My dear Derek. As you receive this document you are no doubt feeling betrayed. But you are being helped, if you only knew it. You might think that I am the one who betrayed you, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The blessed Assembly who gave me this assignment knows so much more than you or I know. I can feel that you don’t believe it. But I must believe it. I do believe it. I need to help you see it. Even now I can see so much good coming out of this project, this collision of old and new World Orders. This is good for all humanity, and that is what we all want, isn’t it?
You should know that all of the people who interviewed you, the doctors, businessmen and working men and women, old and young, professionals and laborers, they were all me. I appeared to you in costumes, holograms, projected images… It is simple for me to appear however I want. I enjoyed it, and I think it helped our relationship, which is why I did it, and is probably one of the reasons why the Assembly chose me to do this job.
I will not disguise myself to you any more. You will recognize me as the schoolgirl who asked you questions about your family and your past. I have prepared a report for you of your family tree, of the names, addresses and occupations of all your descendants who are alive today along with a history of all the friends you named and their survivors. I include that report as part of this package for your benefit.
As I was your appointed guide to this new world which is now your home, I will continue to explain to you things that will, I hope, help you understand many of the issues that confuse you most about our world. In time you will understand why a 16 year-old girl named Courtney could be appointed host to a space traveler from a lost world. I have included also copies of the journal entries you and I have made over the past week.
Maybe you didn’t know that your journal entries were made available for anyone who is interested in your case. Maybe you didn’t know that this project is course credit for me, that I am graded on how I handled it. I hope you understand that these facts do not cheapen our work together. As you see, nothing is secret in your new world. We can all disguise ourselves as anyone we want, listen to anything we want, do anything we want. Trying to keep a secret is impossible.
You should know that all of the people who interviewed you, the doctors, businessmen and working men and women, old and young, professionals and laborers, they were all me. I appeared to you in costumes, holograms, projected images… It is simple to appear however we want. I enjoyed it, and I think it helped you feel comfortable.
You should know that it is considered bad form for me to ask or investigate who financed this project. You asked about that several times. We don’t know who finances anything, or rather, we all finance everything. If we like a project we contribute to it. It is not just money, it is life. The answer which might satisfy you is to say the Assembly financed it.
I have to admit that this project made me feel very important. It is a feeling I liked even as I dread it. I know this is harmful to my soul, how I rationalize looking at how many people are reading my journal entry at night. I never used to look before, never thought I had something so important to say before. I pray that I will be able to limit my feelings of importance when it becomes important to do so.
I even notice how many thousands of people read the journal reports I give to the Assembly every night is a sign of impure motives for me. I was appointed by the Assembly to help you adjust to your new home. My job was to spiritualize your outlook, to bring you up to the future, your future, our future, this future. This is your life now, and hopefully this document will help give a bit more insight into your life.
Journal entry 0708258
My name is Derek Paul, and I have been left here to write this accounting of my arrival here back on earth. The five of us from the first star ship to approach the speed of light and return home are presumably doing the same thing. We are told that this is part of our re-entry into earth society, that we will be free from this responsibility in about a week’s time.
The “Just Science” was the ship of my design which was designed and financed mainly by the five of us. I have always said that anyone who wants to do something bad enough can do it. We did it.
To my knowledge at this time we are the first earth ship to experience a distortion in time and return back to earth in the future. By our reckoning, the date is August 8, 2033. But in our arrival back to earth after our approach to the speed of light the date by earth’s calendar is October 17 of 2102. They use a different calendar, however, and this is the 7th day of the 13thmonth of the year 258 of their Era.
I have trouble remembering that I am home now. There is nowhere else to go. This is earth, and there is no going back in time. I don’t know today what town I am in, or even what country. But I am unmistakably on Earth in the middle of my very own Rip Van Winkle story. The consolation is that this story is entirely scientific, entirely according to predictable laws of physics. There is no magic.