Every morning, at the same time, the old man would step out onto the porch of his house and find the same bizarre gift waiting for him: a new loaf of bread wrapped in cellophane. The package had a colorful label on it that said the name of a store that no one knew. The name seemed strange, like it came from another country, and the elderly guy knew right away that something was amiss.
He thought for the first time that maybe it was his neighbors who were worried about him—someone had seen how lonely he was and offered to help him with his shopping.
He
The next day, the same thing happened again: the identical bread, in the same box, in the same spot. Then he thought that maybe social services had started a new initiative to help older people.
But the funny thing was that none of his neighbors had told him about it, and he hadn’t gotten any notice.
The man’s nerves gave out on the third day. He was anxious about everything, like the time and the strange place the bread came from.
He
“Are you bringing me this bread?” Maybe you’re doing a fresh sale?
The woman looked at him like he was crazy.
“What are you talking about, Grandpa? There are no sales or charity at our store. “We only sell bread; we don’t deliver it to your door,” she said angrily.
The old man was much more upset when he exited the business. As he continued to think about it, his worry increased. He was already scared to touch the bread because he thought it might have something hazardous in it. What if someone was trying to kill him?
He chose a new path on the fourth morning. He got an old video camera out of the pantry, the kind he used to use for family events, and set it up to record the porch.
And when he saw the video that morning, his heart almost stopped. At four in the morning, the screen clearly showed a small drone gliding quietly into his house, hovering over the porch, delicately dropping off a bag of bread, and then flying away.
The old man took a deep breath. Things had gotten much scarier; this was obviously not a neighbor or social services anymore. The situation was a different thing.
He packed his belongings with shaking hands and proceeded to the police station. Then he found out something horrible.
There, after playing the recording, he could hardly describe what was going on. The cops looked at each other, and one of them quietly laughed.
“You’re part of an experiment, my dear.”
It came out that a new firm had decided to try out a strange way to supply bread. And his address just so happened to be in their client database.
A few days previously, the retiree had unintentionally clicked on an ad while trying to check the weather on his phone and signed up for a monthly bread delivery service.
He didn’t know how it happened; it seemed like he had just “clicked the wrong button.” But in fact, he had signed up for a trial plan.
The old man either sighed with relief or got furious when he heard the explanation. They gave him his money back and canceled his subscription, but he still felt uneasy.
He still couldn’t bring himself to try the bread he had at home since the loaves were too scary.
