Author’s note: I took this prompt in a slightly different direction. Instead of the letter being written from the perspective of someone already living 100 years in the future, I wrote it from the perspective of someone who is about to go into cryogenic sleep for 100 years writing to her best friend. Since I changed the prompt around, I focused on different narrative elements than the ones suggested in the instructions.

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Dear Ellie,

It’s me, Liza. I know, I know. It’s been a few weeks since you’ve heard from me, since I dropped off the face of the Earth. Knowing you, you’re probably freaking out as you read this. Probably hoping that I’ll be coming back soon. I’m so sorry, Ellie, but I’m not. I can’t. Please don’t try to write me back, it’s not possible, and it might even be dangerous for you to try. I violated a long list of government and military policies by sending this to you, but I had to say something…I couldn’t just leave you hanging. I could never do that to you, Ellie.

You know that when I became a scientist, I dedicated my life to expanding human knowledge, to using that knowledge to better humanity, to protect our imperfect but beautiful species, and that’s part of why I had to disappear. I’m writing this letter from a cryogenics facility, the place where I will be sleeping for a century. They’re preparing my pod and it’s already cold in here, Ellie. It smells like a damned hospital, and I’m scared. When I wake up, everyone I know will be dead, everything I once loved and understood will be changed and I won’t ever be able to undo that.

At this point, if you believe a word I’ve written, you’re wondering what could possibly motivate me to make this decision. That’s a fair line of questioning. All I can tell you is that something big is coming, something big enough to threaten everything, and my scientific skillset is going to be necessary when it arrives. That’s what I get for hyper-specifying in grad school and wanting to be a fucking expert, right?

I didn’t want to disappear like I did. I know that’s been hard on you, that it will be hard on you for a long time. Harder on you than the day in grade school when your dog suddenly died. You cried so hard that you made yourself sick. Harder on you than the day your ex husband walked out on you without a word, that bastard. He never deserved you, Ellie, he wasn’t good enough for you and now I don’t feel like I’m much better.

I know deep in my bones that it tears you apart to be abandoned, and if there was any other way, I would have done things differently. I swear that on my favorite picture of us. Do you know which one I’m talking about? I had just gotten that terrible haircut before Sophmore year picture day, and I was embarrassed in a way that only a teenage girl can be. To make me feel better, you got the exact same one, choppy, uneven layers and all. In the picture, we’re laughing in front of your dad’s house with our god-awful matching haircuts, but all I could think about that moment was how beautiful you still managed to look and how no one else would ever love me the way you did. I’m holding that faded picture right now and I’m going to sleep next to it for a century. Your face will be the first thing I see when I wake up.

Now, you’re probably wondering if I had a choice in this. I did, Ellie, but it was the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. At first, I refused. I couldn’t imagine leaving you, couldn’t imagine waking up in a world without you. Couldn’t imagine not watching your perfect daughter grow up, not growing old with you and laughing at each other’s wrinkles and grey hair and telling stories and pulling pranks on people who have long assumed that we are just two senile old women. I was looking forward to every moment.

But then, it hit me all at once. Your daughter, as she grows, will inevitably collect loved ones the way you have, and she will change people for the better the way you’ve changed me. She might have children someday and then they might have children. I want your generations to go on and on and to watch each other grow without the threat of annihilation hanging over their heads. I need the echoes of you to persist for eons, even after you yourself are long gone, even after I’m gone. I have to secure a future in which there can be a future, in which the love that you’ve shown me has the chance to flourish and persist, to affect and transform, to grow.

As much as it probably hurts you to read this now, I did this for you, the essence of you, the parts of you that you will pass down. I hope, more than anything, that my decision will keep those future yous safe, or at least give them a chance to endure. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet some of them when I wake up. I hope I do Ellie.

So, I had to do this. I had to. Please understand, even if you never forgive me for it. I need to go now, need to end this letter. They’ll be putting me into cold sleep in just a few minutes, but god, Ellie, I love you so much. You’re my reason for everything, you gave me the strength that I need to do this.

And Ellie? I promise, if I meet your future progeny, I won’t tell them about the first time you got drunk.

Love for all eternity,

Liza