It was fifteen years since the last time the Chronivac 4.0 was used, for better or worse. The device had been left to collect dust in someone's basement. It sat amongst a collection of other early-2000s hardware in a cardboard box, stored away for years until it was forgotten to time.
It wasn't that it had stopped functioning, or that it wasn't compatible with newer hardware. The last user simply stopped understanding what they were doing with it, having made one too many globally applied reality alterations. Thus, it was set aside before long, and their life moved on without it. Over time, that box got moved further and further back into storage until it was left behind completely by the person when they moved away.
The world around them had irrevocably changed. Honestly, everything had changed! But after those changes were made, everything and everyone proceeded as if they were status quo. Politicians were elected, wars were fought, reality shows came and went, and the advent of better technology from TransDem rendered the Chronivac 4.0 an important but flawed prototype. Or so they thought, because the world around them retained the results of the changes the last user made, but that user never returned to use the device again.
So the Chronivac sat in this cardboard box, until one day…
A new owner (or owners) of the house signed the contract. It was a very exciting thing, to move in and make a new life in this place. The real estate agent said the modest home had quite the interesting history and there were some belongings in the basement that should be cleared out, as well. So the owner(s) offer to help move them, but naturally, they want to see what's inside the boxes...
It was destined that the discovery in their basement could lead to the new owner(s) installing the Chronivac and reigniting a world of changes.
But who are they? What kind of changed world do they live in already? And what kinds of changes would they make?