E-Cigarette Forum (ECF) post by forum member VamoVixen on 10 April 2014:
The above post is the primary incentive for the story that follows, a tale of two greedy postal workers on a graveyard shift during a thunderstorm who encounter among their parcels a strange device like nothing they've ever seen.
Here's an image depicting the mysterious item, so you can see exactly what they will be dealing with in the story. (Yes, the appearance of the box has been altered to better fit the story. Artistic license, and all.)
- - -
It's the second decade of the twenty-first century in the richest nation on Earth. The U.S. Postal Service is as highly automated as any other large-scale corporate or government entity in the world. Advanced robotic conveyors controlled by powerful computers quickly sort and process the items of physical mail sent back and forth between us and our loved ones, our acquaintances, our customers, our government. It is the system by which any object possessed by one person and desired by another moves from the former to the latter.
In this highly tuned but inevitably imperfect system, there are occasions in which a package making its way along this "postal super-highway" encounters a problem which prevents the multi-million dollar computers and robots from correctly moving it along its path from sender to recipient. When this happens, the direct involvement of a Postal Service "dropout agent" becomes necessary.
At a small postal sorting facility in Wheeling, Illinois toils such a person. His name is Max Billings. Max has been on the job for twenty-nine years. His pension is long-since vested, so he can retire at any time and continue to receive benefits and a modest but steady income without having to work another day in his life. Most in his position would feel a level of personal security, knowing that even if they'll never be rich, they will at least never be homeless or uninsured as long as they live a life of reasonable thrift.
But as fortunate as he is, intrepid Max will never be satisfied with such a life. He has aspirations beyond what most people in his position would ever consider reasonable. Max has always fancied himself a "man with potential", an opinion not yet validated by meaningful success in any endeavor, which has predictably evolved a moral ambiguity in his character. It hasn't made his wife love him any less. Maybe that's just because she hasn't seen what he might do some day. He is a man with goals rendered thus far unattainable by a lack of entrepreneurial skill and luck. But as it happens, today may just be his day.
Max is at his station standing over a small brown box, staring into it with a puzzled look on his face. His eyes are squinted and his left hand strokes the third-day stubble on his chin, as if he's trying to decipher a mysterious code printed inside the curious parcel. The box's matching top lies inverted on the far side of it.
To his left sits a larger cardboard box two-thirds full of packing peanuts with its four top flaps splayed open. Clear tape adhered to the edges of the two longer flaps has been very finely cut down its center with all the care of a surgeon. A gray-painted box cutter sporting a winged postal service logo and a shiny new blade lies on the table between the parcel and a roll of clear packaging tape mounted in a blue auto-cut dispenser. The blade has clearly not touched the cardboard of the box itself, which remains unblemished.
A quietly humming conveyor belt steadily ferries randomly spaced boxes and bulging envelopes on the other side of Max's table, as if displaying them to him for purchase. The belt's zippered seam clicks lightly as it passes over each set of rollers. The walls are staggered concrete blocks heavily painted in a light blue. The floor is gray concrete. Because the facility was rebuilt four years earlier, the room is in quite good condition compared to its scruffy predecessor. It shows long stretches of newness broken by the occasional streak or abrasion where something has been spilled, dropped or scraped.
It's just after midnight, and a thunderstorm has been increasing in intensity for the past couple of hours. Each increasingly loud crack of lightning threatens to interrupt electrical service, but so far the lights have yet to flicker.
There are only two people in the large, well-lit room, which is furnished with long tables accompanied by chairs on raised swiveling posts every fifteen feet or so. Max's conveyor runs almost the length of the left wall, disappearing after a sweeping left turn into a metal-framed portal curtained by well-worn plastic strips.
An identical conveyor belt on the opposite side of the room steadily ferries its own inanimate passengers in the same direction. The visible portion of each conveyor is half of a continuous loop, such that any package on it will infinitely reappear every couple of minutes until removed.
Each chair is positioned in front of a monitor, keyboard, mouse and handheld laser scanner, all of which are wired to a networked PC cradled in a hanging rack beneath the table. Two of the monitors have blue and white "USPS.COM" logos gliding from right to left across their screens. The rest are turned off.
The only other person in the room is Joe, seated two stations down from Max on the opposite side wall. Joe is watching his own line of packages pass by, eyeing each one suspiciously, as if he's looking for a murder suspect trying to pass by unnoticed in a crowd. He sits very still, but his impatience is belied as he nervously chews the end of a cheap white ballpoint pen, the cap for which has long since been lost. Or maybe swallowed.
Max finally breaks the quiet droning of the conveyors and the thrumming rain on the roof. "I think I've got something." Joe has already picked up a box at his station and is shaking it gently next to his ear. With a look of disappointment, he places it back onto the conveyor, convinced of its innocence, and lets it glide away.
Joe answers. "Well? What is it?"
"I don't know. Maybe you can tell me." Max has yet to look up from the item.
Joe asks the important question. "Are we rich?"
Max is still staring into the box. His voice is more terse this time, almost cynical. "I don't know. Maybe you can tell me."
Joe grunts impatiently and cuts a look to Max to see if he's being serious. He gets up with his cane and carefully lists his way over to Max's station. As he gets closer, the object in the box begins to appear to him. In three more steps he's standing next to Max. Now both are silently peering into the box, and both are lost for words.
Finally someone speaks. Joe looks at Max and asks, "What is it?"
Max slowly shakes his head. "I have no idea." He looks at Joe. "Have you ever seen anything that looks like it?
Joe shakes his head, "No." He sits down at Max's station and clicks the mouse. The screen comes out of screensaver mode and displays a desktop. Joe looks in the bottom-right corner of the screen. A red "X" over the internet connectivity icon reports the bad news. The storm has taken our their phone lines, which includes their DSL. No internet access. No way to look up anything, no way to call someone else to look up anything.
As if he doesn't believe the red "X" over the icon - which has never lied, by the way - Joe starts up Internet Explorer. "Page not found - check your connection - blah blah blah."
Joe ponders for a moment. Cell phones! He pulls his from his pocket. No bars. No service. "Dammit!", he finally reports the bad news to Max, "No internet access and no cell access on my service either. Is your cell phone still messed up?"
Max answers, "Yep. It's at the store. They're looking at it. They'll probably just replace it, but I haven't heard from them yet."
Joe asks, "You didn't get a loaner, or a burner? You know, to use in the meantime?"
Max states matter-of-factly, "I hardly ever use my phone as it is. I hardly notice not having it. Why waste money on a burner to use while it's getting fixed? The store's got my home line, and Tracey's cell. I'd get their message within a few hours, either way."
So Max and Joe are cut off from the world. Which means they're going to have to figure this thing out for themselves.
Joe smiles. "If it were bigger and little more rounded on the ends, I'd say it was a vibrator."
Max sounds impatient, as if Joe's not figuring this out for him quickly enough. "But it's not bigger and rounded on the ends. Anyway, it's got a screen on it. Like a little computer screen. Ever seen a vibrator with one of those?"
Joe ignores Max's rhetorical question, still staring at the mystery item.
Max continues, "And the strangest part? Pick it up."
