Jerry stared unblinkingly at the overhead sun bulb in his little room. His white puffy body poured over the sides of the reclining chair, which doubled as his bed, like folded mayonnaise. His breathing was labored, though he hadn’t so much as stood in hours.

“Angela, what time will lunch be here?” he asked the room.

A voice answered in a mechanical imitation of humanity that still sounded cold and artificial around the edges.

“The courier is still fifteen minutes away, Jerry. Would you like me to send another pulse to the driver?”

The men and women employed to deliver all the things wore headsets that alerted them to new pickups and dropoffs, as well as customer reviews and complaints by way of pulses—small subcutaneous jolts that were more annoying than painful. It sounded like a hellish vocation to Jerry, much worse than being an unboxer.

“Absolutely,” he said, “send one every five minutes until they get here.”

Jerry shambled to his feet without a shred of grace in a series of groans and pauses until he stood breathing like the air brakes of a semi-truck. His bare feet thudded on the tiles around the windowless room as he shuffled between leaning stacks of new boxes.

From the back of the chair bed, he pulled on the same white shirt he had worn yesterday—and likely the day before. His legs he left bare, except for the pair of saggy underpants that were at least twice as old as the shirt.

“They don’t see me below the waist anyway, do they, Angela?” he said.

“Not usually, Jerry,” the room said.

He looked at the press-sealed laundry packs by the door. They too were piling up.

“Good enough,” he said. He slid the nearest stack of unopened boxes toward the only other furniture in the white room, a glass desk the color of frozen milk made from the same material as the walls.

Sometimes his room felt like a jail cell. Other times it felt like a sanctuary. Today it just felt small and cramped with the newest towers of unopened bullshit he had awoken to find—twice as much as yesterday.

It was like an unwanted slot machine—free and endlessly spinning. Every lever pull brought a prize. Food, electronics, lotions, toys, and whatever consumables he was given by people that he never saw.

Jerry adjusted both the monocled camera lenses—one facing him, the other centered on the desk overhead—and pulled out the small stool. His ass spilled over the hard wooden top like a fleshy marshmallow pressed by a flat circular thumb.

“Angela, turn on the duel feed,” he said.

On the white glass wall in front of him, directly under one of the unblinking lenses, two side-by-side screens appeared. The left displayed an overview of the empty desk. The right reflected an obese man with deep shadows under a pair of jaundiced eyes.

Jerry blinked and the man on the screen blinked. He tried a smile, but it came out as more of a snarl when the sallow man on the video mirrored it. What Jerry saw didn’t look like him anymore—not as he had been—but in some ways, it was who he was always meant to become.

For a moment, a part of him was on the verge of screaming again. A familiar voice inside him railed that this wasn’t the way humans were supposed to live. He was nearly overcome by the urge to pick up the hard little stool and use it to shatter the plate glass walls—to escape and run until he was surrounded by trees and wild things, where no one would ever find him again, but he knew better than to listen to that voice. Had listened to it too many times before. A dozen? Twenty? Each time he had reduced the stool to splinters on the concrete blocks that lay behind the frozen milk veneer, he had gone from smashing and screaming to sweating and dreaming with a suddenness that defied explanation. Then, he would awaken here again—or in a room identical to it—with a splitting headache and another fresh crop of unopened boxes. Jerry tried another smile. This one came out slightly less insane looking than the first one.

“Angela, another dopamine tablet please,” Jerry said.

“You’ve already reached your quota for the day, Jerry. Would you like me to increase your daily allowance?”

He said yes—he always said yes.

The wall compartment sighed open and Jerry emitted his own batch of pneumatic noises as he labored again to his feet.

“Dispense a pain tablet while you’re at it. My knees and back are fucking killing me.”

“Of course, Jerry. Would you have me request a telehealth consult?”

Ignoring the question, Jerry snatched the two small pills that jingled into the metal basin revealed by the sliding of one of several seamless glass panels located throughout the room. He chewed them eagerly without waiting for the tiny water bottle that would follow and walked back to his desk.

