'No, you're not insane.'

The words written in faded pencil sure made me feel insane, as they had been the words I intended to write when I opened this second volume of 'Windmill Construction Through The Ages.' I bent the book across the worn spine to read the rest of this hidden line.

'Hello star child!' it read. 'Hello new me. Hello beautiful, innocent redeemer. I want to tell you so much, so please find my collected notes in the pages of 511.712094'

The number held no significance to me. I thought it might be some sort of code that only I would know the answer to, so that no unsuspecting windmill-construction fanatic could accidentally stumble upon my past self's secrets of the universe.

But no. It's the Dewey Decimal system. And as the first librarian I asked for help pointed this out to me, I felt like a complete idiot in two lifetimes. The librarian showed me exactly where to find 'Children In The Early Anthropocene.' It looked to be some incredibly niche topic on the study of historical geology. The book made a cracking sound as I freed it from the bottom shelf, as if it had become a part of the library from so many decades without moving. I could barely keep the pages from falling out of the old binding for how weak the spine had been worn.

Retreating with the book to a private corner of a study room, I pulled the hardback covers wide apart and found a sort of confession written out one line at a time in the hidden margin between the pages.

'Your name was once Arthur Bishopp. I'm sure it's a pleasure to finally meet yourself. If you're lucky enough to be reading this, you must have found one of my many notes left behind in what books I imagined would interest your young mind. Tectonic Tides of Pangaea vol. IV, I suspect?

'I knew you'd retain my love of the sciences. You must be such a gifted child in your school. I bet all the teachers ask where your brilliance comes from.

'Me, dear child. It comes from me. Think of me as your true father, for you are the product of my devotions to study. Not only have I lived my life to the utmost of karmatic benevolence to ensure a favorable rebirthing, I have crammed my head so full of knowledge that it has become entwined with my soul. You did not need to learn from a teacher that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the right angle sides. You knew it instinctively. The teacher needed only to remind you.

'I imagine you will be able to accomplish great things for human kind with these blessings I have bestowed upon you. Be sure not to take all the credit, but you probably need no reminder. We always have been a very humble person.

'Since you are obviously ingrained already with my same love of knowledge, for proof in having found this book at all, and are primed by my studies to absorb all collective knowledge at their first encounters, I see no need in imparting any key scholarly teachings here. Instead, I will give you the best of all personal advice I've collected after fifty-seven years travelling this earth, as I'm sure it will pertain to you still.

'Don't let others interrupt you.

'Don't suffer fools.

'Don't cast your pearls before swine.

'Don't eat with your mouth full.

The advice carried on and on, one line per a page, for what looked like at least a third of the book. I stopped reading and closed the book.

Everything was beginning to make sense in my life. I was not born a genius, as Arthur Bishopp had expected. I did not scour the library as a child looking for the latest volume in the series about tectonic plates. I sucked dirt.

This man was the reason I had been born into a hard life of squalor, to a mother that could never afford rent and a father who walked out after the birth of my third younger sister.

This man is the reason karma saw fit to give me a body that couldn't run too fast without risking a complete shattering of my lower vertebrae.

This insufferable man, and his god awful list of life advice, gave me colitis.

Even now, in my sixty-eighth year of life, I have zero scholarly interests. I only picked up the book on windmills because I liked the picture on the cover. I can't believe that my same consciousness shared the same mind as such a self-righteous know-it-all. What vanity! Assuming he would pass on such a genius that I could better human kind with my knowledge of tectonic plates.

Despite the proof for my theory of reincarnation, discovering this text has turned me off of the whole concept of leaving behind any words of wisdom for my future self. If Arthur left me anything at all, it must be the vanity for thinking my current self could ever know better than the next iteration of my soul.

I'm not going to make some child live in the past for my sake.

I dunked the historical geology textbook into the library's toilet before slipping it into the trash. Then I prayed that the memory of what I read would not outlive me.

​

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I'm somewhat new to the sub, but this is day 16 of my streak. If you want to see more of my submissions like this, they're collected at r/FarFetchedFiction

Thanks.