But I wanted to understand. I turned to page 48.

Don’t try to find me. And for God’s sake, don’t turn to page 52.”

The package was unremarkable—brown cardboard, frayed at one corner, held together by a single strip of packing tape that had yellowed with age. There was no return address, no courier logo. Just a faded shipping label with my name and the address of the small repair shop I’d inherited from my uncle.

I laughed. I was a repairman, not a mystic. My uncle had fixed VCRs and radios, not cursed timers. But the pages inside were not paper. They were thin, flexible screens, each one displaying a different interface. I flipped through them: countdown modes, programmable cycles, milliseconds, sidereal time, decimal hours, something called “evento empalmado” —spliced event.

Curiosity got the better of me. I opened it.

And I had a balance of three.

My finger hovered over the keyboard of light.

At 3:16, I shifted my grip. The mug was warm. The coffee was fresh. The clock on the wall clicked.

Inside, nestled in a bed of crumbling foam, lay the Manual Temporizador Digital IPSA TE 102 34 .

The next pages were worse. Page 49 allowed “modificación de trayectoria ajena” —alteration of another’s path. Page 50: “inversión de secuencia letal.” Page 51 was blank except for one terrifying option: “ajuste de origen” —origin adjustment.

I tried to destroy it. Hammer. Fire. Submersion in saltwater. The manual healed within hours, its aluminum cover smoothing out dents, its screens rebooting with a soft chime.