Joe looks at Max, then back at the shiny object and reaches tentatively for it.
Max jerks forward with his hand raised. "No! Don't touch the contents! Pick up the box it's in."
Joe hesitates. "Did you pick it up?"
Max answers snarkily, "No, genius, it walked off my conveyer and hopped out of its shipping box."
Joe shoots a deadpan look at his sarcastic friend, then leans in, grasps the box on each end and lifts it up. "Whoa! It's light."
Max nods. "Yeah." Then he nods towards the item. "How much would you expect something like that to weigh?"
"I'd have to know what 'something like that' is first. Maybe it's just hollow, like when you buy a new flashlight."
Max shakes his head firmly. "No way. It's got buttons and a little computer screen on it. That means wires, transistors, a power supply... maybe even a small computer inside it."
Joe inquires, "So how much does it weigh?"
"Let's see." Max pushes the larger box off the metal surface built into the tabletop, then presses a button at the table's edge. The small, inclined display to the right of the metal surface lights up. '6.53 oz.'
Joe is astonished. "Six and a half ounces?!? No way! Something that big and shiny can't be six and a half ounces. And its box has gotta be a couple of ounces, too, so the 'thing' is more like four and a half ounces. If it's not hollow, then how the hell could it be that light?"
Max purses his lips and shakes his head slowly and silently. Then he has an idea. "Hey, did you ever see those documentaries about the alien spaceship that landed back in the '50s in New Mexico? The Army got involved, and covered it all up?"
Joe corrects his friend, "It was the '40s. And it didn't land, it crashed. And it was the Air Force that got involved. They eventually moved it to a facility at Groom Lake in Nevada."
Max asks, "Why have I never heard of 'Groom Lake'?
Joe, still staring at the object, "Because it got another name in the late '60s. 'Area 51'."
Max and Joe have been best friends for over twenty years. So Max knows very well that Joe is only a couple of strange news articles away from living as a hermit in a foil-lined fallout shelter wallpapered with every UFO photo and government conspiracy story ever printed.
In an attempt to protect his friend, Max tries to be dismissive of any bizarre theories that come along, but with this potential discovery he can't help but to let Joe linger on the subject.
Joe continues, "You know, the first Air Force guy on the scene said that there were these strange metal pieces from the - whatever it was that crashed - and that the metal pieces were almost weightless?"
Max and Joe look at each other silently, then back at the mysterious object.
Joe breaks the silence, "So you think this might be something from an actual alien spacecraft?"
Max shrugs, then smirks and attempts to lighten the mood. "Maybe it's a light saber."
Joe raises his eyebrows and answers half-jokingly, half-not, "You know, it does look just like a light saber."
Max smirks and shakes his head. "It's too small to be a light saber."
Joe keeps arguing its similarity to the proverbial Jedi weapon. "Maybe aliens have smaller hands than we do." He raises his hand in surrender to Max's deadpan stare. "OK, OK... so it's not a light saber, but it could be some kind of weapon. It looks pretty threatening to me." Joe turns back to the enigmatic device.
Max realizes he's forgotten something. "Hey, wait..." He reaches for the top half of the strange item's box. He holds it up in front of both of them. "It's got a name." Max reads out each letter. "V - A - M - O."
Joe pronounces it carefully. "Vay-moe? What's a vay-moe?"
Max squints. "It's in all caps, so maybe it's an acronym."
Joe tries first. "OK... Very Angry Martian Object."
Then Max, "Vanquisher of All Man's Obstacles."
Joe smiles at his own perversion, "Very Auspicious Male Organ."
Max snorts loudly. Then his face becomes serious with one more guess, "Vaporizer of Alien Military Opponents."
Joe and Max become very quiet. Apparently the same chill has traversed both of their spines.
Joe breaks the silence, "Like a ray gun of some kind? I mean a no-kidding ray gun? You think this thing could vaporize stuff?"
Max raises his eyebrows and shrugs.
Joe flashes an idea. "Let's try it on the wall."
Max furls his brow. "Uh, no!"
Joe asks, "Why not?"
Max answers sternly, making each point with a firmly raised finger. "One, they'd fire us if we blew a hole in the wall, dummy. Two, since we obviously opened the box, it'd no longer be a secret that we're disappearing the occasional parcel for profit. That's prison. Three, we don't actually know what this thing is. It might blow us up. Maybe the whole city, for all we know."
Joe shows a flash of anger on his face after being shot down so harshly. Then he changes the subject with further analysis, "So the big button would be the "fire" button, right?" He points to the smaller buttons next to the big one. "What do you think those two little buttons are for?"
Max ventures an exasperated guess, "I don't know, Joe. Stun and kill?"
Joe finds that funny and not funny at the same time. "Maybe this really is alien technology that the government secretly captured and is trying to reverse engineer."
Max is immediately dismissive. "Wait just a minute. If this is some government-procured super-secret alien device, why the hell would they send it all loosey-goosey parcel post? Wouldn't they have some Army convoy driving it around inside a super-armored truck, or maybe on one of those secret government trains?"
Joe answers, "I considered that." He puts his hands up as he frames his idea. "OK, think about it. You're the lead scientist on a top secret government project and you need to move this alien ray gun thing you found back and forth between your labs in different parts of the country as secretly as possible. Everyone's going to notice a big armored convoy plodding across the countryside, and not even an unmarked train can guarantee safety and anonymity. So instead, you put it in a flat rate box and drop it off at your local post office. No muss, no fuss. And no one would ever suspect a thing."
Max huffs dismissively, "No way. You know how often we lose crap. Or how often stuff gets broken in transit. They wouldn't risk it with something this important."
Joe nods as he overrides his friends disagreement. "They would if the thing had a tracking device in it. No matter what happens to it - falls off a truck, gets stolen, whatever - they could find it anywhere, anytime. And if it's really some alien alloy, then maybe it's indestructible. So they wouldn't have to worry about breakage either."
Joe summarizes his theory. "So it can't be broken, there's no risk of losing it, and no one would ever suspect a small package like this among the ten million we move every day. Think about it. It'd be the perfect way to get it from one secret lab to another."
Max tries to remain grounded, but panic sets in nonetheless. "Wait. What if they know we've opened it?" He steps backward, as if a few feet of distance from the object will make him safer. His voice lowers, "What if they're listening to us right now?"
Joe tries to calm his friend. "If they knew what we were doing, this place would be crawling with government agents by now. Right?" He glances at the electric clock on the opposite wall. "We've had it open for almost an hour." He limps with his cane the three steps to the window, twists the blinds open and points to the almost empty parking lot through the storm. "And see? No one in sight."
Max takes a breath and seems to relax. "OK. So what do we do next?"
The storm outside is picking up strength. Lightning is flashing through the windows more frequently, and each accompanying thunderclap shakes the building firmly.
Joe swipes his access card to open the front door of the building. With one hand on the handle of the door and the other on the handle of his cane, he stands in the doorway and looks out across the parking lot. Rain is coming down in angry sheets, as if its trying to wash away the pavement from the ground. Visibility is less than fifty feet now. He can't see his car anymore.
He takes a step back and lets go of the door handle. The door closes smoothly and silently. The magnetic lock clicks its approval.
