"An Ironical Fact"

You hold in your hands my last words. Believe me, the ghosts did not consume me. If I am dead, it is because I chose life. Only God - if such a thing were to exist - could see beyond the horizon of one's eyes. For most of my life - or all of it - my daily worries and moods blinkered me and I saw only that hour and that day, the things I held in my hands. The existence of the horizon was something I forgot. Or maybe that I had never known.

I offer what follows for your knowledge only. A week ago I discovered the following words. They were written in a notepad - purchased by me some months ago - flopped open and face down on the floor near the kitchen table. The handwriting was mine. The letters were sloppy but readable. Not a word was crossed out. This is unusual for me. I am an indecisive writer. These words were certain and specific:

Dear Silent Friend:

First, we have to offer an apology. We are desperate people but we are kind. We realize that our actions to this point have been a source of torment for you. For the past year or more you have been experiencing periods of dread and anger, uncountable descents into black emotions and a state of severe alienation. Whatever tendencies might have already been present in the make-up of your mind-body, much of the responsibility is ours.

Second, your confusion is understandable. Our methods of communication are poor. Yes, the handwriting is yours. The words are ours. Our reach is imperfect and produces a trancelike state in the recipient. This was once called automatic writing in the realm of occultists and mystics, as we understand. It was a method of communication with spirits - or so it was alleged. We will not put a judgement on that. We are students of science, not belief. Our method is the product of investment and study. We are not spirits.

Third, and most importantly. War is coming. You must know this. This is not a feeling - although our poor technology may have obscured our attempts to communicate and what you received were indeed feelings. Those were the unfortunate output of our methods. In effect, we projected our emotions to you. How useless that has been. It is over and we must focus on facts.

War is coming. That is the most important fact, the only important fact, because it will destroy so many people, so many lives, so much innocence. We weep when we think of it. We are asking for your help because we must.

Your first reaction is understandable: "War is already here - look at the places in Asia and Africa where war is today ruining lives." Yes, that is true, and if we were from there and could act to forestall it we would. But we are not talking about those places or those unfortunate people. No, we are talking about America. War is coming to America. It seems impossible to believe, but don't you think it was the same for people in 1910 or 1935? Don't you think their lives were normal and expected to continue as normal? The important people and important issues and important plans... all those things they had too. Now you are them.

You must use your imagination to grasp what we are telling you. War between the great powers first, and then - in defeat - war in America between Americans. Defeat? You say impossible. Perhaps it seems so, but perhaps it seemed so as well to others who stood on the brink of the abyss and did not know. We say to you: you are on the brink. We say this to you as well: the war is not needed to destroy evil or to obtain a worthy goal. No, the war will be the product of short-sighted men full of greed who don't care about others.

These men - and they are men - will go to war not by necessity or even by accident, but because they think they will benefit, and it is within their power. They only care about themselves. They choose war because it is easy and it aggrandizes them.

Your next reaction is understandable: "How do you know?" We would ask the same. These are not feelings or predictions. This is what has already happened. It is in the past for us. We live in the ruins of that war, we of the future, who watch disease kill our children and who hide from surveillance drones, whose leaders mouth the words of our leaders of the past, but who are controlled by foreign powers. We are unfortunate enough to live in these times when war has brought us low, yet they claim we are at new heights. We know how to discern truth, and have pledged our sacred honor together. We live in privation amid the wreckage of the war, defeated by traitors, but we are indefatigable. It is our luck that God has given us scientists in our ranks. They created the technology despite our defeat and our shame, and so the transmission of our voices to you. We are the voices of the future, Ms. ________, speaking with certainty of the facts.

Here is what you must know... it will begin with another routine crisis stage-managed for the cameras and tweets. So much will seem familiar that few will pay attention, so exhausting is the welter of news. But this time the door of infinity is opening, has opened, and so the ordinary apt cynicism must be discarded. There is news of ships on alert and of threats issued among the powers, and then there is no news at all. Only a cloud of inbound assassin drones and global strike missiles will reveal the defeat at sea. By then it is too late. Soon even the most jaded interpretation of events yields a sense of closing doors and real misfortune. The forces that organize your lives will be turned aside. The assassins know the location of every decision maker and make action and response impossible. The missiles breed cheap terror in every county – and soon the knives are out. When the door of infinity opens, all things must pass through it. On the other side may be death or honor or transfiguration.

