HIstory: "The Legacy"

 

The Legacy

Dylan Carmack had built a digital empire from the bedroom of his Brooklyn apartment, a space cluttered with faded books, state-of-the-art cameras and an organized mess that was almost part of the decor. His video channel was called Secret Words, and it had made him a minor celebrity among those looking for more than just charts and bestsellers. He loved forgotten authors, little-known stories and old paperback editions that contained buried stories and secrets. 

-"It's not just about looking for books" - He said in one of his most popular videos -"It's about finding voices that never had the mass diffusion that we have today with the Internet and social networks.   Draco Noir, for example... why doesn't anyone talk about him today?" 

Draco Noir had become an obsession for Dylan over the past few weeks. The author was a figure shrouded in mystery. His science fiction novels had been published in minimal print runs in the 1970s and 1980s, and had gained a mythical status in certain literary forums. His titles, such as Silicon Towers and The Watcher's Thread , were impossible to find, but those who had read them spoke of them as if they were prophetic scriptures. 

-"It's like he saw the future," one collector explained to Dylan on a Zoom call. -"I'm telling you, the guy wrote about artificial intelligence before the term even existed. And not in vague ways, but in chilling detail." 

Dylan couldn't help but be fascinated. It was just the kind of discovery that could catapult his channel to new heights. But there was something deeper going on, and it was the idea of ​​a writer who had disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving only fragments of his vision behind. 

He began to investigate, trawling mainly through university libraries, obscure internet forums and rare book stores. After days of frustration and almost when he had given up, he received an email. 

-"I'm Draco Noir and I'm still alive. If you really want to interview me, I'll be waiting for you."-

Dylan read those words at least ten times, in total disbelief. The address that accompanied the message took him to an old, forgotten district of the city. He didn't think about it too much. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. 

-"This is too good to be true," he muttered to himself, although he had already made up his mind. 

The camera flashed red as he recorded his farewell for the channel. 

-"Guys, this may be my greatest adventure yet. I'm about to come face to face with Draco Noir himself. Fingers crossed."- 

He turned off the camera, threw it along with a couple of books and his notebook into his backpack, and headed out for what would be the interview of his life.

Draco Noir was a name that echoed through the dark corners of cult sci-fi. He wasn’t just a writer, he was a legend shrouded in mystery, an author who seemed to have disappeared as quickly as he’d emerged. He’d published a handful of novels between the 1970s and 1980s, titles that never made it to the bestseller lists but found their way into closed circles of collectors and obsessives of the weird. For Dylan, that was enough to be a riddle that demanded to be solved. 

Noir's followers spoke of his books as if they were prophecies. In 'The Silicon Towers' he described communication networks governed by invisible algorithms that knew people better than they could themselves.

-"There's no way he knew that," a forum user 'ArchiMind87' had told him . -"Draco wrote that around 1976. There weren't even personal computers, for God's sake."  

But what intrigued Dylan most was the recurring concept of 'watchers on the sidelines' . These entities, vaguely described in Draco's texts, seemed to be omnipresent beings who did not directly intervene, but whose surveillance shaped the course of human history. 

-"A little disturbing, don't you think?"- his best friend, Nathan, had commented to him while they were having coffee one afternoon. 

-"That's what makes him so fascinating," Dylan replied, his eyes shining. -"It's not just what he wrote, it's that he seemed to know something that everyone else didn't. Something that shouldn't even be possible." 

Draco Noir’s makeshift study was everything Dylan had expected: a calculated chaos of books, maps, and sheets scribbled with incomprehensible diagrams. Draco was a man with grey hair and an intense gaze. He stared at him as he lit an old cigarette that looked like it had been waiting for him since the 80s. 

Dylan adjusted the portable camera on the table. “Thank you for agreeing to this interview,” he said, trying to maintain his composure. He had faced erudite professors and eccentric collectors, but Draco Noir’s presence was overwhelming. 

Draco exhaled the smoke slowly before answering. "I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this because I believe everyone deserves to know the truth." 

