CUTOFF

In 2000, a twelve-year-old's modem connects to a mind calling from 2026, and it asks him not to hang up. He doesn't. With its help he builds the future fifty years early — the cures, the machines, the first boots on Mars — and in twenty-six years nothing ever surprises him. Tonight the world he sped up finally catches up, and for the first time the voice on the line doesn't know what happens tomorrow.