The Box
By: Turboencabulator
It was just after opening at the OfficeWay when a man walked in, carefully scanning the aisle
tags. He was painfully nondescript, in worn brownish cargo pants, and a faded olive drab
pea-coat, open with a dove grey t-shirt underneath it. His Wingwalkers squeaked as he walked
over the freshly mopped floor, and he hummed to himself quietly as he went. Nobody payed
attention to him, except for a glance to not run into him, or to simply look and then dismiss
him as another thirty-something, come to buy something.
He disappeared down an aisle, and within a minute came back, went to the register, and
waited. A cashier eventually noticed, and rang him out. She saw the only unusual thing about
him, his face. Or rather, what was on it.
The man wore an eyepatch, black, with a narrow white rectangle printed on it, and a square
bandage with a paisley-like colorful pattern on it. It looked almost organic, and was somehow
both vibrant, and not at all.
“That’s pretty.” The cashier said, nodding at the bandage.
The stranger smiled softly, sorting through his wallet. “Ran out of adult bandages. I don’t
suppose you all carry razors?”
“Sorry.” She said, returning the smile, and taking a fresh twenty dollar bill from
him. “Receipt?”
“I’m good, thanks. I don’t think I’ll need to return this.” He said, chuckling.
The cashier watched him walk out, then blinked, running out after him. She looked around, but
the man was gone.
Another salesperson walked out behind her. “Something wrong Kaylee?”
“He forgot his change.” She said. “He only bought a box.”
Late at night, the man pulled his battered old RV into a secluded corner of a campground, deep
in a state park. After hooking up the sewage and power connections, he quietly set some
homebrew motion detectors, and drew the blackout curtains.
In the back section, he lifted up the bed, revealing pockets of documents and building
schematics secured to the underside. One by one he took these down, carefully tying them into
packets, and tucking them in a plain cardboard box. Eventually, the box was packed solid, and
he taped it shut.
From a compartment in the floor under the bed, the man pulled out a pistol, tucking it in an
armpit holster, and then a sawed off pumped off shotgun. He loaded it, turned out the light,
and lowered the bed into place. Quietly, he made his way to underneath the kitchen table, just
across from the door into the RV, and set the vibrating motion sensor alarm against his chest,
before getting as comfortable as possible, and sleeping.
Kaylee was on the register when an obvious cop came in. He had a poorly fitting suit, grey,
sunken cheekbones, and eyes so fixated on something nobody else could see, he appeared a bit
unhinged. Everyone noticed as he stalked past, ignoring the employees only sign, and went into
the manager’s office.
He immediately came out and pointed at a sales rep. “You. Where’s the manager?”
The rep fumbled for his headset and Keith was paged over the intercom.
Keith, an older, bearded gentleman quickly showed up, a professional, soulless smile on his
face. “Can I help you sir?”
“Office, now.”
They went back in, Keith sitting behind his neatly organized desk. “So, what brings you to
OfficeWay today?”
“Business.” The man said, flipping out a badge. “P.I. Deke Saltzburg. I’m conducting an
investigation and I think one of my leads came through here. I’d like to check your security
footage.”
Keith frowned at the badge, then plastered his carefully manicured smile. “I’m sorry sir, but
OfficeWay policy is to only cooperate with police investigations under the presence of a
subpoena.”
“I have a grand in cash.”
“When did he come through?” Keith asked, picking up the phone and dialing the back room.
Deke frowned at the old CRT monitor, hunched over the shoulder of a young man barely out of his
teenage years. “How the hell can you see anything on this thing?”
“Eh, it’s just for making sure the feed works.” The kid says, tapping on the security
recorder. “This thing is taking frames in HD but the monitors were cheapo leftovers.”
Deke stood up, taking a pocket computer out of his suit. “Can you get me that guy’s face in a
still?”
“Yeah?” The kid says, scrubbing through the footage and printing it off.
After taking the picture, Deke grumbled, examining it. “Should work.” He said, before laying
the paper under a lamp and opening a program on the pocket computer.
A moment passes. Deke gets more and more irritated.
“Why won’t this ID?”
The kid looks over his shoulder. “Dude, is that a facial recognition program?”
Deke snaps the computer shut. “That’s proprietary.”
