I opened the notebook carefully.
The handwriting was neat. Someone who had been educated.
My name is Eric, Her name was Rue. If you are reading this, I am dead.
I don't know how much of this will survive, so I'll write what matters first.
A full section was lost to water damage. I turned past it carefully and found the next readable passage.
…I have had time to think about why. The races of the two western countries had made a pact with something old. They wanted us gone, all of us, the hibrem. They had been working toward it for years while we shared tables with them and called them colleagues…
I read that line twice.
Hibrem.
A word that reminded me of the cube I had and the voice in my dreams. Now it was here, in a dead man's handwriting, on a page that had survived for quite a while.
I kept reading.
