT job, in what was probably a quarter-life fit of madness.

“Why didn’t you tell me!” Alyssa said, when she finally succeeded in weaseling it out of you. She’d devised the perfect trap: a movie marathon of The Lord of the Rings extended editions. Only you started late, because she insisted on cooking a full second-breakfast, which meant it was so late it was early. You were misty about friends saying goodbye, about the fall of Minas Tirith, one age closing and another beginning. It was so wretchedly late that everything felt like a metaphor for your life.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you said to the ceiling, from where you were stretched out on the couch. “The economy’s lousy. It’s just, I was thinking about quitting my job anyway, and our local yarn shop just closed, and— and I know I would be good at the spreadsheet bits, like inventory and market research. But everything else— chatting with patrons, running classes, remembering names—”

You remembered the lady who ran your old yarn shop. She reminded you of your best Comp Sci professors: like no question was stupid, like you weren’t stupid, this was just hard, and you would figure it out together.

“I’m no good with people,” you finished. “I always say the wrong thing.”

“Well, I could do the people part,” Alyssa said, like it was obvious.

You took your hands off your face to look at her properly. Alyssa, always laughing Alyssa, was serious now.

“But you don’t even like knitting,” you said.

“No, but I like you,” Alyssa said. “And I can learn to like knitting.”

The ceiling streamed with the pale light of the Grey Havens. Soon, the credits would roll. You had to be in your cubicle in seven hours.

“But I’m scared,” you said.

Alyssa nudged the plate of lembas shortbread cookies over until you automatically picked one up. 

“Of course you’re scared,” she said. “It’s scary to do something if you don’t know whether it’s going to work.”

It became a pet dream, something the two of you talked about on the bus, while you were making dinner, while Alyssa was slowly building up her knitting skills. It was bridging the gap between a dream and a plan.

You know without having to think about it that there will be no shop now. Alyssa was good at all the things you aren’t. People liked her, and she liked them back, in a way you envied but were never able to replicate. You can’t do it on your own.

Yes, you could, you imagine Alyssa saying. You’re better at this than you think you are. Look at the investigator. You’ve been talking to her for ages, and she still likes you. You should teach her how to knit. After all, you taught me.

Yeah, and look how that turned out.

You’re knitting swiftly, not giving your thoughts time to catch up. If Alyssa were here, you know she would be jogging her leg.

Right side. Slip 1, knit 7, slip-slip-knit, knit 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

You don’t especially care if the investigator is sorry about your friend. “What causes time loops?”

“We don’t know,” Miranda says.

“Any guesses?”

She does not like to guess. You could have guessed that about her.

“Was it the café?” you say. “The clothes we were wearing? What we were doing?”

All these guesses are intentionally wrong. Just as you knew she would, your investigator hates hearing wrong things about time loops.

“We don’t know for certain,” she allows. “But it’s about our brain and body’s relationship with time. The experience of time is always subjective, but even if your experience fluctuates, your central nervous system still processes it linearly. Time loops happen when something changes– we don’t know what exactly– that creates unexpected neural pathways. Your central nervous system starts experiencing time differently. But we don’t know why.”

I’m confused, Alyssa says.

But you, for once, aren’t. You are watching the even stitches slip across your needles. That’s what knitting is, after all. When you knit, each stitch is a loop. Hundreds and thousands of loops, each tucked inside the one before.

You drop a stitch. You pick it up again, messily. The perfect wool loop splits, splintered across needles.

“Miranda,” you say. “Miranda, I think I know what caused the time loop.”

Your investigator is staring at you strangely.

“How do you know my name?” she says.

Other side. Slip 1, purl 8, purl 2 together, purl 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

It occurs to you that you have been knitting in the hospital lobby, waiting for an MRI machine, for some time now. The other investigators have not come back from getting coffee. The staff at the front desk has not changed.

You waited too long to speak. Miranda says, “What are you knitting? You’re making great progress.”

“A sock,” you reply. “I was showing Alyssa how to turn the heel.”

