Dear reader,
I'm writing you to tell you about my life: what has happened, what will happen, and what is to come. I hope that I will be able to prove my identity and show you the way.
Where to begin? Well, I was born on August 13, 1990, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My parents were Lars Noble and Becky Noble. But then again I suppose you already know all of this. I don't want to bore you with these early, insignificant details. I'll just describe what lead me here, because that's all that's really necessary.
I'll start in November, 2013. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was still awake. The dorm was far from silent. The clicking of keyboards and rustling of pages drifted over from the other rooms, and the scratching of miscellaneous rodents echoed from above. The room was a dark shade of gray, and my vision was grainy, like the pixels of a broken screen. The small window cast a stripe of static across the room.
It wasn't rare for me to be up at this time of day- usually I would be studying with the rest of them. Finals were tomorrow, and I should have been using my time wisely, or whatever. But tonight, I just lay in my bed, thinking.
Kai, my boyfriend, had just left me. I wasn't acting like one of those annoying bitches in the movies, with the tissue box and the chocolate. I was just pondering our relationship. I mean, I knew he was trouble was trouble when he walked in- wait, no- that's Taylor Swift. But the point was that he had been a little s*** all along. I had just made excuses because I wanted to believe that he was a good guy.
What would have happened if I had just been smarter about the whole thing? I should have known that Kai and Zoe had been doing much more than studying all of those nights and that guys didn't have menstrual cycles. Would I have saved myself the pain of the last week? But maybe it would have been better to just be ignorant. I could have found false paradise with him. I suppose it's too late for that, now.
I had been laying like this for about an hour now. I glanced over at my roommate, Karen. She was sprawled out on her bed, with her limbs at uncomfortable, jagged angles, making her look more like a broken machine than a person. At first, I thought that she had been sleeping. But when I saw her eyes flit, I realized that she was awake, and that she was just thinking, like me. I saw a tear form in the corner of her eye and slide down her unmoving face. I got up, and walked over to her bed, to see what was wrong and console her.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
Karen completely opened her eyes and tilted her head up towards me.
"What does it look like, dumbo?" she responded. She pulled the covers over her head and rolled to the other side, facing away from me.
I put my hands on my hips and rolled my eyes.
"Well I guess I shouldn't have asked," I said, in annoyance.
Over the years, Karen and I had grown close- I loved her like a sister. But she was just so freaking rude sometimes, and I didn't feel like dealing with it that day. However, before I could retreat back to my bed, Karen rolled back over.
"Sorry," she sighed.
"You better be," I thought.
"It's just been a bad day," Karen confessed, her voice weak, about to drown in grief and fatigue.
"I'm listening," I coaxed her.
"Well," she began, "I don't know if you heard, but there was a fire on campus today."
"What?" I exclaimed. I had been so wrapped up in my own personal drama that I had completely missed all of the news from the outside world.
"Yeah. It sucks, right? The entire computer lab of the library was burned before they were able to put it out. They don't even know what caused it- they say it was some mysterious power surge. 26 people were killed. One of those people was my mom," she said, the words dripping out of her mouth like the tears in her eyes.
"Oh god, Karen. I'm so sorry," I said. It was sincere and completely true.
"It's fine." she said, rubbing her eyes and wiping away the rivulets of mascara.
"Karen, it's not your fault. I just don't want you to take this too hard," I told her. I could tell that she already had.
After closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Karen looked back at me.
"But why did she have to die?" she moaned, and looked up at the ceiling.
"I know she didn't deserve it. I suppose it was just luck- or lack of it. I just can't help thinking...I wish there was a way to change that fate. What if my mom had just decided to skip work and watch Netflix all day? Or what if I could just go Doctor Who on that s***- go back in time and stop the fire from ever happening? Would that work? Could I change my fate? I guess regret is all that it is. I wish it could have gone down differently. I guess that's all sadness is, in the end. Regret."
I didn't answer. I mean, how could I? At the time, I didn't have the answers she was looking for, and I knew she was unstable. I decided to leave her to herself, and to find peace in sleep.
So the days dragged on. Class grew harder. My bank account grew smaller. Life as usual.
Two months after the fire that had killed Karen's mother, another fire occurred at the library. Another 17 people died. But again, the firefighters and police were still flummoxed about the cause. They claimed that it was another mysterious power surge. After this, the library was declared unsafe and closed, and all of the books and technology were moved to a new location.
More scary dangers appeared on campus as well. A shooter had caused a massacre downtown. She just ran out onto the street, and started shooting people on sight. She was wearing a brown leather jacket, like the one you are wearing now. Somehow, she escaped, unharmed by the police.
Also during this time, Karen began to spend more time working. As you know, she didn't have a useless, ghetto,minimum wage job like me. Karen was a professor, instructing people in science. She had always been a genius, skipping through all of the early grades and whatnot. She had sacrificed style and a social life for knowledge. She only roomed with me so that she could get "the traditional college experience", or whatever. Apparently, she was working on a new project.