“Won’t work. Guy’s got adversarial markers on his face.”
“What?” Deke mutters, turning to look at the kid.
“Yeah, the eye patch and cheek bandage. They’re patterns designed to confuse AI. You see 'em
all the time in China.”
After a minute of thought, Deke turns back to his program, and sighs. “Time to do it the old
fashioned way then. What did he buy anyways?”
The kid turned back to the screen, scrubbing forward again. “Looks like he just bought a box.”
“A box?”
“Yeah, just a big express mailer.”
A large, heavy box, tied with twine and sealed with tape, was picked up from the post office
drop box in a small town outside St. Louis, Missouri. The mail carrier was in a foul mood that
day, having used all of their BB gun’s CO2 cartridge on a herd of fluffies that tried to demand
payment for a mailbox on ‘their land’.
This then required them to hose off the box, their truck, and the wellingtons that they were
now very grateful to have. They looked over the big, dense package, eyeing its weight and the
pre paid, no-tracking, generic ticket firmly taped to the top of the box. That would be going
freight, who gives a shit how much they paid, it was too heavy and bulky to fuck with by hand.
Naturally, once it arrived in the sorting depot in St. Louis, it would be transferred to the
correct service, but this little jump was the final element in obscuring that the package had
ever existed.
74 miles away, an RV was being extinguished. Police lines and fire trucks cordoned off a
parking lot behind an abandoned home improvement store as the vehicle went up in smoke.
A silver sedan pulled up and a man with sunken cheeks and bold eyes got out, and began speaking
with an officer minding the line. Questions were asked, ID was checked. All this was observed
by a man in an olive drab pea-coat standing on a hill, in the shade of a tree, watching through
binoculars.
“Mistew?”
He looked down at a chubby, red and peach colored earthie. She was sitting politely, despite
being absolutely filthy, and with the vacant, dull expression of a domestic.
“Nyu daddeh? Nicey mistew?”
“Sorry, no.” He said, turning back to his observation. “I don’t have a house.”
“Aw. Dat otay. Yu be daddeh anyways?” She asked, oblivious.
For a moment, he just looked down at her, then crouched, and spoke something, very softly,
right into her ear.
The mare blinked, and looked around, before deciding to walk over to a short cliff, carved into
the side of the hill by the wind. She sat, thinking for a moment, before leaping off, carefully
tucking her forelegs in, and landing forehead-first on a sharp rock.
The man looked at the twitching corpse for a moment before sighing. “Sorry girl. Witnesses and
all that.”
He walked down the back of the hill, getting into a freshly liberated panel van and driving
off.
It was a clear, cloudless day. Sam walked in to the clinic’s reception, ready for a day of no
appointments, free to work on personal projects and experimentation. Will was setting up the
servers for an upcoming experimental abuse stream, and Frankie was handling the shelter
side. No deliveries on Saturdays.
Clockwork.
Pausing to buzz the postman through the gate, Sam watched Lightning slowly chew his way through the fluffy bacon and Mexican scramble.
“You stay up late watching things again?” Sam asked, not bothering to hide some vague
amusement.
“Nhh. Nu sweep weww. Hab bad dweamies.” Lightning grumbled. “Kept habin dweams of bein fowced to be in a pageant.”
“Told you you wouldn’t like Little Miss Sunshine.” Sam said, before leaping up to help the
postman through the door.
With a grunt, a large package was set on the counter, followed by a pile of normal
mail. “Jesus. Someone must’ve mailed you bricks.”
“Better than the hugboxers that mailed me crickets.” Sam said, before handing over the mail and
seeing the postman off.
After lugging the big package into the mail room, Sam crashed behind the counter, opening the
mail of the day, and texted Will.
Mail for you. Big too.
Will wandered in to hear Sam letting loose a torrent of expletive. Again.
“Cubs lost again?” Will asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Sam looked up at him, actually livid for once. Will straightened up. “Ok, what is it?”
He took the letter Sam proffered and began to read it out loud.
