I’ve never read this story. I only know it from my sister’s description when she told me about it several years ago. She doesn’t remember it at all now.
It’s a sci-fi / Groundhog Day type story, where the main character keeps living the same day over and over again, and is the only one to realize it. As the day repeats over and over, he gradually comes to realize that the cause is an experiment that is started that afternoon in a nearby lab, and that he has to stop the switch from being thrown in order to escape. Unfortunately, there’s not quite enough time to reach the lab in time. Day by day, he gets closer and closer, gradually overcoming one obstacle after another, but never quite makes it. Then, finally, everything goes exactly perfectly. He doesn’t make a single mistake. And he still shows up just a split second too late. Realizing that there’s nothing he can do, so that he’s trapped forever, he kills himself, but then wakes up yet again to start the same day all over again.
Does this ring a bell with anyone? I’d really like to read it.
Smeghead, I remember seeing this story on television. I think that it was an episode of an anthology series, but I am not sure (and can’t remember which one). But I am pretty sure that the title was “12:01 A.M.”
IMDB lists two movies with 12:01 in the title: 12:01 (1993) TV) and 12:01 PM (1990). The summaries don’t quite match your explanation, though. And I seem to remember having seen a movie like you describe, but I’m not sure whether it is one of those two.
The 25-minute version that I watched in 1990 was also made into a made-for-TV movie, titled just 12:01, two years later:
Both movies were based on a short story, “12:01 P.M.,” by Richard Lupoff. The story originally appeared in the December 1973 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was anthologized in Lupoff’s collection Before … 12:01 … and After (1996).
Earl Snake-Hips Tucker, that episode does sound a lot like the synopsis in the OP. But I am thinking that Smeghead is asking about the 1990 film, or at least the story on which the film was based, because of the ending: “Realizing that there’s nothing he can do, so that he’s trapped forever, he kills himself, but then wakes up yet again to start the same day all over again.” I remember, in the film, a particular audiovisual effect that accompanied each recycle. The ending was very dramatic when the constant repetition drives the protagonist to such despair that he contemplates, then resolves upon, suicide–then[spoiler]Loud gunshot
I know there have been dozens of TV shows and movies and whatnot based on this or similar plotlines - I remembered it when I was watching the X-Files version - but I’m thinking specifically of a written story. My sister told me about it when we were teenagers, which would have been in the 80s. Maybe early 90s.
Smeghead, did you see the end of brianmelendez’s post? Story by Richard Lupoff which originally appeared in the December 1973 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.