by Joshua David
Richard always had trouble with the smell of Vick’s office. He didn’t know exactly what it was, perhaps it was just the smell of wet dust, or perhaps it was the way Vick’s cigars permeated the old asbestos laden walls, or the dingy mildew that grew between the grout lines of the old black slate tiles. Whatever it was that contributed to it, the entire office had the lingering scent of freshly picked boogers and it always made Richard’s stomach upset to be in there too long.
Victor stood up and looked out his studio office window at the belt workers down below. The parcel trucks were backing in and within minutes the belt would have to start. Handlers in handling crews would cull the boxes from the giant semis they arrived on like miners excavating a steel cave. Then the belt would carry the packages down to the sorters who would distribute the packages on either side of the belt depending on their final delivery location. Richard was a loader, the last stage of the sorting process. The loaders would eye individual packages coming down the belt and pull the ones that went onto their trucks. Richard was good with numbers and good at quickly sorting numbers and letters in order in his trucks. Therefore he got two trucks, one for the highway that ran through the county with addresses ranging from 501 to 18796, the other truck was for the mall, which Richard knew would all show up as 2223 Post Oak, but would all carry an additional suite number that had to be sorted by a secondary method that would correspond to their actual storefront location in the mall. He knew that his driver ‘Sunshine’ as the crews called him would want them to be sorted differently if the stores had rear access hallways which would make delivery quicker and more efficient. Richard knew this and he knew that Tucker most likely did not. No, Tucker was probably feeling the wrath of old Sunshine at this point.
Victor lit his cigar and stoked it in short powerful breaths till it glowed a bright amberous red at the end. He stared out the window.
“You can’t smoke in here…” Richard said. "It’s against policy."
Victor shot an evil eye Richards direction. “You really feel comfortable talking to me about policy right now Rich? You really think that’s in your best interest?” Victor stared at Richard and Richard could only stare defiantly back at Victor’s cigar. “You can take it up with the Union then. I smoke when I’m having a crummy day, Richard, and right now I’m having a series of crummy days that are proving to be a crummy week. I don’t need you to talk to me about what’s against policy when we’re having a save your skin conversation!”
He looked back out the window. The big red clock above the belt said 2:42 in large digital numbers.
“Ultimately Rich, you’re a Union man, same as me, and I can’t go firing you for having issues. Everyone’s got issues too Richard. Promise me you’ll work at cleaning yours up so we don’t find ourselves in this situation again. Kapeesh?”
Richard nodded.
2:43 AM
“Now get out there and tell Tucker that Vick said it wasn’t working out on mornings. Tell him to go home and come back at evening shift. I’ll give you your mornings back." Vick turned back towards Richard and pointed a fat stubby finger at him. "Show me you can be relied on again and I’ll put you back on evenings too. Like I say, I can’t fire you for having outside issues, but just make sure you don’t give me any reasons that I can fire you. You got it?”
2:44 AM
Richard nodded again and stood up to leave. As he did, he noticed two men in the hallway outside of Vick’s office. How they had gotten there, Richard, didn’t know, but they were there waiting when he left. They were tall and thinly built, and both wore matching grey suits. One carried a black briefcase and the other carried a manila folder with papers sticking out of it. Richard walked out of the office just as the men came towards the door. He tried his best not to look them in the eyes as he passed and instead stared vacantly at the wall behind them. He feared that eye contact would reveal something that he would not want to see. He didn’t want to have another episode, not here, not at work. He knew he was on a thin string with Vick, and would maybe even be on a probationary status until Vick knew he could be trusted again.
The men didn’t say anything either, and for all he knew, they didn’t look his way as he passed, they simply silently slipped into Vick’s office and shut the door behind Richard. He turned and stared at the door for a few seconds debating on whether or not to put his ear to it and listen, but shook it off again as another bad idea. He didn’t want to be caught snooping and acting suspicious on his first day back. Whatever they were talking with Vick about was their business.
He walked down the metal stairs to the lower warehouse and to the walkway that ran along the conveyor belt. About halfway down the belt, he turned and looked back up at Vick’s office.
He instantly knew that he shouldn't have looked. The hairs of his neck stood upright and a chill went up his spine as he saw that one of the grey suited men were looking down at him from the office window. The thin man’s eyes were dark and swirly black, the expression on his face was placid and emotionless. He stared past Richard’s eyes and into his soul. Richard shrieked girlishly and turned away in fright, only to see the other loaders staring at him as if he were insane.
“Look for yourselves!” He shouted and pointed up towards Vick’s window, but as soon as he did, the blinds slid shut and their vision was blocked. They stared back at Richard. Some scoffed and he heard someone ask him what he was on.
Then the Big Red clock ticked over to 2:45, the buzzer sounded and the old beast of a belt came to life. Richard shook his head, and closed his eyes, and tried to forget what he had seen. It isn’t real… he thought. He tried to channel the feeling he always had after leaving Doctor Hays’ office. "They aren’t real…"
But in the eight years that Richard had worked at the shipping warehouse, those blinds had never once been closed. Richard, try as he did, could not shake the feeling that something bad was brewing. He needed to talk to Steven.
