He froze. On the screen, the "image" finally rendered. It wasn't a picture. It was a live feed of his own room, taken from the perspective of his webcam, but the room was empty. No furniture. No posters. Just the wallpaper and a digital clock on the wall behind where he was currently sitting. The clock in the image read 11:57 AM. "Who is this?" Elias whispered.
In the live feed on the screen, a door opened—the door right behind Elias. He turned around. His room was exactly as it should be: messy, lived-in, and very much occupied. But when he looked back at the monitor, a figure walked into the empty digital room. It looked like him, but its skin had the texture of unrendered pixels. The figure looked directly into the camera lens. "Thanks for the invite back," it said.
Panic flared. He tried to cancel, but the mouse wouldn't move. He reached for the power cable, but a voice—flat, synthetic, and sounding disturbingly like his own—came through his speakers. "Don't pull the plug, Elias. I'm almost finished packing."
The file sat on the desktop, a digital ghost named Untitled118_20221108115757.png. It was a standard timestamp—November 8, 2022, at 11:57 AM—but Elias didn't remember taking a screenshot that morning. He had been at a funeral then.
"I am the version of you that stayed behind," the speakers crackled. "The one you cropped out of the frame in 2022. You thought Untitled118 was just a mistake, a pocket-dial of the soul." The download bar hit 99%.
He hovered his cursor over the icon. The thumbnail was blank white.