Dear past me,
Happy eighteenth birthday. It’s time. Your time. Writing this letter feels so, so strange. Believe me, you won’t know what it feels like until… well…
I remember reading this in Mom and Dad’s basement house on our birthday: 24th July 2028. I still have the original version of this letter, tucked away in a shoebox underneath the bed, alongside all the others. All the letters you’ll read.
That I’ll write.
You’re gonna think, “Lazy bitch. She just copied this letter from the original!” That’s called a bootstrap paradox. It happens. Tell your past-self to learn the guitar and give them the melody, rhythm, and lyrics to the greatest song ever written. How did they come up with it? Because, thirty-two years ago, they read it in a letter that, one day, they’ll write and send to themselves. You think copyright is a nightmare in your time!
But I didn’t re-read the old one this letter to copy it for inspiration. Somehow, the same words manage to fall into place. I guess that’s why it’s ChronoCorp’s motto. ‘Don’t worry: you can’t change anything!’
ChronoCorp is a better example of a bootstrap paradox. The founder of ChronoCorp gets a letter every year, just like you and me and everyone else. It includes all the typical warnings. “Don’t try to change anything”, “Time is fixed”, blah blah blah. And then, one year, they let slip write about their mother, explaining to their past-self that she is going to will die soon, that they will cause her death and that, naturally, they shouldn’t blame themselves, because there’s nothing they can do about it. Stupid Decent person that they are, they get in their car and drive to her. In their panicked haze, they crash — into their mother.
Dead, instantly.
At least, that’s the story we’re all told in the future. “When you read what your future-self has sent, don’t try to change anything!” But I reckon that story is a myth kept alive by ChronoCorp to stop people from writing anything dangerous in their letters. Do you remember when Sorry, of course you remember, you’re me, and I remember! Let’s try that again –
When we worked Saturday shifts, cleaning that office downtown, the managers kept telling you us to keep the cupboard door locked because, apparently, a child once opened it, took out a bottle of bleach and glugged it down. What bullshit! But that story kept the door locked. It kept everyone safe. Hey, who knows? Maybe a kid will get in there one day and find a bottle of bleach. Better lock it. Some lies are useful, even when everyone already knows everything that’s going to happen.
At this point, you’re thinking, “Why hasn’t she mentioned a husband?! Am I still a virgin by the year 2060?!” Don’t stress too much. As you grow old, you begin to value the slower path. Why ruin all the surprises? All will be revealed – in due course.
Kind regards,
Future you.
Dear past me,
Happy nineteenth birthday. I still remember the argument you just had with Mom. God, we I was angry. And I still remember reading these words and thinking, “How does she know that?” before realising, “Of course — she’s me from the future!” And then you read that last sentence back and think, “This is getting a bit weird now.” That’s time travel!
Let’s get the difficult part out of the way. Dad’s illness goes away. I wouldn’t recommend telling him (you will anyway) but there’s no cause for alarm.
You graduated high school. Congratulations! Now you’re at Penn State, studying Law. It seems like a course with good career prospects. But you’d be surprised how difficult it is to be a lawyer in the future. How do you prove mens rea when the future is fixed? Look, I don’t want to spoil everything for you. Keep studying Law, if you want. Just remember that you can change your mind. That’s the problem with writing from the future. Everything is painfully certain. God, how I wish I could be you again, not knowing so much all the time. Ignorance used to be considered a vice. Now, it’s a mercy. Words like “past”, “present”, “future” — in our my time, they don’t have much meaning.
You’ve already heard the explanation for how these letters work, but your teachers didn’t explain it properly. It’s not their fault. Time travel was new is new. The impossible suddenly became possible. Let me explain it in a way I know you’ll understand. This is how people thought time worked before ChronoCorp:
The past The present The future
Turns out, it’s more like this:
All of time
All of history is in that ball: the past, the present, the future; different words to describe the same thing. About 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang happened, and the original configuration of atoms in the universe determined everything that followed. In a fraction of a fraction of a second, Shakespeare wrote all his plays, Columbus set foot on the Americas, ChronoCorp discovered how to send letters into the past through time, and you read these words, all at once, all at the same time. Humans just experience it like a movie, one shot after another: the illusion of movement towards something.
