Coming home late that night, Carlisle finds a man waiting for him in the dark, bleeding gently into the upholstery of his one good chair. “They found me,” says the man. “I’m sorry… take this…” and drops a thumb drive on the floor. “Trust… no… one…”

He’s dead, and that’s upsetting, but that’s what the police are for, or so he’s heard. So he calls them, and they send over a detective, and they give him a blanket and a cup of coffee and they have a nice little chat while the paramedics take care of the body. He tells them about the thumb drive, but they don’t care, so when everyone is gone he connects it to his laptop and would you believe it’s full of games? and books?

He feels bad about the man dying, but it was nice of him to give him a present to apologize for making a mess of his chair. He spends the evening shooting little frogs in a tank in a pixel sewer, and that’s pretty fun. Not worldshaking, or anything, but it’s a cute little game.

The books are all pretty terrible, uniformly lousy science fiction from the 1970s written by men who clearly had a problem with Women Today, so he just ignores them. A few days later, a heavyset fellow in a bloodstained coat shows up and asks for the drive, so Carlisle gives it to him. The games weren’t that interesting.