Package For You, Sir!

Package For You, Sir!

“Truth’s back!” Harmony shouted. “I think he died. Bro, did you die?”

“I swear I was delivering a package all day. Yes, I think I died. Bury me somewhere nice.”

“Sorry, Bro. Student budget. Best I can do is a coffee can urn and a quick trip to the storm drain.” Harmony tossed him a can of cold tea from the fridge, which Truth pressed to his neck. His neck ached from leaning up against a wall for sixteen hours.

“Who are we burying?” Sophie yelled from the room she shared with Vigor. And Harmony, when Truth was in town.

“Truth!”

“Save his body for science, I need materials!”

“Sorry, Bro. Maybe we can still do the coffee can thing with the bits she doesn’t use?”

“I appreciate you doing your best.” Truth tried to remember how to open a can. He thought he remembered, but his fingers were suddenly incompetent. He got it eventually. “What time is it?”

“Too late for dinner.” Harmony smiled slightly. “There’s some leftover chicken I can throw in the hot box.”

“Any leftover rice?”

“Yeah.”

“Hurray, I have dinner.”

Harmony threw everything together in the hot box. While things were heating up, he set out a bottle of hot sauce and a shaker of Adlom SeasoningTM next to Truth. Truth stared at the shaker. It was one of the bits of the slums he couldn’t shake. Food- the nice, good quality food they ate now tasted wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was for a while. It just tasted off. Like green beans weren’t supposed to taste that way, and the texture was all wrong.

It took Truth weeks to realize that in the slums, he rarely ate a vegetable that didn't come from a can. Everything came already salted, already cooked to near mush. Real food was an unpleasant surprise. He was trying to train his taste buds to adapt, but it was slow going. The compromise solution? Adlom SeasoningTM. When you can’t make the food taste good, make it taste like Adlom SeasoningTM.

He chuckled darkly. Friends and family points. Elixirs. He was already sitting on unimaginable wealth compared to a year ago. Making people beg to hire the sibs. That tickled a bone he didn’t want to acknowledge. But he still couldn’t shake the taste of poverty. Couldn’t shake the fact that his tongue was still in the slums.

Starting today, he was going to learn to eat good food. Fancy food. Harmony dropped the plate in front of Truth. He had to make sure the sibs forgot the taste of the slums too. Yeah, the System was right. Getting out physically was only the first step. He had to get their minds out too. Starting today. Truth had a bite of the chicken and rice, then dosed it with the hot sauce and the seasoning. Tomorrow. Starting tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep, to gather his strength.

“Morning, Sergeant! Might I say you are looking extremely fit today!” Truth did his best to sound upbeat. Sergeant Murthey looked at him with horror.

“How many dead?”

“Hahah. You sure are a kidder, Sergeant Murthey. Hahahaha.” Truth desperately tried to hang on to a sunny, positive vibe.

“HOW MANY DEAD, CORPORAL?! ARE WE AT WAR?” Murthey bellowed.

“I don’t know, Sarge! I didn’t kill anyone, and I don’t remember seeing anyone killed in the last day or so.” Truth gave up. He had tried his best.

“Prager’s sweaty sack be praised. I always assume anyone cheerful first thing in the morning is welcoming the end of the world.”

“Just... trying to work on being a people person, Sarge.” A cheerful attitude is always welcome, right?

“Yes, Sarge?” Cheerful was no longer a term that could be applied to Truth. He just felt an endless grinding as Harmony’s SAT’s got closer. He might have just enough to get Har into the job he wanted, but that would leave nothing for Sophia and Vig. And it wasn’t all that long until college admissions. And he was used to watching his cultivation shoot up like a rocket thanks to all the elixirs. Feeling it make inchworm progress after a full cultivation session... well, it didn’t feel good.

“You wanted to get back to better-paying jobs, right?”

“You are an exceptionally handsome man, and your wife is very lucky to have you, Sarge.” Truth made a desperate stab towards flattery.

Murthey made some choking noises. “I’m divorced, you little shit! And don’t get your hopes up; it’s another package delivery gig. At least it’s more than your base salary.”

“Yes, Sarge.” Truth said obediently. Right. Baby steps. Flattery was an art. That's what the books said. Not that Murthey had much worth flattering.

“You are thinking something unpleasant, aren’t you, Medici?”

“Never!”

“Uhuh. Here is the order. Get.”

The crate was shuddering and making a sort of high-pitched whining noise. Truth was sitting in the back of the wagon with the crate, a needler, and a heavy-duty fire-bolter fetish. The orders strongly emphasized that if a breakout could not be controlled immediately with the fire bolter, the needler would be employed first upon any nearby civilians and then upon Truth himself. As a humanitarian consideration. No further explanation of the contents of the crate was provided.

They were going up into the mountains, and the roads were poorly maintained. Every pothole or rock in the road made the crate jerk under the cargo net. The whine would momentarily stop... then start again. As though whatever was inside was testing the crate for weaknesses. Over and over again. For six hours. And every time, Truth felt his breath stop, and his hand tighten on the fetish. He tried to distract himself by looking at the Lovers page in the store. Lots of boxes to click. Lots of sliders to move around. Hours of fun, potentially. He couldn't manage five whole seconds before his attention snapped back to the box.

Whatever was in the crate reeked. It stank like rotting meat and fermenting vegetables. You kept praying for your nose to go scent blind, but it seemed to shift subtly. You could never get used to it. It was the distilled essence of the word “filth.” Truth swore the scent was infiltrating him, seeping through the pores of his skin and staining his bone marrow. Making him a carrier of the filth.

For. Six. Hours.

The wagon finally pulled over, and the driver jumped out. Orders were to sit and watch the crate until relieved, so Truth sat where he was.

“Alright, we’re- GOOD GOD! WHERE’S YOUR PPE?”

“My fucking what now?”

An alarm went off, screaming, shrieking the... whoever they were into action. People in slivery full seal suits piled into the back of the wagon and hauled him out, yelling that they had to get him decontaminated. He would have fought them about it, but after six hours with the crate, decontamination sounded like an excellent idea.

He was stripped, scrubbed with long-handled brooms soaked in high foam potions, rinsed under an herbal shower, scrubbed again, and finally given a full body submersion into a tub of consecrated oil. Decent of them to scent the oil with cedar and myrrh, he thought. At the end of it all, he was given a new set of fatigues and a chewing out from the silvery staff of the mountain... wherever they were.

“Why the HELL weren’t you in your gear? What kind of moron-”

“It wasn’t in the order.”

“What?”

“Under ‘gear’ in the order sheet? It listed the fire bolter and the needler, but no PPE.”

There was a pause. “Well, OBVIOUSLY, you should have known....”

Approximately one eternity later, Truth escaped back to Harban. There was no mention of a bonus. He was so ready to spend quality time repairing talismans. But this couldn't go on much longer. The ticking clock got louder and louder.