Hey,

I haven’t figured out how I’m going to send this to you yet. I guess it doesn’t matter. Even if I could send it to you, how would you read it? Using pen and appear is so awkward, but I can’t do anything that would give up my location, so no electronic tranmsmssions of any kind. It’s a shame, some of the old cell towers still work.

Back in the day, I travelled with a notebook and pen and even in this situation, it pains me to tear pages out of a perfectly good notebook. But what choice do I have? I’m killing time in a cave for fuck’s sakes! Most humans have isolated themselves in eco-domes now. They don’t go out. Populations only grow when the areas we destroyed recover enough to sustain more of us.

Who’d have thought that we would actually care enough to do something like that? Things changed fast once we started dying off on droves as a direct result of our own stupid decisions. 50 years ago — about halfway between where you are and I am — small pockets of humanity began to reach out and find other communities.

Interestingly, while economic growth — maybe economic bloat is a better term — vaporized, scientific progress advanced significantly. It’s almost like scientific research during our time had little to do with increasing knowledge and was more focused on delivering results that satisfied the PR goals of the institution funding the work.

So get this, they use light for all kinds of stuff now. Light travels at the same speed as electricity but it’s ready to go, no need to generate it like you need to do with electricity. You can send and receive messages with it, store it, concentrate it to make heat, all sorts of things. It’s clean and abundant. They figured out how to harness vibration, too. That’s why I’m in a cave now. They can’t find me if lurk in this vibe blocking cave. I don’t even know if this is enough.

Once I got here, it did not take them long to realize I was from your time. The Age of Greed and Ignorance, they call it. Ironic, right? We spent our whole lives learning that we were superior to all other life on the planet because of our technological sophistication. Little did we know, we lived in ignorance. Sure some institutions and super-wealthy individuals made some innovations, but the majority of us? We just ground through the motions to feed the needs of the few. We really were appallingly ignorant little dopamine junkies.

Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lost your knife in 7th grade and I’m sorry I got together with Tansha when I knew you had a thing for her. I’m sorry I did not stay in touch when you needed a friend. Now we’re both gone from that timeline, you died and I skipped to the future. Is it impossible for a hand written letter to reach you somehow. Maybe you’ll get it before you take all those sleeping pills.

If you do get this, just know that we may be a lost cause, but the planet and the remnants of our arrogant species are going to pull through fine.

Anyway, I gotta go. I hear voices at the base of the hill.

Hang in there buddy,

Jorsten