“It’s Sunday, why am I getting a package now?”

My housekeeper gave me a confused shrug but left it on my countertop all the same and returned to her cleaning. I sipped my morning coffee and eyed the brown package suspiciously. Not many people knew what my address was. Hell, even what state I lived in. Something felt off.

I got up from my kitchen table and when I inspected the package closer I saw that there was no return address. There was however a card attached to the top of it. It had my full name and correct address on it so there was definitely no mistake here. Something about the handwriting made my hands start to tremble. By the time I opened the envelope, my hands were shaking so badly I needed to sit back at the table to read it.

Dear Tom,

Hello, you glorious son of a bitch. I know you’re terrified right now. I know because I still remember that terror. But I want you to take a deep breath. Another deep breath. Now read on.

You already know by the handwriting, and that gut feeling, yes it is me. You. I am you, writing a letter to myself. ‘Now why don’t I remember that?’ you’re asking. Well that’s because I’m you…from the year 2067. You don’t remember writing this letter because you haven’t done it yet.

I am writing because I need to warn you about your future. You are going to do some terrible fucking things. Society, mankind, Jenna and the kids…it’s all fucked. You’ve destroyed everything and your own legacy in the process. Think that people view Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong as bad people? Just wait until the name Tom Kinder joins the club.

What you’ve been working on, the cure, I know it’s your life’s purpose. Our life’s purpose. It’s been almost seventy years and I remember the pain of mom dying from cancer. But what it is going to do to people, how it is going to mutate and infect others, Tom it is fucking catastrophic. A billion dead. Two billion more facing crippling, permanent injury. Jenna, Addie, Bill, Jonas, all dead. Society is damaged beyond repair.

This all happens in the span of a few months in 2029. I have been working ever since, for the past thirty-eight years, on a way to fix my mistake. On a way to reach you. Now, as I am nearing my life’s end, I finally have managed to do it. Tom, we need to correct our mistake.

But here is the conundrum and you may have already thought this out yourself. If I remember getting this letter then why have things remained unchanged?

Well put simply it’s because I was a damn fool. You ARE a damn fool. I remember getting this letter, laughing, and ripping it up. Returning back to my life’s work, knowing that I could cure cancer in a matter of years, and I know that is what you are thinking right now. I know how close you are Tom. We are so close to solving it. But our cure, there is a devastating side effect that cannot be corrected. This won’t appear to you until it is too late. It CANNOT be corrected. I know you are too stubborn to believe me!

But you need to trust me. Trust yourself.

Get the package. Open it.

I turned away from the letter and grabbed the package. I furiously ripped it open, wondering if I’d see what I suspected.

Because I was right. I did know myself.

There it was, just as I knew it would be. A gun. It was already loaded. There was only a little bit remaining of the letter now.

Tom, you know what you have to do. It is the only way. If you do not remove yourself from the equation, your obsession to complete the cure will be the end of everyone. Do you want Jenna and the kids to live? The rest of your life, my life, has been an absolute misery and the only reason I haven’t done the same thing I am asking of you is because I needed to save them first.

I know it can be different this time Tom. I know it can…because I didn’t have the gun when I got my letter.

Make the right choice.

That was it. My heart was racing as I put the letter down. A million thoughts ran through my head. I think I experienced the five stages of grief in the span of a few minutes. All the while my eyes couldn’t leave the gun, which seemed to be staring back at me from the package where it still lay. As if it was wondering what I was going to do. Would I have the courage to do the most selfless act of my life? Or would I do what it sounds like I did last time and continue the cycle?

But then I thought, why make a quick decision? The letter did say the incident happens in 2029. The shock of the moment starting to reside, and gathering my senses about me, I decided that really the only rational thing to do was to contemplate it all over and surely the right choice would come to me. I put the package away under my bed, ripped up the letter, took a hot shower, and made sure that I had my game face on for when Jenna and the kids came back from their trip later.

This was two years ago. I am still thinking about that letter though. Every day. I try to not let it eat at me but it can’t be helped. In a way, it’s like I have cancer. Society has cancer. We’re on a ticking time bomb.

But really…I am very, very close to finding the cure. Maybe this time I can account for any anomalies.