“Vick says to go home!” Richard said to Tucker as he got close to his trucks.
By the time he stepped into the mall truck, Tucker was already loading packages.
“Hey Tucker, Vick says to go on home, I got my shift covered again.”
“What?! Just go home, just like that?! This is my shift now, you flaked out remember. These are my trucks to load. You go home Richard!”
“You’re keeping the night shift, but I get my morning shift back. Victor said so, now if you have a problem with it, why don’t you go talk to him.”
“Screw you Rich!,” Tucker yelled, his voice sounding tinny from inside the almost empty truck. “I’ll go home and just wait for you to mess up again. It won’t be long. I’ll talk to Vick again, but I’ll wait till it’s him calling me begging me to come back on mornings.”
“I’ve got it under control, plus I know these trucks better than you do, and Vick knows that. That’s why I’m back and why I’m telling you that Vick says go home now, I’ve got it.”
“Yea, I might not know these trucks as good as you yet,” Tucker protested. “And Sunshine might hate my guts, but you’ve had eight years on them. I figure in eight years I’ll know them as good as you, and I won’t mess up a good thing once I have it.”
Tucker stormed out of the truck. Richard knew to just get out of the way or he’d be run over. Then he watched Tucker snag his coat from the break room and leave through the side door of the warehouse.
He began pulling items off the belt as they came down the line from the mouths of the huge supply trucks. One or two for the Mall truck, then one or two for the Highway truck. He would snag them from the belt run in and load them onto the appropriate shelf in the appropriate order. He always had to click the small parcel counter at the rear of the truck as he exited.
Generally speaking the Mall truck got more packages, mostly small boxes that could load uniformly onto the shelves, and sturdy cardboard shipping envelopes that barely took up any space at all. Boxes for jewelry and CDs and clothing. The Highway truck typically
had about one hundred packages less than the mall truck but because there were more industrial and heavy commercial businesses to deliver to, the Highway truck received larger boxes.
About twice a shift, Richard would have to push the large red button on the belt next to his station to stop the belt. Another loud buzzer would go off to let Vick know upstairs that the belt had been stopped. Most of the time, it would be so that Richard could get help with a larger package, some odd piece of machinery, or a pipeline valve that weighed well over a hundred pounds.
Every time the buzzer went off, Richard could look up at Vick’s window and see the man looking down at them, analyzing why business had halted. Today, however, the blinds were closed and no one could see what was going on with Vick and his grey visitors.
Eventually, due to the shifting weights within the trucks, Richard would have to step down into the Highway truck, while continuing to step up into the Mall truck. It was a job easily overlooked by anyone in the outside world, but a job that required strength, endurance, good hand eye coordination, logic and reasoning skills, mathematics, accuracy and the ability to work well under pressure. Richard was good at it, and ultimately he enjoyed it. Additionally there were very odd hours being worked.
In order to maximize the driver’s window for delivery typically 8am to 5pm, the loading process had to be completed before so that the drivers could be ready to roll out by 7:50 or so. That’s why the morning shift began at 2:45 in the morning and went till about 7:45 which would really equate to only part time hours, thus there was the coveted evening shift spots which would help a loader reach a full time hour status. Now that they were entering the holiday season, a loader on both mornings and evenings could expect upwards of 50 to 60 hours a week. The only problem was that there were less spots on evenings so not everyone could have an evening shift. The drivers reffered to this as making the Dream Team.
Before he started having the reoccurring nightmares and the stints of insomnia juxtaposed with periods of missing time, Richard had been a part of the Dream Team. His mall truck alone would pull incredible package numbers during the holidays. So much so that they sometimes loaded a small tagalong trailer that the Sunshine, the driver, could pull behind him down to the mall.
So far, Tucker had only been on evenings so he could sleep in and go to college during the day. He was Vick’s vacation cover man. If one of the primary loaders would be gone for any length of time, Vick would call Tucker in for a temporary morning shift, but he would eventually be put back on evenings only. Vick and Tucker must have reached some sort of agreement in Richard’s absence though, Tucker had seemed pretty upset that Rich was back.
He shook that out of his mind though and continued to work.
The belt stopped only twice that shift, once so that Jamie could offload a large part to a diesel engine for a marine yacht. His truck would deliver around the loop on the outskirts of town. It delivered to the country club, golf course and marina. The driver was Chester Smith, an old retired military type that everyone called Sarge. Sarge was the oldest driver in the fleet and thus had seniority to choose the cushiest route.
The only other stop was for Richard when he got smacked with four huge boxes that were going on the mall truck. Sunshine would not be happy. He hated days when he was loaded with large deliveries. It generally meant that he would have to change up his delivery rotation and visit some other store first. When it came to walking clear across the mall in some instances, it could really throw a driver off.
