It was I whom the prophecy foretold.
I am Franklin K. Somers.
They are being kind enough to let me write this down, it is my hope that one of them will read it, adn be swayed. One of tehm will believe me and others shall follow. All of them will come around, I am patient. My patience is but one of the many reasons why it is I, and not Francis K. Smythe.
I can not fathom that any one truly wants to believe in Francis, if they are given an alternative, they will take it.
Two hundred years ago, the small time, but very welathy, news printer Maxmillian Ato had what was believed to be a break in his sanity. As it happened that was not the case, but Max did not stay around quite long enough to see the day when his insanity became manifest. Of course, as is always the case, when a man of means says something, someone will listen. Seven listened.
Maxmillian's publication, the Equatorial Times, underwent a massive change when the veil was lifted for him. He cast out all of his staff and began producing a very different Times.
Letters were missing.
People immediately noticed the wrong date on the top; wrong date and wrong year.
Stories were quickly claimed to be fabricated.
The Times had the same sections, much left blank. Advertisers who paid for spots still had their spots run. All publishers know not to ignore their advertisers. On the front page of the first edition of this new Equatorial Times readers found a story reading "Farver Flees." There was a space for the picture of the man who fled, but within that space a caption read "photo not available." If one were to read through this story, there were letters missing from words; for example the second sentence read: "Af r exte sive inve ation everyones' worst fear was confirmed, Farver had betrayed the thrust of the Euro an peoples." The Time's readership was becoming quite confused, as no one knew of Alan J. Farver. The names of many teams were wrong and some sports were wholly absent from the sports section. There was no entertainment section per se, but there were reviews and show times for local productions of plays covering a massive geographic area. The list of plays was almost exclusively Greek tragedy or Shakespeare. None of the actors mentioned in the reviews were at all familiar to theater aficionados.
There were countless other things which confounded, scared and drove off the readership and the advertisers. It took only one month for the readership to dwindle from 1.3 million to 7, and ad revenues fell from 16 million to zero.
The editions began to come out more sporadically, with wildly varying quality. There were times when the grammar would deteriorate to that of a five year old. Max had no living family and did not live in a place that could forcibly institutionalize him. He was free and he was the only one who could change that, he would not.
Max sold his home and lived out of his office. From what I have heard, he never left that office during the next 30 years. Many of his former employees loved him and feared the state he was in. Many thought he would snap out of it. A few cared for him, bringing supplies and medical care as needed. Max had been oblivious to all of this; he spoke to none of them, acknowledged the presence of none of them. He died of starvation 30 years to the day after the printing of the first edition of the new Equatorial Times. He had produced over one thousand editions by himself. His caregivers no longer could bear his weight. Accounts vary as to when the supply lines stopped; it is difficult to tell with a character like Max. Perhaps he went 5 years without any food; I would believe it.
A few details are very important for my story, most importantly: those 7 readers. 5 bore children, cultivating in them the need to collect the Equatorial Times, the need to preserve them. Max's paper became their religion, their faith laid in each edition. The children of the 5 bore children, preservation was hereditary. 100 years after Max's death the religion had grown to 25 members. Readers, as they officially called themselves, would comb over their papers, posting everything online. They tried to keep the word out there.
Of course immediately following the passing of the date of the first edition of the new Equatorial Times the religion swelled from 35 to 2.8 million. The Equatorial Times reopened the day following, it had to, it had 100% predictive validity. The days which they could, they would merely go back and fill in the blanks, add in the photos. On those days which no edition had predicted, they were the same as any paper. Often times they would write stories with the grammar of a five year old. Those who did not adopt it as a religion still became thoroughly aware that something remarkable was at hand. By the fifth edition's date the religion's numbers had arrived at 138 million and those who believed in it as a fact (not necessarily as religion) rose to 99.8%. The remaining 0.2% included the mentally deficient, the insane and people like my parents. My parents might have fallen into one, or both, of the other categories, but I do not believe that to be the case. My parents were merely contrarians. Traditionalists. They saw prevalence of the newly formed Church of Equatorial Readers as idolatry, and when they saw what was coming they believed that the end had arrived. The state began instituting policy that was in accordance to prophecy.
A line frequently used to push through public works programs was "to best prepare us for the coming disaster." The state prepared for eminent earthquakes, floods and tornadoes. Policy was oft created because prophecy told them it was to be. When the paper stated that on June 24th that a tax reduction of 10% was signed into effect, politicians would create the piece of legislation and would promptly put it through on June 24th.
Most stories on policy disinterested me.
One story was important to me.
One story shaped government policy and the collective interest of the world more than all others.
The story of the first world ruler.
The edition's date read: September 28th, 2438.
The headline read simply: World Ruler Born Today.
The story foretold that at 11:04AM the first unified world ruler shall be born. His name is Fran K. S . Dr. Rivers, of Los Angeles, will see this child into the world, proclaiming him a 'healthy baby boy,' following minor complications in labor. The story was one of the few written in future tense and the Prophet Maxmillian Ato rambled a good deal. 5 people had information that lined up with all of the known information. 5 that were known of. I was the sixth, I am almost sure of it.