I can’t believe what I am looking it, it’s a letter to me, but that doesn’t make any sense. How could the message be to me.

“To Christine Netterman, 415 Augustine Drive, Thousand Oaks, CA”

Maybe there was a chance that there was some other Christine that had been there, I was named after my aunt. But that time doesn’t work out either, that would have only placed the letter maybe 20 years older. The texture of the page clearly feels like its a hundred years old. It’s unlike anything that I have ever had my hands on, the texture is weird stiff and unmoving. It’s also much heavier than any letter that I’ve ever had in my hands.

“I know that this letter is going to find you well, but that you are going to be slightly disturbed by it’s presence. Please remain calm and try not to panic.”

Well that was more than an understatement. Great and now everyone is looking at me, but I guess that makes sense. If you were to open a 100 year old time capsule and the only thing that was still in good condition was a letter addressed directly to you and no one else, there would be a little bit of confusion. The thing that they don’t tell you about time capsules is that when you dig them up most of the contents are completely destroyed. As it turns out we really aren’t good at making things that you can bury for a long period of time without the contents getting reclaimed by nature. But the letter that I have in my hands is the only thing that is not completely destroyed, in fact it doesn’t look like it’s aged a day, despite being over 100 years old.

“I assure you that all of this will make sense in the coming days, but as someone who was standing, staring at you read this letter I can understand and share your discomfort.”

Wait… so the person who sent the letter is standing in the audience right now. But I can’t see anyone that looks like they are our of place, and clearly there isn’t anyone that’s over a hundred. So how can any of this make sense.

“You can stop looking around the crowd, at the time that I was standing there I didn’t know that I was going to be the one sending you the letter.”

I think that who ever sent the letter is trying to make me feel better about the whole thing. But that’s not really helping me at all. Why would any of this be happening, right now it’s just me looking over a group of people expecting me to say something. They are looking for a 16 year old girl from California to explain to them why opening a 100 year old time capsule, there was a letter addressed to me. Maybe if I look deeper into the letter then they will go away.

“I can only assume that you are feeling very awkward about the whole thing. I remember feeling really bad for you watching you on the stage, but I can give you some help. At the end of everything you are going to tell everyone that this was clearly a prank, then run off. Not really sure where you go, but everyone kind of takes it for a cool magic trick then goes along their own way.”

Is it really that simple? All I have to do to make this end is just tell everyone that it’s a prank and then they will go about their lives.

“You do actually have to say it with conviction, your first attempt doesn’t really sell it. But in the end you get away. When you go make sure that you take this letter with you, the contents are important as they will help you to survive the next two weeks. I know that either way you will make it out, but hopefully if you follow these directions you will impact the present as little as possible.”

Okay, this is too weird. But here goes nothing…

“Sorry everyone, it appears that there has been an elaborate prank that’s been played.”

Why did my voice choose that moment to crack, if I don’t believe it then there is no way that I am going to be able to make them believe it.

“Seriously everyone, sorry for the confusion… it was someone trying to create a scene with a little bit of slight of hand.”

Now all I have to do is walk off the stage slowly and disappear into the bushes. I don’t know what’s going on but as soon as I find the person who wrote this letter I am going to give them hell. This isn’t a funny joke. This is clearly going to mess me up for years and Dr. Wright is going to have a field day with this. But what do I tell her, you’ll figure that out just keep walking, luckily it looks like the letter was right, no one is following me. Just a couple hundred more yards and I should be able to ease up a bit. I need to stop gripping the letter so tightly, I’m creasing the paper and I have no idea what is in the contents.

“Okay, I am assuming that you are reading this part after you have left the assembly. First let me apologize, and know that when you were reading the letter I had no idea that I was the one that sent it to you, I was fully convinced that is was a prank walking away from the meeting. It wasn’t until many months later, that I had to send you the message. You see I’m kind of stuck here a hundred years in the past. Based on the way that I think the science works, there isn’t much chance of me coming back. But with that said there are still something’s that we can do to make sure that everyone makes it out okay. I’m sorry that I’ve mixed you up in this, but when you are trying to contact someone from a hundred years in the past you really don’t have a lot of options. With each iteration we are getting closer to equilibrium, for the sake of everyone involved please don’t let apathy win.”

There is literally no way that this is real. The letter is right, this has to be some prank that’s being played on me. They are talking about time travel and I know for a fact that’s not a real thing. I’ve watched my fair share of Doctor Who and that doesn’t happen in the real world, although I could be convinced by David Tennant…

“At this point I can only assume that you are thinking that this whole thing is crazy and that there is someone that is pranking you. But here is the think, in my timeline, I have a letter from you too. Which means that you have to follow through with the plan at least a little bit, the letter says that you should know that ‘Kerry was a jerk’ and that what she did wasn’t right.”

