The timestamp in the corner of the frame ticked away in real-time, but the physics were wrong. A red kickball sat in the middle of a perfectly manicured lawn, vibrating at a frequency that caused the digital image to tear. Every few minutes, a shadow would stretch across the grass, moving against the position of the sun.
Analysts at the Space Research Institute were baffled. The probe had been four light-years away when the footage was allegedly recorded. Even more disturbing was the audio track. Beneath the sound of a light breeze, a voice—synthetically clear and devoid of emotion—read out the GPS coordinates of every person currently watching the video. 21428mp4
The file 21428.mp4 was never supposed to exist on a civilian server. The timestamp in the corner of the frame