Dear Della,

You can have such a kind heart. You can have such empathy for others.

I wish you didn’t live your life in such fear.

I know automation scares you. I know that the self-driving cars, the drones in the air, the AI-powered kiosks at the store are new and different.

But if you shut yourself away from all that, you’ll just stay at home all the time. You’ll never meet new people. You’ll never get new ideas. You’ll see the world through the broken mirror of media and become even more scared and bitter. Your kind heart will become twisted with hate.

I’m your neighbor. You’re in your 80s. Your health is really poor since you’re too scared to go to the nearest hospital. I don’t like to stay too long. You start by giving me homemade cookies, and within 10 minutes you say really hateful things.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We went to the mall the other day and you didn’t hate it. Imagine what your life could be if you had done that 60 years earlier. If you had done that now.

If the delivery drones scare you, I’m guessing a letter from the future will too. But it’s too late for the “you” that I know. I hope it’s not too late for the “you” that gets this letter.

Your neighbor,

Doug

*****

PO Box 159 at the Brooksdale Post Office is a bit unusual. Every week, it receives letters from many different people from many different times in the future. Many times, the letters are well-wishes and advice from the loved ones of people of our time. Other times, there are dire warnings.

No one seems to know how or why these letters started coming to PO Box 159. They simply appear. The future these letters describe seems to be in constant flux; one day the year 2098 sounds like a dystopian hellscape, the next day a letter will appear describing a garden of Eden.

Emma Reilly, the owner of PO Box 159, shares the letters she receives through this blog (mostly) every Tuesday.