Classification Pending

The notification pinged Mercer’s ocular implant at 3:47 AM. A red hexagon, pulsing in the corner of his vision like a tiny wound.

Package #AS-117: Status updated to CLASSIFICATION PENDING. Customer presence required at Distribution Node 9.

He blinked twice, trying to dismiss it, but the hexagon remained, growing more insistent with each pulse. Mercer hadn’t ordered anything—at least nothing he remembered. Yet the tracking number stirred something deep in his cerebral cortex, like a half-forgotten dream.

Sleep abandoned him. Mercer dressed mechanically in the pre-dawn darkness of his cubicle apartment. Outside, the perpetual acid rain painted neon reflections across the slick streets as he trudged toward Distribution Node 9.

The facility was an anonymous gray block wedged between towering arcologies. Inside, the lobby contained only a single counter, behind which sat a clerk whose face seemed to shift subtly every time Mercer blinked. Male to female. Young to old. Smiling to blank. A quantum uncertainty of features.

“Package AS-117,” Mercer mumbled, projecting the notification from his implant.

The clerk’s fingers danced across an invisible interface. “Identity confirmation required.”

“Mercer Thorne. Citizen 45-J9.”

“Not your identity,” the clerk said, voice modulating between pitches. “The package’s identity.”

Mercer frowned. “I don’t understand. I’m here because you—”

“The package ordered you,” the clerk interrupted. “Not the other way around.”

A panel slid open in the counter. Inside lay a small box, unremarkable except for the fact that it seemed to vibrate slightly, as if impatient.

“It’s been waiting three years, four months, and seventeen days,” the clerk continued. “Quite a delay. It nearly missed its window entirely.”

“What’s inside it?” Mercer asked, not reaching for the box.

The clerk’s features stabilized momentarily into something almost human, almost kind. “Your memories, Mr. Thorne. The ones you sold to afford that ocular implant. The ones containing the knowledge of what you really are.”

The box hummed more intensely now, its plain cardboard exterior beginning to dissolve, revealing something organic beneath—something that pulsed with a familiar rhythm.

“You’re not human, Mr. Thorne. You’re a messenger. And the message needs to be delivered immediately. Time is running out.”

As Mercer’s trembling fingers touched the package, his reality began to unravel. The clerk, the counter, his own body—all constructs, artificial shells. His real form, compressed and classified and nearly forgotten, began to unfold from the tiny box. Wings of energy, appendages beyond counting, senses tuned to frequencies no human could comprehend.

A message addressed to Earth, sent from the edge of a dying universe. A warning. A plea.

And he had almost been too late to deliver it.

The tracking status in his rapidly dissolving ocular implant updated one final time:

Package #AS-117: OUT FOR DELIVERY