January 10 - The Messenger

The most important and difficult thing was establishing his credibility and gaining their trust.
Over the years, he'd learned that this must be done gradually, delicately. If he showed them too much too soon, the job would be botched. And enough jobs had been botched for him to be well aware of the extraordinary damage that that could bring about.
He came to them in their dreams and he was as clear as he could be about the ground rules: He was going to offer them a glimpse into the future. They would have the power to change the future, but once they did, he would never come to them again, nor would he come to them again if they told anyone else at all about his visits.
However, if they were patient, if they demonstrated the will power to wait for the bigger, more significant glimpses into the increasingly distant future without altering anything about the intervening weeks, months, and years, he promised them it would be worth their while.
Most couldn't do it. Most cracked early and told their spouses or used their privileged knowledge to impress their friends. That's why he moved slowly and was careful to reveal only inconsequential but unmistakably recognizable details about the future early on. He had to make sure they believed him and he had to be sure not to give them anything that they would be too tempted to use to their short term advantage.
It often took several years to gain their complete and unquestioning trust.
Just before giving them the final reveal, he always carefully and patiently talked them through everything he had shown them about the future that had come true, like a lawyer delivering his closing arguments. He would not show them the final image until he was sure that they had 100% faith in the truth of what he was going to reveal.
Even still, they always balked. Despite the fact that everything he had shown them about the future--all the sneak previews they'd been privy to that had without exception come to fruition, they couldn't accept the final image. None of them.
After sitting quietly while they tried to come up with a loophole, they would plead with him, as if he were the one making up the rules. He wasn't. He was just the messenger.
"OK," they'd say, finally. "I can fix this. I'll--"they struggled to find other words,"--fix this."
"There is only one way to fix it."
He knew they understood what he meant right away but their minds wouldn't accept it. There was always a long pause before they spoke again. He could tell they were trying to find a way for his sentence to have a different meaning.
"I--I can't."
"You have to."
"But why?"
"It is the only way to be sure."
"But why is it the only way? How could it be the only way?"
"It's not up to me."
"But then, how do you know it's the only way? How can you be so sure? There has to be another way. I'll give him more guidance. I know I haven't been the best father in the world, but I can do better."
"It won't matter. What I have shown you is what will happen. It is the way it has been written. There is only one way it can be stopped. Anything else you do will only delay it or hasten it."
Denial soon gave way to anger.
"But why would he put me in this position?"
"I don't know," he said because he truly didn't. "Maybe he's bored. Maybe he's curious."
Almost nobody could do it. Over the millenia a few did, but history doesn't know about them.
Pen Saloth couldn't do it.
Nor could Svetozar Milošević.
And neither could Alois Hitler or Muhammed Awad bin Laden.
Some of the other angels thought his poor track record reflected poorly on humanity, that it demonstrated how blindly ignorant people were, but he didn't think so. He felt the fact that people could retain their hope and faith even in the face of the bleakest scenario imagineable was a remarkable thing.