Dead Air

She wanted to know what came next. Then the future started answering back.

Sandra Long thrived on routine. Breakfast at 7 a.m. The bus stop at 8 a.m. The office by 8:30 a.m.

Everything had to happen on the clock.

That evening, she noticed an unfamiliar MP4 file on her mobile phone. Its sudden presence itself wasn’t strange. Her teenage brother often used her computer—and loved music.

It was the file’s timestamp.

11:47 p.m.

Her mobile read 8:32 p.m. The file was three hours and fifteen minutes early.

Probably a software glitch.

The next day, tucked in the bottom-right corner of her laptop screen—

Another file. Forty minutes ahead.

Her ears tuned into the traffic noises as she drove to work. The blast of a horn. The screech of brakes.

Her voice invaded her mind. “You should have driven the other way.”

A resonant warning. A little too resonant.

It was the route she usually took. But she listened—and changed it.

Later, Sandra sat down with a dish of fried rice for dinner.

“Now, in local news, five cars overturned along Helmont Highway…”

The very highway she drove to and from work.

More audio recordings tucked themselves into the bottom-right of her laptop screen over the next few days.

They were little things at first. A shattered drinking glass. An overdue task. Something burning on the stove, unattended.

Sandra prevented each event. The future became—editable.

So she started scrolling through her phone with obsessive fervour. Soon, she stopped making decisions until the next recording appeared.

Soon, mistakes arrived in the bottom-right corner of her screen before she made them, the intervals between them getting shorter—and shorter.

Three hours.

One hour

Ten minutes.

Each was a lock sliding into place.

Then, a recording appeared.

2:17 p.m.

With her voice. This time, its clarity was unmistakable.

Don’t answer the phone at 2:17.

It did not explain.

Her phone rang at exactly 2:17—her name staring at her.

SANDRA.

Her number, blinking.

The warning was in her head; she let it ring.

Then, ANOTHER recording at the bottom-right of her screen—with the ringing she had just heard.

Her cryptic voice:

That wasn’t what I said.

She hadn’t heard just one prediction. She was hearing more.

So Sandra experimented. She CONTRADICTED the recordings.

One told her to turn up her radio's volume. She turned it down. Another told her to leave a light on. She turned it off—on purpose.

Then, a new recording. This one told her NOT to open a window. Of course, she flung it wide open.

Each deviation generated a new file.

The timestamp approached. FAST.

15 minutes ahead.

10 minutes.

5 minutes.

Her mobile was clogged with possible futures, some contradicting the other.

Cook the fish. Don’t cook the fish. Open the door. Don’t open it.

Every choice had a haunting echo. She could no longer follow their sequence.

A new recording. Only thirty seconds ahead.

Sandra hesitantly pressed the play button.

There were no instructions.

But breathing. Very heavy breathing.

Then, her own voice.

She did the same thing, movement for movement-- thirty seconds later.

She could hear a sound underneath the breathing. Not hers. A different sound. A different breath.

A new voice. Close to the sound.

She can hear us now.

The static was never empty.

Sandra replayed an earlier recording. She listened carefully to the "dead air".

A final -- or what she thought was the final -- recording arrived.

Time::

NOW.

She heard a quarrel over static. Between herself--

And herself.

Dead air. Accusing--

Her.

"She is responsible."

Sandra stopped the recording.

Then, her voice. From a later time.

"Listen to me."

She hurriedly powered the phone off.

A tiny notification ping.

A new recording. Not from her phone.

The walls surrounding her.

SANDRA.

For Vocal's Dead Air Challenge