"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, Mr. ________, speaking with certainty of the facts.