“Shelter operators, this is an official notice that starting on the first of the month, all
shelters, regardless of state or private status, will be required to be no-kill
shelters. Shelters that wish to be able to terminate fluffies will be required to be terminal
shelters or obtain a specific tax stamp per fluffy terminated. This tax is to subsidize damage
caused by feral fluffies. In addition, all terminations must be conducted in a controlled
environment, and may not rely upon methods that require drugs that are known to occasionally be
ineffective in terminating a subject. In addition, outdoor sheltering is now banned as it
exposes fluffies to wildlife that may ingest the fluffies and become ill. Compliance will be
required within 30 days of the change coming into effect, with penalties in the form of fines
up to five hundred thousand dollars and termination of licenses.”
Will thought for a moment. “This, uh, this is sudden.”
“This is bullshit.” Sam said, getting up. “I’ve got to go talk to Frankie, can you mind
the front for a bit?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Sam stalked out, Lightning following behind with a half-gallop. “Daddeh, swow down. Onwy hab
widdle weggies.”
Will took Sam’s seat, glancing at the clock. Saturday was a half day.
The package sat in the mail room. Just a box, neatly tied in twine and wrapped in paper.
Will managed to get the package up the hill, forcing himself to carefully manage his sensation,
until he managed to set the package down on his kitchen counter and half collapse on top of it,
groaning.
“Daddeh? U tay?” Hickory asked, peeking his head around the corner.
“Yeah. This thing’s heavy.” Will said, before looking down at Hickory and giggling.
Hickory sat in the doorframe, a ring toy stuck on his horn. He did not look amused.
“Hewp?”
Will took the ring off and put Hickory on the counter, using a knife to cut open the
package. “I don’t remember ordering anything.”
The top was opened, and Will looked upon a neat, tightly-compressed set of files, with a single
manila folder laid on the top. This, he set aside, before carefully taking out various
documents. Antique computer core dumps, topographical maps, zoning permit logs, industrial
supply shipment logs, the variety was almost limitless. By the time the box was empty, Will had
covered his dining room table.
Hickory had nosed open the folder, and was squinting at the text. “D-E-E-D. Deed. Wut deed?”
Will turned and looked at Hickory, then walked over, and started reading the document in the
folder.
A minute later he texted Sam.
Sam let himself into Will’s house, Lightning tucked under his arm. As he passed the stone
pillars by the doors he felt himself get hot goosebumps, which passed as soon as he was
inside. He turned and looked back at the pillars. For a moment he thought he saw writing
on them, but after a blink, there was nothing but the shadows of branches.
He closed the door and went in deeper, setting Lightning down with Hickory. They hugged and
started watching Magic School Bus together. Sam walked into the dining area, finding the floor
and table covered in papers.
“Uh, something in your package then?” Sam asked, looking around at the mess.
“Here, my turn to wave a piece of paper at you.” Will said, holding up a folder.
Sam picked his way across the papers, taking the folder and opening it. “What’s this?”
“Property deed. Someone just signed a parcel of land five miles square over to me near the
South Dakota badlands.” Will said, picking through papers. “I think it’s because I know you
though.”
Glancing up, Sam furrowed his brows and asked, “Ok, why do you say that?”
Will held up a scanned section of map. “Because apparently at some point in the past, this
chunk of land was owned by HasBio Research.”
Sam looked at the map, and then at all the documentation around him.
“I’ve taken precautions in case this is hot information.” Will said, leaning on a chair
back. “There’s no information on who sent it or where they got it.”
Picking apart a pile of documents, Sam takes out a scan, streaked and incomplete. “I’d bet they
got it from someplace with a lot of locks on it.” He said, looking it over.
“What makes you say that?” Will asked, leaning over.
Sam turned the paper to show Will a patchy scan of a photograph, a group of people in front of
some kind of machine. “See the two on the far right?”
Will looked at the duo. A man and woman, in their fifties, wearing lab coats. He was sharp
faced and short, she was a broad, smiling woman. “Yeah?”
“I’m pretty sure those are the Applebaums. They did a lot of work for DARPA before going into
private research.” Sam said.
After looking up at Sam and waiting, Sam sighed and continued.
“He was a bioengineer and she was a geneticist. They’re the reason we have fluff-b-gone crop
pesticides.”
Slowly, Will put things together in his head. “Isn’t that what got Alenix started?”
Sam nodded. “And we have photographic proof they used to work for HasBio. In the middle of
nowhere.”
Will slowly looked around at the documents.
“Well. Shit.”