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We found a capsule dated 1975, but the items inside were from 2025.It all started in the sitting room, just as the late afternoon sun leaked through the lace curtains, painting golden stripes across the floor. The ceiling fan clicked rhythmically above as Dad flipped through the channels, clearly unimpressed with all of them. Mum sat cross-legged on the couch, nursing a lukewarm cup of tea and humming along to an old highlife song playing faintly from the radio.Jacob sat on the floor, his legs stretched out, while Estrella leaned against his shoulder, poking her crayons into a half-finished drawing. Outside, Larry barked.Not once. Not twice. But in his usual insistent way—short barks, long growls, followed by paws scrabbling against the ground. “Again?” Estrella sighed.“Maybe it’s a squirrel or something,” Jacob said, not looking up from his game.“Larry!” Mum called out. “Come inside! Leave that poor patch of earth alone.” But Larry didn’t budge. “You two, go check on him,” Dad said without lifting his eyes from the TV. “Before he digs his way to China.”Jacob groaned, and Estrella pulled herself up. “Come on, let’s go.” Outside, the heat clung to them like cling film. Larry was at it again—barking and pawing at a particular spot beneath the mango tree, the same spot he’d been oddly obsessed with for weeks. “Larry!” Estrella called. “Stop that!” But Larry only growled deeper, digging furiously. “We should go back inside,” Jacob said. “He’s just being weird again.” But then, Larry paused and began sniffing a chunk of earth as if he’d struck gold. Estrella narrowed her eyes. “Jacob… get the shovel.”“What? You can’t be serious.”“I am. Come on! Don’t you want to know what’s had his attention for weeks?” He hesitated, then sighed. “Fine.” Minutes later, they took turns digging, the metal shovel slicing into the soft earth. The deeper they went, the more excited Larry became, circling them with his tail wagging like mad. And then, they hit something. A dull clank. Hollow. Metallic. Jacob and Estrella froze. They scraped away the dirt with their hands and unearthed a rusted, cylindrical capsule, about the size of a school backpack. Faintly etched into the lid, through grime and corrosion, were the numbers: 1975. “What is it?” Jacob asked, brushing dirt off the sides.“I don’t know,” Estrella whispered, eyes wide. “But it looks like it’s been here forever.” “Mum! Dad!” they both screamed. “Come, come and see this!” Mum was the first out, her slippers smacking against the stone path. Dad followed quickly, his face stern.“What is this?” he asked.“We were digging where Larry was barking and found this,” Jacob said, stepping back. Dad’s brow furrowed. He looked at the capsule and then at them.“Children, be careful,” Mum warned them. Dad crouched down, wiped his palms on his jeans, and twisted the latch. With a slow creak, the capsule opened. Everyone leaned in. There were photographs of nature—sleek, glossy, and high-definition. Clearly modern. A folded-up newspaper dated 17 February 2025. A smartphone with no buttons. A tiny silver cube that lit up when touched. And a diary. No one spoke for a while. “This… this doesn’t make sense,” Mum finally said. “The capsule—or whatever it is—says 1975. But none of this… none of this is old.” “There’s a photo,” Mum murmured, picking up a picture poking out of the diary. “Look.” It was a family portrait—taken under the same mango tree. Same house. Same faces. Except Jacob and Estrella looked older—probably in their mid-twenties. She flipped it over, and at the bottom right of the picture was written: 27/4/25. “2025? Same year as the newspaper,” she said.“But… we never took this,” Jacob said. Larry barked again and nudged the photo with his nose. “This can't be real,” Estrella scoffed. “I think someone is playing a prank on us. It’s April, remember… April Fool’s Day.”“But we're long past the 1st of April,” Jacob reminded her. “Don’t tell me you believe this sick nonsense, Jacob,” Estrella said with a mocking laugh.“Mind your language, young lady,” Mum reprimanded her sternly.“Sorry.” Dad closed the book, his face unreadable. “Let’s take these inside.” Back in the sitting room, the air felt different—thicker somehow, as if time itself had paused. Dad placed the capsule and its contents on the centre table. Mum picked up the phone, but she felt something… connect to it. “What is this?” she murmured, turning it over in her hand. She pressed a button at the side. The phone lit up and a picture of a baby appeared as the wallpaper. “This is so sleek!” Estrella piped up.