"It's a secret," she told me, with a sly smile. "I'll tell you what it is when the time is right," she said, giggling.
Recently, this project had been consuming more and more of her time. As she spent more of her nights at work and less of her nights with me, at the dorm, we started to become distant. After a few months, she stopped visiting the apartment entirely. She wouldn't even answer my text messages. It was almost as if she had disappeared. I figured that if work was more important to her than friends, then she didn't need me. I gave most of her stuff to Goodwill (I kept the cute clothes for myself), and forgot about her for the rest of the year...until I got this letter.
I guess I have some explaining to do.
I am you. At the beginning of this letter, I told you that I would prove my identity, and I have. I have accurately described the last year of your life- who else could have known all of the details of your past? I am you, but you do not remember writing this letter. I'll tell you how this is possible.
Remember when you were moping around that night with Karen, after the fire, and she said that she wished that she could go Doctor Who on that s***? Well, that's what she tried to do: use time travel to change her mother's fate. Her enormous project was a time-travel machine. I guess that she succeeded, in a way. She went back in time, to the day of the fire. When she wouldn't text you back and she seemed to have disappeared, it was because she actually had. However, by trying to change her fate, she had only insured it. The mysterious power surge that caused the fire was the result of her time travel machine.
Like Karen, I went back in time as well. I caused the second fire. You don't remember writing this letter because you haven't yet. I, a future version of you, have written it.
Now, I have told you about your past and present. But now, I need to tell you about your future and show you the way, as I promised I would. After I got this letter, I did as it instructed, and looked outside my window. It was about 8:00 at night, so the darkness had already set in. However, the street lights cast soft patches onto the courtyard. Standing in the middle of the lawn, a few feet away from me, I saw the shooter, the woman who had murdered all of those people downtown. It was too dark for me to fully make out her face, but I could see that she was still in the same motorcycle jacket. Seeing me through the window, she pulled out a gun. My eyes filled with fear, thinking that she was going to use it on me. But she didn't. Instead, she put the gun into her mouth, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed across campus, invading dreams, and the blood stained my memories.
After seeing the deadly act, I followed the letter, and went to go seek out Karen. The version that I had known had disappeared, but a future version of Karen still existed in this time zone. I grabbed my jacket, hopped onto my motorcycle, and headed to her laboratory, which was adjacent to the library. When I reached the lab lot, I quickly chained my motorcycle to a lamp, and jumped off. I ran up to the small building, and pulled on the door. It was unlocked. After walking down a dark, narrow hallway, I reached Karen's room. I flipped on the light. In the far corner of the room, I could see the future version of Karen, waiting for me.
"I was told you would come," she told me, her face deadly and unflinching.
She lead me to a smaller, hidden room in the back, where she had built her time machine. It was a very complex body suit, with circuits running through it, connecting it to a large, metal frame. Still following the letter, I allowed her to hook me up to the structure. I set the date for the day of the second fire. I was blasted back into the past.
After what seemed like a flash of eternity, I awoke in the library. There were burning books and computers all around me. I said, "Oh Lord, it's a fire." I already had my shoes on, but I ran for my life. Thankfully, it did not catch me, and I did not get Bronchitis.
Once I was safe, I continued on my path and made my way down to the gun shop. With what was left on my credit card, I bought a few assault weapons. Now, you're probably wondering why I did that. Because you're stupid, you haven't put this together yet. You are the shooter. The jacket that the shooter was wearing looked similar to yours because it was the same freaking one.
But why go back in time? Why kill all of those innocent people? Don't you see? I was only helping them.
The world is just an illusion. We think that we are in control of our destiny; we think that our choices determine our fate. I guess that in a way that's true. My choice to write this letter has determined my fate, and Karen's choice to go back in time determined her mother's. But there is no such thing as a free choice- we are not in control of our own choices. We just make these choices based on personalities and opinions that are determined by everything else in this world. Our choices are just the product of many others which were the product of some action from within the deep realms of time. We are not in control. We are just part of some greater machine of fate. And even in realizing this, I have still not escaped it. There is no escape from fate. Trying to change fate is just another part of the game.
But I suppose that the illusion is what makes it all work, what makes all of the cogs turn. When we think that things might have gone down differently, it brings regret and sorrow. And because the future is unknown, we believe that there are multiple possibilities, and this brings hope, determination, and sometimes, happiness. But once you accept that there is only one possibility, one fate, and that you are not in control, then you can find peace. And I know that you will find this truth in the future.
You see, I didn't kill them to help them escape, I only killed them so that they would no longer have to endure the sick illusion that is life. Even in death, you are still in fate; it is just more predictable. And just because you already know your fate doesn't make you different than anybody else. Everyone's fate has already been predetermined. I'm just saving you the emotion that comes with it.
After I did the shooting, I met with Karen and wrote this letter.
I am almost done. Now, all that you need to do is fulfill your fate. Look outside your window.