The boy in the photo was wearing Elias's modern digital watch. And in the corner of the screen, a small, new file had appeared: "Return.exe."

It wasn't music. It was the sound of a heavy wooden door creaking open. Then, the rhythmic crunch of boots on packed snow. Elias froze. The audio was hyper-realistic, spatialized so perfectly he turned his head to see if his own front door was ajar. It wasn't.

The phrase "Download For Christmas mp3" appeared on Elias’s desktop like a digital ghost. It wasn’t a file he had searched for, nor was it a song he recognized. In the quiet of his dim apartment, the cursor blinked next to the link, pulsing like a slow heartbeat.

The progress bar didn’t crawl; it snapped to 100% instantly. The file size was 0 KB. Logically, it was empty, a null data packet. But when he hit play, the room didn't stay silent.

"Elias, come look," the voice whispered through the speakers.

He looked at the media player. The time signature was counting backward. -0:59… -0:58…