Joe returns to Max's station, leaning steadily on his cane with each step. "Alright, let's see where this thing was going. Check the recipient."
Max complies, lifting his scanner from its cradle and aiming it at the bar code on the larger box's shipping label. Just before he pulls the trigger, he notices the label is torn partway through. It's obvious that this is why the package ended up here. An auto-scanner somewhere in the shipping sequence wasn't able to read the torn label, and therefore couldn't process the parcel through to its next waypoint. It was accordingly kicked off the line and into the dropout cue.
Max uses his free hand to hold down the half of the label that's partly curled up, momentarily making it whole again, then pulls the trigger on the scanner. One disapproving, low-pitched beep.
Joe states the obvious. "No good. Try again."
Max uses his fingers to try to align the torn part of the label more evenly. A couple more tries, and he's got it. The scanner beeps twice approvingly.
Max checks his computer monitor. "Hmm, Iowa." He points to the shipping address, and to the location on the accompanying map.
Joe speculates about this new information. "You notice how most secret government bases seem to be in the least populated parts of the country? New Mexico, Nevada, Utah?"
Max continues Joe's line of thought. "Yeah. Makes it easier to keep your secret work secret. Makes it harder for reporter-types to snoop around without getting caught. And I'll bet some of the materials they work with are dangerous. Best to keep 'em away from population centers. So a secret government lab somewhere in farm-country Iowa wouldn't be particularly unusual, would it?"
Joe nods steadily, his eyes still intent on the shipping label. "But this recipient name... No rank. No title. Just some woman in Iowa."
Max replies sarcastically, "Hello. 'Secret lab'? Therefore, secret people working there. Their whole strategy is stealth. Simple parcel, simple mailing address. No one gets suspicious. Right?"
Joe finally concedes. "Yeah. That would make sense."
Max has decided that whatever this thing is, it's too much of a risk to let anyone have it. Not the government. Not the military. Not some laboratory. And definitely not any aliens. He probes Joe's position on the matter.
"Joe, we have no way of knowing what this is, right?
Joe answers, "No, we don't."
Max continues, "So if it disappears, and it turns out to be just some miniature sex toy, or some other stupid thing, then it'll just be a problem between the recipient and the shipper. Everyone knows we lose shipments from time to time."
Joe responds with concern, "But if it really is a 'Vaporizer of Alien Military Opponents" or some other kind of extraterrestrial technology, and it has a tracking device in it, how the hell would we 'disappear' it?"
Max replies, "We'd have to destroy it."
Joe snaps back sarcastically, "Yeah, right. And how do we do that? What do we have here that can destroy an alien device? And even if we could destroy it, it'd surely set off alarms wherever it's being tracked from. Then we would have government agents storming in."
Max is out of patience. He stands over the box, shaking his head. He's tired of talking. Tired of analyzing the possibilities. Tired of wondering what the hell to do with this thing. And tired of thinking about what the government might do with it if they get their hands on it again.
He reaches into the box and gently grasps the device in his fingers. He lifts it slowly out of is container and holds it in front of him, making sure to point it away from himself and his friend. Joe doesn't protest, as if he knew Max was going to pick it up eventually.
Max is holding it in his right hand, tilting it back and forth, noticing how perfectly smooth the metal is. How light it is in his hand. Being very careful not to touch any of the buttons. Whoever made this thing really cared to make it well. It reaffirms to Max how important it must be to someone.
The storm is still raging just as strong outside. Max and Joe have been hearing and feeling thunderclaps every couple of minutes for at least an hour. It's become so predictable that they hardly even show surprise with each one.
Then, sounding much like yet another thunderclap, a loud crash blows the front door off its hinges. Max and Joe both jerk around to face it. A second later, the door is lying defeated on the floor in front of them. A cloud of smoke occludes their view into the doorway, but it's clear to both of them what's happening when three men wearing dark-colored body armor and helmets and holding assault rifles move quickly through the smoke into the room.
A female voice projects loudly from just outside the doorway, "FEDERAL AGENTS! SHOW US YOUR HANDS!"
The men settle into a "delta" formation, one of them on point in the center, the other two flanking a few feet behind on each side. They move forward as one unit directly toward Max and Joe, rifles leveled menacingly at the two postal workers. Several more armed and armored men pour into the room, obviously going for numerical superiority over whatever they may have faced inside.
Joe and Max had never really known what "shock and awe" felt like. Now they feel it. From their point of view, it's damn terrifying. They can hear another team breaking through the back door, out of view from the main room. From the back room, a male voice announces his team as federal agents, probably before seeing that there's no one in the room they just entered.
The two squads of commandos pour into the main room from the front and the back, up to where Max and Joe are, then they stop in position, all at once. There are now over a dozen rifles pointing at Max and Joe. Joe puts his hands up about shoulder-height, his cane falling by his side with a loud clap onto the floor. Adrenaline is holding him upright, the pain in his crippled leg completely transparent to him in this moment of utter fear.
Max begins to put his hands up too, but immediately realizes that he's still holding the "VAMO" in his right hand. He almost drops it to the floor. That would probably be the smartest move he could make. But Max doesn't always let himself be guided by instinct or common sense. Especially not when he feels a higher purpose is at hand.
Max pretends to overcome his fear and thrusts the device outward like a gun, his thumb hovering threateningly over the large button as he points it towards the closest armed commando. The "dangerous end" is obvious to him. It's the one that looks like the muzzle of a gun. The one where the vaporizing beam would surely shoot out of.
Max is shaking but feigns confidence, "Hold it right there! Do you know what this is? You know what it can do? If I press this button, it could take out everyone in the room! So just..."
While Max is talking, the closest agent focuses his eyes on the object in Max's hand for a quick moment - less than a second - then back up at Max's face.
The agent's slight head movement was apparently enough to convince Max he had nothing to lose. He might die, or he might save the world from an alien threat.
Max presses down hard on the large button. Whatever this strange object is, something definitely fires when Max "activates" it. He feels a sharp jolt, sees a flash of light and is sent flying backward. His body crashes to the ground in the opposite direction he was pointing the device. It must have done something.
The object is no longer in his grasp. It has left his hand and hit the floor, sliding several feet behind him. He thinks, just as his mind begins to fade, "Wow! That thing's got some serious kick."
In a couple of seconds, Max is unconscious.
Max gradually wakes up. Everything is murky at first as he blinks his eyes, like he's looking upward through water. As his focus clears, he realizes he's lying on his back facing the ceiling. But it's not the same stippled ceiling as his work place, where he was just a moment ago. It's comprised of smooth white tiles. It's different than any ceiling he's seen before.
He's lying in a bed, his upper body elevated at a slight angle. He lowers his eyes to look around the room. He sees an I.V. bag hanging to his right, a tube running from the bottom of it into a needle in the back of his right hand. A pulse-ox sensor is pinched onto his left index finger. It's wire goes to a heart monitor standing to his left, which is beeping reassuringly every second. His right shoulder is bandaged all the way around, from back to front. It hurts.
Looking back up and to the right, his eyes stop on Joe, who is sitting hunched over in a chair in the corner of the room, his face in his hands, his cane lying across his lap. Asleep, maybe?
