This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar

I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead you must absorb them, admit them into your memory. In order to recall them you must seek my presence in your thoughts, tangled among them like sunlight in water. In order to report my words to your superiors you must admit yourself already infiltrated, another casualty of this most unfortunate day.

All good stories travel from the outside in.

Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another. Keep