• -A Letter from Professor Dawson to Anonymous [Translated]-

    Dear Anonymous,
    I have seen the light of this day. I have felt the power that has been given to me. But I wonder if this is just a crude way to test the power of my will. In my dreams, I have seen the vivid future, and I have encoded it into a random piece of paper. I am determined to prove to the world that I am a prophet, and I wonder if I am correct myself. But with great power, I know that my life will soon be corrupt

    Many people have been scouring around my apartment after I have told one of my friends, and so this is my pitiful attempt in order to allow my work to thrive on through the ages. There are people in this world that are coming after my work in hopes that it will bring their family good fortune. If my prophecies are correct, and these fall into the hands of the devious evil, then the future will simply be covered by a dark sinister coating. It will be a bottomless pit of what we know as hell.

    And so I ask, whoever receives this letter, and I pray it is one with a good heart, do not let anyone use this power. I have to depart now for I hear a knock on the door.
    Year 0-Professor Dawson


    The curator skims over the letter in order to examine its credentials. There are slightly ripped edges, and the paper seems to be one made of papyrus. Unusually, the characters of this letter are not in hieroglyphics. Everything seems to be in order, and so the curator documents the letter in his book. He looks at the next letter and sees that it was simply a sequel of the current one. The curator dismisses it and puts it to the side. In order to verify that the first letter is not a counterpart, he walks to the x-ray machine. After a while, the x-ray is complete and the curator looks at the letter as well as the x-ray copy. He continues walking down the halls to his office while looking at the copy as if there were an abnormality on it. In a few moments his body is shoved to the side and his papers fall to the ground. The curator looks up with an astonished look and a smile forms on his face.

    “I’m so sorry. Uh, I’m so clumsy.” The curator replies.
    “No, it’s my fault. I should have watched where I was going.”
    The curator picks up his papers quickly and places it by his side.
    “Oh, it’s just you Greg.”
    Greg looks up with a baffled look as if hearing his name was so eccentric. “Hey Jen, so what brings you around the hallways?”
    Jen replies, “Oh nothing really, I’m just going to grab some lunch. Do you want to come too?”

    Greg shakes his head almost instantaneously. “No, I’m sorry. I have to finish some things.” After his answer, Greg scurries down the hall and arrives at his room. He closes the door, and rests his body against it. His heart begins to pound as he walks to his desk placing the x-ray copy side by side to the legitimate letter. He looks at the x-ray copy once again, going back into his original trance. Everything is in order and he knows that the letter is real and not a phony, but what amazes Greg is the inscription on the x-ray. Greg smiles in amazement, “Whoever this Professor Dawson is, is very interesting. It seems as if I have found the prophecies he was talking about in his letter. But these symbols, it’s not any language that is even known.”

    Greg leisurely sits down on his chair, turning the papers around so that it is in his direction. He turns on his table lamp and puts on his glasses to closely examine the papers. He looks at every symbol. The first line read the following: “"

    Greg goes over every language he knew from Latin to Hieroglyphics. He rests his back on his chair and then looks at the ceiling wondering how this professor could have possibly encoded his message. Moving side to side on his chair in an anxious manner, he hopes that inspiration would come to him. In the next second though, he had knocked down his glass of water. The water expands and covers his keyboard. Greg sighs and stands up grabbing a towel and cleaning up the liquid that lay on his desk. After he finishes, Greg glances at the keyboard and then to the computer screen; his eyes sent into shock. He moves closer to the screen with heart pounding sensationally looking at every single symbol and comparing it to the symbols of the x-ray. A smile instantly appears on his face. He had cracked the code.

    Greg highlights the many symbols with his cursor and then clicks on the down arrow scrolling until he saw the phrase “Times New Roman.” He clicks on the button and watches all the symbols translate into letters as if a miracle was unraveling. “So this is the genius of the professor. Of course a language would be too easy, so he went for the most unsuspecting idea. He used the font ‘Wingdings 2.’”

