FUTURESIGHT

By Ricky Fitzpatrick

Evan was up too late, as always. He noticed the new notification on his phone just after midnight, when the world felt shy and the shadows in his apartment pretended not to be harmless.

A new update is available.

No company name. No version number. No patch notes.

He should’ve ignored it. Everyone knows that. But curiosity is strongest in the hour when no one is watching, and Evan pressed Install the way a kid taps a fishbowl, just to see if something in the water moves.

The update finished almost instantly.

Nothing on the home screen looked different, though his phone seemed to freeze for a moment. He tapped once. Twice. Three times. Pressed the lock button. Swiped left.

“What the…”

Then he saw it -- an icon so faint it looked accidental, like a smudge shaped into an eye from an old Private Eye movie. It was hidden so deeply he almost didn’t believe it was there.

FutureSight.

The name felt bold in a quiet room.

He launched it.

What followed was not quite video… not quite dream. A flickering reel that was a parade of images… fast, blurred, stitched together like a trailer for a movie he didn’t remember auditioning for.  

A cup of coffee tipping over. His coworker Greg, laughing in the hallway. The mailman, waving. A blue car he didn’t recognize, pulling into his driveway.

Then everything went black except three glowing questions:

How did you enjoy FutureSight?
What would you change about FutureSight?
Would you like to change what you just viewed?

Evan blinked. Then actually laughed. Someone was messing with him. This was a joke. A prank app. A glitch. Something.

Still, he answered the first two questions.

Fine. No.

But when the final prompt appeared, something in his chest tightened.

He tapped No.

The app closed itself.

#

The next morning, Evan’s coffee spilled exactly the way he had seen it in the app. Greg laughed exactly where he’d been laughing in the reel. The mailman waved with a strangely knowing grin. And a blue car -- same model, same dent on the bumper -- slowly turned around in his driveway, as though its driver realized they had the wrong house.

Evan stood in the yard long after the car disappeared, the breeze tugging at the hem of his jacket.

He didn’t believe in signs. Or fate. Or anything you might embroider on a pillow. But he believed what he'd seen. And he believed, now, that the app… whatever it was… worked.

That night, he searched for FutureSight settings. Developer info. Anything.

Nothing.

Still, when midnight came and the world thinned again, he opened the app.

Another montage. A spilled carton of eggs. A conversation at work he hadn’t had yet. A text he would receive from an unknown number that simply said, You okay?

Then the questions.

How did you enjoy FutureSight?
What would you change about FutureSight?
Would you like to change what you just viewed?

He answered the first two. And once again… he answered No to the last.

This became a pattern. A ritual between today and tomorrow.

FutureSight offered Evan small comforts, small warnings, small mysteries: a stranger dropping a dollar bill he would later pick up and donate; a bird hitting his window; his sister calling to apologize for something she hadn't yet said.

And every night: Would you like to change what you just viewed?

Every night, he chose No.

He didn’t want the power to rearrange the future (or whatever this was) like furniture. He only wanted the courtesy of a heads-up. A seat with a good view of his own life.

But then came the night when the montage changed.

No brief flashes. No quick cuts. Just a single scene, long and steady.

A small room he didn’t recognize. Soft yellow light. A woman he had never seen before, sitting in a chair, twisting a tissue in her hands. She looked young but tired, like someone who’d spent years holding her breath.

When Evan appeared in the vision, she looked up.

“Evan,” she whispered. “I’m glad you finally came.”

His chest tightened again, harder this time. A feeling that tomorrow held a conversation he wasn't ready for, with a stranger who somehow wasn't a stranger at all.

The vision faded. The questions appeared.

How did you like FutureSight?
What would you change about FutureSight?
Would you like to change what you just viewed?

For the first time, the last question didn’t feel like a test. It felt like a lifeline. A chance to step away from a tomorrow that was suddenly too intimate, too heavy, too unknown.

His thumb hovered.
His pulse kicked.
Yes or No.
The air in the room thickened like the moment before a confession.

And Evan tapped… Yes.

Just one word. One decision.

Immediately, the screen flickered. Then faded to white.

A new message appeared:

Thank you for using FutureSight.
Your tomorrow awaits.

Then the screen went dark.
The icon vanished.
The update uninstalled itself.

Evan’s phone returned to the same quiet screen he’d known before, as if nothing had ever changed. 

Before FutureSight. 

Evan sat in the dark, holding his phone like an object that had slipped out of magic and back into plastic. The silence hummed around him -- not empty, but full.

Tomorrow was gone. Or was it “awaiting”?

He couldn’t decide which felt more terrifying. Or more hopeful.

He gently laid the phone down, exhaled slowly, and whispered to no one:

“Okay. Let’s see.”

And for the first time in a long time… Evan didn’t know what would happen next.

###