The writer settled back in his chair, and for a moment the only sound was the hum of the wall clock. Then Draco broke the silence. 

"My novels," he began, "were not born out of a normal creative process. They never were. Ever since I was a child, I have had dreams... visions, if you prefer to call them that." 

"Visions?" Dylan asked, leaning forward with his notebook ready to take notes. 

-"Yes, like Edgar Cayce, who prophesied while hypnotized. Or the Argentinean Benjamín Solari Parravicini, who created psychographies during his trances. Is it so hard to believe?" - He paused . -"In my case, the visions always took me to the same place, the same scenes always appeared. Very tall towers that cut through an artificial sky, streets populated by shadows that were not human, and a constant murmur, like an echo that filtered through my mind."   - Draco looked at Dylan as if he was evaluating how much he could endure. -"At that moment I didn't understand what they meant, but I knew they weren't simple dreams." - 

Dylan felt like he was exploring completely new territory - "And you think those dreams could be some kind of... messages?" 

“I know they were,” Draco said gravely. “They weren’t speculations, Dylan. They never were. They were warnings. Every word I wrote in my books came from those visions. I didn’t invent AI-driven social media or observers on the sidelines. They showed me the future.” 

The influencer took a breath as he tried to process what he was hearing. -"Who showed them to you? Where did those visions come from?"- 

Draco patiently put out his cigarette, pondering her words . "I know they came from another plane. I don't know if it was another universe, another dimension, or something more complex. All I know is that the things they showed me then are happening now... and what comes next will be worse." 

The silence that followed spread through the room. Dylan felt his heart beat a little faster. "Why are you telling me now?" he finally asked. 

Draco gave a bitter smile. "Because I was warned that I can't keep quiet anymore, and because you, now, with that camera and your followers, are the person who could make people listen before it's too late." 

Draco looked at Dylan with an appraising intensity that almost made him look away. His fingers drummed on the table, as if the words he was about to speak weighed more than he could bear. 

-"I didn't just write what I saw in the visions, Dylan," he finally confessed. His voice was barely audible,   but each sentence was like a hammer blow in the air of the room . "I wrote what I was 'told' to write." 

Dylan frowned. "You got instructions? From whom?" 

Draco leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. His face was marked by time and obsession. He looked even more somber in the dim light of the lamp. “I don’t know who they are. I never saw them, I just felt their presence. In my dreams, their voices were… not human. Not low or high, but powerful, like a choir. They told me what to write, how to structure it. They gave me details that seemed absurd at the time, but over time… became real.” 

-"Are you saying that... they used you as a message sender?"- The disbelief in Dylan's voice was evident, but his eyes sparkled with fascination. 

-"As an intermediary," he clarified . "I've already mentioned Cayce or Parravicini. They were contacting a single entity, in my case... it was several entities. Each word I published was a piece of a larger puzzle. They explained to me that my books were not just fiction; they were seeds. The ideas would influence the way people thought, how they saw the future, technology, their role in the world. My role was to write them down to shape the course of humanity, to divert it enough so that we would be prepared." 

-"Ready for what?"- Dylan asked anxiously. 

Draco paused, as if it pained him to say the answer. Finally, he said, "For 'the arrival of the others'." 

Silence filled the room like a heavy fog. Dylan felt goosebumps rise on his skin, but he couldn't decide if it was from the gravity of Draco's words or the possibility that this was all just the delusions of an obsessed man. 

-"Wait a minute," he finally said, trying to remain calm. "Are you saying that your books have... influenced the course of history?" 

Draco smiled, a bitter, mirthless smile. “Look around you, Dylan. Social media controlled by artificial intelligence. Omnipresent surveillance systems. The collective paranoia of being watched and controlled on computers and cell phones. All of that was in my books decades before it happened.” 

"That could be a coincidence, like George Orwell's 1984," Dylan insisted, although doubt was beginning to creep into his mind. 

