1999: A Novella

By Erik E. Hanberg

What if the year 1999 repeated? Forever.

Will’s first time through 1999 was a pretty good year. And the second time was even better. But as the year 1999 continues to repeat, and as the world realizes that they might be trapped in the year 1999 forever, Earth’s civilizations start to unravel.

What is causing the time loop? Why is the world stuck in 1999? Is it the Y2K bug? Or something else entirely.

When Will discovers the shocking truth causing the global disaster—and his own unwitting role in it—he will be asked to give up everything in order to save the world and get humanity back on track to the Year 2000.

Fans of time travel and “time loop” stories will love Hanberg’s “sleek and fast” style in this mind-bending novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erik Hanberg
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005604417

Book preview

1999Title Page

CONTENTS

1999: A Novella

Thank you

Also By Erik Hanberg

About the Author

The Lead Cloak: Chapter 1

Copyright

1999: A NOVELLA

Will’s first time through 1999—what he and everyone later came to think of as 1999A—was a better year than he could have hoped for.

His good year started, as years often do, in the final hours of the previous year. Because that was when he met Erin.

Before they met, Will had spent the New Year’s Eve party wandering the halls, looking for familiar faces and coming up empty. The party was hosted by Will’s college roommate, Caleb, but Will was evidently one of the few friends Caleb had kept in touch with over the past five years. Most of the guests were coworkers from Caleb’s new job—some hawkish think tank that paid Caleb handsomely to generate white papers and polemics about the threat of a rising China.

With few people he knew, Will focused on the home. Caleb had plowed his high salary into a mortgage for a sprawling home in suburban Maryland, just outside of DC. The home looked to Will like his twenty-seven-year-old friend was prematurely married and thought about nothing except how to grow his 401k.

He found the parlor—and with the dark wood and adult-level couches, it could only be described as a parlor—and that was where he discovered Erin, sitting alone, a leather-bound book from the ornate bookshelf on her lap.

They stumbled over introductions. She explained how a coworker at her lab liked a guy who would be here and how she had asked Erin to come for support—but then promptly forgot her. She was killing time until she could go home.

Perhaps it was the setting, or perhaps it was a quiet earnestness in her that caught his attention, but she looked radiant. The overstuffed room made her a study in contrast, emphasizing her trim figure, trim clothes, trimmed bangs, and the strong cut to her jawline and cheekbones. He felt the attraction instantly.

Will left and returned with a bottle of wine and a second glass for her. Each glass had a wine charm around its stem, and he marveled at the mind of the single man who had somehow thought ahead enough to buy them.

They spent the rest of the party together on that dark leather couch. They shared their biggest dreams. As a recent PhD in theoretical physics, she wanted to make a massive dent in humanity’s understanding of the nature of the universe. He told her how he wanted a bookcase filled with awards from a career producing a cable news show (a dream Will mostly made up on the spot to try to match the grandness of Erin’s). And they filled the time in between those talks about big dreams and big ideas with inconsequential details, like comparing charms on wineglasses—Will’s charm was a perky pewter koala, hers a wizened owl.

That first moment of 1999, right as the ball dropped on TV, they were sharing a chaste but passionate kiss, a kiss that was filled with the promise of a new relationship.

They would return to that kiss for decades, greeting each new 1999 with their lips together.

Over the first few months of 1999A, Will and Erin spent as much time together as they could. Which wasn’t much. They were both in the throes of careers that demanded their time. His job as a producer out of a cable network’s DC bureau kept him plenty busy—eighty-hour weeks were not uncommon. But somehow Erin’s schedule was even busier.

He visited her at work once, imagining that a theoretical physicist would have amazing Star Trek–level equipment in her office. He was disappointed to discover that the tools she most used were the keyboard, mouse, and Windows 98. It was nearly the same setup as his own, except she used them to study the experimental data that was shipped to her on ZIP drives from far-flung places like Switzerland or the South Pole. He just sent a lot of emails and wrote up pitches for segments.

It was a magical time, though—when they found the hours to spend together, at least. They would sneak away from their jobs and have sex or just lie in bed and recapture the ease they had felt that first night together. It seemed as if they were having an affair, but with no partners to be injured by their stolen moments.

Everything changed in early April, when Erin told him that her consulting contract with the feds was due to lapse. Rather than extend it for another year and remain in DC, she was relishing the chance to get back to her lab at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

But, of course, she would come see him, and he was welcome to visit her. People made long-distance relationships work all the time.

Will never asked her to stay. He implied it. He hinted. He let silences get long enough that he felt they were awkward. But he never asked. They’d been dating for less than four months. It was too much to put on her, wasn’t it? If he actually articulated his feelings and asked her to stay, it would reveal that he was more invested in the relationship than she was. Which must be true, he thought. Her leaving was evidence enough.

And so she left her apartment at the end of the month and returned to Carnegie Mellon and the City of Bridges.

Their long-distance relationship lasted until June.

She visited DC twice. He made it to Pittsburgh once. A fair trade, he felt, since she was the one who left. But their