Chapter Nine: Bathroom Break

It was Monday, June 19th. Steven wasn't paying attention to the weather because he really needed to pee.

He slammed the door open as he rushed in, leaving it up to Connie to choose their table. He didn't even bother greeting anyone and just went straight to a door marked with the bathroom logo that had appeared at the back of the cafe.

He was in the middle of using the facilities when someone rapped at the door.

"I'll be out in a minute!" he said. But the frantic knocking continued, followed by the doorknob rattling.

"Steven, are you okay in there?!" called a familiar voice through the door.

"I'm fine, Peridot!"

"Are you sure?" spoke another voice. "You looked kinda pale when you came in."

"Yeah, Lapis. I just really needed to—Whoa, hey! " Steven yelped as his friends barged into the bathroom. "Guys! I'm trying to pee here!"

Peridot ignored him. "Quick, Lapis!"

"Roger." Lapis slipped outside again, shutting the door behind her.

"What's going on?" asked Steven as he hurriedly zipped his pants and went to wash his hands. "Is this a prank?"

"No, Steven. Listen closely." Peridot turned him around and put both her hands on his shoulders. "Lapis and I... We... have been talking a lot and, well, we have recently come to a conclusion about... something. Basically, there is something very important that we need to tell you."

Steven studied the frown she was giving him. He had never seen her this serious before, not since the drill. Combined with the pressure on his shoulders and the fact that they ambushed him in the bathroom... He couldn't help but wonder how big of a deal this 'something' was.

Oh, maybe they finally got together and wanted to tell him about it? Granted, he'd had his suspicions about those two. He didn't understand why they would need to keep it a secret from everyone else, though. Unless... was he the first one they were going to tell?! That'd be so awesome!

But as awesome and as flattering as that was, it really wasn't the best time. Steven let out a nervous chuckle. "Uhhh, can't it wait? Connie's out there for our date, and I kinda don't want to keep her waiting."

"This is more important than 'dates-with-Connies'!" Peridot quickly said.

Steven opened his mouth to retort, but he was cut off when the door opened and closed again.

Lapis had returned.

"Coast is clear," she said, giving them a thumbs up. She locked the door behind her.

"Okay..." Peridot stared Steven directly in the eyes. "Please don't freak out over what I'm about to say, but..." Then she pressed her palms together and took a deep breath, as if mentally preparing herself. "We are trapped in some 'Woodchuck Day' time loop."

Steven gaped. "What?"

"We're not quite sure how or why this is happening," Peridot continued, "but Lapis and I keep on having these vague... feelings, like we seem to know how things are supposed to play out."

"Or how things had played out in previous loops," Lapis added.

"Uh-huh..." Steven stared at his two friends. What they were saying didn't make a lot of sense, but they both looked dead serious. Then again, he also knew how good they were at acting— that just came with being art students, he guessed. He raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Okay, nice prank you guys, but I really need to go—"

"This is serious, Steven! Just think about it!" Peridot cried. "Can you remember, with absolute certainty, what you were doing yesterday? Or, stars, even just before you walked in here?"

"Of course I can!" he said defensively, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yesterday, I was... uh... And just now..." He wracked his brain, trying to remember, but all he came up with was a blank.

But that was ridiculous. Obviously he had been doing things before his date with Connie. Walking here, for a start. Taking classes. Getting dressed. Training. He just... couldn't picture any of it in his mind.

"See my point?" said Peridot, looking smug.

Lapis, on the other hand, only seemed more perturbed. "Neither of us can remember any details about ourselves, either. Not where we live, not our classes, nothing. Just this whole lot of... vagueness."

"Oh c'mon, you guys. There's gotta be an explanation," said Steven. He was starting to feel a little freaked out himself, but someone had to try and be the sensible one in the room. He pulled out his phone. "We must have texts or something that'll tell us what we were—"

Steven froze as soon as he saw the phone screen. His eyes briefly met Peridot's and Lapis's confused gazes, then glanced back down at the phone in his hand. But no matter how long he stared at it, the screen remained the same. Panic began to bubble up from his chest, but he tried to forced it down and not to show it on his face.

He wasn't very successful.

"Steven?" Lapis asked, her voice full of concern. "Are you okay?"

"What's wrong?" asked Peridot.

"The date," Steven said. "It's not... Today's supposed to be the 19th, isn't it?" He held the phone out so they could see it:

June 20th, 10:09 AM.

"I wouldn't know." Peridot shrugged. "Human naming conventions for the reckoning of planetary cycles is nonsensical."

"Check your texts, Steven," urged Lapis. "Or your photos."

"My camera's been on the fritz," said Steven.

"Well, isn't that convenient," Peridot sneered.

"It's true. See?" Again, Steven held out his phone, this time showing his picture gallery. There was a selfie of himself and Connie, pure black behind them. Another couple selfie, this time with their eyes closed and still with a black background. A pure black screen. A pure black screen. Garnet on a pure black screen. Black screen with Pearl half visible at the side. Black screen—

—a large pink cat sitting in a cardboard box. And his bedroom in the background.

"Lion!" cried Steven, a wave of relief washing over him. "There. Okay, so there's a picture of my pet cat..."

The rest of the pictures must have been taken before his camera broke, because they were all in full color. There was a nice photograph of a bagel he'd made for breakfast, a lovely shot of the ocean, a bunch of snowmen, Amethyst posing so it looked like she was picking the Temple's nose... He paused when he reached a nice big family photo. Everyone had gathered around a table at the barn, smiling brightly at the camera— all the Gems, Dad and Uncle Andy, even Pumpkin...

