Chapter 1
The first time it happened, Mara thought the toaster was broken. She had set it to level four, like always. The bread popped up perfectly toasted… but with a small message burned into the surface:
**GOOD MORNING, MARA.**
She stared at it for a ling time, as if the toast might explain itself.
“Okay,” she said finally, to the empty kitchen. “Either I’m dreaming, or my toaster is flirting with me. Or I’ve gone mad.”
The toaster said nothing, which seemed appropriate for a toaster. Still, Mara ate the toast.
---
The next morning the toaster burned another message.
**TODAY YOU WILL FIND A QUARTER.**
Mara frowned. “Statistically likely,” she muttered. “Coins are everywhere.”
But sure enough, later that afternoon she found a quarter wedged under a bench at the bus stop. She stared at it again. This time, she was definitely thinking. She wondered: Why a quarter and not a million dollars?
She then got serious for a moment. “Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s… mildly concerning.” Then she stared at the sky.
---
By the third day, the toaster had gotten more personal.
**YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR BROTHER TODAY.**
This was different. Mara and her brother Leo hadn’t spoken in almost a year, after a particularly heated debate involving cryptocurrency, the Monty Hall problem, and whether raccoons were “basically little thieves.”
The siblings had asked Reddit for advice. Reddit told them to break up.
They weren’t a couple, but they broke off contact anyway.
Mara poked the toaster suspiciously.
“Look,” she said, “I appreciate the advice, but this feels like a boundary issue. Maybe you should call your… never mind.”
The toaster hummed quietly. It had always hummed quietly. That was normal.
Probably.
---
Two weeks passed, and every morning the toaster printed something new.
Sometimes small things:
**BRING AN UMBRELLA.**
**TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME.**
**DON’T BUY THE SUSHI FROM THE PLACE WITH THE BLUE AWNING.**
Other times… stranger things.
**YOU WILL MEET SOMEONE NAMED CLARA.**
**THE CAT KNOWS MORE THAN YOU THINK.**
Mara didn’t even own a cat.
---
One evening she couldn’t stand it anymore. She unplugged the toaster and flipped it upside down on the counter.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
The inside looked exactly like a toaster inside should look: crumbs, heating coils, and one extremely confused-looking spider.
“No computer,” she said. “No radio transmitter. No nanotechnology, alien or otherwise.”
The spider waved a leg at her. “Not helpful,” Mara said.
She plugged the toaster back in.
---
The next morning the toast said:
**THANK YOU FOR PUTTING ME BACK.**
Mara dropped the toast.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Now we’re officially dealing with science fiction.”
---
The messages kept coming. But what was somehow the most strange was that they were never dramatic. Never lottery numbers. Never warnings about asteroid impacts. Just tiny nudges.
**SIT NEXT TO THE OLD MAN ON THE BUS.**
She did. He told her a story about being a lighthouse keeper in Maine.
**GO TO THE PARK AT 4:10.**
She did. That’s when she met Clara. Clara had green hair and was playing a very one-sided game of fetch with a pigeon. Mara and Clara bonded over feeding birds, and became acquaintances that were almost friends.
---
Months passed and Mara stopped questioning the toaster. Eventually the messages grew shorter.
**YOU’RE DOING GREAT.**
**TRY THE BLUE AWNING SUSHI AGAIN. THEY IMPROVED.**
**CALL YOUR BROTHER. AGAIN.**
She did, and they talked for two hours.
—
One morning the toast came up blank. No message, just toast. Mara frowned.
The next morning: blank again.
“Hey,” she said, tapping the toaster. “You still there?”
Nothing.
She waited another week.
Still nothing.
---
Three weeks later, while cleaning the kitchen, Mara found something unusual wedged under the toaster.
A tiny metal plate, no bigger than a dime.
On it, in impossibly small letters, were the words:
**TEMPORAL GUIDANCE DEVICE – MODEL 3B**
**MISSION COMPLETE**
Below that, one final message:
**YOU’LL BE FINE WITHOUT US.**
---
Mara sat down slowly. She looked at the toaster, then she laughed.
“Fair enough,” she said.
The toaster hummed quietly.
Just a toaster again.
Probably.
