Hey there! I’m not sure who you are, or how this message will find you, but all I know is that you are reading this, right now, and you need to keep reading it. I began writing this letter at 10:53 p.m. central time, Christmas Eve, 2582. As of the time of writing, it has been 1286 days since I last saw another human being. I am not going to tell you the details, but humanity messed up pretty bad.

That’s not important. Nothing is important anymore. I could die tomorrow and there would be nobody around to cry for me. My name, age, gender, race, personality, everything that makes me, well, me no longer matters. The reason I’m writing this is because you don’t know about that. You have never spent three birthdays in a row alone. You have never looked up at a sky that is dark, has been dark for the last four years, and might be dark forever, long after you are dead and gone.
The reason I am writing this is not because I hope to prevent what happened from happening. As a scientist I fully understand that you cannot change what happens by way of time travel. I only hope to let you know that you are lucky. You have people you love, and people who love you. You have food, water, and medicine within walking distance of you right now. Most of all though, no matter what sort of physical or mental duress you have experienced in your short time on this earth, you have never experienced utter and incomprehensible hopelessness.

Not depression, hopelessness. When you know that your situation will never improve, no matter what you do, or how good your attitude is towards it all. You never will experience this, lucky you. While you read this, over 500 years in the future I am curled up around a deer rifle in a shelled out building in central Dallas. Fancy that.

We were so foolish with what we had. Our technology gave us an infinite plane of possibilities, and all we could think of was to use it the way we had for the last 600 years. Why? I can’t change the past, and I’ve spent enough time alone in this skeleton of a city to come to terms with what happened, and I’m no longer angry about it, but I just want to know why we did it. Petty bickering is all it was. “My religion is better than yours” “my country is better than yours” “we deserve those resources, not you”. We had to prove to everyone we were a dominant country, that’s what I assume it was, but who cares now? I don’t, and I just might be the last person on earth.



I guess what I mean to say is that whatever you think is important right now probably isn’t. If somebody has a different opinion then you, respect it. If somebody needs help with anything, give it. But what I need you to do on the first chance you get is to tell that person you love them. Six years ago I had my chance, and I wasted it. That is the only thing I look back on with regret.

That’s all I have to say. The end of the world will happen, but not in your lifetime, so be thankful. I know I am. Hey, my watch just struck 12:00. Merry christmas!