Hey Reddit.
I was taking a jog through a local park, and I found something interesting. Usually the trail is pretty empty, save for an occasional jogger or hiker on a stroll, but it isn’t that out of the way. You can finish a lap in an hour or two, so there’s really no need to bring any supplies. You find old water bottles or protein bar wrappers from time to time, but it isn’t like you need to bring a whole pack with you. That being said, I found somebodies laptop in the dirt. I can’t think of any reason it would be there besides trying to ditch something that might connect you with a crime, but why not just wipe it clean smash it with a hammer?
It was just off the main path, underneath a small bush. I only noticed it because it had this silver logo that caught the light at just the right angle. What is especially weird is that it doesn’t match any model I’m familiar with. There’s a sticker underneath that says it is property of the Exetti corporation but I can’t find any sign of them online, and a Thai restaurant picks up when you call the phone number on the bottom.
I thought I would open it to see if I could get a name and return it to somebody, but it looks like it belonged to a Henry Jones, and there’s a lot of those in the area. It wasn’t password protected, so in one last effort to be a good Samaritan and find the rightful owner, I started to go through the documents. And no, this was not to be nosy, at least not entirely. I really did want to find this Henry guy and return the computer before he got chewed out by his boss.
Anyway, the only real thing of note is that the internal clock was set to June of 2026. Most of the documents were corrupted. All of the programs were things I had never heard of, even the web browser was called something called FetchNet and that wouldn’t connect to my WiFi. Has anyone ever heard of that browser? Anyway, the only files I could get to open were spreadsheets and sales charts for what looks like a logistics company. I dropped out of college, so I can’t make much sense out of any of it, but there was one folder that caught my eye. One titled “A Memoir at the End of the World”. Now, how could I not open a thing like that? I’ve got a buddy whose just as curious as I am and is working to salvage what he can from the hard drive. He finally got back to me with the first document and this is what we found.
What are your thoughts?
_______
February 21, 2026
I wish I was home when it all happened. Even if I had died, I at least would have been with them.
How do you even begin to describe what has happened to me in the last day? It all seems like a dream, like some terrible dream you can’t wait to wake up from and move on with your life. Kiss your wife, hug your kid, and go to work and forget about the horrible nightmare that tormented you the night before as you pour over emails and gulp down stale coffee from the break room.
I guess you start from the beginning.
My name is Henry Jones. I’m 32 years old. I have a beautiful family, a wife of six years and a little boy who’s seventh birthday is in August. My wife, Victoria, she’s the only person that ever really made me feel safe. I told her dad I would protect her and keep her safe during our wedding, but in reality she’s always been the one to talk me off the ledge when things got rough, when we were worried about the bills or if I was just stressed about bullshit office politics. When she laughs, she snorts like a hog. She hates it, but I love it. It’s her, it’s Victoria.
Our son, Stanley, fuck, I love that kid. He never seemed to run out of energy, and asked ten questions before I had time to answer the first. It used to annoy me when he would bounce on my bed every Saturday so we could play catch in the yard or build model rockets, or whatever his interest of the week was at the time. Now? Now I would give anything just to hear him go on and on about his favorite characters from that talking dog show.
They’ve been the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning after my father died. Mom passed away when I was a kid, car accident. I was too young to really remember her, but Dad raised us on his own. He was the hardest working men I ever met, as if most kids don’t say that bout their fathers at some point in their life. He died just two years into retirement, never really got to enjoy his time out in his cabin like he wanted to. We found out he died because we hadn’t heard from him in a week. I went up to check up on him, and found him in bed. Heart attack, doctors say. I just hope he was asleep through it all.
In a way, his passing is probably what saved me. I was supposed to be in downtown Austin today, neck deep in expense reports. I would have been right in the middle of that shit storm when it happened.
After he passed, my brother Marshal and I were his only family left. His possessions fell to us, everything that fit in that one bedroom cabin he had built for himself in the hills outside the city. A lot of guns, a few weeks worth of food and water, some fishing gear, and a bunch of old furniture.
We decided we would drive up today and take stock of everything. The plan was to divide up what we would keep, find out if Dad had any gold stashed away, and leave the rest as a sort of shrine. He always loved nature, seemed fitting to leave it there to let the forest take back what he borrowed.
We almost didn’t go up with the weather as bad as it was. Heavy storms crossed most of the damn country, the kind of rain that turned your windshield into a blurry sheet you couldn’t see out of. But it was now or three weeks from now, when spiders and possums were likely to move in before we got the work done. So we braved the storm and made it up to the cabin with the plan to wait it out, stay the night if we needed to. There was still a generator and some food left, and a satellite TV that shouldn’t be shut off yet. We would be fine for one night.
Thankfully, the rain subsided once we got to the hills, and driving was smooth the rest of the way. We got to the cabin and got to work Boring, tedious work for the most part. Throwing out all of dads old trash he kept for whatever reason and arguing over who kept what gun. We mixed in some talks about old times, Marshal told me a bit about the mom I never knew, and we looked for some buried treasure that might or might have existed.
“Always smiled. Swear, I never saw that woman as anything less than happy.” He said. Being a parent myself, and knowing how Tori and I present ourselves around the boy, I know that a lot of parents are just really good at hiding their worries from the young ones. You worry about their happiness, their health, and their safety in this crazy world we find ourselves moving towards. But Marshal didn’t have kids yet, and I didn’t want to stain that memory for him by telling him she was probably up all night worrying about us.
