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The old man's breaths stutter, his face contracts before smoothing, his fingers ghosts over the tube in his arm as though he wants to tear it out - though they never try. His head rests on a mountain of pillows, yet he can't seem to get comfortable, shaking his head back and forth endlessly.

"Young man," he rasps, "young man."

You startle from your slouch. You had thought him too close to death to speak, thought that you had arrived to the hospital just seconds too late to hear what your long lost uncle could tell you.

"Yes?" You whisper back.

One of his hands comes up as if to gesture, before it drops back down. You have a feeling that he will die before the hour is out. Even with the new technology, the whispers that they will have beaten death itself in the next few years, there are still some that they can't save.

He opens his mouth again, and for a second nothing comes out except harsh wheezing. "I'm dying."

It isn't a question, but you nod anyway.

"Before I go, there's one last secret."

He doesn't look like the type for devastating secrets, yet you find yourself leaning forward.

He pauses before beginning, "Once, when I was just ten years-" he stops abruptly, and for a moment you're afraid that he's gone, but then he continues, "it was glorious time, then. Age of so many new things. And I- I created a website. An HTML page we called it."

You stare at the man. You had expected to find out that he cheated on his wife, or had accidentally killed someone. Maybe that he had fought on the wrong side in the Civil War. But this was something else entirely. Some story that must have taken place, you make the calculations in your head, close to seventy-five years ago.

"And I pretended to link something - but when you clicked it- it- it- it," you are leaning so far forward that your head is almost touching the cool metal of the bed's raised sides, "it didn't go where they thought it would. It wen-"

A fit of coughing interrupts him, and you wait impatiently for it to pass. What could it be? What could he have possibly done?

"It went to-" he pauses, as though gathering the courage, "it went to a song."

You stare at him. There is a suspicion in your mind - a date seventy-five years in the past they had given you in history class. But it couldn't have been what you're thinking. Not this helpless old man in front of you.

"What song?" You ask, desperately, searching his jaundiced eyes for some confirmation that it isn't that. It isn't what you think it is.

He doesn't answer. In fact, he seems to be avoiding your eyes.

You raise your voice a little, the urgency cutting through it. "What song?" He still doesn't answer, and you reach forward, grabbing his shoulders. You're standing over him, so close that you can see the small red veins in the corner of his eyes.

A single tear rolls down his cheek, as he begins to hum. Ba-bahhhh, ba-bahhhhh, da-da-da-da, ba-bahhh bu bu-buhhhh.

No. It can't be possible, not this helpless man in front of you. He couldn't have done that, couldn't have played the prank that would later result in the death of millions and the collapse of the United State's government.

Here is the man who had started it all, the one they've been searching for for years. About to die without ever paying for his actions. It pains you, but you know that there's only one thing to do.

Roughly, you grab a fallen pillow from the ground. You take a moment to look out the door and see that the coast is clear. Take another to steel your heart against the terror in his eyes.

And it seems that you were right, he died within the hour.