Voices of the Unborn

He had been given a gift. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know why, but he had been given a gift like no other gift ever given. He found himself hearing the voices, and they were quiet at first, but gradually he began to understand whole words. And soon sentences. Soon they were talking to him, and he wouldn’t talk back, just listen. He would listen, silently, to the voices of a hundred children yet to be born.

He marvelled at his new found present, this ability to hear them, as they told him of things yet to come. He took wonder at the possibility of learning of all that was ahead, of hearing what would become of him, and his family, and his family’s families. He was in awe as they whispered of that which had not yet happened, truths that only he would learn for many years, as they told him of the future.

And then he despaired. For the voices did tell him of that which had not happened, and they did tell him of that which would come to be. And he recoiled as they told of the course of humanity, of his family’s families, and as they told him of everything that would be done. In sorrow he listened to those voices in his head, the voices of a hundred children yet to be born, and the voices of a hundred children never to be born. They told him of the deculturisation of the people, of the mass corporation of society, of the wars and the disasters, of the famine and the drought. They spoke of pain, and of misery and of loss, and of all the things that man would bring into being. And they told him the truths that only he would learn, they told him of the bleakness of the future.  

And then he smiled. Because at least now he knew there would be a future.