Prologue. July 4th, 2021.

[It’s a handwritten letter. Water has frayed its edges.]

Dear Maya,

I’m not sure how to start this. Xzeyko says I should tell it from the very beginning, but that’s a really vague timeframe and it’s not like I’m writing a book here. So in hopes of keeping things at least a little academic, I guess I’ll lead with the technical bullshit.

They called it the ‘New Dawn Experiment’ because, in a sense, it was a new dawn for humanity, the way the first firearm may have been. The science behind it was ingenious. In the right hands, it could have saved millions of lives and reshaped entire fields of research. And knowing people like you are out there, maybe it already has.

The firearm, though, was made for good reason. Its creator must have needed it to defend himself (or at least, he made it for someone else who did). The creator of the New Dawn Experiment, whoever it was, definitely didn’t have a good reason. I’d wager they made it because they hated the world. From every description I’ve found, it was meant to ‘save our planet’, but all it’s done so far is tear us apart. Maybe that was the point…?

Anyways, apparently I’m not supposed to start with the technical stuff. “That’s not how letters work,” Xzeyko’s telling me. “You’re supposed to be all nice and formal at first.” As I’m writing this, he’s thirteen and almost illiterate, so I’m going to ignore him.

As for what N-Dawn (as I’ll be calling it from now on) actually is, it’s either an abandoned Cold War project or it’s from the future. All the testing logs being labeled ‘57 with no elaboration really hasn’t helped us at all. Clearly it’s an American invention—as far as I’m aware, the Russians weren’t writing in English and constructing WMD’s at an abandoned laboratory in the Midwest. (It probably wasn’t abandoned when they were here, but that doesn’t add any credibility to the argument.)

As unlikely as it being from 2057 is, there’s a chance. The actual machinery behind the thing is crazy complex. It’s a bioweapon, a tiny little capsid packed with DNA samples from roughly a thousand species. When it attaches to human cells, it hijacks the nucleus and edits the genome to its liking. The way it decides what to change and when is still a mystery to me. Maybe someone else has it figured out. Hell, you could do it. Get on that, why don’t ya?

Whatever the case, you probably know what I’m talking about by now. The plague that’s run rampant for the past year or so, the one that changed everything we knew about being human. I’m not sure what you city folks are calling it. Xzeyko says some people called it the midnight virus, like the way Cinderella’s coachmen turned back into animals when the clock struck twelve. I think that’s stupid, because none of us were animals beforehand. So I’ll just be calling it N-Dawn.

From my little hideout in the woods, I’ve only heard bits and snippets of the outside world. Supposedly the thing spread way past Serpho, which makes sense since it’s literally engineered to destroy humanity. I hope Aurora didn’t get hit too badly. I haven’t been down there since… I’ll get into it in another letter. But if my mom’s still alive, tell her I’m going strong-ish, too. She’s probably out launching fireworks tonight. Every time I see one, it makes me think of her. (And how Chloe and I got in trouble for launching one in your room that one time.)

Speaking of, I really hope you still live at your old address, because I don’t have the Internet and I’m not even sure you’re alive right now. You know they still route mail out here? The truckers wear hazmats and everything. It’s kind of hilarious; you can tell they hate our guts by how forceful they are when they’re collecting letters. And by the way they say they hate our guts.

If you write back, and you really don’t have to, send it to ‘The Mangy Cat Guy With The Vest’. They’ll know who you’re talking about, and honestly, I think it’s better that they don’t know my name. I don’t want them to look into it, especially with how popular you’re probably getting. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Xzeyko says I have to write some kind of farewell. I think that’s bullshit. Teenagers are weird. Happy Independence Day.

Signed,

Niko Thumis

======

[It’s a typed letter. The font is… a bold choice.]

Dear Niko,

No wonder you never responded to my texts. I thought you were dead.

Things have gotten very busy. The stasis was an incredible victory, but with success comes fame, and with fame comes many, many papers to sign. Sometimes I think maybe you are the lucky one, then I remember you do not have air conditioning, and I laugh a little to myself.

We do call it the Midnight Virus—I personally love the allusion. It was the late Dr. Vixen Blackshine who decided on it, God rest her soul. But taking into account what you said in your letter, we have dubbed the in-progress cure the ‘New Dawn Antidote’. It is very beautiful, metaphorically. Midnight ends with a New Dawn. We could use that as a slogan.

Your letter reached my parents’ house. They passed during the onset, so I had any letters to them redirected to me. Your mother is still alive, and she was overjoyed to hear that you are out there somewhere. She asks you to come back to Aurora soon, but you really should not, considering your state of being.

My idea is, the creator was some sort of twisted environmentalist. They must have believed eradicating humanity would be the solution to all Earth’s problems. Granted, greenhouse emissions are down. Then again, so is our population. Do with that information as you will.

Who is this ‘Xzeyko’ you make mention of? I can hardly pronounce that name. It reads like some kind of cipher. I presume this is a name he picked out himself? You should not let teenagers get away with this sort of thing. I surely hope his parents are around to manage him—you would make for a terrible father.

We are trying to figure out the virus’s mechanisms ourselves. I do not think time travel is possible, but to quote Clarke, it seems "indistinguishable from magic"; so far ahead of our time it is practically alien. On a positive note, it has given me a real brain teaser. Those do not usually last me very long, and I hope you do not find me conceited for saying that.

Thank you for your letter, and I hope this one finds you in good health. Before I seal this off, I would like to query: how is Chloe doing? I heard she was last seen with you, and as the year has gone by, I have become quite anxious about it. I worry my last conversation with her was… not very sisterly. So do update me!

Kindest regards,

Dr. Maya Johnson, Ph.D.

P.S. Your odd little friend knows what we call ‘etiquette’. Perhaps take his advice next time.