Silas stepped out of his car, holding his phone in front of him like a compass. The air smelled of sage and ozone. He walked through the darkness, guided by the pale blue glow of his screen, matching the landscape in front of him to the pixelated image on his phone. He walked past the rusted fence. He walked toward the pole. Then, he stopped.
The chat on the side of the video was a waterfall of gibberish and coordinates. Most users believed it was an old government site, a forgotten relic of Cold War monitoring that someone had accidentally hooked up to a modern server. Others claimed it was an art project.
The stream didn't lag. It didn't buffer. The figure on the screen waved at the exact same millisecond. Silas turned around wildly, searching the darkness for the lens that was capturing him, but there was only the vast, empty Nevada night.