Max tries to speak, realizing his voice is very hoarse. It crackles. "Hey. You awake?"
Joe looks up, sounding relieved, "You're conscious. Man, it's about time!" He looks at his watch. "You've been out for about the past nine hours."
Max is still moving slowly. "Is Tracey here?"
Joe answers, "She's been here the whole time, until about an hour ago. She was really falling out. I told her to go home and get some sleep, and that I'd call her when you woke up." Before he finishes his sentence, he begins stabbing at his phone with a finger, then he holds it to his ear. After a few seconds... "Tracey? Hey, he's awake." A pause. "OK, I'll tell him." He shoves his phone back into his pocket.
Max asks, "What did she say?"
Joe responds, "She said to tell you she's on her way. And that if you're not already dead when she get's here, she's going to kill you herself."
"Yeah, she's ....... I saw that coming." There are several seconds of silence. Max is just starting to remember what happened - remember what he did to try to save the world.
"Did it work? Did the device go off when I fired it?"
Joe gives his buddy the news, "No. It didn't do anything. But thankfully, the agent who shot you seems to have been well trained. It's lucky for you that he realized he didn't have to blow your brains out in order to disarm you. He hit you in the shoulder. You went down like a sack of potatoes."
Joe looks down to the floor, "Scared me to death. I thought you were dead." He looks back up at Max, "They brought you back from surgery a couple of hours ago. The bullet went right through you. No major damage. All they had to do was patch up a couple of small blood vessels and then sew you up on both sides. You're going to have a couple of cool looking scars."
Then Joe's mood changes. He furls his brow and glares at his friend, "What the hell were you trying to prove, anyway?!? You didn't see all the freakin' hardware and the small army wielding it at you? You should have just dropped the thing."
Max looks away from his disapproving friend. "I don't know what I thought. It all happened really fast. I knew they were government agents. I guess I just didn't want them to get the device back."
Both men are quiet for a couple of minutes.
Joe breaks the silence, "Oh yeah - the whole thing was a mistake on their part. The FBI rep told me they were targeting a nationwide drug trafficking ring that was operating in a USPS sorting facility, but it turned out they had bad intel. The location was wrong. They hit the wrong place."
Max takes a moment to think through this rush of information. He looks back at Joe, "So which one were they supposed to hit?"
Joe answers, "I asked, but she wouldn't tell me. Classified, of course. At least until they take it down, I guess. We'll probably see it on the news when it happens. Unless they decide to cover it up, like they do everything else."
Max ignores Joe's accusation. "So I guess they confiscated the device, didn't they?"
Joe raises his eyebrows, "No, if you can believe it. One of the agents recognized it. He said it's a "vaping device". It's like a fancy e-cigarette. He said you put a tank or something on the threaded end. The device holds a battery and sends power to the part that vaporizes the... well, whatever it does to generate the e-cig smoke."
Max is excited, "Aha! So it is a vaporizer, at least, isn't it? So we were partly right?"
Joe answers, "Yep. Just not the kind of vaporizer we thought it was. Not an alien ray gun."
Both men are a little embarrassed at the presumptions they made. Even though their presumptions didn't seem so wild at the time. They really did seem to add up, in fact, when it was all happening. Funny how things can go like that.
Joe continues with his description of the events, "Anyway, since they ended up being embarrassed about raiding the wrong sorting facility, they really didn't want to file a report about it. It was only the two of us there, and as long as we don't cause a stink about what happened, there'll be no paperwork, no arrests and no evidence to gather. Like it never happened."
"They were a little miffed at you for pointing what might have been a weapon at them. But once they realized both what the device was and that they were in entirely the wrong place, they decided to let it go. No charges against you."
Max is relieved. "That's good. That's really good. So, what about our, um....."
Joe reassures him, "We're fine." He leans toward Max and lowers his voice to a whisper, "We hadn't had an actual take all night, so no one knows anything about anything. They didn't even ask about why the 'device' was out of its box. I bet they just think it was an open container when it came to us, as in that's why it was a dropout parcel. It happens sometimes - a box pops a seam and opens up while in transit - so no one really thought it was suspicious."
Max looks relieved. "So what happened to the device?"
Joe answers, "By the time everyone was rolling out of there, the next shift had arrived. The new guy, Ricky - you know him?"
Max nods. Joe continues, "Well, Ricky puts the thing back into its box, then packages it back up in the original shipping box we left sitting at your station. He put a new label on it and sent it on its way."
Max rolls his eyes. "He's only been out of training for a few days. Watch... he'll probably route the thing to two or three other states before it finally gets to it's destination. Recipient's gonna be ......."
Joe smiles and nods in agreement.
Max tries to sit up a little, and immediately grunts in pain. "Damn! What was it that guy shot me with?"
Joes tells him, "An M-16. 5.56mm high-powered rifle round. Blew a small chunk of flesh out of your shoulder. You're just lucky he didn't go full auto on you. You probably weigh a few ounces less than you did yesterday."
Max leans back onto the bed. "Ha-ha. Very funny. So I bet they want to keep me for a day or two, Right?"
Joe nods. Max stares through the open door and into the distance a moment, then asks, "So, the thing was an e-cig, huh? You think those things really work? To quit smoking, I mean."
Joe answers, "I don't know, but the agent I talked to says his mother and his sister both quit smoking with e-cigs, so I guess they do. If all the smokers go the same route, that'll be a big, giant black eye for Big Tobacco when it's all said and done."
Max smirks, "Good! Those scumbags deserve to get vaporized."
Thank you for reading The Post Office. I hope you enjoyed it. It's just a small gift of entertainment from me to my friends here at ECF.
I consider it to be the second part of my "ECF Trilogy"...
Part 1: Hell Hath No Fury
Part 2: The Post Office
Part 3: WAR (in progress...)
I'm working on WAR now, but it may take me a while. It's fairly epic in scope. It tells the story of a galaxy on the other side of the known universe, where several dozen intelligent civilizations thrive because each of them has attained a unique artifact that gives them a unique and powerful ability or advantage. All the civilizations thrive in peace for thousands of years, until the discovery of a new artifact changes the balance of power and breeds a new and ominous threat to the very existence of all life in the galaxy.
As soon as I've finished writing, editing and proofing it, I'll post it in this forum. I can't give a target date because I really have no idea how long it'll take me to finish. I want it to be the best story it can be, but at the same time, I am getting faster at producing working, cohesive stories, so maybe it won't take as long as I imply.
I won't be happy until I can make money doing this new hobby of mine. My ECF Trilogy is my prototype - well, three prototypes, really - to prove to myself I can write well enough to "go pro" (i.e., online publishing at first, then formal publishing) by presenting each of a small set of stories to a relatively small, anonymous audience and then measuring feedback.
Thank you, again, to everyone who reads these things I create. Let me know what you think - what I could have added, left out, improved, done differently, etc. After all, I can only get better if I get criticism.
And oh yeah - keep vaping!
-- C.K. Calmer
The above post is the primary incentive for the story that follows, a tale of two greedy postal workers on a graveyard shift during a thunderstorm who encounter among their parcels a strange device like nothing they've ever seen.
