I was sitting in the library stacks, perusing one of my favorite volumes, when Douglas McCloud walked in. Doug was quite wealthy, and reasonably healthy, especially for a man in his late sixties.

Despite his hardy constitution, however, Doug was well aware of his age, and had become more so in the past few years. This led him, as it leads many men in that phase of life, to consider his final destination, and seek answers about where his last steps would lead him.

Of all the options advertised, Doug liked reincarnation best. Other theories involved everything simply ending, or a life of ethereal bliss that sounded far too trite for him to accept. None of that nonsense, thank you very much -- only reincarnation would do, for Mr. Douglas McCloud.

Indeed, it was his belief in this concept that led him to the library that day. Doug hadn't arrived to seek further knowledge of the beyond, however. He'd come to send a message, to himself. Or rather, the self he would be when he returned for his next helping of mortal existence.

It was a feat that he believed he could pull off, thanks to his possession of a substantial amount of currency. No, not money, though he also had plenty of that to spare. Doug had also shifted a substantial portion of his assets to the currency used in the reincarnation business: karma.

Doug liked the idea of karma. It was mathematical, like economics, and economics were something he understood very well. Do more good than bad, and ultimately, you get a proportional upgrade on your next go-round. This appealed to him more than other methods of retiring one's moral mortgages. He'd always resented the idea that he should have to feel bad about about things he'd done, or enact some sort of transformation in himself, in order to account for his mistakes. What good did that do for anyone, anyway?

As he saw it, if he embraced the idea of karma, he didn't need to feel bad. He just needed to pay a fine to the Universe for his misdeeds, and move on. Moreover, as he saw it this gave him much more freedom and flexibility, since the morality of any individual action mattered very little compared to the totality of his karma summed up when he ceased his mortal operations -- and his considerable resources would allow him to impact that total dramatically.

For example, his fondness for attractive young women, both those who traded privately, and those who offered their charms for sale directly on the open market, would have been seen as a vice by most, or least as rather excessive. But, as he saw it, he did nothing in his interactions with one or two dozen women per year that wouldn't be utterly karmically obliterated by the one or two dozen women's shelters he funded, which aided many thousands of women during that same year.

His dearly departed wife might not have seen it that way, he had to admit, but then, she'd known of his proclivities, and she'd still stayed with him until her death, so even she must have realized that he did her far more good than he did harm.

The one thing that bothered him was starting over from square one -- he'd earned a lot of important skills, through hard experience. Even now, if he had to start over from nothing, he felt confident he could parlay those skills into a comfortable retirement, in only a few years. His reincarnated self, however, though he could expect to have the benefit of more favorable circumstances as a result of his good karma, would lack all of that valuable knowledge.

There was nothing he could do about it, directly -- all the sources he'd read agreed on that, sadly. But, with enough good karma, his reincarnation should be more inherently enlightened, which should in turn lead him to seek more knowledge about the universe and his place in it. Doug hoped that this search would lead his future self here, to the library's peerless selection of rare books on religion and philosophy. Inside the most obscure of these volumes, Doug would conceal notes with important information his future self would need to know, and invaluable life lessons gained from Doug's own experience.

It would be an extremely lucky coincidence if his future self found these notes, obviously, since this future-Doug wouldn't remember putting them there for him to find. But Doug felt that with the amount of good karma he was accumulating for his next life, extremely good luck was something his future self was practically guaranteed.

When he went to place his first note, however, he found something he didn't expect: there was already something pressed between the pages of the rare, esoteric volume. An ancient, yellowed envelope, signed "To my future incarnation -- J.D. Rockefeller"

To his amazement, Douglas found that the letter from the past that seemed to be meant for him, it described the successful businessman he'd become, and expressed confidence that he would possess the wisdom -- and the luck -- to both find and comprehend the letter left by his past incarnation, the famous tycoon John David Rockefeller. And like the letter Doug had planned to leave in the very same old book, it contained instructions and ideas from a man of the past to his future incarnation -- some of which he wouldn't have thought of, nor even dared considered.

He wasn't completely credulous, of course. He'd think it over, and later he'd quietly hire a team of discrete experts to authenticate the less supernatural parts of the letter. It was, they would conclude, Rockefeller's handwriting, for a start. But the part that established the letter's bona fides also mentioned secrets of the old oil baron that could still be, and later were, authenticated. They were things that only Rockefeller himself could possibly have known.

But that night, still wide-eyed in wonder and excitement, he'd just fled from the library, taking the wondrous letter with him. I smiled, as I watched him go.

Of course, handwriting can be forged, if you have the skill. As for the secrets in the letter, well you could also know them if you were there when they were hidden away.

And I had been there, with Rockefeller -- him, and a lot of other men and women, over the years. Sometimes, while I'm hanging about, I make a suggestion or two. And sometimes, they listen. But I'm always close by.

I'll stick especially close to Doug, from now on, as he follows the instructions I've given him. And when his time comes, I'll be the one to show him out, and escort him to his destination.

I hope he likes surprises.