2 A Letter From the Future (1/2)
It wasn't an ordinary rain. All over the world, water literally poured from the sky. Oceans, seas, lakes and rivers seemed to boil. The innumerable fires that had flared were almost instantly extinguished. Clouds of steam enveloped cities and towns, covering everything and everyone with a hot mist that was thick enough to cut with a knife.
And in this mist, this fog that made it impossible to see an outstretched hand, mysterious translucent cubes began to appear. They were as tall as a grown man, they glowed with a soft, mysterious light, and they appeared everywhere.
They appeared in every town and city on the planet. They appeared in the fields and in the surviving forests, on sea shores and in the mountains. They appeared on the sands of the vastly expanded deserts, and on the ice that still covered most of the Antarctic.
They even appeared inside buildings.
One of the softly shining cubes appeared on the stage of the General Assembly chamber in the United Nations building, right in the center of New York. The delegates inside the pitch-dark room were swarming towards the exits. Only Olaf Troll, Sonia Patel, and Nelson Odongo stood still on the stage near the lectern.
The glowing cube appeared next to the lectern. It was only an arm's reach from Olaf Troll. He looked at it, then looked at Sonia Patel and made a gesture that said: ladies first. Sonia smiled at him, and shook her head.
Olaf Troll looked again at the glowing cube. He put a finger to his lips and frowned. Then very slowly, he began to reach out to the cube, finger pointing.
Before he could touch it, Nelson Odongo quickly walked past him and put his hand on the cube. It instantly changed color, from snow-white to ivory. Big dark brown letters appeared on its every side. They all said the same thing, in different languages and alphabets:
GREETINGS, REVERED ANCESTORS. PLEASE TOUCH AGAIN FOR AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE
Nelson Odongo turned to look at Olaf Troll and Sonia Patel, raising his eyebrows. The huge, dark chamber was perfectly quiet. All the delegates that had been trying to get out of the assembly chamber were frozen still, and watching the cube. It was the only source of light in the entire room.
Olaf Troll nodded, and the secretary general of the United Nations put his hand on the cube. The letters dissolved and reappeared again. This time, they said:
PLEASE SELECT LANGUAGE
A list of all the languages represented by the delegates appeared, each in its own alphabet. They were ordered by dominance: Chinese characters stood next to the Latin script used by English. Nelson Odongo didn't hesitate.
He couldn't read Chinese, so he chose English.
New text appeared on the sides of the cube. The delegates in the chamber began moving closer; some were even brave enough to climb on the stage. Interestingly, the brave ones were almost all civilians: the marshals, generals and admirals kept back, maybe because they knew better what explosives can do to the human body.
But nothing exploded. Instead, there was a widespread intake of breath among the delegates close enough to read the text on the cube. It said:
'According to the outdated time-counting method you are using, we are writing you this on the first of January, 32035. Tomorrow, you will experience a global catastrophe that will throw Humanity back into the Stone Age for the next ten thousand years. You will experience nothing but death, pain, and misery for hundreds of centuries.
'We know that, because this is what happened to our ancestors: to you.
'We are your children, removed from you by hundreds of generations. We have confirmed what your scientists are suspecting: there is an infinite number of dimensions. There is an infinite number of universes. It is possible to exist simultaneously in different dimensions, and to travel between them. It is possible to travel in time. IT IS POSSIBLE TO CREATE A NEW UNIVERSE.
'We are offering you a chance to follow an alternate timeline.
'We are sending you the tools you need to settle a new world.
'It is a planet that is a better, richer Earth. It is located in a universe, a galaxy, a star system just like the one you live in now: the Solar System.
'It is geographically, geologically, and biologically identical, except for three major new archipelagos: North Pacific, South Pacific, and the Atlantis. These archipelagos have islands as big as Greenland. But be warned: because they are new, they have retained the life forms of the Mesozoic era.
'The tools we send you will let you REPLICATE in the New World all forms of life on Earth: microbes, plants, insects, animals, yourselves. They will also let you TRANSPORT anything that is not alive from the New World to Earth, where you will continue to live. You will stay in telepathic contact with your second selves in the New World at all times.
'The resources and goods you send back to Earth will let you avoid the terrible hardships you shall suffer otherwise.
'Remember: we know. We are your children. We love and revere you as our ancestors. We want to help you.
'We have only one thing to ask of you.
'Do not call us Gods.'
TO RECEIVE MORE INSTRUCTIONS, TOUCH AGAIN
This time, it was Sonia Patel who took a step forward and touched the cube. New text appeared on its sides. It said: