Delivery Day

“Hey Bill, this package won’t scan but you’ve gotta deliver it anyways. It’s over-night shipping, must be important.”

“What is it?” Collin asks his manager, Alex.

“I don’t know, kind of gives me a funny feeling you know…”

Collin raises his eyebrows with light curiosity.

“Kind of like the guy who ordered this must be real weird… says it’s from an oversees pearl company.” Alex says and then shakes the box a little bit.

“Well don’t shake it,” Collin says and takes the box from Alex’s hands, “if i gotta deliver it then it’s gotta get there the way it’s supposed to, not all broken, don’t you hate that?”

Alex looks at Collin blankly, pauses and then says, “It’s a piece of mail. It’s not gonna get broken if I shake it up a little bit… that thing’s probably got twenty layers of bubble wrap on it.”

“Probably like two layers of bubble wrap at most…”

“Just deliver the package okay, it’s not gonna scan. It’s not even in our system but it’s probably a pearl for some rich guy.”

“Alright…” Collin says, turns around and heads for his delivery truck in the parking lot of the post office from the lobby.

“And hey!” Alex says as Collin is walking out of the doors, where here, outside, the clouds turn and the sky grows overcast, “Deliver the package on time Collin, the universe depends on that package getting there just as perfectly as we are standing here now soldier. It’s my machinations.” Alex says, appearing serious, mocking him again, pointing his left index finger straight at Collin with authority.

“Over and out sergeant.” Collin says and walks out of the lobby doors, towards his delivery truck. He looks to his right and a police officer is sitting in his police vehicle, parked with the flashing lights on.

“Sirens off… how weird…” Collin says, gets into his delivery truck, sets the package down on the passenger seat, turns the car on, starts the delivery truck and drives off. The radio is playing old johnny cash music from the 1950’s and the package wrapped in brown paper sits ordinarily on the passenger seat, oddly enough, appearing foreign in some undetectable way.

In some way this ordinary package appears to hide some wonderful secret, from the far away of the space of some place of many distant galaxies, by chance… happening upon the human being in great disguise. All of it’s mystery caught up inside, away from the external world and like pouring out in the drama of life, yet unknown to the human being, sheltered in their ignorance from the grandiosity of this self-silencing… thing. That which is wrapped up in the clothes of modernity there and the postman charges his vehicle through the city streets, unaware of the possible implications for mankind as it’s secret echoes out as it is only the ordinary and about itself as it is, in relation to the society… only passing by. There, moving the alien thing goes, on the way to it’s destination.

The music on the radio is interrupted by another signal and oscillations of tones play through the white static of the radio.

Sounds martial.

Sounds exotic, sounds like the quiet instructions of an imaginary empire.

Sounds alien.

Sounds alien and sounds like it’s the arrival.

Sounds alien, in the arrival of what human place and this earth as life moves about the stars, which they do, with regards to the powers of technological super-civilizations where upon their evolution they stand in the time and about their agendas.

About their agendas and exertions of interstellar cartographic force. the territories of the outer space place. The other sparkling world aside from ours where we do so abide and thus so far, having like all of our privacy… alone. Every day in the same dream of life, dream of space and so forth propelled about the direction of the solar system… to the future, of our evolution.

The sunlight catches the window shield of Collin’s delivery truck producing a significant glare.

“What on earth?” Collin says, tries to fix the radio by fighting with the dial and when he looks back up at the road the buildings look much taller now, much greater now. Appearing as like colossal figures, monuments in the sky as they are, as they should be in some great dream. His vision climbs up the sides of metropolitan windows like dipped in water, the blue glass of these huge buildings put up to the sky where clouds stand. Where clouds stand like as they have been put out, posterior, where the buildings are such as they are striking the day, striking life with size.

Just now, as Collin has been involved in his daydream of magnified forms, the metropolis made into the massive, a taxi cab honks it’s horn, alerting Collin that he has almost come to crash his delivery truck into the vehicle of the other man by veering into the right lane.

“Hey, watch your ass!” The taxi cab driver says, “Asshole! We’re on fuckin’ earth buddy…”

“Sorry,” Collin says, compelled to look back up at the ginormous buildings. The human being gazes at that which is familiar there as it is on the edge of being registered as foreign.

“Why does everything seem so big today?”

Collin stops at the red light in front of him and reaches over to the left side of his seat. The box moves a little bit while he is locating a glass bottle of water and then a sliver of a beam of light, blue hued light, wonderful, gleams with hope through some small open part of the box wrapped in brown paper. A crease has made way for the royal light to shimmer in the day and miraculously, the package fixes itself. Collin turns to face forwards and takes a drink from the glass bottle of water.

The box sits on the passenger side seat appearing entirely normal and the street light turns green.

“Finally,” Collin says.

He remembers a dream he had as a child as he drives down cadere avenue.

In the dream he is 5 years old and watching television in the middle of the night. his parents are asleep. A ufo film plays on the television screen, illuminating the room in florescent blue light where shadows of the cinema dance about the background of the dream scene here.

“Aliens?” One character says, a female, “I don’t know about that. Sounds kind of hysterical.”

“Hysterical?” The other character, a male, says.

“Yeah, you know. All those freaks out there who talk about all this ‘aliens’ this and ‘aliens’ that. I don’t wanna be a freak.”

“Well, I just talked to Charlie and he said at that area 51 base they’ve got a whole bunch of aliens out there.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t tell me that. That’s awful.”

“Awful? Why is it awful”

“I don’t need that kind of stress.”

“Ah, c’mon Valerie. It’s just a story.”

“I thought you said Charlie just told you it was real…”

“I wasn’t being serious. He told me that for a laugh, it’s not real.”

“Promise?”

“I promise I won’t talk about that anymore with you if you don’t want me to.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t real…”

“C’mon… I can only promise about something true…”

“You said it wasn’t real, it’s not real is it?”

As Collin is drifting out of sleep in his dream he hears a knock at the front door… which alarms him from his sleepy dream. Collin stares at the front door with a blank expression, holding back his expectations and another knock is heard at the door. The television distracts him for a moment.

“Let’s talk about something else…”

“He’s not gonna come here is he?”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah…”

“Charlie is our friend. He’s military. Charlie’s good.”

Collin continues to drive down Cadere Avenue and remembers that when he woke up someone had indeed been knocking at the front door and when he went to check to see who it was… there was no one there. Only a copy of T.V. Guide and the title of the film he had seen in his dream. on the front cover of the T.V. Guide read, “Special! This month on T.V. Guide! Interstellar!”. In his delivery truck he looks over at the mysterious package wrapped in brown paper.

Coincidentally it’s been resting on top of other pieces of mail and out of the stack of mail protrudes a copy of T.V. Guide.

“What the…” Collin starts to say, checks the road quickly and then pulls the copy of T.V. Guide from the stack of mail.

“Special! This month: A trip down memory lane! Interstellar!”

“This is so weird,” Collin says and the radio messes up again, interrupted by white static. This time the oscillations are more pronounced. The white static is still crashing around there still but the sound appears to be wholly clearer.

Inside of that mysterious box is some kind of living being, some kind of alien life form, or lifeforms or something. There is no way for Collin to know what it is inside of the box wrapped in brown paper which rests in the passenger seat… but he assumes it is playing some role in the interruption of the radio signal frequency.

“Wait…” Collin says, acting on his evolutionary instincts, “maybe i should pull over and figure out what this thing is.” His mind is filled with images, there like squid, slime, tentacles and he figures it’s probably just fish, or something from the factory which processes fish along with pearls from oysters.

Out of the box wrapped in brown paper an invisible telepathic limb is extended out towards Collin’s brain. The telepathic tentacle moves slowly and then with military precision enters the psychic substratum of his brain in like less than a second. The human being appears more sober, fully conscious and realizes that he’s got his job to do.

“I’m an adult. I don’t have time to day dream today and put off my responsibilities.” Collin says, gripping the steering wheel with confidence. “Today is going to be good.”

In the mysterious box, appearing as the ordinary to all of ours, the outside world, rests that alien being, that alien life form where all of it’s psychic powers have afforded it the most wonderful luxury of all. Determination of the bodies, conduction of the human powers in life. Total control.

Collin turns onto 54th street and says, "I could’ve sworn this street had another name last time…” looking up at the numbers 54 on the green street sign, “… I drove through this neighborhood…”

The telepathic limb of the psychic alien probes, secretly, around inside of collin’s brain. Soft pink flesh massaged by a kind of clear and colored purple, liquid jello like substance. The alien life form inside of the package detaches that part of it’s mental body, leaving it… inside of Collin’s brain. Now it’s working at his brain there, squirming, making itself comfortable.

Collin smiles. The mental entity now lodged in his brain is happy and so Collin feels happy.

“This street looks so good,” Collin says, noting how vibrant the green grass is and takes a deep breath in, “Ah, the grass smells so good today.”

The alien being is working on his brain and making him feel good.

Evolutionary.

Some part of his brain knows what is happening and causes him to begin desiring sushi... and squid.

“I kinda wanna try some squid today.” Collin says and then he feels sick to his stomach. The alien being is trying to attack him where he has made an evolutionary choice to act out against the mind control in any way he can. his human spirit is stronger than the alien expected and he says, “They must have some pretty good fish at this factory.”

He picks up the box wrapped in brown paper, “I’m going to a buffet.”

Wonderful.

Evolutionary.