Here's an image depicting the mysterious item, so you can see exactly what they will be dealing with in the story. (Yes, the appearance of the box has been altered to better fit the story. Artistic license, and all.)
- - -
THE POST OFFICE
by C.K. Calmer
Inspired by VamoVixen and other members of the E-Cigarette Forum
by C.K. Calmer
Inspired by VamoVixen and other members of the E-Cigarette Forum
Part 1
It's the second decade of the twenty-first century in the richest nation on Earth. The U.S. Postal Service is as highly automated as any other large-scale corporate or government entity in the world. Advanced robotic conveyors controlled by powerful computers quickly sort and process the items of physical mail sent back and forth between us and our loved ones, our acquaintances, our customers, our government. It is the system by which any object possessed by one person and desired by another moves from the former to the latter.
In this highly tuned but inevitably imperfect system, there are occasions in which a package making its way along this "postal super-highway" encounters a problem which prevents the multi-million dollar computers and robots from correctly moving it along its path from sender to recipient. When this happens, the direct involvement of a Postal Service "dropout agent" becomes necessary.
At a small postal sorting facility in Wheeling, Illinois toils such a person. His name is Max Billings. Max has been on the job for twenty-nine years. His pension is long-since vested, so he can retire at any time and continue to receive benefits and a modest but steady income without having to work another day in his life. Most in his position would feel a level of personal security, knowing that even if they'll never be rich, they will at least never be homeless or uninsured as long as they live a life of reasonable thrift.
But as fortunate as he is, intrepid Max will never be satisfied with such a life. He has aspirations beyond what most people in his position would ever consider reasonable. Max has always fancied himself a "man with potential", an opinion not yet validated by meaningful success in any endeavor, which has predictably evolved a moral ambiguity in his character. It hasn't made his wife love him any less. Maybe that's just because she hasn't seen what he might do some day. He is a man with goals rendered thus far unattainable by a lack of entrepreneurial skill and luck. But as it happens, today may just be his day.
Part 2
Max is at his station standing over a small brown box, staring into it with a puzzled look on his face. His eyes are squinted and his left hand strokes the third-day stubble on his chin, as if he's trying to decipher a mysterious code printed inside the curious parcel. The box's matching top lies inverted on the far side of it.
To his left sits a larger cardboard box two-thirds full of packing peanuts with its four top flaps splayed open. Clear tape adhered to the edges of the two longer flaps has been very finely cut down its center with all the care of a surgeon. A gray-painted box cutter sporting a winged postal service logo and a shiny new blade lies on the table between the parcel and a roll of clear packaging tape mounted in a blue auto-cut dispenser. The blade has clearly not touched the cardboard of the box itself, which remains unblemished.
A quietly humming conveyor belt steadily ferries randomly spaced boxes and bulging envelopes on the other side of Max's table, as if displaying them to him for purchase. The belt's zippered seam clicks lightly as it passes over each set of rollers. The walls are staggered concrete blocks heavily painted in a light blue. The floor is gray concrete. Because the facility was rebuilt four years earlier, the room is in quite good condition compared to its scruffy predecessor. It shows long stretches of newness broken by the occasional streak or abrasion where something has been spilled, dropped or scraped.
It's just after midnight, and a thunderstorm has been increasing in intensity for the past couple of hours. Each increasingly loud crack of lightning threatens to interrupt electrical service, but so far the lights have yet to flicker.
There are only two people in the large, well-lit room, which is furnished with long tables accompanied by chairs on raised swiveling posts every fifteen feet or so. Max's conveyor runs almost the length of the left wall, disappearing after a sweeping left turn into a metal-framed portal curtained by well-worn plastic strips.
An identical conveyor belt on the opposite side of the room steadily ferries its own inanimate passengers in the same direction. The visible portion of each conveyor is half of a continuous loop, such that any package on it will infinitely reappear every couple of minutes until removed.
Each chair is positioned in front of a monitor, keyboard, mouse and handheld laser scanner, all of which are wired to a networked PC cradled in a hanging rack beneath the table. Two of the monitors have blue and white "USPS.COM" logos gliding from right to left across their screens. The rest are turned off.
The only other person in the room is Joe, seated two stations down from Max on the opposite side wall. Joe is watching his own line of packages pass by, eyeing each one suspiciously, as if he's looking for a murder suspect trying to pass by unnoticed in a crowd. He sits very still, but his impatience is belied as he nervously chews the end of a cheap white ballpoint pen, the cap for which has long since been lost. Or maybe swallowed.
Max finally breaks the quiet droning of the conveyors and the thrumming rain on the roof. "I think I've got something." Joe has already picked up a box at his station and is shaking it gently next to his ear. With a look of disappointment, he places it back onto the conveyor, convinced of its innocence, and lets it glide away.
Joe answers. "Well? What is it?"
"I don't know. Maybe you can tell me." Max has yet to look up from the item.
Joe asks the important question. "Are we rich?"
Max is still staring into the box. His voice is more terse this time, almost cynical. "I don't know. Maybe you can tell me."
Joe grunts impatiently and cuts a look to Max to see if he's being serious. He gets up with his cane and carefully lists his way over to Max's station. As he gets closer, the object in the box begins to appear to him. In three more steps he's standing next to Max. Now both are silently peering into the box, and both are lost for words.
Part 3
Finally someone speaks. Joe looks at Max and asks, "What is it?"
Max slowly shakes his head. "I have no idea." He looks at Joe. "Have you ever seen anything that looks like it?
Joe shakes his head, "No." He sits down at Max's station and clicks the mouse. The screen comes out of screensaver mode and displays a desktop. Joe looks in the bottom-right corner of the screen. A red "X" over the internet connectivity icon reports the bad news. The storm has taken our their phone lines, which includes their DSL. No internet access. No way to look up anything, no way to call someone else to look up anything.
As if he doesn't believe the red "X" over the icon - which has never lied, by the way - Joe starts up Internet Explorer. "Page not found - check your connection - blah blah blah."
Joe ponders for a moment. Cell phones! He pulls his from his pocket. No bars. No service. "Dammit!", he finally reports the bad news to Max, "No internet access and no cell access on my service either. Is your cell phone still messed up?"
Max answers, "Yep. It's at the store. They're looking at it. They'll probably just replace it, but I haven't heard from them yet."
Joe asks, "You didn't get a loaner, or a burner? You know, to use in the meantime?"
Max states matter-of-factly, "I hardly ever use my phone as it is. I hardly notice not having it. Why waste money on a burner to use while it's getting fixed? The store's got my home line, and Tracey's cell. I'd get their message within a few hours, either way."
So Max and Joe are cut off from the world. Which means they're going to have to figure this thing out for themselves.
Joe smiles. "If it were bigger and little more rounded on the ends, I'd say it was a vibrator."
Max sounds impatient, as if Joe's not figuring this out for him quickly enough. "But it's not bigger and rounded on the ends. Anyway, it's got a screen on it. Like a little computer screen. Ever seen a vibrator with one of those?"
Joe ignores Max's rhetorical question, still staring at the mystery item.
Max continues, "And the strangest part? Pick it up."
