Alstain.avi

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.

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.

I closed the player. The desktop was still black. But now, underneath alstain.avi , a new file had appeared: alstain_reply.avi . Same size. Same timestamp. alstain.avi

At 0:21, the hand pointed directly at the lens.

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. For a moment, nothing

At 0:12, the chair turned. Not because someone moved it—it turned , slowly, on its own, facing away from the hand. The hand followed. The smudges on the wood began to spell something. Not letters. Coordinates.

The video had no audio—not silence, but the absence of sound, like a room after a gunshot. No shadows

At 0:03, a hand rested on the chair’s back. Pale. Long fingers. No person attached—just the hand, as if the arm dissolved into static.

I haven’t opened it.