September 19, 2025
Fragment 1: Gerald - Delivery Day

Gerald happened to be awake the night the world as we knew it ended. He sat on his doorstep, quarter to midnight, nursing a pilsner and vaping. His shift working security at the data center wrapped up and he drove the forty minutes home to be greeted with an empty apartment and a fridge full of cold beer. His girlfriend, now ex, cleaned the place out while he was working. At least she left him a drink.

While Gerald sipped, he heard a faint hum. At first, he thought his vaporizer pen was on the fritz. He held it up to his ear, and the hum intensified. But when he took it away, the hum didn't quiet. It grew into a buzz, then a cacophony, crescendoing like a billion locust wings sweeping over the Appalachian mountains. It was a black night, no moon, and even the stars were blocked by the cloudy night. Whatever the sound was bounced off the cloud deck, making Gerald feel like he was in a blender.

Just as he got up off his stoop and turned to go inside, the hum became personal. One singular note of the chord presented itself from on high - a package delivery drone. It had two brown boxes, one large and one medium in size, which it deposited on his stoop where he just sat. The drone was completely jet black, with no obvious branding. It didn't strike Gerald until later that it also had no lights. No obvious means of identification whatsoever.

Looking across the drive he could see identical drones depositing similar packages on all the doorsteps around him. Some were smaller boxes, even others were bubble envelopes. Some doorsteps had multiple drones in quick succession. Both of his neighbors got deliveries as well. The only nearby door that was spared to Gerald's eye was the vacant unit two doors down. Whoever made the deliveries knew to skip that door.

As quickly as the hum roared around Gerald, it faded. His next door neighbor came out in a robe and slippers. They shared puzzled looks and shrugged. Neither man felt like a conversation at this hour, just recognition that everything was okay. For the briefest moment, everything did seem to be.

Gerald looked at the two boxes at his feet. One, labelled "Gerald", the other "Leticia". She'd only just moved out, maybe she forgot to redirect whatever this order was. But as Gerald hoisted the boxes into his dining nook, he noted that not only were they much, much heavier than they'd looked, but that the boxes had no return address. In fact, they had no actual address on them, just the names of the recipients.

"This must be some kind of tech company publicity stunt," Gerald thought. They were always trying something flashy, and simultaneous, bespoke drone delivery to everyone in a mid-size American town would certainly make national news the next day. Gerald wondered what kind of project manager dreamed up this one. He figured they'd probably get promoted for it. Though the packages themselves were also completely unmarked aside from the name labels on them, so whatever branding element there was must be inside.

Gerald grabbed a box knife from the junk drawer in his kitchen, another treat Leticia had left behind, and sliced the tape seal on the top of the medium-sized box with his name. What was inside puzzled Gerald, then stunned him, then, terrified him.

The cardboard box was neatly packed into sub-packages and stacked manila folders on the left, and a chunk of cash that was wrapped perfectly in clear plastic film on the right. On the top of the cash was a cell phone, or at least, what used to be considered a cell phone. It was a touch-tone phone that looked like it belonged in the 90's. It had a charger cable included with it. Apparently, meant to be used.

Gerald picked up the phone and searched for the power button. While fumbling, he found that the phone was already on. The screen displayed a list of contacts. These were all his contacts from his android, by name. He grabbed the smartphone out of his pocket to double check. When he pressed the screen, it stayed black. Must have been out of battery. He plugged it in to the charger on his counter and waited, but the android stayed black as the night sky.

He thumbed through the contacts until he reached the one person he really wished he could talk to about this right now and pressed the green phone button. Gerald felt like an old pro hitting that call button, like he was a teenager again. When the other box on the table began to buzz with an incoming ring, he jumped. Why would this phone not be calling Leticia's? Unless...

Cancelling the call, Gerald went back into the open box. He first pulled out the stack of cling-wrapped cash and set it on the table. There was a small piece of paper on the top of the money, and ripping off the plastic let him see through the glare caused by the kitchen lights. It was a receipt.

"To the care of Gerald Frederick Tennyson.
$34,319.44 across all cash accounts.
$1,119.82 in converted cryptocurrencies.
Certificates of bond and stock in folders 12 and 13.
Health and retirement account portfolios in folder 14.
For further inquiries please don't hesitate to contact.

- A"

He recognized those numbers. They were the balances of his checking, savings, and the $200 he had thrown at various meme coins years ago that had apparently matured handsomely.

Gerald thumbed through the manila folders on the other side of the box. There were 29 of them in total. The first had his birth certificate, social security card, and copies of his passport and driver's license. Every folder was filled with key personal records, from each one of his monthly credit card bills dating back to the 00's, to dental X-rays and blood test results. Even a provisional will he had created as a chore from six years ago was included.

The one that really chilled his bones though was folder 28. Inside it were 200 high quality photo prints from his cloud photo library. And they were consistently his favorite, most meaningful photos, the ones he would have saved over any others.

The smaller boxes contained an odd assortment of goods and tools. The first one Gerald opened was an old copper coil thermostat, the analog kind that worked by the heat in the room expanding and contracting a bit of metal to flip the furnace on or off.

Gerald's mind was racing. He ripped open Leticia's box to find the same array of incredibly high fidelity personal items in manila folders, a phone, seemingly identical to his own except for the one missed call, and a considerably larger stack of cash. He always knew she saved her money, but Gerald was impressed by just how disciplined she must have been. He realized at once he needed to get this back to her, and felt the guilt of having her entire life in a box.

"How the hell did all this get here?" he said to the empty apartment. This was simply too much information for anyone to have collected on him, and if this was blackmail or intimidation, why send the money alongside? Gerald wished for his cynicism about the tech PM would've been right. He'd much rather have opened a box of Amazon or Walmart swag than... this.

Gerald flicked his television on to see if any breaking news was on. Although he'd pressed the button on the remote, nothing happened. He checked the plug, and it was fine. Same power strip was lighting the lamp next to the tv. Smartphone, dead. TV, dead. Laptop? He ran to check. Dead. Everything he owned with any hint of digital life in it was dead and gone. Even the wifi connected smart thermostat was out of life. His casio wristwatch with its eight segment display still lit up when he pressed the button. It was already past midnight.

In a cold sweat, he ran outside, abandoning the insane practical joke on the table. The night was cool and silent aside from the rustling of leaves and chirping of crickets. It felt like almost nothing out here had changed from thirty minutes ago. Almost like an army of drones hadn't descended upon him and upended his sense of safety. The only reminders were the packages still sitting like time bombs on each welcome mat as far as he could see.