Joe looks at Max, then back at the shiny object and reaches tentatively for it.
Max jerks forward with his hand raised. "No! Don't touch the contents! Pick up the box it's in."
Joe hesitates. "Did you pick it up?"
Max answers snarkily, "No, genius, it walked off my conveyer and hopped out of its shipping box."
Joe shoots a deadpan look at his sarcastic friend, then leans in, grasps the box on each end and lifts it up. "Whoa! It's light."
Max nods. "Yeah." Then he nods towards the item. "How much would you expect something like that to weigh?"
"I'd have to know what 'something like that' is first. Maybe it's just hollow, like when you buy a new flashlight."
Max shakes his head firmly. "No way. It's got buttons and a little computer screen on it. That means wires, transistors, a power supply... maybe even a small computer inside it."
Joe inquires, "So how much does it weigh?"
"Let's see." Max pushes the larger box off the metal surface built into the tabletop, then presses a button at the table's edge. The small, inclined display to the right of the metal surface lights up. '6.53 oz.'
Joe is astonished. "Six and a half ounces?!? No way! Something that big and shiny can't be six and a half ounces. And its box has gotta be a couple of ounces, too, so the 'thing' is more like four and a half ounces. If it's not hollow, then how the hell could it be that light?"
Max purses his lips and shakes his head slowly and silently. Then he has an idea. "Hey, did you ever see those documentaries about the alien spaceship that landed back in the '50s in New Mexico? The Army got involved, and covered it all up?"
Joe corrects his friend, "It was the '40s. And it didn't land, it crashed. And it was the Air Force that got involved. They eventually moved it to a facility at Groom Lake in Nevada."
Max asks, "Why have I never heard of 'Groom Lake'?
Joe, still staring at the object, "Because it got another name in the late '60s. 'Area 51'."
Max and Joe have been best friends for over twenty years. So Max knows very well that Joe is only a couple of strange news articles away from living as a hermit in a foil-lined fallout shelter wallpapered with every UFO photo and government conspiracy story ever printed.
In an attempt to protect his friend, Max tries to be dismissive of any bizarre theories that come along, but with this potential discovery he can't help but to let Joe linger on the subject.
Joe continues, "You know, the first Air Force guy on the scene said that there were these strange metal pieces from the - whatever it was that crashed - and that the metal pieces were almost weightless?"
Max and Joe look at each other silently, then back at the mysterious object.
Part 4
Joe breaks the silence, "So you think this might be something from an actual alien spacecraft?"
Max shrugs, then smirks and attempts to lighten the mood. "Maybe it's a light saber."
Joe raises his eyebrows and answers half-jokingly, half-not, "You know, it does look just like a light saber."
Max smirks and shakes his head. "It's too small to be a light saber."
Joe keeps arguing its similarity to the proverbial Jedi weapon. "Maybe aliens have smaller hands than we do." He raises his hand in surrender to Max's deadpan stare. "OK, OK... so it's not a light saber, but it could be some kind of weapon. It looks pretty threatening to me." Joe turns back to the enigmatic device.
Max realizes he's forgotten something. "Hey, wait..." He reaches for the top half of the strange item's box. He holds it up in front of both of them. "It's got a name." Max reads out each letter. "V - A - M - O."
Joe pronounces it carefully. "Vay-moe? What's a vay-moe?"
Max squints. "It's in all caps, so maybe it's an acronym."
Joe tries first. "OK... Very Angry Martian Object."
Then Max, "Vanquisher of All Man's Obstacles."
Joe smiles at his own perversion, "Very Auspicious Male Organ."
Max snorts loudly. Then his face becomes serious with one more guess, "Vaporizer of Alien Military Opponents."
Joe and Max become very quiet. Apparently the same chill has traversed both of their spines.
Joe breaks the silence, "Like a ray gun of some kind? I mean a no-kidding ray gun? You think this thing could vaporize stuff?"
Max raises his eyebrows and shrugs.
Joe flashes an idea. "Let's try it on the wall."
Max furls his brow. "Uh, no!"
Joe asks, "Why not?"
Max answers sternly, making each point with a firmly raised finger. "One, they'd fire us if we blew a hole in the wall, dummy. Two, since we obviously opened the box, it'd no longer be a secret that we're disappearing the occasional parcel for profit. That's prison. Three, we don't actually know what this thing is. It might blow us up. Maybe the whole city, for all we know."
Joe shows a flash of anger on his face after being shot down so harshly. Then he changes the subject with further analysis, "So the big button would be the "fire" button, right?" He points to the smaller buttons next to the big one. "What do you think those two little buttons are for?"
Max ventures an exasperated guess, "I don't know, Joe. Stun and kill?"
Joe finds that funny and not funny at the same time. "Maybe this really is alien technology that the government secretly captured and is trying to reverse engineer."
Max is immediately dismissive. "Wait just a minute. If this is some government-procured super-secret alien device, why the hell would they send it all loosey-goosey parcel post? Wouldn't they have some Army convoy driving it around inside a super-armored truck, or maybe on one of those secret government trains?"
Joe answers, "I considered that." He puts his hands up as he frames his idea. "OK, think about it. You're the lead scientist on a top secret government project and you need to move this alien ray gun thing you found back and forth between your labs in different parts of the country as secretly as possible. Everyone's going to notice a big armored convoy plodding across the countryside, and not even an unmarked train can guarantee safety and anonymity. So instead, you put it in a flat rate box and drop it off at your local post office. No muss, no fuss. And no one would ever suspect a thing."
Max huffs dismissively, "No way. You know how often we lose crap. Or how often stuff gets broken in transit. They wouldn't risk it with something this important."
Joe nods as he overrides his friends disagreement. "They would if the thing had a tracking device in it. No matter what happens to it - falls off a truck, gets stolen, whatever - they could find it anywhere, anytime. And if it's really some alien alloy, then maybe it's indestructible. So they wouldn't have to worry about breakage either."
Joe summarizes his theory. "So it can't be broken, there's no risk of losing it, and no one would ever suspect a small package like this among the ten million we move every day. Think about it. It'd be the perfect way to get it from one secret lab to another."
Max tries to remain grounded, but panic sets in nonetheless. "Wait. What if they know we've opened it?" He steps backward, as if a few feet of distance from the object will make him safer. His voice lowers, "What if they're listening to us right now?"
Joe tries to calm his friend. "If they knew what we were doing, this place would be crawling with government agents by now. Right?" He glances at the electric clock on the opposite wall. "We've had it open for almost an hour." He limps with his cane the three steps to the window, twists the blinds open and points to the almost empty parking lot through the storm. "And see? No one in sight."
Max takes a breath and seems to relax. "OK. So what do we do next?"
Part 5
The storm outside is picking up strength. Lightning is flashing through the windows more frequently, and each accompanying thunderclap shakes the building firmly.
Joe swipes his access card to open the front door of the building. With one hand on the handle of the door and the other on the handle of his cane, he stands in the doorway and looks out across the parking lot. Rain is coming down in angry sheets, as if its trying to wash away the pavement from the ground. Visibility is less than fifty feet now. He can't see his car anymore.