    Greg instantly pulls out a new keyboard and plugs it into the computer. He changes the font to “Wingdings 2” and types lower and uppercase letters from a to z as well as all the punctuation marks, symbols, and numbers. He looks at the symbols on the computer and matches it to the ones on the x-ray. He starts typing the matching symbol by symbol and finds that the first line was a simple test to see if a person was able to decode the rest of the letter. It read, “Once you know what this first line means, then you are able to translate the whole message. Please, keep this to yourself, I beg of you.”

    Greg glances at the clock on the wall and reads the time aloud as if to assure himself that he had all the time in the world. “2:30 P.M.” There was a lot written on this letter and so he started decoding it. Each decoded phrase translated into a comprehensible one and before he knew it Greg finished. He glances at the clock once again and finds that it is now 9 P.M. “That wasn’t so bad.” He smiles and reads the whole prophecy holistically. The page has a date on the left column, and on the right column is the description of all the devastations that would occur during the year.

    Greg is entranced into the letter and reads a line. “64 A.D. There will be a great fire. This fire will be located in Rome.” Greg grabs a pen and then starts fidgeting with it. Greg is a great historian, he knew his history, and he was pretty sure that there was a fire in Rome during that year. His face freezes in shock. His eyes did not blink, and his breathing stops for a few seconds. His heart grows to the beat of a drum roll, and his fingers move frantically. After a few moments, he needed to make sure that he was alright. Greg skims down to the year 1920 and then looks beside to the description. “A crude army will be formed. This army will be lead by a dictator, and he will devastate the masses, specifically a type of religious race.” A word escaped Greg’s lips, “Hitler.”

    Greg’s eyes closes, as his heart begins to revert to the standard heart beat. “Why have I been given this? I don’t want this piece of paper.” He says apprehensively. Greg knew that now he had great responsibility. Greg lets out a sigh and then skims down to the year 1963. Greg is currently living in that year, and so he wondered what possible tragedy could happen then. He looked at the description, “A great death will occur. A person in the greatest power of a country will be assassinated.” Greg wonders what the description could mean. He stands up and starts pacing. Looking at the television, he sees the news and turns on the volume. At that moment, inspiration struck again. He smiles, but is sad at the same time. It was simply a bitter-sweet moment. He instantly knew who would die during the course of the next day. “John F. Kennedy will die today, and he doesn’t even know.” He continues to listen to the news hoping it would give him an idea as to when he would die.

    Greg sits down and looks at the television once again. After a while, he falls asleep.

    As the next day crept up on Greg, people passed by his office wondering why he would pull an all-nighter. As the clock struck eleven o’ clock, Greg wakes up with a big yawn and looks at the paper once again. The television was currently turned on to the news, and his inspiration arrived once again. The news said the following, “John F. Kennedy will be at Dallas, Texas today at a midday motorcade.” Greg shuts down his computer without saving he document and grabs the sheets of paper. He grasps his jacket and runs down to the place where John F. Kennedy would be. He looks around for any potential suspects, but unfortunately he was too late; John F. Kennedy was coming down the street in what seemed like a car, waving to the public like the prideful man he is.

    Greg begins to shout, “Mr. President! Mr. President!” But his voice is lost over the merry sound of the cheering. Greg pushes countless people out of the way and finds a suspicious man. He places on his glasses and starts looking at the man up and down inconspicuously as if he was performing his occupation. He, at last, finds what seemed like a gun, but he didn’t know what to do. Greg follows his instincts and instantly jumps on the man hoping that the gun would be lost in the transaction. However, Greg was never an athletic man. In a matter of moments, he finds a black coating over his eyes and loses all of his senses at once. His heart slows until all rhythm is lost. Greg is now dead.

    -A Second Letter from Professor Dawson to Anonymous [Translated]-


    Dear Anonymous,
    I know that this letter will be found eventually, and I am hopeful that whoever finds it will know what to do. But I must say that what is known cannot be prevented, even if one tries his/her hardest. I am one of the firm believers that everything must happen for a reason. Please, if you are the one who finds this letter, I ask you to burn them. I do not want anyone to feel my pain. I do not have a lot of time left; they have found me hiding under the trapdoor of my apartment. I even hear the creak as I write this instant. I beg of you, burn these letters if you know what is good for you, and if you do not, you will be cursed to a short life like I have now. I would do it myself, but I have no time.
    P.D.