Steven's whole body tensed up as a dozen things seemed to slot into place. He stared at Lapis and Peridot— especially Peridot— his eyes growing wide as he only now registered what had been right in front of him this whole time:

There was a giant gem sitting in the middle of Peridot's forehead. Automatically, his hands grasped around his own stomach, to where his own gem was located.

"You guys!" he gasped. "We're Gems !"

"Well, duh," said Lapis.

"No, no no no no, don't you get it? You're not humans ! None of you go to school! I mean, I'm half-human and I don't even go to school a-and– and —" He whirled around, looking at the tiled walls of the bathroom as if for the first time. No, he was seeing it for the first time.

But... that couldn't be right. He hung out at Deja Brew all the time, he must've used the bathroom regularly. But no, he couldn't actually remember ever coming in here before. Or even seeing its door. Not until he'd come charging in, desperate to pee—

He reached out and touched the wall. It was cool and smooth beneath his fingers. Solid and certain.

Just clouds, he thought suddenly. But it wasn't a thought— it was a memory.

"This isn't a coffee shop!" he suddenly cried out. "This is my Mom's room!"

Lapis and Peridot wore identical expressions of dawning realization.

"Oh," said Lapis. "Well, that makes a lot more sense."

"My Mom's room," Steven repeated, astounded that he'd managed to forget. He turned to Peridot. "I thought you said you fixed it!"

"I—" Peridot started, momentarily flummoxed. "And I did fix it! But evidently there were some errors."

"Yeah," said Lapis. "It managed to convince us we're all human. Great work."

Peridot dismissively waved off that statement. "That's not an error, exactly. That only proves just how much more realistic the simulation capabilities of the upgraded system are. But there must be something wrong with the processing power... or maybe the cooling system? The simulation cannot proceed past a certain point and keeps resetting..."

"The loops." Lapis nodded.

"So wait... it's just boot looping?" Steven asked. "Like a messed up computer?"

"That's an adequate way of looking at it, yes," Peridot said. "How do humans fix computers that do that?"

"Um... They kinda don't? Most just buy a new one."

"Super," Lapis deadpanned.

"But that's okay, I got it all figured out!" Steven cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "Room, I want you to get rid of the coffee shop."

Nothing happened.

"Room," he repeated, "I want you to get rid of the coffee—"

"That's not going to work," Peridot groaned.

"Why not?" said Steven.

"Because I upgraded it to respond to everyone's wishes. Not just your own," said Peridot. "And that particular wish would need to be unanimous for it to work."

Steven's brows furrowed. "But it is unanimous. The three of us are the only ones in… here..."

He trailed off when he saw the dark expressions on the two Gems.

"The others came in too, didn't they?" said Lapis, her hands clutching at her own arms for comfort.

Steven's heart was hammering. Everyone out there— Connie, Pearl, Garnet, Amethyst, Dad, Sadie, Lars— they were all stuck here too.

"You mean," Steven started, "we're all trapped in a broken, brainwashing room!?"

"An evil broken brainwashing room!" Peridot cried.

"I don't think it's evil," said Lapis. "I think it's just trying to give us what we want. Or what it thinks we want."

"That doesn't matter," said Steven. "How do we get out?"

"That's the problem: We can't!" Peridot began pacing in a tight circle. "In order to get out of the room, we'll need to fix what went wrong first. Which we can't even do because we keep forgetting we're trapped in the first place!" Peridot yelled out the last bit, grabbing at her own hair.

Lapis wilted and stared at the tiled floor, still hugging herself. Steven stepped closer and took her hand into his own, squeezing in wordless reassurance. After a few moments, she squeezed back.

"Look, maybe if we try really hard to remember-" Steven began, but Peridot cut him off.

"We have no way of knowing if we've tried that before. Maybe we have and it still hasn't worked!" She grabbed onto his shoulders and shook him, shouting desperately, "MAYBE WE'VE ALREADY HAD THIS VERY CONVERSATION BEFORE! DOZENS OF TIMES!"

"We don't know that either! This could be the first time!" Steven cried through the shaking. He pushed Peridot's hands off his shoulders with his free hand, and continued, "Didn't you say that you remember previous loops?"

At Steven's words, Peridot seemed to calm down a little. "Yes. Yes, I did say that," she said.

"Nothing too detailed though," Lapis added. "It all sort of… blurs together."

"But enough to know something is off." Steven nodded thoughtfully. "Okay. Between the three of us, I'm sure we can figure this out. What do we know so far?"

Peridot started pacing again, thinking out loud. "The current running simulation of a coffee shop appears to reset if anyone— by which I mean, all of us who are not part of the simulation— tries to depart from the vicinity or the established narrative too much. There also seems to be a time component to the narrative. Thankfully, it's not a perfect reset; otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

"The problem, however, is that, since this simulation is actively preventing us from doing anything besides participating in it, we cannot readjust the settings that will allow us to leave."

Lapis's grip on Steven's hand tightened.

"There must be something we can do," she demanded.

"We're only stuck until the room burns out its processing power," Peridot clarified. "Theoretically, if we force the room to generate something too complicated for it to handle, the simulation will fall apart and we'll be able to get out. However, we can only do that in a way that fits the already established narrative, otherwise the room will just reset."

"You also mentioned that if we could get everyone on the same page, we could wish the coffee shop to go away, right?" Steven asked.

"Right."

"Then let's do that right now," he said, striding forward and pulling Lapis along with him. "Let's just go out there, tell everyone what's going on, and we'll be out of here in no time!"

He pushed open the bathroom door with his free hand, took a deep breath, and—