A few months ago an outfit of deep-sea miners happened upon the petrified cache as they were probing for cobalt-rich rocks somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Through the usual channels it found its way to our facility where my colleagues managed to crack it open without damaging its contents. Carefully they produced the following from it:
A broken clay jug depicting hunters with spears in the Greek White-ground technique; a box of “Tordenskjold” matches from the late 1800s (presumably Danish) containing eighteen unlit matches; a figurine carved from soapstone with archaic cuneiform inscriptions on its base (circa 2900 BC); a Vietnamese 50 Đồng coin from the 1970s with a tree-shape made of three triangles on the tails side; two mummified toes of unclear age that once belonged to a dark-skinned person (a plain golden ring on one); and a BASF cassette tape with a handwritten label, “Like the Wind” in blue marker.
I joined them in the lab and eagerly examined the artifacts but when I got my first good look at that tape, I couldn’t fully hide a flash of horror. Dr. V noticed my reaction and forced my hand.
I feigned a sudden sickness from being subjected to the pungent undersea tang in the clean room and excused myself. What had so terrified me about that innocuous cassette tape hadn’t been the words on the label but the handwriting—my own from forty-one years ago. As the others were still trying to make sense of our haul, I already knew. God, I wish I didn’t. I locked the lab’s hatch from the outside and flooded it with CO2. Through the porthole I watched my colleagues scream, plead, curse, and cry as they drew their last breaths in blissful ignorance.