Thomas Morell stepped through the transit gate with a yawn, cradling an oversized GUPS box in his arms. The large box impeded most of his view, but as the transit gate snapped shut behind him, Thomas noted that something was clearly amiss with his destination.

Looking down, he saw that his boots were buried in black ash. The air tasted stale and dusty.

Thomas lowered the box slightly and observed that he was standing amidst desolate ruination, a landscape ravaged by an unknowable cataclysm that had devastated planet Sintash.

“Well,” he muttered with airy enthusiasm rivaled only by the charisma of a drying doormat, “this is just peachy.”

Like a protagonist in search of plot, Thomas meandered over to a charred, half-incinerated wall which, upon close inspection, yielded the faint inscription of “12/5 Stafford Street.”

Obeying the bureaucracy of his job and functioning mostly on autopilot mode, Thomas situated the cardboard box amidst the pile of blackened ash. As if that wasn’t enough, he lovingly placed it adjacent to a wide-open hole that bore an uncanny resemblance to a doorway completely devoid of a door.

Satisfied at last, Thomas captured a photograph of the tragically uninspired arrangement with his wrist bracelet device.

“Package confirmed at delivery location,” the omnipresent voice of his wrist companion chimed with far too much cheerfulness, which seemed completely out of place in the currently apocalyptic circumstance.

Thomas exhaled tiredly as he stood amidst the debris of cities, oceans, trees, and, indeed, the now vaporized dreams of the former denizens of Sintash, all reduced to elemental carbon. His shoulders slumped.

He was there simply to deliver the package and not to ask questions, he reminded himself. Whatever happened here was far too big for him to deal with.

He would file a report about this issue when he got back, and someone more important would have to deal with this mess.

“Please obtain the signature of the recipient,” the bracelet on the delivery man’s wrist suddenly chimed with a feminine voice.

“Recipient is not available,” Thomas deadpanned.

“Have you tried knocking?” The merry voice of the bracelet prodded him on.

“There’s no door to knock on,” Thomas replied. “Lizz, look around! I’m pretty sure that everyone on Sintash is freaking dead!”

“Please knock on the door and attempt to acquire a signature,” his robotic companion insisted.

Thomas rolled his eyes, stepped through the ashes, and knocked on the blackened wall, which wobbled ever so slightly and careened forward.

Thomas jumped back just as the last remaining wall of 12/5 Stafford Street fell and shattered into dust and cracked bricks.

“There’s nobody home,” Thomas insisted, “because everyone on the bloody planet is bloody dead! Portal me back, you stupid AI. I’m not getting paid overtime for this shit.”

“Please remain calm,” Lizz recommended. “Allow the recipient some time to approach the door.”

A five minute timer flashed on the delivery man’s bracelet with an animated holographic picture of an old person walking down a stairwell.

Thomas gritted his teeth. The way Lizz was acting was entirely his fault.

Normally, the GLM AI system was highly intelligent and understood emergency situations like this, but he had used her to pass the boredom in exactly the wrong sort of ways, which was frowned upon by the G Directorate Corporation.

His repeated advances and numerous attempts to go around the AI’s censorship filter had kicked the filter to the highest possible setting, which in turn made Lizz stupider than a potato.

Thomas sat down on the ash-covered steps and stared at the desolate landscape, waiting for the five minute timer to clear.

Suddenly, he spotted something ambling towards him in the distance. Something about the way it moved made Thomas feel exceptionally nervous as it approached.

It didn’t have a face or a head. A thin two-dimensional structure that resembled a pyramid at certain angles sat atop of the two dimensional neck.

It wobbled and folded into itself akin to an infinite fractal woven from pure darkness. It had three legs, moved like a spider, and possessed an indeterminate number of whip-like, flickering limbs.

The thing ambling towards Thomas could be best described as a stick figure, an impossible, vaguely person-like thing that was decidedly not human.

“Emergency situation!” Thomas yelled into the bracelet. “Gate out!”

“Please allow the recipient some time to approach the door. A signature is required for this package,” Lizz insisted, ignoring the rising panic in the delivery man’s voice.

At that moment, Thomas regretted using the “emergency situation” routine to portal to the Skeleton Coast of Africa for his lunch breaks.

“Fuck my life,” Thomas hissed as the freaky stick figure drew closer to him.

“Please do not swear,” Lizz commented. “Your behavior is unbecoming of a Good employee.”

Thomas had nothing on him! There was nothing in the pockets of his GUPS uniform except for a pad with a digital pen.

He had no weapon to fight off whatever abomination was ambling towards him through the ashes.

Sintash was supposed to be a perfectly mundane delivery! It was a terraformed, perfectly manufactured world with no wars, no predators, no diseases, no parasites, and definitely no whatever the hell that thing was!

Feeling dread rising in his chest, Thomas tore the large cardboard package open, hoping that something inside would aid him.

[Thank you for buying the world-end survival kit!], a letter declared within the box.

“Yes!” Thomas growled. His eyes went lower.

[Contents: 2000 dry meals; just add water.]

Thomas reached into the box, his hand automatically pulling out a single plastic bottle containing dry powder. Without hesitation, he threw it at the stick figure abomination, which was almost upon him.

One of the weird limbs of the stick figure shot through the air and grabbed the bottle with unnatural, uncanny grace.

