Chapter 4: Discovery 2: Envelopes with misaddressed or unrecognizable addresses that cannot be delivered will be opened...
Still frazzled from her horrifying encounter with a Turk—a Turk! She'd knocked over a Turk!—Mary guided her mail cart into the elevator and pushed the button for the forty-eighth floor. While she waited, she calmed herself with deep breathing exercises and started sorting through the bins for unaddressed mailers. Might as well get a jump start on the really stupid ones, she reasoned. She found five, which she set aside in their own little stack. The boring, everyday routine helped settle her nerves.
It had been an accident, she told herself. Despite his scary facial scars—she didn't want to imagine how he might have gotten them, but she couldn't get them out of her mind—he was really nice about what had happened. Hadn't blamed her at all. Thank Gaia.
When the door opened, she had recovered and was no longer in danger of having a panic attack. She rolled her cart down to one of the company's seven mail rooms where the initial sorting and distribution occurred for assigned floors. Any mail directed beyond the mail room's designated floors was forwarded to the next corresponding mail room, where it was re-sorted and finally delivered to the mail stations located in each giant cube farm. Sometimes it took an entire week for mail to get where it needed to go. Thank goodness most people used email these days, though there were still plenty of things that couldn't be sent electronically.
Which was good, because if everything could be sent by email, she'd be out of a job.
Mary had always assumed an idiot had designed the system. Or a corporate, bureaucratic flunky obsessed with creating ridiculously complex cat's cradles, probably for cat's cradle competitions online. In her opinion, there wasn't much difference between the two types of company drone. Damn, she hated Shinra sometimes. At least the company paid—huh. Well, the pay wasn't exactly great, but it was at least okay. Better than most other places for the kind of job she was qualified to do. Her salary and her husband's combined covered the bills with a decent amount left over to save for retirement.
And damn, she really wanted to retire someday.
"Hey, Joe," she said to the other poor soul banished to the dreary beige mail room. The harsh fluorescent lights provided adequate illumination for the most part, but did little to brighten the shadowy corners of the cavernous space. "We've picked up quite a load today for the next shift to sort through. At least this time there are only a few where the dumbasses didn't bother addressing them. I've already pulled those out from the rest."
She deliberately did not mention that she'd crashed her cart into a Turk. Her supervisor and coworkers would probably treat her like a pariah for weeks due to fear of retribution from "Administrative Research." Hah, what a benign name. There were so many rumors about what the Turks actually did...
Remember that he was nice, she told herself firmly.
She pushed her worries from her mind and maneuvered the damned cart next to twelve other identical carts. Each bore at least one bin of envelopes, and most with several.
Joe looked up from the mail racks where he was organizing a rather large load of outgoing company mail. He looked annoyed. Not surprising, since it was almost shift change and the last thing either of them wanted was more work.
"Okay," he said. "Do you want to go through them, or shall I?"
"You finish what you're doing then head on home. I'll take care of the dumb ones before I leave. Shouldn't take more than half an hour."
Joe nodded, and Mary collected the unaddressed mailers and sat down at a computer on a work table on the far side of the room. She logged in and opened the first envelope. It was her job to snoop, per company policy that proclaimed "Envelopes with misaddressed or unrecognizable addresses that cannot be delivered will be opened and an attempt will be made to deliver to either the intended recipient or sender." She had that particular rule memorized in case anyone ever complained. If the morons didn't want people looking at the mail they sent, they could jolly well write down a legible, proper address.
"Idiots. How can they be so absent minded?" she grumbled, looking over the contents of the mail for any clues. This one had a memo attached with a name. She dutifully logged it into the computer, assigned a sorting number to the envelope, and set it aside in its very own "Out" basket.
She did this two more times with varying degrees of success. One had a department ID on the enclosed paperwork, but no names. Another couldn't be identified at all. Both got logged and assigned sorting numbers, and then went into individual "Out" baskets for the next shift to handle.
Joe finished his sorting and clocked out. "See you later," he said with annoying cheerfulness. "Don't stay too late."
She mock-scowled at him. "Remember, I'll be gone tomorrow. I'll be done in another few minutes, and then I'm outta here for a well-deserved break," she said, and went back to her envelopes. Thank the Goddess she had the next two days off. The time would let her recover from dealing with blithering idiots who couldn't write an internal company address to save their lives. Not to mention her terrifying Turk encounter.
Envelope number four was thicker and heavier than the others. The moron who'd last had this one had blotted out his or her name entirely with heavy black marking pen. Not that it really mattered for identification purposes. Often people took empty envelopes back to the mail station in their office area, so a completely different person might have picked it up and used it.
She opened it and dumped it out onto the table. Before her wondering eyes appeared a seven-year-old, dog-eared copy of Barely Legal, Harvest Time Special! magazine with several young men in skimpy swimsuits on the cover.
Blinking in surprise, she flipped it open to do a quick check of the contents. Just to be thorough.
Great Bahamut's bouncing balls! That centerfold was quite the cute, young hottie. And she could swear she'd seen him somewhere before, too, but she couldn't place him to save her life. Of course, considering the impressive attributes on display, it was no wonder that her brain wasn't focusing on the task of identifying his face. She wondered if he'd become an actor and that was why he seemed familiar. Maybe she'd seen him on some television show or in a play. She'd heard that young actors sometimes resorted to doing porn shots to put food on the table before they managed to score a decent role.
She closed the magazine reluctantly. She couldn't believe it. Some idiot had really gone and sent an old porno through company interdepartmental mail—and had forgotten to include any addresses.
"Well, this certainly qualifies as an inappropriate use of company resources," she said with a smirk. Nobody would dare file an official complaint if this particular piece of mail went missing, and she needed a pick-me-up in return for a truly rotten day at work. Besides, undeliverable mail always ended up in the shredder. It went without saying that no one sent restricted or classified mail through the routine mail system. The mail department never held onto dead mail for longer than a month. Just long enough for someone to try to claim it.
Hah. No one would ever so much as ask about this little treasure. The Shinra company's disciplinary policies were legendary. The magazine was as good as abandoned.
She slipped it into her bag and moved on to the last unaddressed envelope.
Dave from the next shift arrived and clocked in just as she was pulling her stuff together to leave. "I logged four misaddressed mailers, Dave," she told him, uncommonly cheerful. "The rest still need to be sorted."
"Okay," Dave said with an unenthusiastic shrug. "Enjoy the rest of your day," he added. It was what he always said.
"I intend to," Mary said, unable to contain her grin. She tossed the now-empty mailer into the closest bin of empties, and headed out to go home where she could enjoy her prize at her leisure. Maybe with a nice glass of wine and some classical music.
Free time, here I come, she thought gleefully.