He takes a step back and lets go of the door handle. The door closes smoothly and silently. The magnetic lock clicks its approval.
Joe returns to Max's station, leaning steadily on his cane with each step. "Alright, let's see where this thing was going. Check the recipient."
Max complies, lifting his scanner from its cradle and aiming it at the bar code on the larger box's shipping label. Just before he pulls the trigger, he notices the label is torn partway through. It's obvious that this is why the package ended up here. An auto-scanner somewhere in the shipping sequence wasn't able to read the torn label, and therefore couldn't process the parcel through to its next waypoint. It was accordingly kicked off the line and into the dropout cue.
Max uses his free hand to hold down the half of the label that's partly curled up, momentarily making it whole again, then pulls the trigger on the scanner. One disapproving, low-pitched beep.
Joe states the obvious. "No good. Try again."
Max uses his fingers to try to align the torn part of the label more evenly. A couple more tries, and he's got it. The scanner beeps twice approvingly.
Max checks his computer monitor. "Hmm, Iowa." He points to the shipping address, and to the location on the accompanying map.
Joe speculates about this new information. "You notice how most secret government bases seem to be in the least populated parts of the country? New Mexico, Nevada, Utah?"
Max continues Joe's line of thought. "Yeah. Makes it easier to keep your secret work secret. Makes it harder for reporter-types to snoop around without getting caught. And I'll bet some of the materials they work with are dangerous. Best to keep 'em away from population centers. So a secret government lab somewhere in farm-country Iowa wouldn't be particularly unusual, would it?"
Joe nods steadily, his eyes still intent on the shipping label. "But this recipient name... No rank. No title. Just some woman in Iowa."
Max replies sarcastically, "Hello. 'Secret lab'? Therefore, secret people working there. Their whole strategy is stealth. Simple parcel, simple mailing address. No one gets suspicious. Right?"
Joe finally concedes. "Yeah. That would make sense."
Part 6
Max has decided that whatever this thing is, it's too much of a risk to let anyone have it. Not the government. Not the military. Not some laboratory. And definitely not any aliens. He probes Joe's position on the matter.
"Joe, we have no way of knowing what this is, right?
Joe answers, "No, we don't."
Max continues, "So if it disappears, and it turns out to be just some miniature sex toy, or some other stupid thing, then it'll just be a problem between the recipient and the shipper. Everyone knows we lose shipments from time to time."
Joe responds with concern, "But if it really is a 'Vaporizer of Alien Military Opponents" or some other kind of extraterrestrial technology, and it has a tracking device in it, how the hell would we 'disappear' it?"
Max replies, "We'd have to destroy it."
Joe snaps back sarcastically, "Yeah, right. And how do we do that? What do we have here that can destroy an alien device? And even if we could destroy it, it'd surely set off alarms wherever it's being tracked from. Then we would have government agents storming in."
Max is out of patience. He stands over the box, shaking his head. He's tired of talking. Tired of analyzing the possibilities. Tired of wondering what the hell to do with this thing. And tired of thinking about what the government might do with it if they get their hands on it again.
He reaches into the box and gently grasps the device in his fingers. He lifts it slowly out of is container and holds it in front of him, making sure to point it away from himself and his friend. Joe doesn't protest, as if he knew Max was going to pick it up eventually.
Max is holding it in his right hand, tilting it back and forth, noticing how perfectly smooth the metal is. How light it is in his hand. Being very careful not to touch any of the buttons. Whoever made this thing really cared to make it well. It reaffirms to Max how important it must be to someone.
Part 7
The storm is still raging just as strong outside. Max and Joe have been hearing and feeling thunderclaps every couple of minutes for at least an hour. It's become so predictable that they hardly even show surprise with each one.
Then, sounding much like yet another thunderclap, a loud crash blows the front door off its hinges. Max and Joe both jerk around to face it. A second later, the door is lying defeated on the floor in front of them. A cloud of smoke occludes their view into the doorway, but it's clear to both of them what's happening when three men wearing dark-colored body armor and helmets and holding assault rifles move quickly through the smoke into the room.
A female voice projects loudly from just outside the doorway, "FEDERAL AGENTS! SHOW US YOUR HANDS!"
The men settle into a "delta" formation, one of them on point in the center, the other two flanking a few feet behind on each side. They move forward as one unit directly toward Max and Joe, rifles leveled menacingly at the two postal workers. Several more armed and armored men pour into the room, obviously going for numerical superiority over whatever they may have faced inside.
Joe and Max had never really known what "shock and awe" felt like. Now they feel it. From their point of view, it's damn terrifying. They can hear another team breaking through the back door, out of view from the main room. From the back room, a male voice announces his team as federal agents, probably before seeing that there's no one in the room they just entered.
The two squads of commandos pour into the main room from the front and the back, up to where Max and Joe are, then they stop in position, all at once. There are now over a dozen rifles pointing at Max and Joe. Joe puts his hands up about shoulder-height, his cane falling by his side with a loud clap onto the floor. Adrenaline is holding him upright, the pain in his crippled leg completely transparent to him in this moment of utter fear.
Max begins to put his hands up too, but immediately realizes that he's still holding the "VAMO" in his right hand. He almost drops it to the floor. That would probably be the smartest move he could make. But Max doesn't always let himself be guided by instinct or common sense. Especially not when he feels a higher purpose is at hand.
Max pretends to overcome his fear and thrusts the device outward like a gun, his thumb hovering threateningly over the large button as he points it towards the closest armed commando. The "dangerous end" is obvious to him. It's the one that looks like the muzzle of a gun. The one where the vaporizing beam would surely shoot out of.
Max is shaking but feigns confidence, "Hold it right there! Do you know what this is? You know what it can do? If I press this button, it could take out everyone in the room! So just..."
While Max is talking, the closest agent focuses his eyes on the object in Max's hand for a quick moment - less than a second - then back up at Max's face.
The agent's slight head movement was apparently enough to convince Max he had nothing to lose. He might die, or he might save the world from an alien threat.
Max presses down hard on the large button. Whatever this strange object is, something definitely fires when Max "activates" it. He feels a sharp jolt, sees a flash of light and is sent flying backward. His body crashes to the ground in the opposite direction he was pointing the device. It must have done something.
The object is no longer in his grasp. It has left his hand and hit the floor, sliding several feet behind him. He thinks, just as his mind begins to fade, "Wow! That thing's got some serious kick."
In a couple of seconds, Max is unconscious.
Part 8
Max gradually wakes up. Everything is murky at first as he blinks his eyes, like he's looking upward through water. As his focus clears, he realizes he's lying on his back facing the ceiling. But it's not the same stippled ceiling as his work place, where he was just a moment ago. It's comprised of smooth white tiles. It's different than any ceiling he's seen before.
He's lying in a bed, his upper body elevated at a slight angle. He lowers his eyes to look around the room. He sees an I.V. bag hanging to his right, a tube running from the bottom of it into a needle in the back of his right hand. A pulse-ox sensor is pinched onto his left index finger. It's wire goes to a heart monitor standing to his left, which is beeping reassuringly every second. His right shoulder is bandaged all the way around, from back to front. It hurts.
