The Brown Paper Bomb

The Brown Paper Bomb

They sent me in to investigate a lonely brown parcel in the airport. A lady reported the package, then a man reported it, then a child looked at it and screamed and soon the whole entire airport was in an uproar about the brown paper parcel.

They found it two hours ago on a seat in terminal A, the pleather kind of seat attached to 4 other seats in a row and sporting armrests on either side. Now the airport, rather terminal A of the airport, is closed and deserted. The National Guard is blocking all access points, all planes have closed their doors, and the flight crews, waiters and cooks all evacuated. In this massive, hallway shaped terminal of marble columns supporting panoramic glass windows the quiet is broken only by occasional plane engines roaring off into the distance; best for everyone to get out now.

I am the sole human in terminal A now, and I am in a blast suit. They dropped me off a couple minutes ago, and sent me up a service stairway from the tarmac at a “safe distance” for those who are not in blast gear. Now I am stuck climbing and walking a great distance in this infernally hot blast suit, all to save the world.

But the reality of the situation is that nobody knows what waits inside that brown paper parcel. It could be a gift someone bought at a souvenir shop for their nephew, forgotten takeout food, or a biological or explosive agent planted by a subversive who somehow eluded all modern security measures at a major hub of international travel. But my job is not to speculate, only find out concretely what someone left on a seat in the airport.

Walks up to a target are always the same. I am attentive to the environment with all senses on full alert, because this kind of environment is highly unpredictable, even though ultimately harmless from my experience. The logical course of action is to relax and not be fearful, to remain composed through a vague apathy towards what I cannot control. Plus, this empty, locked down airport terminal is strangely soothing; I am always enamored by the sensation of ghost town strolls through areas otherwise bustling with life if not for the imagined hazard.

But this job can be exasperating, too. Most days I am the only calm, rational execution-ist amidst chaos, anxiety and helplessness. My voice is one which discovers and solves problems because scared people are never reasonable people, and unreasonable people frequently make decisions to snowball fear which then require somebody, me, to play cleanup. And that is why I wear a blast suit, to protect me from physical and psychical blasts. Just another day on company time.

One time I was deployed into a private religious school, where backpacks and prayer books scattered the hallways. The students and staff all sat on the lawn transfixed by my suiting up. Three different men dressed me in the armor plates, the heavy boots, and robust helmet and collar; all I did was hold still, occasionally moving my limbs in accommodation, while watching others stare in horrified captivation.

Moments like that expose the relation between terror and fascination to be extraordinarily small. To be terrorized is to be completely absorbed in something, terror is to focus with such extreme on a singular object or prospect that nothing else but instinctual fighting or fleeing takes over; the face contorts itself as if staring into the infinite void and recognizing through feeling rather than thought or rationality its own mortality and smallness. There is nothing rational about that reactionary face. The only difference between fascination and terror is how they are received—one in pleasure the other in trepidation. An evolutionary psychologist might disagree, but modern humans seem not to need this archaic terror-fascination function because today its causation of hysteria is always misdirected or blatantly misused. How better the world would be without it! Whatever circuitry causes this phenomena of tunnel-vision focus is like a conflagration misusing a house. No reason exists for it in modernity.

When I first trained for this job, my nerves were like barbed wire—steely but occasionally startling me with a poke. Now I am cool and rational, without exception. I recall the first time I deployed in a real scenario; in a poorer part of the world a man drove his car into a shopping mall through a glass window, threw a briefcase from the trunk and drove off. They dressed me then hooked me up to an oxygen tank, and wished me luck. Not even good luck, just a nervous look and thumbs up. The briefcase was full of phonebooks.

This job taught me that most people cannot take a joke, or know a ruse when it hits them dead-on. The odd comment, snicker or word play is enough to evoke a defensive stance from almost everyone; it’s like everything is personal. Personally, I believe nothing is off limits so I taunt everything; political beliefs are my favorite to taunt, because the people who take it personally are more uptight than a fiend itching for drugs. People always make me ask: why so serious?

