Every few minutes, the zoom changed. Not random. Responsive. If Sam thought about his mother, the zoom focused on a tear duct. If he remembered the car accident he’d had at seventeen, the iris showed a faint scar that matched the one on his real eye.

Sam is still online. So are you now.

Over the next hour, USER_004 explained what they’d pieced together. There were currently five active viewers, including Sam. The movie was always streaming. The IP never changed. No one knew who “Sam” was — the title, the filename, the viewer count — but the consensus was that Sam had been the first viewer. Maybe the creator. Maybe the subject.

Inside, one line: 172.16.50.5/sam_online.mov

USER_004: I don’t remember my own face anymore. Just this one.

USER_004 sent one last message before going silent:

He hadn’t shown anyone. He’d just opened a file on a secondhand laptop.

Sam tried to close the tab. He hovered the cursor over the X. His hand wouldn’t move. Not paralyzed — unwilling. As if the eye onscreen had reached through the fiber optic cables, through the router, through the cheap laptop’s plastic frame, and placed a warm, invisible finger on his clicker finger.