Dylan Carver

Dylan Carver finds a phone in his apartment—the same model as his, unlocked, containing a contact list identical to his own and a message history of conversations he hasn't had yet. The conversations are dated over the next three months. Some are routine. Some are urgent. One, dated six weeks from now, is a conversation he apparently has with himself, in which he asks himself what to do and the other phone answers. He doesn't find out what the answer says because that message is marked unread. *The Second Phone* is thriller about a man who discovers that his future correspondence already exists—who is now reading his own future and trying to determine whether it's prediction, fabrication, or something he should act on. It follows Dylan as he traces the phone's origin, watches the predicted conversations become real, and faces the decision about whether to open the message from himself. The novel unfolds across twenty-two chapters: the phone found and its contents; the first future conversations becoming real; the phone's origin and who placed it; the critical conversation; the unread message; Dylan's decision about whether to read it—and what he does instead. Dylan is not an investigator or a technical specialist. He is an ordinary person who approaches the phone the way anyone would: by using every normal resource to figure out what it is, where it came from, and whether it can be trusted. He is reading his own future correspondence and trying to determine whether it's prediction, fabrication, or something he should act on. The messages are written in Dylan's voice—casual, specific, authentic. The fragments quoted across the novel feel like reading someone's real texts. But the texts are from the future, and they show Dylan making choices he hasn't made yet, in situations that haven't occurred. The unread message is the novel's emotional core. What Dylan is about to say to himself—and what his future self responds—builds throughout the story as the thing he both ne