Chapter 1

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DEDICATION

For every child who has ever buried a message for the future — and for every future that dug it up and understood.

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It started with a hole.

Seven-year-old Ruby Jackson was helping her father dig a new flower bed in the backyard when her shovel hit something hard. Not rock hard — hollow hard. The sound of metal against metal, like knocking on a door underground.

"Dad! There's something down here!"

TIME CAPSULE — 1995 DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2025

Ruby looked at her father. Her father looked at Ruby.

"It's 2025," Ruby said.

"It is indeed."

"So we can open it."

"Whoever buried this wanted it opened NOW. Thirty years. They buried this when they were probably about your age, and they wanted someone to find it in 2025."

A folded piece of paper — a letter, written in pencil, the writing large and uneven, clearly a child's.

A cassette tape — unmarked, in a clear case.

A small plastic dinosaur — a Tyrannosaurus rex, green, missing one arm.

Ruby opened the letter first.

"Dear Future Person," it read. "My name is Destiny Williams. I am 8 years old. I live at 14 Birch Lane. The year is 1995. I am burying this time capsule because my teacher Mrs. Henderson said that time capsules are how you talk to the future. I don't know who you are or what the future is like. But I hope it's good. I hope people are kind. I hope the oak tree in the front yard is still there. Here are some things from 1995 so you can know what it was like to be a kid now. Love, Destiny."

Ruby read the letter three times. Then she looked at the photograph — the three children, squinting, smiling, alive in a summer afternoon thirty years ago. They were kids. Like her. Standing in this same backyard, under this same sky, thinking about a future they would never see.

"Who is Destiny Williams?" Ruby asked her father.

"I don't know. But she lived in this house thirty years ago. Before us, before the family we bought from. She was HERE."

"I want to find her."

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Finding Destiny Williams in 2025 was both easier and harder than Ruby expected.

Easier because the internet existed. Harder because "Destiny Williams" was not an uncommon name. Ruby's mother helped her search. Social media, public records, alumni directories for Maple Creek schools. They found seventeen Destiny Williamses. Only three were the right age — about thirty-eight, born around 1987.

One lived in Texas. One in California. One in Maple Creek — still here, twenty minutes away, on the other side of town.

Ruby's mother called the Maple Creek Destiny Williams. The conversation was short — Ruby listened from the kitchen table, trying to read her mother's face.

"Hello, is this Destiny Williams? ... Did you grow up on Birch Lane? ... In the 1990s? ... My daughter found something in the backyard that I think belongs to you."

A pause. Then Ruby's mother smiled.

"She's coming over Saturday," her mother said. "She said she forgot all about the time capsule. She said she can't believe someone actually found it."

"Say something for the future!" "Hi future! I'm Sarah! I like soccer and pizza and my dog Biscuit!" "I'm Marcus. When you hear this, I'll be old. Like forty. That's ANCIENT." "I'm Destiny. I hope the future is cool. I hope there are flying cars. And I hope whoever finds this knows that we were here. We existed. We mattered."

Ruby played it three times. Each time, the voices felt more present — more REAL. These weren't historical figures or characters in a book. They were kids. Regular kids, talking into a tape recorder on a summer day, trying to send a piece of themselves into a future they couldn't imagine.

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Destiny Williams arrived on Saturday morning driving a blue sedan and looking nothing like the eight-year-old in the photograph, which was obvious but also somehow surprising. She was tall, with short natural hair and glasses, and she wore a teacher's lanyard around her neck even on a Saturday, which Ruby's mother said was "a teacher thing."

"I teach fifth grade at Lincoln Elementary," Destiny said, sitting at the kitchen table with the time capsule spread before her. "I've been in Maple Creek my whole life. Well — I went to college in Ohio, but I came back. This town has a way of pulling you back."

She picked up the photograph. Her face changed — softened, opened, became for a moment the face of the eight-year-old in the picture.

"Sarah Nguyen and Marcus Thompson. My best friends. We were inseparable that summer — the summer of 1995, the summer we buried this."

"Are they still here?"

"Sarah moved to Portland after college. She's a veterinarian. We text sometimes. Marcus..." Destiny paused. "Marcus passed away. Car accident, ten years ago. He was twenty-eight."

The kitchen was quiet. Ruby felt the weight of the cassette tape — Marcus's voice, recorded at eight years old, saying "When you hear this, I'll be old. Like forty. That's ANCIENT." He never got to forty. He never got to find out if the future had flying cars.

"Can I hear the tape?" Destiny asked.

Destiny listened with her eyes closed. When the tape ended, she was quiet for a long time.

"You mattered," Ruby said. It felt like the right thing to say. It felt like the NECESSARY thing to say — the response that the tape had been waiting thirty years to receive.

Destiny opened her eyes. They were wet. "Thank you, Ruby. For finding this. For caring enough to find ME."

"The capsule said 'Do not open until 2025.' It was time."

"It was time."

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"I want to make a NEW time capsule," she told her class on Monday morning. "Not just me. ALL of us. A class time capsule. We'll put in things from NOW — from 2025 — and bury it for someone to find in 2055."

"2055?" said her friend Leo. "That's THIRTY years from now. We'll be thirty-seven."

"Exactly. Ancient. And some kid will be standing in a backyard somewhere, digging a flower bed, and they'll find our capsule. And they'll know we were here."

Ms. Rivera loved the idea. She made it a class project — each student would contribute one item and one letter. The capsule would be buried in the school's garden, with a marker so future students could find it.

"But here's the thing," Ms. Rivera said. "A time capsule isn't just about what you PUT in. It's about what you want the future to KNOW. What do you want someone in 2055 to understand about life in 2025? What matters to you RIGHT NOW that you want to preserve?"

The class discussed. What DID matter in 2025? What would someone in 2055 want to know?

"What we eat!" said Leo. "Future people might eat totally different food."

"What music we listen to," said Priya. "The tape from 1995 had Backstreet Boys. What's OUR Backstreet Boys?"

"What we're worried about," said a quiet boy named James. "Like, in 1995, they probably worried about different stuff than we do. In 2055, they'll worry about different stuff than us. But KNOWING what we worried about would be interesting."

"What we hope for," said Ruby. "Destiny's letter said she hoped the future would be good and people would be kind. That's what she wanted the future to know — that she HOPED."

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Over the next two weeks, twenty-two second-graders assembled their time capsule contributions. Each item was discussed, debated, and ultimately approved by the class.

Leo contributed a menu from the school cafeteria. "Future people need to know we ate chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. This is important historical information."

Priya contributed a USB drive with a playlist of the class's twenty favorite songs. "Music is how a generation sounds. This is what WE sound like."

James contributed a printout of the front page of that day's newspaper. "So they know what was happening in the world when we were seven."

A girl named Amira contributed a photograph of the entire class — taken by Ms. Rivera, printed on archival-quality paper (Ms. Rivera did her research), with every student's name written on the back. "So they can see our faces. And know our names."

Diego contributed his favorite pencil — a mechanical pencil with a dragon grip. "Future people might not use pencils anymore. This is proof that we wrote BY HAND."

Ruby contributed Destiny's letter — a photocopy, not the original (the original was returned to Destiny, who framed it). "So the future knows that WE found a time capsule too. It's a chain. 1995 to 2025 to 2055. Each capsule connects to the next."

And every student wrote a letter. Twenty-two letters, each one addressed to "Dear Future Person," each one a seven-year-old's attempt to talk across thirty years to someone who didn't exist yet.

"I hope your sky is still blue." — Amira

"My dog is named Rocket. He is the best dog. By the time you read this, he will be gone. But he was the best dog and I want you to know." — Marcus (a different Marcus, not the one from 1995)

"I am scared of the dark but I am trying to be brave. Maybe by 2055, no one is scared of the dark anymore. That would be nice." — James

"I like math. My favorite number is 7 because it is a prime number and prime numbers are special because they only belong to themselves. I hope in 2055 the number 7 is still prime." — Leo

"I hope whoever reads this has a friend. If you don't, come find me. I will be old but I will still be a good friend." — Ruby

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The burial ceremony was on a Friday afternoon in May. The whole class gathered in the school garden — a sunny patch of raised beds behind the building where the third-graders grew vegetables and the butterflies gathered in September.

