September 25, 2025
Fragment 4: Noah - The Line

Noah Tanaka stood on his condo balcony in Ala Moana staring out in the direction of Waikiki. It was a dark, cool night, and the air whistled across his arms. Moments ago, his 4,000 viewer livestream just blinked out mid-raid. Noah was ready to chalk it up to a Twitch outage, when then his computer itself went black. He launched himself out onto the balcony in a fury. That's when he found the package. It was a small box with his name on it. That's when Noah realized that the winds were more than they seemed. His eyes seemed to deceive him at first, but when he focused he could pick out the thousands of small matte black drones with parcels flitting through the air.

"They were right!" Noah's eyes opened wide. He snatched a pair of binoculars off his bookcase and scanned the skies. Locking in on some drones backlit by the amber streetlamps, he searched for one without a package. Finally glimpsing his quarry, he tracked one of them as it flew away down Kona street. He couldn't see where it turned with the road, but Noah saw other drones following that direction.

Heart pounding, Noah burst out of his apartment and raced to the service stairwell at the end of the hallway. "But if they were right, where are the explosions?" Noah's mind scrambled as quickly as his feet. He'd been seeing messages for weeks now on a few forums about how something big was brewing. As usual, conspiracy theories abounded on the internet. Few if any were ever accurate. Of those that did make a right call, their details were typically totally off base. Like a Nostradamus prediction, they were a broken clock right twice a day. But this latest one had some elements Noah found hard to ignore.

Reaching the top of the stairwell, Noah's heart was in his throat. It'd been a while since he'd run, and even longer since he'd run up stairs. Luckily his young muscles were able to cope with the sudden strain. Noah put the binoculars to his eyes and traced the drones' flight back to Kona street. He watched one fly to the parking deck at the Ala Moana Center and duck underneath the solar panel array. He swore that even though it was dark out, he could see a crack of light spilling out under the panels. But his vantage point afforded Noah no more detail.

He gulped and ran back inside. He pressed the elevator button and tapped his foot, paced, almost hovered off the ground. Noah was worried. Who was it? The Russians? China? This was definitely the attack he'd read about. Internet cut, mass mayhem, societal upheval. Seeing the drones in concert above the city cemented it in Noah's head. But who? He gritted his teeth as the elevator descended, waiting for the explosions to begin. He'd been smart enough to leave the parcel on his balcony alone, but he knew others would be less prudent. Bombs, hand-delivered, personalized to each victim. A horrifying terror crime unfolding before his eyes.

Halfway down the elevator, an elderly couple got on. They smiled at Noah, sensing his tension. He smiled politely but kept his eyes forward as they settled into the cabin. It was too late by the time Noah realized that the old woman wasn't rustling around with her purse, but with a small brown parcel.

"No!" Noah screamed as she managed to tear the package open. He winced, eyes closed, arms outstretched. When he realized he wasn't blown to smithereens, he pried one of his eyes open.

"Oh dear, I'm sorry!" The woman exclaimed. "Was this not my package?"

"It had your name on it!" The man grumbled.

She double checked it. Sure enough, it was hers. She put a hand on Noah's arm. "Are you okay keiki?"

His mouth hung open as he saw into the parcel. A phone, papers, and was that... cash? This package seemed more like it belonged to a spy than an old lady. The elevator made it to the ground floor and Noah pushed his way out, past the couple, still shocked by the lack of bomb. The forum posters were wrong again!

Noah ran down Kona street, breathlessly making his way up the exterior staircase to the roof. As he closed in, the sounds of the drone propellers grew louder until they were a steady hum, like locusts. Noah scrambled underneath the solar panels and saw it - a louvered opening in the roof of the parking deck that streamed a steady river of drones in and out.

He made his way on hands and knees closer to the opening and peered in as best he could. Getting any closer would require timing his way past the drones, lest he be sliced up by the propeller blades. But what Noah saw was even stranger than he could've imagined.

The slot opened onto a narrow service bay tucked under the solar panels. Amber work lights ran the length. Warm air breathed against Noah’s face and wafted the smell of hot plastic and inked cotton.

Returning drones slipped through in a steady rhythm. Each one slid onto a thin aluminum rail, clicked into a cradle, and a series of catches along the conveyor popped out their spent batteries and slid in fresh ones. The soft clacks of inserting batteries and green blinks of check lights were hypnotic. As the drones reached the end of the conveyor, they met with a new parcel that slid up from below, fed by an assembly line.

Noah watched the line in awe. A small printer spit out names. A collator flipped manila sheets into a sleeve. A heat sealer kissed the edge and moved the packet along. A waist-high drawer like an ATM sat behind a clear shield, full of cash cassettes with colored bank straps. A little picker eased a cassette forward, weighed a strap, passed it under a UV bar, and dropped the bundle of cash into a tamper sleeve. A black brick-like touch tone phone rattled down from a hopper to join it. A label head laid the name across both. The belt fed the finished parcel to the rail. The waiting drone took weight and lifted away.

Noah slid his head in to the opening to get a closer look. The line paused. A thin shield slid over the cash drawer with a soft thunk. A thermal printer by the slot chattered and fed out a narrow strip of receipt paper. Noah could barely make out the words:

MAINTENANCE OBSTRUCTION
PLEASE CLEAR ACCESS

Instinctively, he backed his head away and realized there was a backup of drones queued at the entrance to the opening. When he'd backed off enough, the shield slid up. Another drone slipped in. The line kept moving.