Chapter 6: Suspicious Sam

Back at work, Sam was one of George's snitches and my hated rival. I can't remember when Sam started hating me, or even why we continued to dislike each other after working together for several years, but we did. It was mostly petty stuff, I'd avoid him and he'd snitch on me. Our boss, George knew about it and, as long as it didn't interfere with work, left us alone. Now Sam knew that I was being punished with the scout detail to the lab level. But I guess her got a suspicion that I wasn't bringing up a lot of inventory reports from the level I was supposed to be surveying. Sam confronted me one night at quitting time, accusing me of being lazy and sleeping on the job. I laughed at him, telling him that he should worry about himself rather than about my work habits. Looking over to the admin building, I saw George standing in the window, watching the whole scene. I nodded toward him but he turned away from the window without acknowledging either Sam's scene or my nod.

George was looking at the inventory slips Jack had submitted for that week. Since most of the items were electrical equipment, George was happy because that indicated a lot of wiring, which in turn indicated profit. He initialed the slips and put them in a routing envelope. He shrugged on his coat and left his office. On his way out, George walked through the distribution room. Facing a wall of pigeon hole boxes, he ran his eyes across the tags which noted which offices each box belonged to. He dropped the envelope containing Jack's inventory slips into the only distribution box without a nametag. For a moment he wondered who emptied that box and read the inventory slips, but then he remembered Larry.

Larry had asked those same questions. At first it had been a joke between the supervisors, "I'm dropping off distro to the Black Hole." But then Larry had started poking around, hanging out near the distro room and watching who came to pick up the envelopes that had no routing names. Pretty soon Larry had an accident. He was OK, as long as you don't unplug his respirator. The doctors say he's got the brain of a lizard. George concluded that it was easier to do what your told and not ask silly questions.

The distro boxes were emptied as usual. The courier loaded everything into his car and made his rounds of the offices and buildings on his route. The envelopes from the box with no name were taken to a big mailroom in a complex of buildings in a nearby city. A mail room worker placed them in a plastic tub and sent the tub along a conveyor belt. The tub entered a long tunnel between two buildings but, when it left, it was empty.

Deep beneath the office buildings, inside a window-less office brightly lit with fluorescent lights, a man behind a desk opened the envelopes and read through them, making notes on a computer while doing so. He finished the stack, leaned back, and stretched. Picking up his coffee cup, he headed for the break room. On the way back from the coffee machine, he stopped into one of the many anonymous cubicles in the blank, sterile area. Knocking lightly on the cubicle's entry, he looked in at the young lady who sat there.

"I think you'd better take a look at what they've found in Bunker area Seven Kilo Three Twenty Two. It might be one of the hot spots the boss was looking for."

She thanked him with a word and started tapping commands into her computer. She scaned the information that was displayed and then picked up her phone.

"Take a look at Seven Kilo322. Possible green light."

Without waiting for a response, she hung up the phone and resumed working at her computer.