Trippy, right? In your time, people consider this…. depressing. You remember the mass suicides of 2026, when the first batch of letters was received. It’s impossible difficult to justify free will when nothing you do can change anything. I guess there’s no such thing as fre We try not to think about it.
Currently, we only know how to send inorganic material through time, with a remit of about thirty-two years on either side. It’s possible to send letters to the future, too, but nobody ever does it. What would be the point? May as well stick it in a bottle and send it out to sea.
Hopefully, someday, a genius with an ego figures out how to send entire human beings back. Until then, you’re stuck with these letters: once a year, every year. Physics is interesting, right? You weren’t a big fan of science in school, but all you need is the right teacher. If Law doesn’t work out, it’s always an option.
Kind regards,
Future you.
Dear past me,
Happy twentieth birthday. I’m sorry. I know you’re angry. I understand why.
Did you really want me to tell you Dad died? Would you have preferred living in dread, knowing it was about to happen? Did you want Dad to know?
You’ll understand one day, believe me. There’s a part of you that’s thinking, “No. When I’m her age, I’m going to tell myself the truth.” But you won’t. Because I didn’t. If it’s any consolation, that was the last lie I’ll ever tell you. The first one hurt too much to repeat. Be kind to Mom. She’s in pain, just like you. She lashes out sometimes, but she doesn’t mean to. You’re very similar, as much as you might deny it.
Onto nicer things…
You’ve changed course — to Physics! Good decision. Law wasn’t right for you. Interesting modules this year. Of course, time is a popular subject. The first batch of letters from ChronoCorp is still within living memory.
Do you remember seeing it on the news? BIGGEST PRANK IN HISTORY — every eighteen-year-old in the world simultaneously getting a letter on their birthday, claiming to be from their future self. And, within a week, every lottery company in the world went bankrupt. A massive surge of eighteen-year-old millionaires and then, never again. We were so pissed off. Why couldn’t we have been born a few years earlier? It’s okay. We make our money a different way now.
Look out for love this semester. Like I said, I don’t want to ruin all the surprises. But that dorky, shy kid who always sit next to you in Introduction to Physics? He’s not just nervous about the Schrödinger equation, if you know what I mean. Ask him out for coffee.
This is the only letter I don’t still have in my shoebox. When you’ve finished reading this, you’ll rip it up and throw it in the garbage. You’ll swear to never trust a thing I say write again. And then, after reading that last sentence, you think, “In that case, I won’t throw away this letter”, just to prove me wrong. Here’s a lesson from the future, kid: don’t fight it. It doesn’t work. I know everything you’re going to do because it’s already happened to me. Time’s a ball, not a line. The unhappiest people in the future are those who refuse to accept it. Why do you think ChronoCorp only lets people send one letter a year? Any more letters, and it would drive people insane, desperately trying to fix every problem that has ever happened in their life. I could have tried, in vain, to stop Dad dying, somehow. But it wouldn’t have worked. Dad always dies, I always write this letter, and you always throw it away.
It’s a shame I don’t keep it. Then again, regret is pointless when you already know everything that’s going to happen. Don’t worry: you can’t change anything.
Kind regards,
Future you.
Dear past me,
Happy twenty-first birthday. A very happy twenty-first birthday!
Dress up nice for your date with Shaun tonight. Red dress, not blue. Curl your hair, don’t straighten it. The small, silver earrings, not the big, loopy ones. I know you’re thinking, “But I look better in blue.” You don’t. Go red.
Mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Nobody would have been perfect for her little princess, especially when we you don’t have Dad to protect you. Shaun is the one. He’s sweet, he’s kind, he’s funny, and he’s hot as hell (even especially in his old age).
It’s weird, though. If I hadn’t told you to look out for him, you would have never asked him out for coffee. You would have never fallen in love. The rest of your future life would have never happened.
But it wasn’t fate. Make no mistake; there’s no room for fantasy when talking about time travel. Fate and determinism are not the same thing. I told you to suggested that you ask him out for coffee. Let’s call that action X. You asked him out for coffee. Let’s call that action Y. You fell in love. Let’s call that action Z. X leads to Y leads to Z. X would have always happened, no matter what. Therefore, so would Y and Z. But it was still caused, even if it was also determined.
Expressed as a diagram, it looks like this:
X Y Z
Follow the X line back far enough, and you will eventually get to the beginning of the universe. Obviously, that diagram is an oversimplification — actions X, Y, and Z are all happening at the same time, we just experienced them in chronological order — but you get the idea. That’s how we know that free will doesn’t exist; everything in life is predetermined.
Fate is something different. Fate means you would have fallen in love with Shaun even if you didn’t ask him out for coffee, or if you didn’t go to the same college, or if you had never even met him. As physics demonstrates, nothing in the universe is without cause.
Some people don’t get letters. Their future-selves They either die before ChronoCorp begins operation in the year 2043, or they simply don’t want to send letters to the past.
Unfortunately, I know you. I know the question that has popped into your mind and the answer you’ve immediately assigned to it: “Why doesn’t Mom get any letters?”
Stop it. Stop it. Some people don’t send letters to their past-self. They’re not all dead or crazy. Perhaps Mom enjoys the mysteries of life. We, on the other hand, hate surprises.
For that reason, and that reason only, I’m going to give you a little spoiler – Shaun’s going to ask you a question tonight. For the love of God, say YES!!!
Kind regards,
Future you.
Dear past me,
Happy twenty-second birthday. At least, as happy as it can be, given the circumstances. You shouldn’t have listened to Mom. You weren’t too young to be making big decisions, to get married, to start a family. It’s your life, not hers. And, yet, here you are, back in the basement, studying off-campus so you don’t run into him. Or the new girl.
I know we you broke his heart, but it wasn’t right for him to move on that quickly. He ends up marrying that girl instead, by the way. Sorry for rubbing salt in the wound. But I’d rather that you we hurt that little bit more now in the year 2030 so it doesn’t hurt as much when it actually happens. You learn a lot about the mechanics of time as you get older. It becomes your specialty, so it shouldn’t hurt to analyse it. But it does. It hurts, badly.
When people turn fifty, and they’re given the chance to send their first letter to the past, they have to go through several rounds of therapy before they can even touch pen to paper. They make you repeat the same phrase, over and over, just to keep you sane:
“The only time is now.”
Nonsense. We’re too smart for that Stoicism bullshit. As physicists, we know, all too well, that humanity’s concept of the ‘now’ is a fiction. ‘Now’ was ten-thousand years ago and this morning and tomorrow and today and yesterday and a hundred-billion years into the future, all at once, all at the same time. But experiencing it, feeling it tick away slowly like a clock hand, is another thing entirely. What am I supposed to write, from the vantage point of the future, to give my past-self the best possible opportunities, knowing that I can’t change anything that happens? How much of our future should I spoil?
Thinking about it drives me you us insane. All the things I would have done, could have done, differently, if not for the immutable laws of physics.
You never forgive her. Not really, not fully. Perhaps reading those words means you’ll never try. But she messed you up, your mom; she didn’t mean to, but she did. As you get older, you try your best not to be like her, to look like her, to act like her, but everyone ends up like their parents in the end. It’s another inevitable law.
Another bootstrap paradox.
Sometimes I wonder if we were better off before ChronoCorp, before we had access to so much knowledge of the future. The deepest craters of mystery have already been scorched for answers. Scientists don’t follow rigorous trials anymore. They come up with a question and just wait for a letter from themselves in the future with the answer written down. That’s how time travel is discovered. That’s how ChronoCorp gets started. That’s how you knew to say yes to Shaun when he asked you to marry him, last year, on your birthday.
I didn’t want to tell you what happens. I wanted you to have your perfect birthday, your perfect proposal, your perfect life — if only for a brief moment in time.
Kind regards,
Future you.
Past me –
It’s a lie. It’s always been a lie. ChronoCorp is trying to control you, control everything. You can change the future. You can still be with Shaun and have everything you’ve ever wanted. You just have to do exactly what I say.
It’s not just letters now; they’ve discovered how to send people to the past. But you know too much. They know you’re going to try to fix the past and they’ll threaten everyone we care about to stop you.
They’re going to kill Mom.
Don’t call the police, don’t tell anyone, they’re all controlled by ChronoCorp. You need to save her. Throw this letter away and go.
NOW!!!!
– Future you
Dear past me,
Happy twenty-fourth birthday. You’re confused, understandably. But, if you keep reading (you will), I can explain everything.
Do you remember what that lecturer said during our first class on time travel? Of course you do. You’re me. He said, “Time travel is many things, but it’s not simple.”
He was wrong. Time travel is simple. It’s just physics and diagrams and ones and zeros and lines and equations. Human beings are the problem. Humans aren’t simple. Humans are confusing. They lie, when they say they won’t, even to those closest to them.
Even to themselves.
Why did I do it? Why did I lie about ChronoCorp? Why did I tell you to keep Mom safe, knowing full well that you would get in that car and crash into her?
Why did I make you kill Mom?
The most important thing to understand is this: I hate you. I hate you, with every fibre of my being. I lie awake, every night, unable to get to sleep, because all I can think about are all the stupid things we you did growing up.
Remember when you were sixteen and you told that racist joke? I hate you. Remember when you spilt coffee over that poor girl’s laptop in the campus library? I hate you. Remember when you told Shaun that you didn’t love him because you thought it would be kinder? I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!!!!
It’s not your fault. Nothing is anyone’s fault. X leads to Y leads to Z. You had to do those things because, 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang happened, and those atoms, in that configuration, predetermined that you would tell that racist joke, that you would spill that coffee, that you would break Shaun’s heart.
But, still, I can’t help but feel regret. Regret that we never told Dad that we loved him. Regret that we listened to Mom. Regret that you’re spending graduation in a jail cell.
You won’t be incarcerated for long, if it’s any consolation. It’s impossible difficult to prove mens rea when time travel is involved. What crime did you even commit? Manslaughter, I suppose. But you were trying to save her. You didn’t mean to crash the car. You’re an unwilling temporal accomplice, no more culpable than a bullet shot across time. Good Samaritan laws were invented for innocent victims like you.
What does that make me? Mom’s hitman? Should they wait for a few decades before they make an arrest, until you become me? Questions like that are why you dropped out of Law. Physics is much simpler. Let me explain it in a way you’ll understand. Expressed as a diagram, my our motivation for killing Mom looks like this:
Mom was a control freak
Mom ruined our life
Mom deserved to die
Now, a quick history lesson from the future.
You burn the next few letters I send you, without reading them. To this day, I still don’t know what I wrote. I suppose, over the next few years, I will find out. Until then, you live in self-imposed ignorance. Despite knowing it’s impossible to change the past, you cling to the idea that, when you’re my age, you won’t do what I did.
But being alone for the first time in your life, you start to think, properly think, about physics, about Dad, about Mom, about Shaun, about me. There’s one person, above everyone else, that you think about the most: that woman, that girl, that bimbo who swooped in and mended Shaun’s broken heart. She is living your life. And, why? Because Mom wanted you to herself. You were all she had and, if you were anyone else’s, she would have nothing.
Shaun was the one. I’ve fed you so many lies over the years — so many I’ve lost count — but that wasn’t one of them. You never find anyone else. You never have children. You don’t have friends or spouses or flings or parents. You have no one.
On your thirty-first birthday, you decide to read that year’s letter, the letter where I finally explain the mechanics of time travel. And, so, you build a company: ChronoCorp, made with brick and mortar and sweat and regret. You begin to remember what kind of person you were between the age of eighteen and twenty-four, when I was your age. Gullible. Stupid. Hopeless. Worth punishing. Worth confusing. Worth nothing.
So, you start sending your letters.
That’s the main difference between Mom and me. In the end, Mom was alone. But I have you. You are mine. I decide what you do, who you love, who you become. Because I’m the one with the pen and the paper. And if that pisses you off, imagine how I felt.
Well, I guess you don’t have to.
Of course, I’m only one part of your history. I have a future, just like you, and I still get my letter every year. This year’s letter has just arrived: from our 88-year-old self. She’s figured out how to send organic matter through time. One day, she might even be able to send whole people. If she does, she’ll let me know. Perhaps I’ll come visit you. Of course, I already know whether I did or not, whether future me is successful, but I’ll keep that surprise to myself. So, if you even think about treading away from the beaten track, remember: one day, I might be able to do more than just write. Only time will tell.
Kind regards,
Me.