Look around and consider the sound of explosions in the sky, deep booms from overhead that resonate in your chest, look around and consider fires and smoke that chokes you as you run, look around and consider loved ones you cannot reach, the last bit of food set aside for the children, look around and consider that you love them but you cannot make it stop, cannot turn back the clock. This is not speculation or the output of models. These are our memories of the past. Our memories we offer to you. These are our prayers. Hear them please and wake up. Hear them please and act! If you act, you may avert this disaster that you will otherwise see and that we rue. All the world knows us by the stupidity with which we launched the war, and how not only were we defeated in the field first - at sea and in space - and then our own government was swept away and we are now and forever humbled. So boastful were we, so convinced of our might. It is sad to think that what we lost did not have to be lost. That is why we have come to you.

The device we are using took years to build and longer to perfect. For too long we projected our emotions back in time - our horror, our fear, our desperate sadness. Now we have the ability to send this message. So we reveal ourselves to you. We pray to you for help. If it is possible that we can further refine our device to send you back a weapon, this will ensure your ability to save us. You see, this is what we need. You have the ability to prevent the war - consider that! You can be the force that saves millions from pointless deaths - men, women, and children who are not yet born. If it becomes possible to send you a weapon it will doubtless come soon if you do not already have it.

Your guns fire physical objects that damage the tissues of the target. With our guns you may manipulate radio energy and electrocute an entire square mile if needed, or you may focus its capabilities on a single malevolent actor even miles away, and cause an overload of cranial electricity. With some training, which we might be able to provide, you can take effective action from a long distance and never put yourself in danger of discovery. If we are not able to get you such a weapon you'll need to be prepared to use kinetic metal rounds.

Your third reaction is understandable: "Isn't there another way? I am not a violent person. What if I were to go to the news media and tell your story?" It would be ineffective, and would reveal the existence of our technology. This would be a waste. No one will listen. You will be ignored until it is too late. There is only one way.

You are not a violent person. We do not seek violence or violent people. We who have suffered seek only peace and justice. We seek to avert the war and protect the innocent from suffering and from death. You have the power. You can lead the way. Consider yourself the first warrior of a new revolution. Our scientists have studied all available records from before the war: we know the guilty parties by name and location. Our assessment shows that ten white men had essential causal roles in initiating the disaster. Each of them took actions that contributed uniquely and materially to the start of the war and all the horror that has come since. Our analysis shows that you will have an opportunity to prevent at least one of these men - and maybe more - from carrying out their fatal tasks.

Ten white men - of course - distributed across the machinery of politics, each with his own damnation awaiting. Here are their names. You may recognize them. We implore you to consider that this ironical fact is true: through a single act of violence you may avert a universe of pain that will otherwise afflict the innocent. If you address even one of these ten white men, you may save us all.

Godspeed, friend.

I put the paper down. I had read through it a dozen times. Suicide by cop. This is what it said to me. My mind reflexively went to calling a doctor or crisis hotline - as I had contemplated a thousand times. Once it had been every day. Despite that anguishing emotional turmoil - names I had learned to use for what had once been so powerful - despite a powerful urge toward something like violence I had never once really lost my head. Yet now here was a letter I had written myself. A feeling of peace or lightness came over me. It felt something like relief. It was not the black void that had haunted me for so long. The letter made no sense from a scientific or objective perspective, but there it was: time travel. It made emotional sense. It was maybe the first thing that ever had. My agony had a name: it was a message from the future. This finally explained the skin-crawling foreboding that had inhabited me for so long I had forgotten that it could be otherwise.

According to the law of names in folklore, knowledge of the true name of a person or object gives one power over it. Witness the Norse myth of Falanor, held captive by a wizard who sought his blood in a quest for immortality. Falanor learned the name of his captor from a bird just before he was to be sacrificed. When the wizard came for him, he instead compelled the wizard to free him and climb onto a burning pyre. So it was with me. Now that I knew the name of the thing that had controlled me - the ghost behind my eyes - it seemed to have shed its weight.

I contemplated the list of names. Some of these I knew. Others no. I folded up the page and put it in a box with my suicide writings. These were my own burden to bear - a weight I would carry as before, but which suddenly seemed much lighter. My Glock rested in the same box. My reply to its call had always been the same: not today. I did not know what to make of the letter, but I knew this: it would stay inside the vault. Nothing would give me away, or let on to anyone. I had determined to carry the burden in silence, even lighter now, even though I knew its name.

But that was a week ago. Today I am watching the news. A directed energy weapon - as far as anyone can tell - was used in an attack on a stockholder meeting in California. The CEO - one of the ten white men on my list - was injured along with a hundred others. He did not die.

The doorbell rings and I find a rectangular box waiting for me. There is no truck or driver.

I have the list. Time to go.