I Got an Email From Myself — Dated One Year From Now (Part 3)

Last night, I slept with the lights on.

Not that it helped.

It wasn’t the dark that unsettled me—it was the shadows of memory. Or worse… the blank spaces. The fear wasn’t of what was lurking out there. It was of what I might remember—or what I might already have forgotten.

My dreams were jagged reels of someone else’s life. A red door. A ticking metronome. Elara—drenched in rain, her voice slicing through the storm:

“Do it right this time.”

I jolted awake at sunrise, heart racing. My apartment reeked of petrichor.

But the skies were clear.

It hadn’t rained.

I needed answers. I needed logic. I needed something to anchor me.

So I called Rajiv—an old grad school friend, now a cybersecurity analyst with more clearances than common sense. I forwarded the original email and all its metadata.

When I told him I thought it came from the future, he laughed.

“Is this some sci-fi script you’re working on? Am I being punked?”

“I’m not joking.”

There was a long pause.

Then he said, slower this time, “The encryption key in the header… it’s not just ahead of its time—it’s untraceable. The kind of algorithm baked into this thing? It shouldn’t exist. Not for another decade, at least. Unless… you’ve got access to black-budget tech. Or something not from here.”

He hesitated again.

“Also… your name is encoded into the encryption signature. Embedded like a personal watermark.”

He took a shaky breath.

“It’s not just a digital signature. It’s like the email was signed with your DNA.”

My blood turned to ice.

Later that afternoon, I did something reckless.

I followed her.

Elara.

She stood at the exact corner where I’d first seen her. 1:14 PM sharp. From my apartment window, I watched her stare at the building across the street like she was waiting for fate itself to show up.

She looked exactly the same.

Exactly how I remembered her a decade ago—long auburn hair spilling out of that green coat. The same coat she wrapped around me in that snowstorm in 2013. A storm I suddenly wasn’t sure had ever happened.

Because she hadn’t aged. Not a single day.

Like time had wrapped around her and just… paused.

I followed her at a distance. Through the noise of the city. She didn’t look back once.

Not until she reached the underpass on 9th Street—the one no one goes near after dark. The one with the murder cases still collecting dust in unsolved folders.

She stopped beneath the arch, its walls layered in forgotten graffiti.

Then she turned. Looked straight at me.

Not startled.

Not surprised.

Just… calm.

Like she’d been waiting for me.

“You always follow me here,” she said softly. “You never ask the right question.”

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t move.

She stepped forward. Her eyes were softer now, filled with something between sorrow and resolve.

“You’re torn between two versions of yourself. One wants to rewrite the past. The other wants to burn it to ash. But neither of them remembers what really happened in Berlin.”

Berlin?

I’ve never set foot in Berlin.

But the second she said it—something cracked open.

A searing pain pierced behind my right eye. I dropped to one knee, gasping, clutching my head.

And then—

It hit.

A room. Cold. Stark. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

A circular metal table.

I’m strapped into a chair. A woman in a white lab coat is drawing a syringe. Elara’s across from me, screaming. Someone smashes a pane of glass.

Red lights strobe through the room.

A voice roars from somewhere above:

“Initiate the loop again! Wipe the last 48 hours!”

Then—

Nothing.

I blinked. The pain faded.

And she was gone.

Only a small folded note remained on the cracked cement beneath where she stood.

I picked it up, my hands trembling.

In my own handwriting—sloppy, unmistakable—were just eight words:

You were the one who started the loop.

And now I can’t tell what’s real anymore.

Did I do something so terrible I chose to forget it? Was Elara trying to save me—or manipulate me into seeing something I wasn’t supposed to?

Why don’t I remember Berlin?

Tomorrow is May 29th. 11:04 PM.
The moment the photo predicted I die. Why does the photo say I die tomorrow at 11:04 PM?

What if I’ve already died—again and again—each time forgetting just enough to try something different?

Maybe this blog is one of hundreds.

Or maybe—for the first time—I’ve gotten far enough to finally break the loop.

To be continued…

—

What do you think happens next?

Is Elara a guide… or a trap?

Am I the key to ending this loop—or the reason it started in the first place?

Tell me your theories in the comments below.