Insistence

I did not sleep well after my flight yesterday. I woke up at nearly two hour intervals. Sometime around 3am, I woke up with a character knocking at my mind's door. I heard her voice through threshold, even managed to catch snatches of words.

Even so, I ignored her. Look, I mentally muttered, I have to be at a client early tomorrow and I'm three timezones behind. She didn't seem to care. Her voice -- nearly 12 hours later -- is still fresh and clear. Finally, I gave up. I switched on the light and groped for the notepad often found on hotel nightstands. In my unsteady, sleep-deprived hand, I wrote down what she said.

She went silent. Had I been paying attention, I might have heard her linger by the doorway for a minute before quietly walking away. I tossed the notepad aside and went back to sleep.

Some hours later my alarm sounded and I went off to work, leaving the note behind. In fact, I completely forgot about it soon after waking as one would any number of dreams. My client for the next two weeks tends to start very early in the morning, and ends their day similarly early. I had been coming in at the tail end of a sizable systems migration, and no one was quite ready for me yet. I helped where I could, went to lunch, briefly planned our tasks for the next fortnight, and went back to the hotel.

I decided to relax for a while on my bed, catching up on many of the sites on which I had been delinquent this morning. The outlet was on the right side of the room. Nearly finished settling in, I found the scrawled notepad. I was startled by what it said:

I know one thing for certain: I was or am born in the 20th Century. If you find my story useful, you may personally reward me with another life.

I had written questioningly "Reki?" under the quote. The character did sound very much like the voice actor for Reki in Haibane Renmei, but I suspect this is a passing resemblance.

Despite the fact I the "letter" was in written by my hand, it feels strangely foreign to me. It's almost as if this note was left behind for only me to find.