Lifeloop

"Lifeloop" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collections Capitol and The Worthing Saga. Card first published it in the October 1978 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

Plot summary

Although Arran Handully is the most popular lifeloop (reality show) actress on the planet Capitol she is sick of acting and wants to retire. Her manager tells her of an idea that for one last lifeloop that will make her rich enough to quit. She suggests that Arran do a nonstop loop from the time she wakes up from suspended animation to the time she goes back to sleep using the fictional drug Somec twenty-one days later. Arran reluctantly agrees to this because she really wants to quit. On the last day of filming a famous lifeloop actor named Hamilton Ferlock comes to her apartment. Shortly after arriving he breaks character, tells her that he loves her and asks her to marry him. She assumes that he is just doing this to play a trick on her and rejects him very coldly before going to the Sleeproom to be put under Somec. When she wakes up she finds out that Hamilton committed suicide a week after she went to sleep. She also discovers that she really cared for him.