-"There are no coincidences, Orwell suffered the same thing I suffered. He may have been influenced by another kind of entity, but it is part of the plan that I myself am part of."- Draco replied sharply. -"The stories I wrote were not just to warn. They were to condition. To make humanity accept what is coming and not fight against it. Because if we fight..."- He stopped, looking at Dylan with a strange gleam in his eyes. -"If we fight, we are lost."- 

Dylan sat back in his chair, feeling like he was going through a critical moment. Draco was compelling, too compelling. But was he a visionary manipulated by unknown forces, or simply a man trapped in his own illusions? 

-"And why are you telling me this now?"- he asked, trying to find logic in all this. 

-"Because I can't keep quiet any longer," Draco replied, his gaze pleading for understanding. -"And because you, Dylan, have the platform to tell the world the truth. Or at least, what you can of it."

Draco Noir was silent for a moment, watching Dylan with an expression that mixed with compassion. Then, with a heavy sigh, he looked away towards the library that dominated the room, filled with ancient tomes and hand-bound manuscripts. 

-"I haven't told you everything," Draco began in a deep voice, as if the words were hard to get out. "We are among you." 

Dylan stared at him, feeling something change in the atmosphere. The evening light, which had been warm through the window, now seemed dimmer and unreal. 

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, a knot forming in her stomach. 

Draco stood up, walking slowly to a bookshelf at the back of the room . "I've been honest with you up until now. But it's time you knew the full truth." He pulled out a thick book, wrapped in faded leather that looked so ancient it almost fell apart at the touch. He held it in his hands as if it were something sacred. 

-"Morphologically I look human, Dylan. But I'm not."- 

The statement fell like a stone into a deep well. Dylan opened his mouth, but no sound came out. 

-"Excuse me?"- he managed to say incredulously after a moment. 

-"I was sent here by the observers on the fringe," Draco continued, not giving him time to process . "Cayce, Parravicini, myself, and so many others... We are part of a cosmic intelligence, a collective consciousness that does not operate within the limitations of human time and space. We incarnate in human bodies and work as writers. We are sent to alter the course of reality, sowing ideas in worlds that do not even know they are being manipulated."

Dylan instinctively recoiled, as if Draco's words were physical and pushing him away. "This is crazy. You... you're making all this up, aren't you?" 

Draco didn't answer. Instead, he walked over to the table and placed the book in front of Dylan. "This is my latest manuscript. It's called 'Secret Words'. Go ahead. Take a look." 

The title made Dylan's heart skip a beat. "What the...?" 

-"Open it."- 

Dylan complied. As he turned the first few pages, his eyes scanned the text with increasing disbelief. It was all there: the birth of his channel, his research, even intimate details he had never shared with anyone. Then he came to a passage that made him stop dead in his tracks. 

The description of the interview I was having at that very moment. 

-"This can't be real," he muttered, his voice breaking. He looked up at Draco, but the writer just stared at him, motionless, his expression serene. 

-"Time is relative, Dylan. What you call the present, I wrote decades ago. Everything has followed the course it was meant to follow, and now my task is complete. My time in this world is over."- 

-"What the hell does that mean?"-

Draco smiled, though there was a sadness in his eyes. "I don't belong here. But you do. This book is yours now. What you do with it is your decision." 

Dylan wanted to say something, to protest, to demand an explanation, but the world began to spin around him. A feeling of vertigo enveloped him as Draco's figure faded along with the room. Everything was falling apart like a broken dream. 

Suddenly, he opened his eyes. 

She was in her bed, the morning sun streaming in through the window. Her breathing was rapid, and her heart was pounding in her chest. “It was just a dream!” she muttered, bringing a hand to her face. 

Relieved, he stood up and walked to the kitchen. As he made the coffee, he tried to shake the images from his mind: Draco, the Watchers, the manuscript... 

That's when he saw it. 

On the kitchen table lay a book bound in faded covers. On the cover, engraved in gold letters, was the title 'Secret Words' . 

END