HERE LIES A MESSAGE FROM 2025 PLEASE OPEN IN 2055 WE WERE HERE. WE MATTERED.

"Before we fill it in," Ms. Rivera said, "does anyone want to say something?"

Ruby stepped forward. She looked at the container in the ground — the plastic box holding twenty-two letters, twenty-two lives, twenty-two hopes for a future that was thirty years away and entirely unknown.

"Destiny Williams buried a time capsule in 1995," Ruby said. "She was eight years old. She said she hoped the future would be good and people would be kind. Thirty years later, I found it. And I want to tell her — and tell US — that the future IS good. Not perfect. But good. People are kind — not always, but enough. The sky is still blue. The number 7 is still prime. And dogs are still the best.

The class filled in the hole. The dirt covered the container. The stone sat on top, its engraved words facing the sky.

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Before the capsule, time was simple. There was NOW (the only time that felt real), YESTERDAY (which was over), and TOMORROW (which was too far away to think about). The future was abstract — a vague, blurry place where you'd be taller and have a job and eat dinner at restaurants by yourself.

After the capsule, time became connected. 2055 wasn't abstract anymore — it was the year someone would dig up their letters. It was REAL, in the way that a place is real once you've buried something there. The class had sent a piece of themselves forward, and that connection pulled the future closer.

Kids started thinking differently. Leo started a journal — "For future Leo," he said. "So I can remember what seven felt like." Amira drew a portrait of her family every month — "Because faces change, and I want to remember." James started keeping a list of things he was scared of, with the plan to check it every year and cross off the ones he'd conquered.

The capsule had also connected them backward. Destiny Williams came to the school as a guest speaker, bringing the original 1995 capsule. She told the class about 1995 — about a world without smartphones, without social media, without the internet as they knew it. About writing letters by hand and taking photos on film and recording voices on cassette tapes.

"The technology changes," she said. "But the feelings don't. I was eight in 1995 and I was scared of the dark and I loved my friends and I hoped the future would be good. Your letters say the same things. Thirty years, and the human heart hasn't changed at all."

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On the last day of school, Ruby stood in the garden beside the flat stone. The garden was blooming — tomatoes in the raised beds, sunflowers along the fence, butterflies on the lavender. Life, growing and continuing, indifferent to time.

She put her hand on the stone. Beneath it, two feet down, in a sealed plastic box, her letter waited. It would wait for thirty years. It would wait through summers and winters, through rain and drought, through whatever the world became between now and 2055.

She thought about Marcus Thompson, who recorded his voice at eight and died at twenty-eight. His voice was still on that tape. His joke about being "ancient" at forty still made people laugh. He was gone, but he was also HERE — in the tape, in the memory, in the fact that Ruby knew his name and said it out loud sometimes, which was a form of keeping someone alive.

She thought about 2055. She would be thirty-seven — the age Destiny was now. Would she be a teacher? A scientist? A mother? Would she live in Maple Creek or somewhere else entirely? Would the oak tree in her backyard still be standing? Would the sky still be blue?

She didn't know. Nobody knew the future. That was the point. The future was the great unknown, the great uncertainty, the great adventure that every generation faced with nothing but hope and the stubborn belief that what they did today would matter tomorrow.

Ruby took her hand off the stone. The garden hummed with bees and butterflies and the quiet persistence of growing things. Somewhere beneath her feet, twenty-two letters waited in the dark — patient, sealed, carrying the voices of twenty-two children into a future they would never see but already loved.

"See you in 2055," she whispered to the stone.

The stone didn't answer. Stones never did. But the wind moved through the garden, and a butterfly landed on the lavender, and somewhere in the distance a school bell rang, and the future — all thirty years of it — stretched out ahead like a road that only appeared as you walked it.

Ruby walked. The chain continued. And beneath the garden, the messages waited.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crimson Ark Publishing publishes fiction for readers of all ages, drawing on the spiritual principles and rich cultural heritage of the Bahá'í Faith. Our stories explore themes of unity, justice, courage, and the transformative power of love — through characters and communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of the human family. Every book is an invitation to see the world not only as it is, but as it could be.

Visit us at crimsonarkpublishing.com