I opened my browser history to check a date.
I did not find the date.
I found a folder.
I do not remember creating it.
Its name was simply “temporal.”
Nothing else.
No numbers.
No labels.
No context.
I opened it.
Inside were seventeen screenshots.
The oldest was nine months old.
The newest was from last week.
I looked through them one by one.
At first I thought they were different images.
Then I started to suspect I was looking at the same thing.
Not exactly the same.
Something was changing.
Or perhaps it was me.
I could not decide.
I went back to the first screenshot.
Then the third.
Then the eleventh.
By the time I reached the end I no longer remembered what I had originally wanted to check.
I only knew I kept going.
There was a note in the same folder.
A text file.
One single line.
“You have already been here.”
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
I expected irony.
An explanation.
Something that would reveal itself as a forgotten joke.
I found nothing.
The sentence remained there.
Motionless.
Waiting.
I closed the folder.
I went to the kitchen.
The cup was still on the counter.
The coffee was cold.
I stared at it for too long.
Because for a few seconds I had the feeling that I had done this exact thing before.
Not something similar.
Exactly this.
The same cup.
The same light.
The same inexplicable pause.
I returned to the computer.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I was already thinking about the folder again.
I checked its creation date.
It did not match what I remembered.
The folder existed before the search that was supposed to have created it.
I sat there staring at the screen.
Trying to arrange something that refused to fit together.
Then I found another file.
An older note.
I recognized my handwriting immediately.
The strange thing was something else.
It used an expression I never use.
At least I think I never do.
The note said:
“Do not look for the first time again.”
Nothing else.
No explanation.
No signature.
No context.
For several minutes I did nothing.
I simply remained seated.
Looking at the sentence.
Trying to remember when I wrote it.
Trying to remember why.
Trying to remember whether I had written it at all.
I opened another screenshot.
Then another.
Then another.
In one of them there was a browser window.
Only a corner visible.
A meaningless detail.
Until I saw the date.
It was later than an image I had supposedly saved months before.
That made no sense.
The sequence was inverted.
Or my memories were.
I tried to reconstruct the order.
I could not.
Every file seemed to assume I already knew something I had not yet remembered.
The sensation began then.
Not an emotion.
Not exactly.
More like a slight pressure.
The feeling you get when you are trying to remember a word and the word remains just beyond reach.
I think I have spent several minutes thinking about moving my neck.
I am not sure.
Maybe I already did.
Maybe I did not.
I searched for another note.
I do not know why I expected to find one.
But it was there.
Hidden inside a folder I do not remember creating either.
Only one line.
“You already moved your neck.”
The screen remained open.
The coffee remained cold.
The folder remained there.
And for the first time I stopped wondering what I was looking for.
I started wondering how long I had been finding it.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
