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I don’t know why you’re reading this, but I’ve got a couple ideas.

Option A: you’re some kind of approved government historian, and you’re being forced to review this as part of your job.

I want you to know that you’ll end up censoring nearly all of this for the public, you might as well just make something up.

Also, if you’re with the CRA, you got lucky, I faked my death, catch me if you can, and I hope you watch your entire family get eaten alive in a riftbreak.

Option B: you’re an anti-establishment type trying to follow in my footsteps, do what I did.

I’ll be upfront here, there’s like zero chance of that happening, but more power to you dude. Keep reading, maybe you’ll get something out of this, prove me wrong.

At the very least, I’ll include plenty of CRA-humiliation material that was never in the official press releases or got scrubbed off the Network.

Option C: you know me.

I recently went through something best described as a “breakthrough,” and I’ve picked up a few new tricks as a result. One of them has to do with memory.

Lately I’ve been watching back bits and pieces of this entire mess over again: my whole life, available for perusal like a damn Net show. The sensation is strange, kinda bends time, so I’ve relived entire months inside an hour.

At first I used this for information gathering, and I won’t stop doing that. So much of those early days was a blur, and some details fell through the cracks.

Seemingly innocuous moments are coming together now to form a huge and terrible picture, as if someone ripped a painting to shreds and scattered the fragments across my life. A painting of what, I’m not sure yet. I’m afraid to find out.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A side effect of going back in my memory has been nostalgia, or loneliness? I’ve been a solo act for a while now, and it’s beginning to get to my head.

I tell myself I’m writing this for someone else’s benefit: that I want to flip a middle finger to the CRA, or inspire someone like me to take a stand.

But the truth is, I just want to talk to you. I’ve wanted to tell you my story ever since I met you, since I really felt like I knew you, since you punched me in the arm and told me that I wasn’t alone anymore. Ever since I believed you.

In the past, I only let myself think about you when I rose from sleep. I needed to stay focused during the day, couldn’t be distracted with thoughts of you.

But I don’t sleep anymore. I can’t. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like. And when I discovered I could play it all back, see it all again, I realized it was the closest I’ve come to dreaming in so long. The dreams are just the way life was then. They’re mostly miserable trash. But I find you there. So it’s ok.

I’m going to use this new power to record it. Maybe not all of it, but the important parts, because I never opened up while there was someone to open up to, and now I’m alone.

There’s this feeling sitting on my shoulders, like the gaze of some huge beast. It’s the feeling that if I fall here, if I’m not strong enough, then no one will ever know what I did. What I was. The only thing left of me will be some wanted posters and the quiet grief of a few people who’ve hopefully moved on with their lives by now.

Worse: if I fall here, no one else is coming to find you.

So I’m going to write for you, and to inspire the outsiders like me, and yeah, to taunt my enemies. It’s the last thing I thought I’d ever admit, but I kinda miss the CRA, the old war. I don’t have enemies out here. Not really.

The things hunting me now don’t hate me, they can hardly comprehend me. It’s not as if they’re mindless, but they don’t have souls. I’ve checked. There’s something else where it should be. Something rotten. Something wrong.

The memories remind me what people are like, a soothing escape to that time. And using them, I can remember precisely what I said, saw, felt. What I did. How I failed.

If anyone ever reads this I’m sure some, maybe most people won’t believe me. I get that, and that’s your right. Certainly, if the CRA is still around, they’ll label every word of this as dangerous lies.

For what it’s worth though, I literally can’t lie. I lost that around the time I lost sleep. And if that doesn’t sound too bad, just know, if given the choice? I’d take back lying over sleep any day. Lying to yourself is the sweetest drug humanity knows. I was an addict. The withdrawals are hell.