Signals From Tomorrow

CHAPTER 2: The First Prediction

Ethan stood there for a moment longer than he should have—staring.

The phone was still in his hand.

Its screen glowed softly, steady now—no more of that strange, rhythmic blinking that had drawn him from the road.

It was just… alive.

The light was a pale, cool blue, casting faint shadows across his fingers and the overgrown leaves around him.

He turned it slightly, checking for cracks, scratches, for signs of damage, anything that might explain why it had been discarded here, hidden away from the world.

But it looked clean. Too clean. Too new.

The casing was smooth, unmarked, as if it had never been held, never been dropped, never even left a box.

There was no logo, no brand name, nothing written on the back or the front to tell him what kind of device it was or who it belonged to.

It felt heavy in his palm, solid, like it had been built to last far longer than any ordinary piece of technology.

He frowned. That didn’t make sense.

Phones don’t just turn on like that, he thought.

Especially not phones lying forgotten in random bushes at the side of the road.

He checked the screen again.

The main display was simple, almost blank.

There were no app icons, no folders, no photos, no contact lists.

Just a clean, dark background and a single line of text sitting right in the centre, glowing white against the black.

"Prediction 001: In twelve minutes and seventeen seconds, a silver sedan will lose control on the wet bend of Oakwood Road. It will strike the guardrail. No fatalities, but three people will require medical attention. Time of impact: 7:14 PM."

Ethan blinked hard, certain he must have misread it.

He tilted the phone, adjusting the angle of the light, thinking the words would shift or disappear, or that he was just tired and seeing things that weren’t there.

But the text remained exactly as it was, clear and sharp, as if it had been carved into the glass itself.

Prediction?

He let out a short, nervous laugh that sounded too loud in the quiet of the night. His breath came out in small clouds; the air had turned colder the longer he had stood still.

“Okay,” he whispered to himself, shaking his head. “This is just… a prank. Someone set this up. It’s a joke phone. One of those novelty things you see in shops, right? It just spouts random lines to mess with people.”

He told himself this was logical. It made sense.

He’d found it in the bushes, after all—probably dropped by some kid who had bought it for fun and then got bored or scared by it. That was all it was. Nothing magical. Nothing dangerous. Just a toy.

But even as he tried to convince himself, his heart was beating a little faster than it had been a few minutes ago.

There was something about the way the words were arranged, the precision of the timing—twelve minutes and seventeen seconds—that felt less like a joke and more like… information. Information that shouldn’t be possible to have.

He looked up from the screen, peering back through the gap in the bushes toward the road.

He knew Oakwood Road well.

It was the main route through the neighbourhood, the stretch of road about half a kilometre ahead of him that curved sharply down a small hill.

It was notorious for being slippery when it rained, and sure enough, the ground was still damp from the shower that had passed over the city earlier that afternoon.

But… accidents happen, Ethan reasoned.

Anyone who lives here knows that. Anyone could write that sentence and have a decent chance of being right. It’s just a guess. A lucky guess.

Still, he couldn’t make himself put the phone down.

He checked the time displayed at the top corner of the screen. It read 7:02:43 PM.

According to the message, the accident was set to happen at exactly 7:14 PM. He had roughly eleven minutes left until the moment it claimed would come true.

Part of him wanted to just walk away. To toss the strange device back into the undergrowth and go home, pretend he had never seen it, never heard the strange sound, never felt that odd hum that had run up his arm when he touched it.

His mother’s voice echoed in his memory again—Some things are better left alone—and for a second, he almost listened.

But curiosity was a stubborn thing, and right now, it was stronger than his caution. Besides, what was the worst that could happen? He would wait ten minutes, nothing would happen, and he would know for sure it was just some silly electronic trick. He could laugh about it later.

Or… a small voice in the back of his mind whispered. Or you stay, and you find out it wasn’t a trick at all.

He stepped back out onto the pavement, brushing leaves and dirt from his school uniform, and tucked the phone securely into his jacket pocket.

He didn’t put it away completely; instead, he held it out in front of him, the screen facing up, so he could watch the time count down.