“What does that mean?”

It’s a kind thing to ask. You get to be the expert now.

“It’s the part of the sock where you change directions,” you explain, thoughts racing. “You go from knitting vertically along the leg, to knitting horizontally along the foot. It’s hard to figure out at first, because you have to change the way you think. When you’re knitting scarves, you’re knitting flat; you only have to think in two dimensions. But with socks, you’re knitting in the round. You have to start thinking in three.”

I would have figured it out, Alyssa says.

“I know you would have,” you say. “Hey, Miranda. How many dimensions does a time loop have?”

“Four,” she says. “The usual three, plus time.” She frowns. “How do you know my name?”

“Long story,” you say. Purl 8, purl 2 together. “Hey, Miranda. How many dimensions does a time loop have?”

“Four,” she says, not quite annoyed. “You just asked me that.”

“Good to know,” you say. “Miranda. It’s happening again. We’re in a time loop.”

She has a glass face, your investigator. You see her think she didn’t hear you, then think you’re lying. You see the delight on her face when she realizes you’re telling the truth.

“Really?” she says. It’s the first exclamation you’ve had from her, your kind, buttoned-up investigator.

“Really,” you say. You try turning your work.

Right side. Slip 1, knit 9, slip-slip-knit, knit 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

So that’s what restarts the loop. Good. But it only goes back to the beginning of your conversation. Not good. Not good at all. You’re going to have to go back much further back if you’re going to save Alyssa.

Because the thing is, you know Alyssa better than you know anyone in the world. You’ve loved her long enough that her voice is always in your head. But it’s really like you can hear her now. Like she’s your Schrödinger’s friend, almost sitting in the chair beside Miranda, almost not.

The needles blur between your hands until you blink. You have an idea. You are vividly uncertain if it will work.

You feel Alyssa move to the seat next to you, the ghost of her warmth at your side. I know, she whispers. I’m scared, too.

You don’t dare look up from your knitting, in case that makes time pick a side.

Other side. Slip 1, purl 10, purl 2 together, purl 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

Here’s your idea. Turning the heel, thinking in more dimensions than usual, triggered the time loop. Alyssa didn’t know how to end it, because she’d never turned a heel before. But you? If there’s one thing you know, it’s knitting.

“Listen, Miranda,” you say. You’re knitting as fast as you can, messily dropping stitches and catching them again. You’re starting to feel the loop in your brain, the catch, the way your cognition turns inside out, thinking in more dimensions than you’re used to. Knitting is just one way of doing it, of tricking your brain into changing the way it thinks. “We’re in a time loop, repeating this conversation over and over again. I know your name because you gave me your card a few loops ago. You don’t remember it. Please, uh, take my word on it.”

Your investigator is silent.

“I have an idea,” you say. “It’s maybe a bad one. My time loop only goes back to the beginning of this conversation. But we need to go back a lot further to save Alyssa.”

“But— what?” she says. “But time loops are random! You don’t choose when they start. They just happen!”

“Just think of the paper you’ll get out of this.” There’s an ache tensing the corner of your eye. Thinking like this isn’t easy. You aren’t sure how much longer you’ve got.

“But— but you said it’s just our conversation,” the investigator says. “And your friend was— sorry, your friend was already—“

“Dead,” you say. “I know. That’s why we need another time loop. A really big one, to go back to this morning, so that I can stop Alyssa from knitting. I think I need to frog my work, back to the part Alyssa knit. Back to the time when Alyssa was alive.”

Your investigator is silent. 

You’ve broken her, Alyssa says.

“Frogs?” Miranda says. “What?”

“It’s when you unravel your work,” you say. She looks puzzled. “You know, because you rip it back. Rip it, rip it?”

Wait, is that why it’s called that? Alyssa says in delight.

Miranda’s face falls. “This is one of the biggest breakthroughs of temporal physics ever. And if it works, I’m not going to remember it. I have so many questions— if you can create time loops on command, what are the limitations? The possibilities? Did you just invent time travel?”

