Elias hesitated, his finger hovering over the 'Execute' command. If he cleared the buffer, he would officially end the old world. He pressed the button.

The machine hummed, a low vibration that rattled his teeth. A message scrolled across the terminal: [EVENT LOG: 12.31.2059. 23:59:59.999]

The clock had frozen a millisecond before the world changed. For sixty years, the D 2060 had been holding its breath, waiting for the permission to turn the page to a new year that never technically arrived.

Outside the salvage yard, for the first time in decades, the sun seemed to set at exactly the right time.