The video ended. The file disappeared from the folder. When Elias looked out his office window, the afternoon sun was gone. In its place was a flat, violet expanse, and for a split second, he could see the faint, white outlines of a wireframe bird circling the horizon.

The file sat at the bottom of a directory labeled RECOVERY_MAY_2024 . Elias, a freelance digital archivist, had seen thousands of these—fragments of lives rescued from dying servers. Most were wedding photos or blurry vacation videos. But was different. It was only 4 megabytes, yet the timestamp claimed it had been created in 2031 . He clicked "Play."

"Seven tries," Manuel whispered, his voice sounding like it was being transmitted through a storm. "They told me the sky would be blue again on the seventh attempt. But Elias... it’s not blue. It’s written in code." Elias froze. How did he know my name?

The video opened with a low-angle shot of a dusty living room. Dust motes danced in a shaft of unnatural, violet sunlight. In the center of the frame sat a man—presumably Manuel Skye. He was wearing an old-fashioned flight suit, the kind used by high-altitude pilots in the late 90s, but the patches on his shoulders bore symbols Elias didn’t recognize: a stylized eye inside a digital hexagon.

Manuel finally turned his head. His eyes weren't eyes at all, but two tiny, spinning loading icons. He reached a gloved hand toward the lens, and the video quality began to degrade rapidly. The violet light turned into a blinding white glare that bled out of the video player window and across Elias’s desktop. "The seventh sky is a ceiling, Elias. Stop looking up."

Does this vibe fit what you were looking for, or were you thinking of a different genre for the story?