His heart was hammering before he sat down again. The man on the screen’s pupils pushed against the colored rings of his eyes until they reached a bizarre size. Jerry threw his head back and laughed.

“Angela, turn on the filters,” he said between giggles, and the man on the screen transformed. Jerry’s waxen pallor gave way to the glowing tan of a man who had just spent a month on an island instead of years under a sunlamp. Clear eyes—the whites white—and dazzling teeth, devoid of a single brown stain, smiled back at him from a too-handsome Jerry.

He laughed again.

Whistling a songless tune, Jerry pulled the topmost box from the stack beside the stool. He centered it on an otherwise empty desktop, watching the wall screen to frame it precisely in the shot. He found the lone button on the underside of the desk, pressed it, and a small red circle blinked into existence at the bottom of each screen. It flashed slowly three times, then it stayed lit.

“Hi, folks!” the too-handsome Jerry said on the screen. “Unboxer 332 here, but my friends just call me Jerry, bringing you another consumer report as well as the best unboxing videos on the server.”

Jerry laughed as if at some inside joke. He sliced the unopened box’s brown tape expertly down the middle in a smooth swipe of the plastic blade.

“Before we get started, and see what’s on the inside, make sure to leave a like on this video and subscribe to our network, as it helps with the algorithm.”

He chortled again and paused. The screen lit up with the stacking of user comments.

“You guys are the best!” Jerry said, and—thanks to the wall-dispensed pills—he meant it.

A comment flashed over his feed.

“You’re the best, Jerry,” it read.

As he opened the top flaps of the crisp brown box, Jerry held his breath. He assumed the people watching at home did the same.

“Ooh-la-la,” he said, pulling out a lady’s pink neglige speckled with tiny black hearts. He held it over his too-wide chest. There was no way it would ever fit the real Jerry, but video Jerry made it look like it just might. He swayed playfully back and forth, blinking heavily and making kissy faces. The screen was inundated with heart emojis and the rapidly stacking replies.

“Jerry’s the silliest!” one user typed.

“Brings out your eyes,” another joked.

“Matches your purse,” said a different one—that one quickly disappeared.

“You’re the best, Jerry,” someone repeated.

Jerry cackled madly into the camera, his enormous pupils slowly shrinking as the medicine already began to wane.

“We’ll have another box for you in just a few moments, folks,” Jerry said just as there came a knock from the glass wall on the far side of the room. “Or maybe a bag—that sounds like lunch,” he leaned in conspiratorially, close to the lens. “I wonder what we have today!” He flashed a grin that disappeared, along with the red circles on both screens, with the press of a button.

The knock came again.

“Hold the hell on, for Christ’s sake!” Jerry yelled, groaning to his feet.

He double-tapped a blank section on the wall that, except for an army of greasy fingerprints, looked like every other section. A rectangular void appeared, through which a faceless pair of hands pushed several to-go containers double-wrapped in cloudy plastic bags.

“Is that curry again?!” Jerry said as his hand closed around the bags. “I fucking hate curry.”

The panel slid closed and from the other side came the same muffled words as always, though from a different voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jerry said irritably, “five stars, coming at ya.”

He framed the unopened bag in the overhead shot and delivered a vicious kick to the nearest box tower while grumbling about the smell that would stay in the room for days. He called out bitchily to Angela. Two more pills went into the tray—then his hand—then his mouth—and a violently trembling finger reached for the button again.

“God, I hate curry almost as much as the idiots that watch me eat it,” he said.

The red balls flashed three more times and his pupils slid nearly to the size of nickels.

“Hi, folks!” the too-handsome Jerry shouted from the screen. “Unboxer 332 here, but my friends just call me Jerry, bringing you another consumer report as well as the best unboxing videos on the server!”

He laughed like a maniac as tears rolled down his face.

“You guys are the best!” Jerry screamed and—thanks to the unending supply of pills—he actually meant it.