A Concise History of the Third World War: Introduction - Our Message to You

A Story by JBlanchard

A transcript of a message from the future - a plea to humanity to remember its promise.

X-66-93-O4F: Transmission transmigrated X16P01J2014. Begin.

Hello. Whilst we understand that this is hard to believe, as to your spacial period time-travel exists only in the realms of science fiction, it is necessary to inform you that this message comes from the future. The future of planet Earth (if not made entirely obvious by the nature of this message) - one which we fear the people of your time will not recognise. For better or for worse, we do not know, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

To all intents and purposes, this message, and the messages to follow, is a history lesson. Not only that, but it will not be too dissimilar to a history lesson which most children (privileged enough to secure an education) will have taken - an event, etched into the memory of the entire world, called the Second World War. During that six year conflict, sixty million lives were lost, and with it the age of the empire gave its final death-bed spasm. Looking back at the ocean of blood spilt in the pursuit of freedom, the human race made a promise to itself: "Never again." it said. "Never again will we let this happen. Never again can we watch a world tear itself apart, and a people massacre their brothers and sisters purely for their differences. Never again will we let so many die in vain."

The human race did not honour this promise.

To clarify, this is not a request for you to change the future we are about to relay to you now. The nature of time travel means that, because we are sending you this information, what you read now will inevitably come to pass - these events are inexorably tied to the journey of the human race by virtue of existing. [K67-OI Posttransmitigation note. Follows: The creation of time travel is something, in retrospect, we feel you deserve some allusion to; the sad fact of life is, war breeds ingenuity. Had time travel as we know it been completed before the end of the conflict to which this message is dedicated...well, that is something no scholar wishes to discuss. End.]

Neither is this an attempt to condemn you and your people to this future - trust us when we say the human race of our time has stomached more cruelty than could ever be imagined, which is an amazing feat considering our capacity for it. No, we send this message because we know it will be ignored, and only thought of again once the world has finished screaming at itself in rage. We know this because we lived it. Therefore, in a way, this is a message to ourselves as much as it is one to you. We are telling you to remind us of the promise made on September 2nd 1945, so that we may atone for ignoring it. The events we will speak of are your future. We hope that, through you, ours will not be so bleak.

We will not plea to your humanity, or play upon your innate human guilt for the lives taken by what will be known as the Third World War. We will simply tell you the facts of your life to come, as though (as mentioned before) this were a history lesson.

Below lies a map of the world not too far away from yours. Familiarise yourself with it, because over the coming days, it will change drastically.

Good luck.