I Got an Email From Myself — Dated One Year From Now (Part 5)

They always say you don’t realize you’re dreaming until the cracks appear.

I think that’s what’s been happening to me—except I’ve been wide awake the entire time.

Today, I finally saw through one of the cracks.

The Recording

At 3:07 PM, I received another message.

Not an email this time. A package. No return address. Just a sleek black flash drive inside a folded map of Berlin—with a red dot marked on the Tiergarten and a handwritten note: “This is where it began. This is where you’ll end it.”

When I plugged in the drive, it auto-played a video. No metadata. Just static for a few seconds.

Then a timestamp flashed:

2023.01.18 — 22:36 CET
BERLIN BASELINE FILE – LOOP ZERO

The camera was shaky, like handheld footage in a dark room. Fluorescent lighting. A lab? I heard muffled voices.

Then… I saw her.

Elara.

Strapped to a chair. She was screaming—not in pain, but in defiance.

Across from her, standing off-camera, someone was pacing. All I could see was the edge of a white coat… and black gloves.

Then the voice. Clear as day.

“If we don’t erase this iteration now, it’ll anchor. We lose control. You knew the risk.”

Then Elara’s voice, furious, cracked with emotion:

“You’re scared because he remembers. Because he’s starting to diverge. He wasn’t supposed to wake up this soon.“

The voice laughed coldly.

“He’s not waking up. He’s deleting himself. One memory at a time.”

And then…

The camera panned.

To me.

Not a version of me.

Me.

Standing in the corner, silent. Watching. Wearing the same green coat Elara had on earlier this week.

I looked straight into the camera.

And said:

“This is version 1. End the loop. Or it’ll end us all.”

The Collapse Begins

I don’t know what to believe anymore. Every version of me I discover feels less like a memory and more like a threat.

And today, the world started breaking in ways I can’t explain.

• I was in the elevator, alone, when the display glitched. It jumped from Floor 3 to Floor 17.
  My building has 12 floors.
• I passed a mirror in the lobby and didn’t see myself.
  I saw a man with my face but with a scar over his eye. He mouthed the words:
  “He knows you’re waking up.”
• My phone’s voice recorder has a 9-minute audio file I never made.
  It’s just me. Breathing. Whispers layered underneath, like distorted frequencies.
  If you slow it down, it says: “You were the experiment, not the observer.”

Elara’s Truth

At 6:21 PM, Elara called me.

It wasn’t her voice.

Not the Elara I remembered.

This one sounded… tired. Like she’d been speaking across timelines for far too long.

She said:

“You’re close now. You’ve crossed the fourth fork. Once you reach the Tiergarten, don’t trust the map. It’s not drawn for this version of you.”

“There are three constants across every loop. One dies. One remembers. One resets. Choose wisely. You can’t be all three.”

Before I could respond, she whispered one last thing:

“Whatever you do… don’t listen to the version of you that smiles. He always lies.”

And then the line went dead.

What Now

It’s 7:49 PM. Just over 3 hours until I supposedly die.

I’m staring at the red dot on the map of Berlin.
I can feel it vibrating in my hand.

Not figuratively. Literally. Like something under the paper is alive.

I think it’s a key. Or a gate. Or maybe a trigger.

I’m booking a ticket tonight. I don’t know if I’ll make it.
But I need to go to the Tiergarten.

Because if I don’t—

He will.

And he’s already made it further than I ever have before.

Note to my next version (if you’re reading this):

Burn the map.
Don’t follow the red dot.
Follow the shadow it leaves when it’s gone.

To be continued…..