When he clicked play, the video didn't start with a high-definition roar. Instead, it was thirty seconds of frantic, muffled audio and a shaky view of someone’s sneakers hitting pavement.

He watched the sneakers on the screen again. They weren't his. He realized with a jolt that he hadn't recorded the video; he had been the one receiving it.

In the video, he wasn't alone. A girl's hand reached into the frame, pointing at a streak of light—a satellite or a shooting star, it was impossible to tell. "Look," she said.

Elias found the file buried in a folder labeled Misc_Transfers_2022 . Most of the files in that digital graveyard were screenshots of recipes he never cooked or memes that had long since lost their punchline. But was different. It had no thumbnail, just a grey icon of a film strip.