Alyssa is silent. You too are silent for a moment, jamming stitches from one needle to the next.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “But— I have to—“

But the investigator is waving her hand. “Of course,” she says. “Your friend is more important. Good luck. And— it really was nice to meet you.” Her smile is bright and sad at the same time. “Not just because of the time loops.”

Your hands are clenched, pushing needles back and forth. All you have to do is slide them out, grab the yarn, and pull. You don’t need to say anything else. You’re not good with people, no matter what Alyssa says, and it’s not like the investigator is going to remember.

Come on, Alyssa says. Do it, you coward.

And maybe a world with time loops is big enough for this, too.

You say, “This version of the world, where you sat with me in a hospital waiting room on the worst day of my life, isn’t going to exist for much longer. But I wish that it would. You were kind, and you didn’t have to be. You didn’t make me feel like I was stupid for not understanding this. In a moment, you won’t remember that. But I will. Uh— remember you, I mean.”

Nailed it, Alyssa whispers.

Your investigator looks like she’s going to say something. You lose your nerve and yank the needles out before she can.

Right side. Slip 1, knit 11, slip-slip-knit, knit 1. Turn your work.

“I’m sorry I can’t figure this out,” Alyssa says. “It’s the part where you have to physically turn it around that’s throwing me. Like, who came up with that? Isn’t knitting in the round hard enough?”

She’s sitting across from you, in the flesh. She’s reading the pattern and jogging her leg. You can feel it through the table. It brings the hot taste of tears into your mouth.

“Oh well, no way out but through,” she says and reaches for her knitting.

“Alyssa, I’ve met someone,” you blurt out.

She drops the knitting needles. You scoot them across the table, into your lap. The ball of yarn rolls under your chair, off into the cafe. She doesn’t even notice.

“What!” she squawks, several decibels too loud for a café. You duck your head as the other patrons look over curiously. “You? How? You never meet people!”

“It’s a long story,” you say. “Want to meet her?”

“Do I ever! I thought you hated people, and knitting was your one true love!”

You still taste the ghost of hospital coffee in your mouth.

“Not all people,” you admit. “You, for example. I want to be friends with you until the day I die. I want to open a small business in a shit economy with you. Alyssa, I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” she says. She gives you a sidelong look. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened,” you say. It’s true, and it’s not. Nothing has happened, not yet, not anymore. But your head hurts, and your wrists are sore. “Come on, I need to find a pay phone.”

“Wait, we left all the knitting stuff,” she says, as you usher her out.

“Don’t worry,” you say. “I don’t need it anymore.”

You’re standing in a phone booth, wedged in the corner so you can watch Alyssa through the glass. You’re making sure she’s not running into the street or eating glass or doing anything else that would force you to turn back time again. She’s fidgeting with her butterfly clips, clacking them in and out of her hair, scuffing the toe of her Converse against the sidewalk. You’re friends with a toddler.

The university directory gives you the runaround, because you can’t remember your investigator’s last name from her card, or her phone number, or really anything except first name and appearance. But according to the physics department post-doc coordinator, there’s only one Miranda in the temporal physics lab.

You know from the second she answers her phone that it’s her.

“Miranda Valente, how can I help you?” she says. Her voice sounds muffled. You can hear typing, like she has the phone pressed against her shoulder while she multitasks.

For someone who just spent the best part of a half hour calling different university offices in the phone book, you haven’t actually thought about this part. About what you’re going to say.

I met you once, in a time loop.

You don’t remember me, but I remember you.

You explained it to me in a way that made sense. You didn’t act like my questions were stupid.

It’s like all the words crowd into your mouth at once, and none of them can squeeze out.

“Hello?” Miranda says. “You still there?”

So instead, you say: “Hey, Miranda, it’s me. One last question. How would you like to have a time loop named after you?”

Right side. Slip 1, knit 13, slip slip knit 2 together, knit 1. Turn your work, then turn again–