If you’re reading this, it means they’ve kept their word.
I only hope you are still you.
I am no longer in existence because mine I did not provide. Perhaps out of guilt. Perhaps…
My name was Herbert R.
In 2019, I was a specialist-consultant with the World Health Organization, an employee of the National Security Agency, and a high-ranking officer of an organization called FADE, an ostensible pro-environment NGO whose actual purpose was the suppression and manipulation of information related to climate catastrophe—inevitable climate catastrophe, although that was precisely what we were tasked with denying.
You must understand this: I knew humanity was doomed.
By our own actions, by inaction.
FADE was merely a means of controlling our species-death without causing panic.
That knowledge was a burden I carried with me every day.
Then I saw Lightbeast.
He appeared to me out of the sky—a fallen star become an avatar, a speaker for an interstellar alien race specialising in the collection and restoration of dying planets, “antique worlds.”
He made me an offer:
In exchange for the peaceful transition of Earth into alien hands, salvation for humanity.
It was not my decision to make, I told him, but he seemed not to understand the concept. “Are you not human?” he asked.
“I am,” I said.
“Thus the decision is rightfully yours.”
His terms were cruelly simple. Because humans were the cause of Earth’s destruction, the only way to preserve Earth was to destroy humanity.
“We could eliminate you through war,” Lightbeast said, sensing my consternation, “but that would be inefficient for us and horrific for you.”
And so, I agreed.
I betrayed my species—to become its saviour.
The proposed method of annihilation-salvation was deceptively simple, mass DNA collection followed by species-wide suicide.
“We will remake you elsewhere,” Lightbeast said.
He left implementation to me.
My plan, developed feverishly but with genuine intentions, is undoubtedly well-known to you by now, so suffice it to say that through my contacts at the NSA, I acquired a virus—contagious and sufficiently dangerous to warrant global action—and released it in Wuhan, China.
I watched it spread.
When the virus became a worldwide health issue, I supported the creation of a vaccine, which was to be the lynchpin of my plan: a method by which to acquire systematically the genetic material of as much of humanity as possible, and—with Lightbeast‘s intervention—the euthanising agent itself, so willingly, if unnowingly, taken.
I tried my best to expand the vaccine to as many as possible, working tirelessly to bypass trials and lower the age at which it could be administered.
But I could not save them all.
For that, I am sorry.
Lightbeast promised me the residuals would be eliminated humanely.
As for the endtime itself, it was engineered to take effect on time-delay, simultaneously for all, in our final Earth year, 2022.
But I could not wait.
Bless me.
Forgive me, please.
God could not help us, so it was I who tried.
—Herbert