I have been told to smile, to deliver my jokes in a more jovial, care-free manner and then people might laugh. But I find apathy to be the most carefree manner to perform anything. Projecting emotions is an irrational waste of time, mostly. The people who tell me that probably just misinterpret my sweaty stance as caused by something other than heavy gear. But they need to understand that nothing about me is serious, I simply have a gambling addiction but never wanted money around me! And that’s just one of my jokes.

The other joke is how often people misplace fears. Almost every time I go into a job nothing happens. The box, suitcase, or stroller is left behind by an Alzheimer’s grandparent or stoned hippie. It happens almost every time a video comes out online of a person or group purporting to commit violence; people get so high-strung and anal that one shriek ignites madness, and the madness evokes a stampede and they send me in to explain. People’s attitudes and dispositions are the real powder kegs, and one explosion from that spreads faster than a virus!

I have never found anything notable in “objects of interest” at my job, but I also never know what all the people are told about my findings. I return and everyone pats me on the back, then I tell the chief what I found (nothing). He always nods pensively, with the same worried expression then disappears to tell cameras what happened. I have no idea what chief says, however. I am not sure I much care, anyways.

They literally drag me from my bunk at the station, stick me in our guided truck and I am suited up and then lights and faces displayed on my HUD provide guidance. Most days, I feel like a pawn because no one ever talks to me like anything but a problem solver, they stick me in this suit and look at me with serious expressions. I want to tell them this is all a big joke, that nothing is real, that groupthink is changing our culture for the worse. But my work is all that matters.

This airport seems especially harmless, more like a use of modern fear’s reflexivity to condition humanity away from reality. Modern communication technology is so stimulating it absorbs our attention and soon our world is painted by another’s hand, our nerves react in a preprogrammed fashion and then conduct of the living leaves the realm of personal awareness. Soon after, people become automatons enslaved by mechanisms created by people with greater perceptibility of life. That is why I choose to walk alone, to go in and investigate what people fear most.

I still remember getting this job. The interview was nothing spectacular, I had moved from another department and the guy gave me the job immediately. Training was mostly just following conspicuous instructions. An arrow guides me to the target, then instructs me with hand movements and I essentially mimic. Since then I have scouted a dozen suspicious instances here and found nothing but false alarms. This brown paper parcel will probably be the same.

The floor of this airport is covered by scuff marks and trash is everywhere, but the monitors are still lit up and I can see signs and papers moving from ventilation. I am at gate 17, the site of this brown paper parcel. A voice chimes in on coms and asks if I am ready, “yes,” obviously. This is probably another false alarm, anyways…

Behind a minefield of dropped baggage, the brown paper parcel is resting on its pleather seat. A string is tied around its nondescript, perfectly smooth exterior. The package is eerily immaculate, and I am fighting the urge to stroke it as instructions over coms to standby for a computer scan come through. I wait stoically; but the scan results are taking abnormally long.

During this “ceremonial” wait time my rational voice always grows louder. It thanks existence for its own rationality, and for its innately cool, collected, and unfeeling nature. The voice reinforces that terror is irrational because wanton destruction is counterproductive to the furthering of human kind, and that rational existence does not coincide with heedless annihilation of our fruits of labor. It rationalizes that humanity is destined to continue developing for the good, that although you and I have no idea how the good will progress, this does not influence humanity’s path.

The voice proclaims that terror is an uneasiness of the nerves and is divorced from the reality of controllable affections, nothing more. The body chooses to be scared, and that forgoing that choice only happens to the absent of mind in most situations. Rationality tells me my emotional response is independent of the things around me, all that which is external, and that terror will not touch me—especially in the context of terror caused by hysterical groupthink.

No, the rational mind does not fall victim to psychic games of reality, it only analyzes them. And with my analysis, this entire job is built off a human perpetuated ruse of the most unlikely event happening, happening. Why else would every job be a false alarm? If the dozen times before this, no bomb ever exploded or even existed, why would this time prove different?

And here come coms, telling me there is nothing to worry about…

“Jim, you need to proceed with extreme caution, our censors have detected unusual radiation coming from the brown paper parcel.”

And now my hands are shaking.