Looking back up and to the right, his eyes stop on Joe, who is sitting hunched over in a chair in the corner of the room, his face in his hands, his cane lying across his lap. Asleep, maybe?
Max tries to speak, realizing his voice is very hoarse. It crackles. "Hey. You awake?"
Joe looks up, sounding relieved, "You're conscious. Man, it's about time!" He looks at his watch. "You've been out for about the past nine hours."
Max is still moving slowly. "Is Tracey here?"
Joe answers, "She's been here the whole time, until about an hour ago. She was really falling out. I told her to go home and get some sleep, and that I'd call her when you woke up." Before he finishes his sentence, he begins stabbing at his phone with a finger, then he holds it to his ear. After a few seconds... "Tracey? Hey, he's awake." A pause. "OK, I'll tell him." He shoves his phone back into his pocket.
Max asks, "What did she say?"
Joe responds, "She said to tell you she's on her way. And that if you're not already dead when she get's here, she's going to kill you herself."
"Yeah, she's ....... I saw that coming." There are several seconds of silence. Max is just starting to remember what happened - remember what he did to try to save the world.
"Did it work? Did the device go off when I fired it?"
Joe gives his buddy the news, "No. It didn't do anything. But thankfully, the agent who shot you seems to have been well trained. It's lucky for you that he realized he didn't have to blow your brains out in order to disarm you. He hit you in the shoulder. You went down like a sack of potatoes."
Joe looks down to the floor, "Scared me to death. I thought you were dead." He looks back up at Max, "They brought you back from surgery a couple of hours ago. The bullet went right through you. No major damage. All they had to do was patch up a couple of small blood vessels and then sew you up on both sides. You're going to have a couple of cool looking scars."
Then Joe's mood changes. He furls his brow and glares at his friend, "What the hell were you trying to prove, anyway?!? You didn't see all the freakin' hardware and the small army wielding it at you? You should have just dropped the thing."
Max looks away from his disapproving friend. "I don't know what I thought. It all happened really fast. I knew they were government agents. I guess I just didn't want them to get the device back."
Both men are quiet for a couple of minutes.
Part 9
Joe breaks the silence, "Oh yeah - the whole thing was a mistake on their part. The FBI rep told me they were targeting a nationwide drug trafficking ring that was operating in a USPS sorting facility, but it turned out they had bad intel. The location was wrong. They hit the wrong place."
Max takes a moment to think through this rush of information. He looks back at Joe, "So which one were they supposed to hit?"
Joe answers, "I asked, but she wouldn't tell me. Classified, of course. At least until they take it down, I guess. We'll probably see it on the news when it happens. Unless they decide to cover it up, like they do everything else."
Max ignores Joe's accusation. "So I guess they confiscated the device, didn't they?"
Joe raises his eyebrows, "No, if you can believe it. One of the agents recognized it. He said it's a "vaping device". It's like a fancy e-cigarette. He said you put a tank or something on the threaded end. The device holds a battery and sends power to the part that vaporizes the... well, whatever it does to generate the e-cig smoke."
Max is excited, "Aha! So it is a vaporizer, at least, isn't it? So we were partly right?"
Joe answers, "Yep. Just not the kind of vaporizer we thought it was. Not an alien ray gun."
Both men are a little embarrassed at the presumptions they made. Even though their presumptions didn't seem so wild at the time. They really did seem to add up, in fact, when it was all happening. Funny how things can go like that.
Joe continues with his description of the events, "Anyway, since they ended up being embarrassed about raiding the wrong sorting facility, they really didn't want to file a report about it. It was only the two of us there, and as long as we don't cause a stink about what happened, there'll be no paperwork, no arrests and no evidence to gather. Like it never happened."
"They were a little miffed at you for pointing what might have been a weapon at them. But once they realized both what the device was and that they were in entirely the wrong place, they decided to let it go. No charges against you."
Max is relieved. "That's good. That's really good. So, what about our, um....."
Joe reassures him, "We're fine." He leans toward Max and lowers his voice to a whisper, "We hadn't had an actual take all night, so no one knows anything about anything. They didn't even ask about why the 'device' was out of its box. I bet they just think it was an open container when it came to us, as in that's why it was a dropout parcel. It happens sometimes - a box pops a seam and opens up while in transit - so no one really thought it was suspicious."
Max looks relieved. "So what happened to the device?"
Joe answers, "By the time everyone was rolling out of there, the next shift had arrived. The new guy, Ricky - you know him?"
Max nods. Joe continues, "Well, Ricky puts the thing back into its box, then packages it back up in the original shipping box we left sitting at your station. He put a new label on it and sent it on its way."
Max rolls his eyes. "He's only been out of training for a few days. Watch... he'll probably route the thing to two or three other states before it finally gets to it's destination. Recipient's gonna be ......."
Joe smiles and nods in agreement.
Max tries to sit up a little, and immediately grunts in pain. "Damn! What was it that guy shot me with?"
Joes tells him, "An M-16. 5.56mm high-powered rifle round. Blew a small chunk of flesh out of your shoulder. You're just lucky he didn't go full auto on you. You probably weigh a few ounces less than you did yesterday."
Max leans back onto the bed. "Ha-ha. Very funny. So I bet they want to keep me for a day or two, Right?"
Joe nods. Max stares through the open door and into the distance a moment, then asks, "So, the thing was an e-cig, huh? You think those things really work? To quit smoking, I mean."
Joe answers, "I don't know, but the agent I talked to says his mother and his sister both quit smoking with e-cigs, so I guess they do. If all the smokers go the same route, that'll be a big, giant black eye for Big Tobacco when it's all said and done."
Max smirks, "Good! Those scumbags deserve to get vaporized."
The End
- - -
Afterword
- - -
Afterword
Thank you for reading The Post Office. I hope you enjoyed it. It's just a small gift of entertainment from me to my friends here at ECF.
I consider it to be the second part of my "ECF Trilogy"...
Part 1: Hell Hath No Fury
Part 2: The Post Office
Part 3: WAR (in progress...)
I'm working on WAR now, but it may take me a while. It's fairly epic in scope. It tells the story of a galaxy on the other side of the known universe, where several dozen intelligent civilizations thrive because each of them has attained a unique artifact that gives them a unique and powerful ability or advantage. All the civilizations thrive in peace for thousands of years, until the discovery of a new artifact changes the balance of power and breeds a new and ominous threat to the very existence of all life in the galaxy.
As soon as I've finished writing, editing and proofing it, I'll post it in this forum. I can't give a target date because I really have no idea how long it'll take me to finish. I want it to be the best story it can be, but at the same time, I am getting faster at producing working, cohesive stories, so maybe it won't take as long as I imply.
I won't be happy until I can make money doing this new hobby of mine. My ECF Trilogy is my prototype - well, three prototypes, really - to prove to myself I can write well enough to "go pro" (i.e., online publishing at first, then formal publishing) by presenting each of a small set of stories to a relatively small, anonymous audience and then measuring feedback.
Thank you, again, to everyone who reads these things I create. Let me know what you think - what I could have added, left out, improved, done differently, etc. After all, I can only get better if I get criticism.
And oh yeah - keep vaping!
-- C.K. Calmer
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