He started walking again, but this time his pace was slower, more deliberate. His eyes kept darting between the display in his hand and the road stretching out ahead of him.

The silence around him felt different now. It wasn’t just quiet; it felt charged, like the air right before a thunderstorm.

Every distant sound—a dog barking, a car engine starting somewhere far off, the rustle of leaves in the breeze—seemed sharper, louder, more meaningful than before. Ethan felt like he was standing outside of time itself, watching the world move while he waited for a line he had read on a screen to become reality.

Minutes passed. He counted them down in his head.

7:05… 7:07… 7:10…

He reached the top of the hill where the road curved away to the left.

From where he stood, he could see the entire stretch of Oakwood Road winding down toward the intersection further along.

There were a few cars moving along it, but nothing out of the ordinary. Traffic was light, as it usually was this late on a weekday evening.

Ethan stopped walking entirely now. He stood at the edge of the pavement, leaning slightly forward, his grip tightening around the phone. The screen still displayed the prediction, the words unchanging.

7:12… 7:13…

He held his breath. He told himself over and over again that this was ridiculous, that he was being an i***t, that nothing was going to happen. He tried to imagine what he would do when the time passed and everything remained normal. He would delete the message, he would reset the phone, he would prove to himself that it was just a machine.

7:13:45… 7:13:52… 7:13:58…

7:14:00.

For two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, nothing happened. Ethan let out a long, shaky breath, a strange mix of relief and disappointment washing over him.

"I knew it" , he thought. "I knew it was just a game" .

But then—

There was the sound of tyres screeching against wet road, sharp and high-pitched, cutting through the hum of the evening.

Ethan’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

He looked down the road, and there it was.

A silver sedan, exactly as described, had come around the curve just a little too fast. The back wheels skidded on the damp surface, the car swinging wide out of its lane. The driver tried to correct it, turning the wheel hard, but the road was slippery and the vehicle lost all traction. It spun around once, twice, before slamming sideways into the heavy metal guardrail that ran along the edge of the drop-off.

The sound of the impact was deafening—a loud, heavy crunch of metal and breaking glass that echoed off the nearby houses.

Time seemed to slow down. Ethan watched in frozen horror as the car came to a halt, tilted slightly against the rail. Smoke began to rise from the engine compartment. Doors opened, and people climbed out—three of them, just as the message had said. They looked shaken, their clothes torn, one holding their arm tightly as if it was hurt, but they were walking, moving, alive. No fatalities. Just as it had said.

Passing cars began to stop. People got out to help. Someone called emergency services, and within minutes, the wail of sirens could be heard in the distance, growing louder by the second.

Ethan didn’t move. He didn’t run forward to help. He didn’t pull out his own phone to call for assistance. He just stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the scene unfolding before him, his mind completely blank.

Slowly, shakily, he raised the device in his hands back up to eye level. The screen was still bright. The text that had been there minutes ago had vanished. In its place, new words had appeared instantly, as soon as the event had finished.

"Prediction 001: Confirmed. Accuracy rate: 100%."

And beneath that, smaller text, appearing letter by letter:

"There is much more to come, Ethan. Are you ready to see what happens next ?"

His name.

It knew his name.

The cold feeling that had settled in his chest spread all the way to his fingertips.

This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t a coincidence. This wasn’t some broken toy or random gadget someone had thrown away.

Whatever this phone was, whatever power it held… it was real. And it had chosen him.

He turned away from the accident, from the flashing lights of the approaching emergency vehicles, from the people shouting and rushing to help.

He started walking again, but this time his steps were unsteady, his legs feeling heavy and weak beneath him. The streetlights above him flickered, casting dancing shadows across the pavement, and every shadow seemed to look like letters, like messages, like things he was now destined to know.

Ethan had spent so long feeling invisible, feeling like nothing he did mattered, like he was just moving through a world that didn’t notice him.

But now, holding this strange, impossible device in his hand, he realised with terrifying clarity:

Nothing would ever be normal again. Nothing would ever be random.

The future wasn’t just something that happened to people anymore.

It was something that could be read.

And he was the one holding the book.