It was almost the end of his shift when he saw the brown box come down the belt. It was about the size of a shoe box. When the conveyor brought it closer, he looked at the label and saw that it was illegible. The printer that had printed it must’ve been low on ink. Richard couldn’t tell if it was meant for one of his trucks or should be left to go further down the line.
He picked it off the belt and examined it closer. No identifying marks or logos, just a nondescript brown box with a big white label that had unreadable markings on it. Richard stuck it under the belt by his station. It would have to go to the undeliverables room when the shift was over. He continued to examine and pull packages off the belt as needed. Each time, he would load them on the appropriate truck, in the appropriate spot and then click the package counter on the way back out.
In the end, his two drivers showed up and he ended his shift with a few packages for a tobacco shop in the mall. In total he had 314 on the mall truck and 196 on the highway truck, but still the highway truck sat lower. He checked out with both drivers.
“Great to see you back Richard,” Frankie, the highway truck driver had said.
“Yea! That guy from the night shift should be fired, or put back on grabbing out of the supply trucks.” John, aka Sunshine commented. “He’s no good as a loader, I know that.”
“It’s good to be back guys,” Richard responded and wished them well with their deliveries before going up the belt to get his things. He got his coat from the hook at the front and then clocked out. Then he went into the break room to see if anyone had brought in doughnuts or breakfast tacos.
He was eating a plain glazed doughnut when he remembered his undeliverable. He had to get it into the system as an undeliverable before the office personnel showed up at 8:00 so that they could trace the shipping number back to the source location and get a new label printed.
He hurriedly walked back down the belt and picked up the undeliverable. Then he took it back to the undeliverables room and set it on the counter. He took a form from the sticky pad that sat on the counter and began filling out a short report on what happened and why he felt that the package could not be sorted and delivered in its current condition.
One of the questions asked if he could tell if there were any additional labels on the box that could contain identifying information about the package. He was about to check no, when he noticed something written in permanent marker underneath the white label. He considered whether a case like this gave cause to damage the illegible label in order to possibly help identify the source information on the package itself. He thought for a moment, and decided that he would pull back the label ever so slightly until he could tell wether the permanent marker writing would help him or not.
If it did, he could copy it down and add it to his report, if it didn’t, he could simply check no and push the label back over.
He pulled up on the top left corner of the label it came peeling away leaving the sticky smudgy residue of a cheap stick on adhesive. This effort revealed a TH… he now really thought that it would prove to be an originating address which had simply been covered by the more standard printed label.
He peeled back further, damaging the white label a bit in the process, but eventually getting the bulk of the printed label off with a few minor rips and tears in the process. It was definitely in good enough condition still to prove that he had had a reason to bring the package back in the first place.
To his dismay, the permanent marker underneath wasn’t an address at all, but some old message, perhaps written on the box a long time ago and the owner simply taped the shipping label over it to avoid confusion.
“This is how they hide,” the message read. Richard taped the damaged shipping label back in its original spot and checked no on his report, then he put it on the shelf. Suddenly he got the feeling that he was being watched. He walked to the door of the undeliverables room and looked out. There were a few straggling drivers left in the bay and a few of the office and admin people had shown up, but nobody paid him any attention. He looked up at Vick’s office window. The blinds were still shut.
“Open it…” a voice said from behind him. It was Steven.
Richard turned and saw Steven tucked in a shadowy corner of the room like Batman.
“How did you get in here?” Richard asked even though he knew it didn’t matter.
“Never mind that, you don’t have time to hesitate. You have to see what’s inside that package. It’s a clue, something that
someone has clearly risked everything to tip us off to. Now open it before you attract attention and it’s too late.”
“It’s just a package that can’t be delivered because the sender had a crummy printer with no ink. It’s a bunch of chicken scratch on the label. I’m surprised it even got this far.”
“Those lines and dashes, the stuff you think is chicken scratch from a busted printer, its really something else. Some kind of message.” Steven said in a husky whisper. “Look again, it’s really an alien language.”
Richard pulled the box back off of the shelf and looked once more at the label.
“Its the language of a race of beings that is superior in intelligence than we are. We need a common grouping of symbols in order to make sense of anything. We pick up on patterns and can learn the letters of our language, but what if we could read in a language that seemed chaotic, yet still made sense. It would be a language without patterns or learnable symbols, yet with our superior intellect, we could decipher any and all meaning from it.”
“You’re saying these random lines and fragmented letters are actually a message? I don’t buy it. It looks like a faded label to me.”
The vertical smudge lines may look random, but they actually contain the name that the package is for, and the letters are only smudged and faded where they were meant to be smudged and faded. To these aliens, this tells a location.”
Steven paused and Richard saw him light up a cigarette in the darkness.
“What if I told you that at every stop, this package gets pulled off the belt and put in a room like this, but somehow it arrives at the next leg of the shipment a few days later undeterred.”
“And that would mean what exactly?”
“They know how to get past these check points, they must have someone working on the inside. Now someone who is trying to help us has marked this particular package and we need to have a look see inside to find out what is so important.”