Liam Perrin

The electric cart whizzed down the tarmac. She waited until they passed the noisy hangar where they build the Friday ships then glanced at him. He was staring at his paper-cut fingers.

Placards identified passing buildings: Day Owls. Peripatetic Cows. Northbound Coyotes. Right-handed Herons. Crows. Magpies. Black Cats.

He slumped. He didn’t want to be seen by the other handlers – not while they were cleaning up his mess. All those dead albatrosses…

She stopped at a dilapidated out-building. “It’s not the end of the world,” she tried.

He looked away. “What if it’s … a sign?”

She handed him a bag of finger protectors. “At Otto’s Omens we … ?”

“… We make our own luck.” He stepped out and braced himself for a second day of re-routing unforwarded chain letters.

“I’d better go,” she said. “Stars aren’t gonna shoot themselves!”

She depressed the accelerator and fled her clumsy joke.

She halted her patrol in loping mid-stride. A thin object had been slipped through the slot in the exterior door. Everyone knew that mailmen were extinct, but her database insisted the object on the floor was a sleeve of wood pulp which would contain a folded sheet of the same material on which she would find markings transcribed in arrangements intended to convey meaning.

Intriguing as it was, automated billing had depleted the account supporting her premium routines some time ago. She had no other choice. She let the letter rest and resumed her patrol. Dust gathered.

Eventually the letter was opened. Not by her, but because of her. It is commonly posited she was chosen because of her relatively stable metaphysical algorithms. It is this author’s admittedly unpopular opinion that he chose her because he liked her.

He wanted her to experience the joy of purpose.