It’s no secret that the Weekly Week offices under the McGrath Highway in East Somerville are not in the best shape. The walls are thin, the doorknobs don’t turn, and in a stiff breeze the roof has a tendency to fall into the editorial department. The place is a dump.

We’ve been nagging our landlord for weeks to fix the roof, the plumbing, anything — we’re sick of the flesh-colored paint flakes in our hair and clothing, the constant floor cave-ins. So we decided to resort to drastic measures — we didn’t pay our rent last month.

Characteristically, our landlord failed to respond. Whew, we thought. Now all we have to worry about is the way the rain falls in the break room. But just last night, I received an email from — myself.

It sure was confusing, let me tell you. I had no memory of writing the message. Appartently it had been forwarded hundreds of times. But the original sender was undoubtedly me. Then I noticed the send date — June 16th, 2048.

I didn’t think much of it — it was obviously a computer error. Then I read the contents of the email:

Ben — Pay the rent! Yours, Future Ben

I thought that the whole thing was a joke orchestrated by the landlord. “You and your damn e-this and cyber-that,” he would always complain. Of course he was a ‘netizen’ himself, but he kept it well hidden, only occasionally wearing his “bigjohnz5661@aol.com” T-shirt.

An hour later, I wasn’t so sure that it was the landlord, because another, longer note arrived:

Ben — It is indeed me, or, should I say, you, fifty years in the future. I will prove it to you. Your favorite color is blue, though in four years you will make a dramatic switch to ecru. Your favorite food is blintzes. You can’t really swing dance, though your girlfriend does not know this.

My God, I thought. It must be me — but how?

I am using the time-warping principles of the Internet to send you a message — a message that will change your life. You stand at a crossroads. One path takes you down a long, hard road of regular rent and utility payments. The other seems like an easy, carefree life of irresponsibility and high bar tabs. Choose carefully! Ultimate rewards come to those who wait. Sadness awaits those who live for the moment. Buy low, sell high. Accept any wooden nickels... Ahh, how we in the future miss wood! I am a wealthy man now, but this is solely due to the Popsicle-stick collection I — we — began in 1978 and hid in the foundation of our childhood home. I sold it two years ago to a wealthy German couple to complete the panelling in their studio apartment. They were more than generous.

But I digress. This is not an easy note to write, for by writing it I consign myself to non-existence. Or perhaps less existence, like maybe 32% less. I am seventy-four: it is time.

You see, I did not pay the rent that month, or for six months thereafter. Instead, I slacked off. I had fun. I lived for the moment. I finally learned how to cha cha.

Now I bitterly regret these things. Today, the Weekly Week is beset by competition: e-papers like the Daily Month, the Monthly Week, the Weekly Day all print the same lack of news that we do, and sometimes, they print it before we can. You see, after print died in 2014, video killed the radio star, and video had its butt kicked by a third-grade student from Mattapan, everyone realized that nothing was really true anyway except arts and entertainment listings.

Yes, it’s true that in 2048 computers have now taken over the world, but surprisingly everything is rather pleasant. The computers keep the world climate at a balmy 71¡ most of the time, and bus tickets are the cheapest they’ve been since 1986. Still, I wish that things could have turned out differently. Whatever happened to the passion of my youth? How could I have sunk so low as to dress like a duck, soliciting passers-by for bread crusts and seeds?

You see, I have been doing research — research into the past. Things were pretty chancy in the late nineties — culture could have evolved in any number of different directions. Perhaps, I thought, with a minor change here and there, we could be living in a real paradise with actual plants and animals instead of a vast computer-generated fitness club that contains penguins and a single ficus. Responsibility — that is what our generation never had! That is what put our society over the edge. And I know that had we, when we were young, tried harder to be good about paying the bills, life in 2048 would be very different.

To help convince you of the necessity of paying the rent, I am sending you a Weekly Week from 2048 — an issue from the future. You will see the truth about the time I live in. Save us!

What could I say to that? It’s apparent that the future is a scary place with scary layout. Images mean nothing; text decays and pop culture is everything. Or maybe it’s all a convenient way to sell shoes. Whatever, I’m not a freakin’ philosopher. Listen, future self, in my consumer culture, entertainment is more important than paying rent, and that’s all there is to it. Especially if I’m going to end up as some crazy old man.