To whomever finds this time capsule,
The year is 1914. My name is Alfred Burdock, and I am a dairy farmer. My wife, Eloise, and I have been married ten years. We have four children: Suzanna, Maria, Theodore, and Vincent.
This letter is being sealed inside the wall of our new barn as a kind of commemoration. Whoever you are, I pray that your livestock are thriving the way ours have in recent years. The Good Lord has blessed us with abundance.
But I must tell you something stranger than I ever imagined I’d live to witness. Something I believe belongs to the future, maybe your time, or maybe long before your time, or perhaps far beyond it.
It began one night after I blew out my candle. As I reached to draw the curtain beside our bed, I glanced out the window and saw a faint glow. At first I thought it was a trick of the eye, but no matter how many times I blinked or rubbed them, the soft, unmoving light remained.
Concerned for my family’s safety, I took my rifle and stepped out the back door. The glow hovered still, near the old chestnut tree. I crept forward, heart pounding. When I reached the tree, I realized the light was coming from within the trunk itself. A small, unflickering glow, barely the size of a coin.
I raised my gun and inched closer.
It just sat there glowing, still as could be for a minute. I sat there wondering what it was, what I should do.
Then it began to grow. It expanded until it lit the entire yard as though the sun had risen. I turned to run back, but the house was gone. My wife and children were gone. The sky was bright, but it wasn’t morning. It was like I’d awakened from a dream into some terrible imitation of life.
I sprinted to the police station, but it was no longer there. In its place stood a tall, square building of glass and steel—no cornices, no stonework, no signs of craftsmanship. Just a sheer wall of windows, towering and blank. It looked… soulless. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like inside a place with so few windows.
Then I saw a vehicle fly past. It had wheels, yes, but was larger, smoother, and far quieter than any automobile I’d ever seen. It looked sturdier too, and fast, like a beast built for speed.
I looked around for help.
That’s when I saw a man emerging from the glass building. He wore a shirt dyed a blue more brilliant than any cloth I’d ever seen, and his shoes were orange as pumpkins. He looked like a piece of candy. I could almost taste him.
“Sir,” I said, “I’m not sure what’s happening, but my wife and children are missing. I believe they’ve been taken. Do you know where I might find a policeman?”
“F*** the police,” he muttered.
Then he pulled a little flat rectangular thing out of his pocket. It lit up in his hand, and he began tapping it with his fingers. I didn’t know what was happening, so I waited. I thought maybe he was going to offer some sort of help, but he just stared at the light, entranced. Completely still. Not even a glance in my direction.
“Sir, please,” I said again. “I need help.”
“I said, f*** the police, man.” Still, he did not look up.
At that moment, a bus hissed to a stop in front of the lot. I’d never seen one in person, only pictures of something similar in the Sunday papers. It was enormous and impressive, but I was in no mood for marveling. I ran to it.
Inside, I found dozens of people, every one of them staring into those same glowing rectangles. Some had odd plugs in their ears; others wore bulky contraptions covering their heads. Not one person looked up when I shouted.
“My wife and children are missing!” I cried. “They’ve been abducted!”
No reaction. Not a flinch. Nothing.
“Pay the fare or get off the bus,” the driver barked.
“I’ve no money,” I said, embarrassed to realize I was still in my nightgown. “Please, I just need help.”
“Fare or off.”
The chill hit me then. The bus was cold—unnaturally cold. I wondered if I’d taken ill. But once I stepped off, the warmth of the day returned. It wasn’t me. It was the bus.
I spotted a sidewalk and followed it. The people I passed were just as absorbed by their glowing boxes. Some mumbled aloud, to themselves it seemed. Back home, we’d call them mad.
After some time, I reached a small grocery store. I heard music playing inside, but I saw no band. It seemed to pour down from the very ceiling.
People moved through the aisles, and when they reached the cashier, they merely waved their glowing rectangles. No coins. No cash. Perhaps these devices were a kind of currency. They worship them. They must hold some significance.
Desperate, I pushed through a door at the back, hoping to find a manager. It led to a restroom… indoors, not an outhouse. There were standing toilets that offered no seat. And even here, a man stood before one, eyes fixed on his glowing screen.
I tried another door. That one lead to an office.
“My wife and children are missing,” I told the manager.
He asked for their names, then spoke into a strange device. His voice echoed through the store.
“Will that reach them outside?” I asked.
“No, just the store.”
“They’re not here. They vanished from our home. Can you send that voice through the whole town?”
“Sorry, pal, it doesn’t work like that. If your family’s missing, you should call the police.”
“I’ve been trying. The station’s moved.”
He gave me directions. I ran there and cautiously opened the glass door. Inside, I explained everything.
“Have you tried calling them?” the officer asked.
I hadn’t. Not in the way he meant. I tried yelling, but my voice isn’t loud. I said as much. He stared at me, either puzzled or suspicious.
“Doesn’t your wife have a phone, buddy?”
“A what?”
He led me to a sleek vehicle with cushioned seats and blinking lights. He had me sit in the back behind a partition. It felt like a cage.
As we drove through the city, the sun began to set. The sky burned gold and lavender, fading into a pearly white. I remember thinking, this is the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. Strange, isn’t it? How in the midst of chaos and loss, you can still witness a sunset so beautiful it stops your breath.
Soon, we were outside of the town. There were wide fields all around us, and one big, boxy building a little ways off. Along one of the hillsides, two people sat on a bench. They were holding those little glowing boxes up in front of their faces, even when they could be watching such a beautiful sunset. I wanted to yell out to them, “you’re missing the whole thing!”
We arrived at another building. The officer led me inside.
I sat in a waiting room while he talked to a woman behind a glass window. I noticed a little black spot on the other side of the room. It was the blackest black I had ever seen. I blinked my eyes a few times, but it remained.
I stood up for a closer look. As I leaned in, the whole world seemed to tilt. I lost my balance and began falling. Then, before I realized what had happened, I was outside again. I was in my own backyard. It was dark. The little glowing spot was gone.
I ran to the children’s rooms. They were all there, asleep. I held Eloise’s hand. She stirred and smiled and asked if I was alright.
I said I was. I didn’t tell her what I’d seen. Not that night. I wondered if I’d even seen it at all. Maybe I’d dreamt the whole thing. But it was more real than a dream. And yet, it was stranger than reality.
With sincerity and wonder,
Alfred Burdock
July 7, 1914