He never clicked it. But sometimes, late at night, when his screen goes black between videos, he sees a faint reflection that isn’t his own. And in the static of his dreams, a slow, patient voice whispers: “Your turn.”

In its place was a silhouette. Not a person. Something that wore a person like a loose coat. It stood in a field of tall grass at twilight, facing away from the camera. Its shoulders were too wide, its neck too long. The sky behind it was wrong—the stars were arranged in unfamiliar constellations, and a bloated, violet moon hung low on the horizon.

When he looked back at the screen, the feed had changed. The alien from the field was now standing behind his own chair. Its faceless head was tilted, almost tenderly, as if studying a child’s drawing. And typed beneath the image, in that same impossible font:

He pressed play. The creature had no face—only a smooth, ovular surface where features should be. But as the camera zoomed in (who was filming? what was filming?), a single word appeared in the lower-left corner, typed in a font that didn’t exist in 1979: