Dear Child,
If you are reading this, then I fear I haven't much time. Forgive me, please. I love you, and I know you'll never truly understand the extent of my love; the love a father has for his child; his only son.
Your name is Adam, and you are my only child. There's little time to explain so, please, forgive my candor.
Your mother and I exist in a time quite unlike your own; a time in which, for simplicity's sake, the human race is dying. Brother has turned against brother, daughter against daughter, child against parent, and parent against offspring. But not you and me. I love you, Adam.
Before our little family's eyes, the world around us was thrust into devastation the likes of which mankind had never seen before. It started as nothing more than a disease, no more foreign than the common cold. But, unlike a cold or flu, it wouldn't go away. Soon, our neighbors grew ill, our economy grew barren, and society began to collapse from beneath us all.
We tried vaccines. We tried anything. Alas, nothing worked.
Except for the bombs.
It started as radiation therapy, but the need grew far beyond what hospitals and clinics could offer. Nationwide mass-hysteria would be an understatement. Worldwide holocaust, woefully, sums it up better. We had no idea. We thought we were living in the last of the world's wars. We didn't know we weren't being attacked.
We were bombing ourselves.
To rid the world of the virus, we had to stop the spread. But instead of putting pressure on the wound, we merely cut the appendage off.
Two days. It took us two days to go from a depression to, literally, hell on Earth.
And that leads me to you.
When your mother and I thought things couldn't grow worse, she caught the virus.
And so did you.
While you both experienced the pitiful sufferings of the virus ravaging your bodies, I perhaps suffered a far worse agonizing torture: I had to endure watching my family fall apart before my very eyes. When your mother died, I lost all hope. My years of medicinal training were wasted; my degrees and certificates a mere prodigal display. My only impetus was keeping you safe by any means necessary.
And I did mean any. I pushed myself to limits far beyond those I had business dwelling in.
In the time I'm from, man exists harmoniously with both nature and technology. We have perverted God's intentions, and I have perpetuated this sin in what I've done with you. To you.
To preserve you, my only child, I had to remove your consciousness from your body.
God, forgive me.
I isolated your brain and spinal cord. Removed them. This is a process commonly reserved for cryopreservation, but there's simply no point in freezing you for the future.
Because there is no future.
You are preserved in the present. One of the last human consciousness' alive. Perhaps, the only consciousness left. This is a heavy burden, I know, but believe in my words as I believe in you, my child.
Your brain has been integrated with a computer, the harmony of nature and technology. Your identity and surroundings are mere fabrications of the computer and your mind. Your world, as you know it, doesn't exist.
When a tree falls in the forest, and you aren't there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound. The tree doesn't exist. Neither does the forest. Nothing exists unless you experience it, my child. You think, therefore you are.
Adam, you are the only thing real about your reality. You are alone inside your mind.
This is a heavy realization, my son, but if you can believe it, and ignore your ignorance, then the reality destroyed by the atom can be renewed by an Adam, too.
Because reality, apart from you, is dead.
I too, without you and your mother's love, am dead. Love, my son. Love is all you can know truly exists… because you've experienced it firsthand. Know that I love you, Adam.
One day we will meet again.
Wake up.
Love,
Dad.
Written by MakRalston
Content is available under CC BY-SA