The wind is cold and biting. The sun is sinking into a languid fall behind scraped mountains and golden-red trees, with fallen rivulets racing in a hurried flutter behind a pair of heavy dark boots. The soles are enough to crunch pebbles and make easy meat of bugs, stopping with a curious drag just shy of a quaint, numbered door. One gloved hand reaches forward and taps with a surprising resonance. The wood groans under each repetition, until finally, it creaks open.
The figure’s masked head tilts in one direction, then dips with a fluid, intrepid bow. Just as quickly as it had leant into a greeting, its stature is fully restored, cloaked and twisting under a black trench coat with one crooked hand tipped forward. Between satin wrapped fingers is a brown flap of paper. The moment the sheet is dislodged from the stranger’s hand, it bows again and turns to hurry back toward the waning sun.
“Don’t dismiss this outright as the work of some raving lunatic.
There’s some sense to this story, if you’ll just hear me out…
Look, we all wonder if time travel is possible, right? Well, let me
tell you something… it is. I’m from the future, actually. I know
you probably don’t believe that, but seriously, I’m from the future.
It’s a really great thing; getting to see the past, watching events
unfold… stuff like that. We know more now than we ever would.
Behind all the fun, though, there’s a more serious aspect. We
aren’t supposed to go in our own lifetime, and we are NEVER
allowed to contact our past selves. Let me tell you, I’m breaking
that rule right now. Yes, kid, you’re talking to yourself. Your future
self. I’m going to be executed for this, but you know what? I accept
that. I’m preventing something by talking to you that is WORSE than
death. I can’t tell you outright what to do, because the filters would
catch it. This is the closest I can get, trust me. I can, however, send
a little message.
You should probably read the first word of every paragraph, now.”