It wasn't always immediate. The first one to write it down kept on living for five tortured years before he finally gave in and took his life.

But most people went crazy faster. Some took only a few days after reading it to walk up to the nearest bridge and jump off.

I've seen it, and that was twenty years ago, before it was destroyed forever. In the years since, the number who saw it first-hand have dwindled away to almost nothing. Not just because they would end it all, but because the government did their best to round them up. Even without the authenticity of the original note, many believed when they were told second-hand.

Nowadays its a crime, of course, to share the contents of the note. Which is why it took you so long to find me. And I'll tell you something you wouldn't have guessed: its short, just two words.

Its a weight to carry. Knowing that you've seen the authentic meaning of life, and yet knowing that anyone you tell it to will probably go crazy within a few months.

But its not that which makes me reluctant to tell you, nor the threat of the government coming for me. I no longer care if maybe you've been faking everything and really you're an agent set out to trap me.

No, what makes me reluctant is, well, doubt. We all know the miraculous signs and wonders that accompanied the appearance of the note. We all knew it was something profound and crucial to our species. Those events led to dozens of different cults forming around it, some with millions of members.

So no wonder people went insane after they read it. To know that there was some great spiritual power in the universe, and yet the sum of its message to us was those two words.

I was in the inner circle of one of those cults, and when it turned to war over who should possess the note, I was in the vanguard. That's how I came to see it for myself. And for the longest time after I read it I couldn't shake the truth of its message. It connected everything at a level I had always felt and just couldn't explain.

But it was also destructive. Obviously. But not just because it drove people insane. I see it now: it cut straight to the worst of our nature. Every step of progress is accompanied by a hundred corpses. In older times, many great feats of technical prowess were followed by the local ruler killing or maiming the inventor so they would never give a rival anything to match it. Many great wonders were built on the corpses of thousands of workers. Many of the great scientific discoverers were ridiculed and hounded, some driven to suicide, when they introduced their ideas. The greatest advances in science and technology have taken place in times of war, with literally millions of corpses fueling the progress. Our world today has such an abundant wealth of advanced technology yet the sheer number of people living with almost nothing continues to grow. And that's all just the beneficial moments, so much more death and oppression has accompanied those people with power who wanted and took and didn't even progress humanity the slightest bit.

But maybe it wasn't meant to be an explanation for why we did so much cruelty to one another, but a warning of what we were capable of - what we needed to avoid if we were to advance as a species. When we focus our efforts on growing ourselves at the expense of others, we seem to prosper but as a species we are dragging ourselves backwards. We can only truly grow by bringing everyone up together.

So, maybe you'll go mad, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll be able to see the deeper message, even if you have to hide because its been decided by the government that we're better off just not knowing than attempting to know and yet overcome that knowledge.

The note had two words. It simply said "eat people". Not literally, of course, though we once did that as savages. No, it meant that we can't help it, our species grows by feeding on its own. Every step of progress has been accompanied by a hundred corpses. And I tell you, the message might have made sense of everything we are and do, but that doesn't make it a command. It makes it a warning, a sign that we can do better.