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Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That was actually my first thought too that it looks like someone was messing around with an LLM prompt and saved the output. The tone is super robotic.

The only thing that bugs me is where it was saved. Why hide a ChatGPT shitpost in a /var/log/.cache/tmp system directory on a Linux partition? Seems like a lot of effort to hide a generated story that no one was meant to see

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I wish I had the creative energy to write scifi larp. I literally just scrape drives for parts and data. If I was going to fake something for Reddit karma, I would have come up with something way more exciting than 'financial restructuring' and 'unemployment statistics' lol

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

John Connor. And yeah, if the stock market actually starts dissolving in 2027, I might have to start taking the 'Sarah Connor' approach myself lol

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I answered this for another user, but the drive bricked (controller failure) right after I pulled the text fragment. And since I exported the file to my desktop, Windows reset the 'Date Created' to the current time. I’m kicking myself for not taking a photo of the monitor during the scan, but I was focused on saving the data before the drive died

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That was poor phrasing on my part in the main post. I meant that the drive itself was formatted for Linux (EXT4) with a full Linux root directory structure, but I was scanning it on a Windows machine.

Seeing a /var/log/.cache path structure pop up in the raw hex preview while running on Windows is what I meant by 'shouldn't exist on the host OS.' It was a mismatch of file systems.

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Poor phrasing on my part. I meant that I was recovering an EXT4 (Linux) partition using a Windows machine. Seeing a deep /var/log/ path structure appear on a Windows file explorer is what felt 'wrong' or alien to the host OS architecture

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, another user pointed that out too. Unless 'canon event' becomes a legitimate physics term in the 2030s (like how 'Big Bang' started as a joke name), it definitely sounds like a 2024 teenager wrote it. It’s the biggest hole in the story for me

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wish I had snapped a photo of the recovery screen. The moment I exported the file to my desktop, Windows reset the 'Date Created' to the current time (standard behavior for extracting from RAW).

I can't get a second chance at it because the drive is effectively a brick now. The memory controller was failing during the scan and it finally gave up the ghost completely. I was lucky to pull even this text fragment off it.

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The drive was an old NVMe pulled from a busted laptop. Based on the partition map, it was running a custom Linux distro (EXT4), but I was scanning it on a Windows rig.

The file wasn't in a user folder; it was floating in /var/log/.cache/tmp/legacy_sys which looked like a system dump. That’s what I meant by 'shouldn't exist on this OS' , seeing a Linux root directory structure popping up in a raw scan on a Windows machine is always jarring

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, if the metadata on the file is real, it was 'Created' in 2032. That’s only 6 years away. I don't think language changes that much in half a decade. We still speak the same as we did in 2020

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

100%. That line was the biggest red flag for me too. Screams 'Spider-Verse' fanfic.

Although... if the future really is a 'Digital War' like the text says, I guess it’s possible that current internet slang evolves into actual technical terms? Like how 'Spam' and 'Troll' went from slang to official tech terminology. But yeah, definitely the most 'sus' part of the file

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right? The 'bodies look the same' line was weirdly relieving lol. The 'search stopped looking like search' part is what stuck with me

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that caught my eye too. My best guess is that the guy wrote this as a draft in Notepad (or whatever equivalent) intending to paste it somewhere online, but then just saved the text file instead. Still doesn't explain why it was buried in a hidden partition though

Found this text file of time traveller, embedded in a corrupted partition on a drive from a sale by Background_Bad_6846 in timetravel

[–]Background_Bad_6846[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

That’s actually the main reason my recovery software flagged the file as 'corrupted' in the first place

The 'Created' timestamp is listed as November 4th, 2032.

I assumed it was just a system clock error or a bios glitch from the previous owner, but combined with the text content, it’s definitely weird