Okay, how the hell does she know that. That happened when I was in middle school in Kansas, I’m not even sure that Kerry would remember the sleepover. Stop and think, there are only three people who could know about that. Weighing the likelihood that one of those three people was trying to pull a prank on me is on one side, the other is that time travel is real. I just have to get to some place safe where I can read the rest of the letter without being bothered. But where to go…

I hadn’t heard of it, but with a quick trip over to the wiki, it’s going to be my next read. Thanks for the suggestion.

"There is no way that magic is real." he said to the man who was sitting in the driver seat of the government vehicle.

“Believe me, it’s a lot more mundane than it sounds. Most people never experience anything that couldn’t be described away as basic good luck, or coincidence. But those are the lucky cases, worst one that I know of happened back in the 1960’s, apparently a couple in Hoboken figured the whole thing out and nearly destroyed the fabric of society. Took the bookstore, almost a decade to straighten everything out.”

“Okay we are going to come back to that, but why do they call us the bookstore?”

“They call the CIA the Company, the FBI the Bureau, and they call us the bookstore. They do it so that they can talk about us in open company. Besides, I assume that the bookstore was one of the more acceptable things that they could have called us. We handle things that are of an occult nature. Which honestly sounds cool till you've been on the job for about a month. Most people who figure their magic, out blow it in the first couple of days before they can really control it. Seriously the number of people who get caught trying to beat the lottery makes this the most boring job ever. Then again that's probably why we run the game.”

“Back to the Hoboken thing, you mean to tell me that the entirety of the 60’s was the responsibility of people from New Jersey?”

“You can look the whole thing up your self, you have the clearance now. It’s all part of the training documentation, hell it should have been part of your onboarding training. The story goes something like this, an old couple in their mid 70s, grandpa has a failing libido and grandma suffers from migraines. One day she snaps, and figures if she can focus all of her mental energy on a sewing needle the headache goes away, and she finishes her cross-stitch at meth addict speed. Next thing she’s working on grandpa’s muscles, and suddenly he’s like a twenty year old. Over the next three months she teaches him and the two of them start tugging at the fibers of reality as we know it.”

“So all of the things that we know about the 60s are because of these two people. All of the sex the drugs and the rock and roll, all because of those two?”

“God no, seriously didn’t they teach you this stuff. Most of what you know about the 60s is from the bookstore cleaning things up. As you put it the sex, the drugs, and rock and roll were all of the tools that were required to get everything back into order from the mess that the two of them created. You hear about people taking acid and seeing sounds and tasting colors? Well here’s the thing, there were two types of ‘acid’ that were going around at that time, one was LSD, the other was an open door to magic that people shouldn’t be experiencing. The worst outcome wasn’t communism or free love, it was the complete unraveling of reality as we know it. Everything else was part of the cover up.”

The recruit looked down at his pressed shirt, everything had been okay when he had left the house this morning, everything felt right about the world. But now there was something that was deeply wrong and he wondered if it would ever be right again.

“Cheer up, like I said in most cases we don’t deal with anything anywhere close to that. The system is designed that way, most of the people blow it within the first couple of hours of making their first awakening. So we really aren’t anything more than glorified tax collectors. Seriously, flash your badge and see what kind of response you get. Most groups will look at you like your from land management or from the county health inspector, you know… check that, the county gets more respect. If, they recognize the letters then they will probably not give you the finger, but it’s never guaranteed. Some you flash the badge and it just pisses them off more, because now not only are you walking into their jurisdiction they now have to look up what backwater agency the letters stand for. I stopped using my badge about two years back. I think it’s still in there. It honestly if it wasn’t I couldn’t tell you where I lost it.”

Mike knew that he was trying to cheer him up but he still didn’t know what to make of all of this. The lead up to all of it had been so weird, and now that it was here and they had basically dumped all of it on them, he didn’t know what to think. He had sat though the orientation but all of the information that they had given them had been veiled in science speak, and he hadn’t been particularly good at science through school. Most of it went over his head and once that started the rest of it washed over him pretty quickly. They explained, in the most clinical way that they could, that there were people who could modify the world around them using their thoughts. They explained that most of the people would be harmless and that they would just need to be redirected. Then they assigned them partners and sent them on their first run. The whole thing felt rushed and reckless.

Sensing the stress in the silence his partner broken in, “The reason that the trainings are so short is statistically speaking most of the runs that we are going to go on are simple ones, and they make sure that the first couple are going to be routine. After a week they are going to take you back in and give you the full briefing and more training. They do it this way to make sure that you don’t freak out with all of the information. Retention has always been a problem with the bookstore, mostly because its super routine until it’s not. Once you’ve had one of ‘those’ experiences you either hang around or your out. Hang around long enough and you get special training to use some of the skills yourself. Outstay your welcome then they put you on patrol and give you a rookie.”

He let out a small chuckle, and it seemed to ease the tension in the car. The radio cut in, “Mike need you to go talk to Sean, over on willow.” He picked up the radio, “Alright, loud and clear, we’re on it”. He chucked the microphone into the center console. “Well rookie, welcome to your first house call, you’ll like Sean… just don’t look at the paintings on the wall.”