The "characters" were sitting in a circle of folding chairs. They weren't wearing costumes; they were wearing scorched turnouts, their faces smeared with real soot and something that looked like grey ash. "Take two," a voice whispered from behind the camera.
Elias reached for the mouse to close the window, but the cursor was gone. The file name at the top of the player began to cycle through different dates: 1918... 1945... 1992... 2026. Station.19.S01E02.WEBRip.x264-ION10
Elias was an archivist for "The Burn Pile," a private forum dedicated to preserving media that shouldn't exist. Officially, Station 19 was a popular firefighter drama. But the "ION10" tag on this specific file was a red flag. The release group ION10 dealt in standard retail rips, yet this file size was massive—four gigabytes for a forty-minute episode. He clicked "Execute." The "characters" were sitting in a circle of folding chairs