It was about four in the afternoon when we noticed the sky turn a sickly green color. The overcast started to look the color of rusted copper, and the wind picked up something awful. Now, this is Austin, Texas. We’re no strangers to weather like this, usually it means a twister or a bad thunderstorm is on the way. I tried calling Victoria and Marshal tried to call his boyfriend, but we couldn’t get through with the crappy reception. We trusted them to be safe, but we wanted to let them know we were ok and were were going to hunker down in Dad’s cabin for the night. There was no signal, no internet, nothing. As much as we hated the thought of leaving our loved ones in the dark, driving during a storm like this could be suicide. It was best to stay put, at least until it all passed. Better to come home at 2 AM than not come home at all because you flew off the road and headfirst into a tree.
But despite how dangerous this weather could turn, I found some kind of beauty in it. The way some folks like watching scary movies in the dark or going to a haunted house on Halloween, I like standing out in the middle of a storm and just experiencing it all. Tori about near beat my head in when I went out to record an F3 twister from our porch last summer. Getting that money shot of funnel cloud touching down was worth a few nights on the couch.
Marshal tried to pull me inside when a flash of lightning landed somewhere north of us, and thunder damn near shook the door of it’s hinges, but I just kept staring at the city skyline a few miles out.
“Henry!” He shouted. “Get your ass in here before I have to drag you! If a chunk of hail hits that empty head of yours, don’t expect me to drive through a this shit to see a doctor!”
“In a minute!” I snapped. “I pointed to a blue jay sitting at the top of a tree beside me. “He ain’t scared, still singing his little heart out! Telling me your more scared than a damn bird?”
Marshal was always afraid of the thunder… But me? It gave me one hell of a rush. I knew it was stupid to stand out in a storm, but it was hypnotic watching the wall of rain slowly move away from us and make it’s way to the buildings off in the distance. We had been out of any downpour since we left the suburbs, but I could hear the familiar sound of soft raindrops falling on the leaves and in the dirt all around me. Not much, just enough to give the promise of what was to come. It was a familiar, and comfortable sensation, and I was enjoying myself until a foul smell wafted through the air.
“Jesus, Marshal… did you let one out?” I cried, waving my hand in front of my nose and pretending to gag, acting like my brother passing gas was something I had never experienced.
“No. Now come on, let’s go.”
He was getting antsy, just wanting to get inside. I was fully prepared to stay out until lightning singed my boots, but a sting on my cheek brought me to my senses. I swatted at it, thinking it was just a bee or horsefly. Then I felt another sting on the back of my hand, then my scalp, not even a second between each jab at the skin.
That was when I started looking around for whatever swarm was trying to take a bite out of me, and I saw nothing but the woods around us. The drizzle was starting to pick up a bit, and Marshal was starting to swat at himself too, and I heard a thud just in front of me. The blue jay, flailing about, the smell of burning flesh wafting off of it, then suddenly it went limp as bits of feathers and flesh started to slough off of it.
Ahead of me, raindrops falling on the truck ate away at the paint, leaving streaks where it melted off of the body. All around us, bits of smoke or steam or something rose off of the grass and trees like tiny geysers.
Marshall started screaming like something had just stabbed him, and if it wasn’t for that, I might have still been standing there all dumb and joined that blue jay in the field. We ran for the cabin, and Marshal ran over to the sink, running his eyes under the water and groaning, practically shouting as he tried to scrub something out of it. I bolted over to the window, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. I could still see that spec of blue on the green patch of grass, some critter or another running around it as a trail of steam drifted off its back until it just couldn’t go no more.
I heard thick raindrops on the in roof of the house, the usual comfort of a drizzle was replaced by the terror of what it brought. I waited for the roof to give in and for a cascade of the burning rain to dump onto me, but it never came. Instead, it softly began to subside.
I didn’t dare step out, I didn’t dare open the door. All I could do was watch out the window as the streaks of death peppered the otherwise serene forest. A few more critters had joined the blue jay, a squirrel had stopped moving just outside of the window. It’s fur singed and giving way to the flesh and bone underneath. That was when I swear my heart stopped beating, and I realized that we only got the brim of that massive rain column that was moving north ever so slowly. North, and right to the city skyline.
I fumbled to get my phone out of my pocket to call Victoria, to tell her to get Stanley and find cover. Get inside, get in the storm cellar, just to stay indoors. I tried to think of how to explain what just happened and what I feared was coming their way, but I never got the chance. There was no service, there was never any fucking service up here! That was why we didn’t even worry about dad until it had been an entire God damn week! If he didn’t move into the fucking mountains we might have saved him!
But what does that matter? What does anything fucking matter?
As we sat in the cabin, watching helplessly as the wall of death trudged through the sky, and it was only a minute or two before it reached downtown. We watched as the skyline was shrouded in the rain column, and that was when I swear I heard the screaming. The screams of thousands of people subjected to something far more terrible than what we had been caught in. The silhouettes of the buildings started to shake and quiver like the air above asphalt on a hot summer day. Some terrible rumbling sound started to drown out anything else, then the buildings just started to fall over, crumbling like wet sand. The pillars of concrete, steel, and glass fell apart like they were a kids cardboard fort left out in the rain. A chopper out in the air started to fall, and I’m not too sure if it even hit the ground.
Out of all the terrible sounds of destruction and suffering that assaulted my ears, I swear I could hear them. I swear I heard my wife and my son.
And then it all went silent. It all went still. And somehow, that was worse.