The lighthouse keeper’s daughter found it wedged between two stones, wrapped in sustainable packaging that had somehow survived decades of salt spray. The paper inside felt delicate as butterfly wings, covered in handwriting that reminded her of her grandmother’s.
“To whoever finds this in our uncertain times,” it began. “I write from 1952, though I suspect you read this in an age of artificial intelligence and electric vehicles humming past on the coastal road. My father, the keeper before me, swore that time moves differently here. That sometimes the lighthouse beam catches glimpses of tomorrow.”
She sat on the gallery, autumn wind tugging at her mindfulness journal, and continued reading.
“I’ve been researching climate change before we had a name for it. The sea levels, the storms—they’re different now. I’ve documented everything, hidden copies in the lighthouse walls. But this letter isn’t about data. It’s about the night I saw your world.
The beam swung east, and instead of empty ocean, I saw cities glowing with renewable energy, vertical farms rising like green towers. I saw floods too, and fires, and millions moving inland. I saw people adapting, surviving, transforming. I saw you.
You’re wondering if you should believe this. In your time, you probably analyze everything through quantum computing, verify truth through blockchain, question what’s real in your world of remote work and virtual meetings. But some truths transcend technology.
The lighthouse will fall. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon enough. When it does, remember that we knew. We saw. And we chose to keep the light burning anyway.”
She folded the letter carefully, her phone buzzing with notifications about inflation rates and upcoming elections. Tomorrow, the historical society would come to document the lighthouse before its scheduled demolition. But tonight, she climbed the spiral stairs and lit the beacon one last time, sending light across waters that rose a little higher each year, toward a horizon where past and future met.
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