It was supposed to be just another night out.
Ryan Keller, 27, left a party in Austin, Texas, around 1:00 AM. He called a rideshare, scrolled through his phone, and remembered nothing else—until he woke up on a stranger’s couch, surrounded by VHS tapes and Backstreet Boys posters.

He thought it was a prank. Until he stepped outside.

No Ubers. No smart cars. No signal.
The gas station across the street was selling Pepsi Blue. A movie theater advertised Armageddon. And everyone kept asking him what “Bluetooth” was.

Ryan wasn’t dreaming. Somehow, he had woken up in 1998—with his 2025 iPhone still in his pocket.

Panicked, he tried using it. The device was fully charged, but there was no network. No Wi-Fi. Just one bar of GPS—and it showed his location as “unknown.”

People stared at the sleek, glowing rectangle in his hand like it was alien tech.

He tried explaining. Tried finding someone who believed him.
But every time he revealed the phone, the signal dropped and the temperature changed. Lights flickered. Dogs barked.

Then he got a push notification.

“Your return window closes in 2 hours. Stay awake.”

That’s when he started hearing the ringing—high-pitched, rhythmic, almost like a modem dialing. And wherever he went, people began to speak in strange loops, repeating the same sentences over and over.

A woman at the diner told him, “You’re not the first. But you might be the last.”

With 14 minutes to spare, he opened the iPhone’s camera and took one last photo.

Then everything went black.

Ryan woke up in his bed in 2025.

Except… his lock screen now shows a photo he never took:
Himself in 1998. Standing in front of the gas station. Holding the phone.

And under it:

“Would you like to go back?”