Urgent Messageby Josh Nolan

If you're reading this, my temporal transducer has flagged you as someone involved in the creation of the improbability ray. Please heed this message. We apologise for overwriting whatever you thought you were going to read, but believe me, you need to read this.

My name... won't mean anything to you. I am in your future. My grandparents likely haven't even been born yet, if my information is correct, it is not only possible, but likely, that as a result of this message, they never will be. So please, listen to my last request:

Do not invent the improbability ray.

It starts out simply enough. At first, the improbability ray appears to be merely an amazing weapon. It does something (forgive my vagueness, but I do not wish to inadvertently create this thing) to the quantum states of matter, making extraordinarily unlikely events occur, most often reabsorbing the matter into the zero-point field. Essentially, you shoot something and it vanishes. Every so often, you'd have your target slide through the ground until its waveform stabilised, but the stress of suddenly coexisting with the ground usually pretty thoroughly destroys the target, regardless. And in my time, the remains of the Hindu Kush stand testament to what happens when a significant portion of the matter spontaneously converts to energy.

The early versions aren't man-portable. They have to be mounted on a nuclear-powered ship, or a one-shot version can be fired from a cargo plane, but I cannot understate the appeal to military minds of a weapon that can end most engagements in a flash – sometimes literally. Once the technology is better understood, it starts having applications in mining and geothermal drilling, and the unwanted side effects (such as the spontaneous energy conversion) become a thing of the past.

Don't be fooled. It's too good to be true. What can't be avoided are the macroscopic effects.

My mentor is Dr. Johannsen, better known to the world as Doc Robot, the Uranium Knight- but of course, that name won't mean anything to you. He postulates that the effect is minute, but cumulative, every time the weapon is used. And in our war – I won't burden you with the details, but I pray it can be prevented - it was used a lot. Nobody noticed anything, at first, but scientific progress began to upswing slightly – as usually happens in a war.

And then things got crazy.

We had a giant monster wade out of the sea near Japan and begin to crush the countryside. The I-ray was deployed against it to no immediate effect, but it wasn't until it had undergone an intense bombardment that it began literally breathing radioactive fire.

An experimental geothermal drill in Kenya cut through to a pocket inside the Earth, well underneaththe mantle, where strange creatures thrived, and they began to swarm back up the shaft to the surface world. Africa, fractured by its own historical conflicts and devastated by our war as well, fell to the scourge of the Underdwellers.

A rogue genius who came to be known as Professor Dinosaur spliced his own genetic material with genes preserved in amber from the Triassic period, turning him into an abomination with the intellect of a man but the size, appetites and unfeeling cold heart of a reptile. He began raising hordes of dinosaurs and unleashing them upon the world.

Our war turned sour when the enemy began fielding cadres of sorcerers, who used their magic to cut through our troops and beseige our cities with angry spirits. Again, the I-ray served only to fuel their rage, and conventional weapons proved useless. A few decades before, such an idea seemed preposterous, but in the world of the I-ray it has become a sad fact of life.

Fortunately for us, heroes have also emerged. Their names will mean nothing to you, but they are men and women of intellect and courage, who nobly risk their lives against impossible odds to preserve our way of life against the madmen who seek only to destroy.

Most recently, a cabal of evil geniuses who call themselves the Demon Enclave have begun enacting a plan to remake all of Earth as a den of suffering, with themselves as the rulers. Heroes have striven, but fallen, and the remaining few go now in a last-ditch attempt to hold back the night.I wish them well, but I can't see how they can possibly succeed.

I am no hero. But I'm trying to save the world.

I am the world's foremost expert on applied temporal dynamics. I created TEMPOVAC, the most advanced omni-dimensional computer the world has ever seen, and I've used it to trace the development and construction of the I-ray. It's my belief that all my world's ills stem from the use of the I-ray, that the Underdwellers, the Dinosaur Holocaust, the ghost attacks, would never have happened if the I-ray had not been used. I don't know how your descendants will harness the powerof the earth without the I-ray drilling geothermal wells, but I have faith that you will rise to your challenges as we rose to ours.

But I sit here on the edge of Armageddon, and while I hope my friends can win through, the situation seems hopeless. Hence, my message to you. Before I sent this, you were going to read something else – I have rewritten your timeline, slightly, so that you have always been going to readthis. TEMPOVAC is oracular in the information it provides to me, but you, or your descendants, will be instrumental in the invention of the I-ray.

Do not allow it to come to pass. Do not let your world be destroyed, even as mine is being destroyed as I write this.

I will probably never be born, now. TEMPOVAC will resolve the paradox, somehow, before it is unmade. I have destroyed my world to save it. Please do not let my sacrifice be in vain.

My world has seen great good, and great evil, but I believe the evil we now face cannot be defeated.Ordinarily, a momentous decision might let history be the judge, but if you heed my warnings my history will never come to pass.

Make a history to honour the good I've destroyed.

God help me.