“Oh—it needs a password.” Just then, Mum tapped in a code, and the phone unlocked. “Whoa,” the children said simultaneously.“Mum, how’d you do that?” Jacob asked.Mum looked confused as well.“I don’t know,” she answered. “Deep down, I felt like I knew the password.” She quickly turned it off and placed it back on the table. Dad picked up the diary, opened it, and started reading the first page aloud. “Private property of E.J. Don’t go through my stuff! If found, please return to the address below.” “E.J?” Jacob asked. “Estrella Johnson?” Turning to Estrella, “It does look like your handwriting.”“But I didn’t write this,” Estrella said flatly.“Not yet,” Dad replied. “Then how…” Jacob started.“I don’t know. But someone—maybe future us—left this as a reminder of the little things. Maybe to make us pause.”“The future?… I think I’m with Estrella on this one. This theory is crazy.So you’re trying to tell me that time travel is real? You might as well say pigs can fly,” Mum scoffed. “Okay,” Dad replied. “So you don’t believe it. Then how else do you explain the diary and the pictures? Jacob and Estrella look older in the photo.”“As for the diary, anyone could’ve written that. And the photo is definitely an AI-created or edited image,” Mum said.“And so you’re saying that this ‘AI’ also buried these items in our yard?” Dad said, gesturing at the items on the table.“You’d be amazed at what AI can do,” she replied casually, to which Jacob started laughing. Dad shook his head in exasperation. “What do the rest of the pages say?” Estrella asked. Dad turned the first entry and read aloud:“2 July 2015.Jacob has snuck out of the house to go and see that girl again. I don’t like her. But I don’t mind as long as he keeps paying me to keep my mouth shut.” Dad’s eyes darted to Jacob, then to Estrella, and back to Jacob again. Then he continued: “Speaking of payments, I think it’s high time the children of the house got paid for the jobs they do at home. It’s not easy.Yesterday, Mum made me rake the backyard till my back hurt. And Dad made me wash the cars.I mean, don’t get me wrong—children should do chores—but when money or a prize is involved, it becomes motivation.” “Also…”“I don’t think we should be reading that,” Mum cut in.“What? Mum?! If this time stuff is all real, then with this diary we could actually know what’s going to happen. Isn’t that crazy?” Jacob suggested.“Yes, it’s crazy. And that’s all the more reason we shouldn’t mess with it,” Estrella said, rolling her eyes. “But just imagine how that would be. We could stop so many problems before they happen,” Jacob tried to convince everyone. He then picked up the diary from the table where Dad had placed it. “This book…” he said, “could be a lifesaver.” He finished while caressing it gently. “What’s come over you, Jacob?” Mum asked. “Hand that diary over—now.” Jacob took a step back with the diary in his arms.“Jacob!” Mum called out to him louder, then turned to Dad for help.“Jacob, give the book back,” Dad’s deep voice boomed. Jacob hesitated, as if thinking whether to take another step back.“Don’t even think about it, young man,” Dad warned. He then stepped closer to Jacob and gently took the diary from him. It was as if a cloud had passed over Jacob’s eyes the moment the diary left his hands.“I’m sorry, Dad. Sorry, Mum,” Jacob whispered. “It’s okay. Best to keep it locked away for now,” Dad said. Jacob sat back down, and Larry rested his head on Jacob’s lap, finally calm. “Do you believe all this stuff?” Estrella asked softly. Dad rubbed his chin, then looked at them all.“I don’t know what I believe. But I know this—something wanted to be found today. Something meant to be remembered.” He turned to Jacob and Estrella.“Maybe it’s not about how it got here. Maybe it’s about what we do with it.” They sat in silence after that. The sun dipped lower. The curtains swayed gently. And outside, the wind carried the soft rustle of leaves over the earth that had, until today, hidden a secret. A secret that felt oddly… familiar.

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A Familiar Tomorrow

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Johnny E. Stone

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A Familiar Tomorrow

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