THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: WE WERE NOT THE FIRST, A SUICIDE RANT

First Cliff, I’m not dead. I mean, where you are I am dead. But I’m not dead, really. I'm at the library. I know this doesn't make sense. But I've included all you need to come find me inside this box. But put the rock aside for a bit. I know you. You're thinking Sandy fucking checked out. But no. Trust me. Just read. Then read the instructions on the second sheet. We'll see each other again.  

Second, we weren’t the first. We weren’t even CLOSE. And I’m not even talking about why there were humans in North America 3,000 years before the land-bridge, or why they humans were smelting aluminum in what-would-be Georgia 12,000 years ago. The timeline we cling to now is merely the straggled ends of black threads of human civilization that creep back 20 million years or more. Yeah Cliff, I don’t care what the books say. I’ve seen it.  

I went there.

I know what our books say, but those books are wrong. Everything is wrong. The world is wrong. We’re skipping through the gravestones of giants, and we don’t even know it. So much time has passed, so much has happened since their deaths, we’ve mistaken their corpses for the world.  

This earth is a boneyard and it has always been one. 

Many civilizations came before man. I don’t know how many. More than four. That I know of. And though I know things, I don’t know as much as some. Our books say we crept out of Africa 200,000 years ago, and all that followed was genetic destiny, but you already know how I feel about books. Human books. You can’t write anything of any interest without reading the right books first — or by using other methods to unlock the world’s secrets. I did both. Someone showed me how to do both. I know why, now. It tilts you, this seeing. It changes you. They just wanted the data, not the baggage. They needed the info, not the drain. No biggie. No big deal. 

I understand it now, but I keep doing it just the same. It’s totally worth it. It doesn’t matter what the world thinks. I KNOW. I know where to find those books, and they're not in any human library. 

I’m going to lay this out for you as clear as I can, so you don’t have to repeat all the foot-work I did. This all sounds like shit. It will get you laughed out of every university, any museum, any online journal. It’s patently ridiculous. It sounds like the worst forms of science fiction. Like some kid banged it out in a half an hour.

Nevertheless, I assure you, it’s all real. 

A billion years ago, things shaped like giant, winged, plant-husks with 5 eyes built cities in what is now the antarctic. Then they built life. And everything that came after, dinosaurs, trees, all the things in the sea, they are all just misfires on some central theme the plant things worked on for epochs. They were the accidental architects of all the flesh that has risen and fallen in the time since.  

The plant-things warred with creatures from beyond matter. I know what this sounds like. Great, whistling things that crept between the spaces of the earth and undid all order in their path. They erected vast, black towers of nothing, and crept across the globe, undoing reality. They warred with the plant-things; or, it’s more accurate to say the plant-things warred with them. It’s unclear if the whistling un-things even noticed the plants, really. 

The plant-things marshaled energies never before seen on Earth. They made giant, hooting, gelatinous servants — soldiers and laborers — and called them slaves. The shuggoths. These engines of flesh ruined the towers and trapped the un-things. They marched across the planet in an unbroken wave of conscious matter, and everything tumbled before them. The un-things were bound and hidden in spaces in the Earth. Not dead and not alive, but waiting.  

Sometime later, the travelers came. These beings were not of the Earth, and threw their minds across time and space to inhabit whatever might be present. On Earth, they found dumb forms descended from the plant-things experiments, and living in them, built great cities. From this point in history, they projected themselves throughout all spacetime, sending agents to every civilization, and every time, and recorded it all in the greatest library ever erected. A library of time. 

They’re still there, you know, even though their civilization fell. They’re still here. And so am I. Now. Or then. It’s complicated.

Then the outsider came. Something the size of a mountain boiling down from the stars. The priest. The keeper. The lord. Wars raged between the plant-things and this being, ending in stalemate. Weapons were used that shifted continents and scarred the surface of the moon. Impossible things occurred. Things beyond language. 

They fought to a stalemate.  

Epochs passed.

Then they died, the plant-things. They were too clever in their creations. The shuggoths were too smart. Too plastic. They died like man will die. Fleeing as their cities collapsed, and their living machines ran rampant over their creations. The shuggoths turned on them, of course. They turned on them are undid all the order that had brought them to life and in so doing doomed themselves. But nothing could kill the shuggoths, not completely. Some still remain, as do far-flung outposts of the plant-things, frozen, waiting for their time. They died and gave birth to what would become our world. 

The stars changed. Beings that were once ascendant collapsed into nothing, or were shifted out of phase with our world. Some slept. Still the biological machines of the plant-things motored on. In every cell. In every creature. A spray of life spiraling ever-outward driven by the code trapped within it by the doomed plant-things millennia before. 

So much. There’s so much to show you, Cliff. I can’t explain it here. Words are not sufficient. Inside the box, you’ll find the shape. The stone. Here’s what you’re going to want to do. Go to page 2 and you'll find the chant…