To the Editor:
Although it may seem as if I have gone "around the bend", the events described in this letter have actually taken place and are as real to me as the very paper on which I am typing this bizarre submission to In-Genius, the journal of the Top One Percent Society.
It will not have gone unnoticed that in the year 1996 AD I founded an organization called "The Giga Society", with an admission requirement corresponding to the 99.9999999th percentile in general intelligence, the "one-in-a-billion" level, taking place at six standard deviations above the mean score of the unselected population, as measured by any of a number of carefully selected ultra-high-range tests for cognitive abilities.
Apart from me admitting myself on basis of a founder's exemption, no one has qualified for this most exclusive of all societies to date. And yet... I am in regular contact with six members of The Giga Society; with the six most intelligent individuals on the planet Earth! "How can this be true?", one will ask oneself. Let me explain the facts as they occurred to me:
During the years and decades to come, several persons will qualify for my society. Being the superior minds of their time, in collaboration they will unravel the secrets of time travel. And from their distant future, they will contact me and furnish me with selected fragments of data regarding future events perceived by this "White Brotherhood of Time Lords", as they like to call themselves. This classified information reaches me in the form of excerpts from the Giga Society journal, which is called "Nemesis", and edited by - how confusing! - the future version of Paul Cooijmans; that is: it will be edited by me. To avoid confusion, I will from now on refer to the future Paul Cooijmans as "the Nemesis Editor", and to my present self as "Paul Cooijmans", or simply as "I". A minor point the Time Lords asked me to convey to you is that the Nemesis Editor, originally a member, will be demoted to an emeritus status.
Although I am not authorized to reveal to you all the future knowledge in my possession, the Time Lords have assigned to me the task of publishing, at occasions chosen by them, specific bits of information, to thus help humanity to become aware of and bear its fate, at least as far as this is possible within the limitations set forth by the deterministic mechanics of the time-space continuum. In doing so, the Time Lords will never be referred to by their actual names, as they do not wish their past (1998) selves to become aware in advance of their to-be Time-Lord-ship. In other words, the Time Lords could be any ones of you, readers! The following is an excerpt from a 2020 issue of "Nemesis":
Official Report From Time Lord Five
The Planetary Council Of World Leaders has decided in favor of worldwide heavy fluoridation of tap water. A secret experiment, beginning in the early nineties of the twentieth century, has shown that a fluoride intake of 6000 milligrams per day is beneficial for the development of verbal ability in humans, especially when it comes to briefness in formulating well-structured, to-the-point letters. The experiment has been conducted in the former United States of America, in the state of New York, in the town of Southampton. For citizens living in parts of the world where no waterworks are available as yet, fluoridation of drinking water will take place through subsoil groundwater injections and artificial snow, consisting of fluoride monohydrate powder.
23 Sep 2010, 8:21 am
