There are three things I should mention before we begin. The first is that I have left the material intact, with most of my input restricted to formatting the testimonies as per the sender’s instructions. I have indicated where the written record and the recordings diverge; the section titles are also mine.

      It’s also worth noting that the middle of the book operates in a manner that is distinct from the rest. Though our research has led us to believe that this section, titled “Five Weeks in the Plague,” is indeed a work of autofiction, it lacks the form’s traditional transparency. It is coded more than usual, no doubt for protection. For example, while we were able to discover that an eco-terrorist group did indeed plant the four explosives on the face of Table Mountain in 2026—timed to detonate only two decades later—the connection to the arts and the artists mentioned was never unearthed. Nor did we confirm the existence of a publication titled Obelisk. Furthermore, while no evidence exists of the alien sightings alluded to throughout the text, the Department of Social Development’s collusion with Cash Paymaster Services against their grantees has been well documented; and, the kidnapping of three teenage girls in King William’s Town gained national coverage in 2002.

      Perhaps our most significant discovery, then, has been identifying and locating the records of the late Dr Marianne Dixon, who appears as herself in the text. Dixon earned her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from Vassar in 1998. Her dissertation was on the topic of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development as applied to the education models of apartheid South Africa. Dixon was unmarried and childless, which left us no descendants to contact for testimonies, and along with her colleagues in the field (now also deceased), she maintained a low profile. There are records, however, of her attempts to publish her findings in various journals over the years, and of her applying to secure audiences at conferences in Johannesburg, New Delhi, and New York—all of which were met with rejections. Unable to prove their claims, including the existence of extraterrestrial life, which would have required them to reveal their sources, Dixon and her colleagues were excommunicated from the field. This was on the heels of a scandal—enough to cement the damage—that alleged the researchers had misused a public grant to conduct unauthorized experiments on minors.

      Dismissed by their peers, Dixon and her team continued as independent researchers. Their findings, disregarded by all established cognitive neuroscience journals, can now be found collated on their website, http://www.triangulum-earth.com, whose hosting has been paid up¹, despite it not being updated in a decade. The text also explores the origins of the zones, or Delta Labor Camps as most of us know them, which are proliferating in every province—and which remain the nation’s most divisive issue, bringing me to my second point, which is the setting of the manuscript.

      The reader will notice that the bulk of this narrative takes place in the Eastern Cape, once known as the Ciskei² homeland, an apparatus of conquest implemented here by Europeans in the second millennium. This is the sender’s lineage and it is also mine.

      That little has changed isn’t a deterrent, but a motivation for publication in 2044: to commemorate the demise of the homelands, as well as to encourage those lobbying against the state’s current plan to make the North West a zoned province—a marker of 50 years of progress, we’re told, since the abolition of apartheid. Which leads me to my third and final point.

      I have not contacted the government. In the past, as related above, scientists and authorities have not heeded the message contained in this manuscript. It is also true that, in the end, Joseph and I concluded that the instruments of power could not be trusted with our future. Instead, our aim is to deliver it to the population, even though we do not know how events will unfold, and whether or not we will survive. The choice is ours. In the end, the sender intended this work for humankind, and it is only fitting, then, that I close here with her own words.

       The message I wish to pass on is not complicated. There is indeed a force more powerful than humankind. I have assented and do not know much else.

      Neither do I.

      Dr Naomi Buthelezi

      Stellenbosch

      December 2, 2043

      1The owner of the domain is hidden, but we have reason to believe the account was passed down to the sender.

      2A note for our foreign readers: the Ciskei homeland was a nominal independent state, symptomatic of the apartheid regime, that existed from 1981 to 1994. It was located in the southeast of the republic, taking up less than 3,860 square miles, and run as a dictatorship. It excluded the port of East London as well as economic centers such as King William’s Town—which would later become the sender’s home—and Queenstown, which belonged to the Europeans of the republic. To give the scheme a veneer of legitimacy, the land was assigned to isiXhosa speakers in two “self-governed territories.” The two homelands were divided by the Great Kei River and dissolved in 1994, at the arrival of our first democratic elections, leaving behind ethnic tensions that simmer into the present.