At 0:17, the screen flickered. For one frame—just one—the chair was gone. In its place: a mirror. And in the mirror, you . Not you watching. You from three seconds in the future, mouth open, eyes knowing something you hadn’t learned yet.
The file was the only thing on the desktop. No icons, no wallpaper—just a black screen and that name: alstain.avi . 14.3 MB. Modified December 31, 1999, 11:59 PM.
For a moment, nothing. Then the image shuddered into existence: a single chair in the middle of an empty room. Fluorescent light. No shadows. The chair was wooden, straight-backed, the kind you’d find in an abandoned school. alstain.avi
At 0:07, the hand began to tap. One knuckle. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each tap left a dark smudge on the wood. The smudges didn’t fade. They spread.
I haven’t opened it.
At 0:21, the hand pointed directly at the lens.
But last night, I heard tapping from inside my bedroom wall. Tap. Tap. Tap. And this morning, the chair at my desk had turned to face the corner. End of piece. At 0:17, the screen flickered
The video had no audio—not silence, but the absence of sound, like a room after a gunshot.