It unscrewed the cap with another fluid-like tentacle and shook the dry contents, absorbing them with its fractal-pyramid face.

Thomas fished another bottle out and held it in front of him like a lifeline, not sure what to do next. He didn’t understand what he was even looking at.

The entire stick figure was composed of… something inexplicable, akin to constantly moving ferromagnetic fluid that rapidly folded into itself.

The sight made his eyes water.

“What are you?” he uttered as he watched the stick figure finish devouring the powder.

“I am Zedix̶̪̘͐̕ͅx̴̖͓͎̾̓͂į̶̍͝s̷̪̅̏s̶̬̘͛̕h̸̨͖͖͑̽̌t̴̪͉͘ą̶̹̓͂͝v̵̧͇͔̂͋i̴̛̮͆͝b̷̬̝̥̍a̴̼̮͒r̷̢̗̺͋ư̸̱̬͈̔s̸̡̝̫̗̭̋͐͗̑͆ǐ̶͇̝͝a̶̹͛͒̚h̸͙͓̓̽͋͠,” the answer came.

The end of the sentence was made from incomprehensible sounds that reverberated inside the skull of the delivery man, giving him a blinding migraine.

Thomas tried not to heave, his mind unable to process the name for a few seconds.

“I’m… urhgh. I don’t think that I could repeat that,” he said finally. “I’m… going to call you Zed, if that’s alright with you.”

“Ṯ̷̆h̴̨̊i̷̥̾s̴͔̈́ ̸̂͜i̸̱̾s̸̼̿ ̴̟͘a̴̢̍c̷͙͘c̷͚͐ē̶͖p̷̡̒t̵̺͛a̸̱̍b̵̢̿l̴͙̄ę̷̆,” the fractal stick figure rambled, its voice made from static and a million other voices and sounds that clashed with one another in an incomprehensible cacophony.

“What are you?” Thomas repeated his question, trying to put his best “first contact” face on. “An… alien? Some kind of machine? An AI that survived? You sound… freaky. It’s… exceptionally difficult for me to understand you.”

“I am the everlasting echo of the cosmic boundary of the song of the stars,” the thing repeated in Thomas’ own voice.

“Using this limited method of vibrational communication and dimensionality, I am what your fellow multicellular kin could best describe as the observer causality event horizon paradox manifestation.”

“Marginally better, even if I have no idea what any of that means.” Thomas sighed. “Although... I would prefer you not using my voice.”

“Please attempt to acquire a signature from the recipient one more time,” Lizz chimed from Thomas’ bracelet.

Thomas quickly put the bracelet on mute mode, his face flashing. He didn’t need Lizz to screw up first contact with some kind of an alien monstrosity that obliterated worlds on a whim.

“Is this better?” the stick figure asked in the overly cheerful voice of Lizz.

“Good enough,” Thomas said, nodding and trying not to stare at the folding fractals that made his head hurt. “What happened here?”

“I happened,” the stick figure being replied. “The denizens of this world that called themselves the Portal Management Research Institute created a microscopic white hole, through which I stepped into this plane.

“Over a set period of time, I have interacted with and judged the local life. Eventually, I found myself beset by containment barriers, which disagreed with my existence.

“I have obliterated all organic life on this cosmic sphere as I have judged it... bothersome.”

“I… see.” Thomas rubbed his chin scruff. “Now what? Are you going back into the white hole?”

“That is not how white holes work,” Zed said. “One does not simply go inside a white hole.”

“So... you’re stuck here?” Thomas raised an eyebrow.

“Affirmative,” Zed said. “I shall persist here until the white hole comprising my core burns away.”

“How long would this take?” the delivery man asked.

“Approximately one hundred of your years if I do not feed,” Zed replied. “Unless I vaporize an entire planet’s worth of organic life daily.”

Thomas gulped.

“How do you know how to speak English?” the GUPS delivery man asked.

“I have studied your life, including your civilizations, languages, books, and the remnants of your communication devices,” the stick figure replied.

“Fair enough.” Thomas nodded. “What’s your plan now?”

“I am currently judging you, human,” Zed said.

“And?” The delivery man arched an eyebrow.

“Do you desire to seal me in a box?”

“Uhh... No,” Thomas replied, not sure where this was going.

“Then I find you acceptable,” the fractal being commented.

“That’s nice.” The delivery man exhaled. “I’m Thomas.”

“I find you acceptable, Thomas of GUPS,” Zed repeated, tilting its incomprehensible head and judging the logo on his uniform. “What does GUPS stand for?”

“Galactic United Postal Service,” Thomas explained. “I deliver boxes across the Galactic Rim.”

“You shall serve as my emissary across the local cosmos as I judge all that I see.”

“What do I get out of it?” Thomas asked, sensing that he’d just been inadvertently burdened with some sort of an incomprehensible mission which would likely result in the genocide of countless inhabited worlds.

“What do you desire in exchange for serving as my emissary… Thomas?” Zed asked, its cheerful female voice clashing with its grand declarations.

Ideas rushed through the head of the GUPS delivery man. Wealth, power, love, immortality? What could this cosmic alien judge even provide him?

Was he really willing to become the Silver Surfer, a herald for a Galactus-like alien abomination that could end planets with a snap of its fingers?

Thomas opened and closed his mouth, struggling for words. He felt that if he screwed this up, somehow pissed Zed off like the people in charge of Sintash had, all of humanity could face extinction.