Vid_20201203_134436_611mp4

The lens was pointed at a park bench dusted with light snow. A person sat there, back to the camera, wearing a bright red coat that cut through the gray afternoon like a signal fire. They were holding something small—a bird, maybe, or a handwritten note.

When he clicked play, the image didn't immediately appear. There was only the sound of heavy wind and the rhythmic thwack-thwack of a flag hitting a pole. Then, the camera stabilized. VID_20201203_134436_611mp4

He played it again, and again, and again. On the tenth loop, he noticed something in the bottom corner of the frame. Reflected in a frozen puddle near the bench was the person holding the phone. It wasn't Elias. The lens was pointed at a park bench dusted with light snow

The person filming was wearing a jacket he didn't own, standing in a park he didn't recognize, speaking with a voice that sounded like his own but carried a weight he hadn't felt yet. When he clicked play, the image didn't immediately appear

Elias found the file in a "Recovered" folder on an old microSD card he’d unearthed from a desk drawer. While most of the photos were of blurry lattes and forgotten sunsets, the file felt different. It was dated December 2020—a time when the world was quiet, masked, and lived mostly through screens.

He looked at the file name one last time. The numbers were just a date and time to anyone else. To Elias, they were now a coordinate to a memory he was never supposed to have—or perhaps, a warning from a version of himself that had already lived through what was coming next.