The Lost Jetpack

The Hyperion Hotel had a strict lost and found policy. A guest who left any items behind had thirty days from check-out to claim any forgotten items before they were turned over to the house keeping attendant who found it. Naturally, when Helga Oglethorpe went to clean room 208, she did her best not to get her hopes up. There in the closet was a jetpack, and not just any jetpack. This one belonged to Air Commander, Centerville's own superhero. Ever since she was a little girl, she wanted to fly, and here in her hands she had everything she needed to do so. But how could she keep it? Air Commander was her hero, the hero of millions, in fact. Without the jetpack, who was he? She placed the jetpack in a box and sealed it before turning it in to keep its contents a secret. She mulled it over as she waited the required thirty days, and when no one claimed it she took it home.

She wanted to fly it so desperately, but Air Commander needed it back. He hadn't been seen in a month. She knew his secret identity, he had checked into the hotel under the name of ace reporter Tom Hawkins. Maybe she could fly it, just once, to his house to drop it off, but no. That would reveal his secret identity if anyone saw her, and who wouldn't notice a cleaning lady flying through the air on a borrowed jetpack and landing in the lawn of a local celebrity? She thought about bringing it over in the box or calling him on the phone to let him know she had it, who knows how he would respond to discovering she knew his secret. She could mail it in an unmarked box, but he would no doubt suspect it was booby trapped and never use it anyway. She couldn't think of how to return in safely. No, she decided. The only way to get the jetpack back to him on his terms was to fly around town, using it as much as possible and wait for Air Commander to come to her.

- Originally mailed to M. Blackwood in Los Angeles, California

Petra Fan

Sue McDaniels loved the Ender's Game series, particularly any parts dealing with Petra Arkanian, the only girl in Ender's jeesh. The character represented all that women could accomplish, being the commander of an army who can stand on her own, who could stay strong when others crumbled around her. She possessed the keen sort of intellect that could help mastermind an escape from a virtual prison. She was everything Sue wanted to be. Every year for Halloween, she would dress as Petra in one form or another. Salamander Army Petra. Dragon Army Petra. Launchie to Command School and beyond into Bean's Shadow books. Sue served in the air force and married a short guy named Julian. She named her seven children appropriately. She lived her life as Petra. Many told her she was obsessed on the verge of insanity. They teased and mocked, but she didn't care, for on reflection at the end of her days, she looked back and saw that like her hero, she had not lived a life of fear. When times of crisis came, she rose to the challenge, she faced adversity head on, and fought to protect the people and the nation she loved. She lived a life she could be proud of. There were worse role models to have.

- Originally mailed to C. Townsend from Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Balding Security

After pre-natal genetic customization became commonplace—albeit at a steep price—the beautiful became far more beautiful, genetically flawless in fact. The wealthy had their health, their looks, their brilliance, athleticism, and ambition all guaranteed from birth while the rest of humanity was forced to rely on the traditional crapshoot that had been genetic heredity for the past dozens of millennia. With every genetic and monetary advantage stacked against them, the lower class became more resentful than ever, until soon the world existed in a state of precarious balance, just barely avoiding civil war. The Beautiful People paid their guards and servants in single genetic enhancements for their children. Of all genetic modification, from eye color and skin complexion and bone structure and teeth straightness, the hardest to perfect—and the hardest for the poor to fake—was hair. There were too many variables. Sheen, shape, shade, volume, bounce, density. The odds of someone being born with “perfect hair” without genetic manipulation were astronomical. As such, security systems on both sides no longer cared to pinpoint faces anymore. Instead, they pointed their cameras straight down on the hair, searching for receding hairlines, implants, dye jobs, or split ends. The natural part could tell friend from foe better than any interrogation.

- Originally mailed to S. Sartin in Atlanta, Georgia

Beauty Parlors

The back alley beauty parlors were battle grounds in the war between the those who could afford gene scrubbing and those whose genetics were untampered with. Unable to afford professional genetic modification, the poor often resorted to places such as this, where unlicensed med school dropouts would tailor the DNA of the poor so that they and their children could be biologically better off, be it more beautiful, more athletic, more intelligent. The ruling elite of the wealthy, bred from the womb to be perfect in every way, would crack down on these clinics first with legislation and later with firepower. They claimed this was simply for the underprivileged public's own good, to protect them from shoddy workmanship that could do who knows what to their bodies. The poor, however, believed it was control, for how could they compete against the wealthy and gain a fair foothold when those with enough wealth and power could ensure their children would be more cunning than the naturals and their enforcement squads stronger and more agile.

- Originally mailed to C. Townsend of Gulfport, Mississippi

Thwarted Alien

It is a belief widely held by conspiracy theorists and ufologists that there exist just out of phase with our own world an infinite number of other realities neatly stacked atop our own. Those who scoff at tales of the long dead returning argue that ghosts are simply beings from these other worlds visible as through a window when conditions are just so and portions of the two parallel realities briefly graze each other. In the rare cases in which they overlap, we sometimes get reports of people vanishing without a trace or the appearance of people without a verifiable past.

On December 15, 1974, mankind quite unintentionally averted disaster when our world and another very different from our own intersected for seven and a half seconds. In that short time, a creature fueled by hatred and destruction crossed over into our own world. Thankfully, at that precise spot in space and time, we were building a parking garage and the beast found itself caught half phased within a concrete support pillar being poured. Because the parking garage was built by skeptics, they thought nothing of the haunting little round face in the middle of the completed pillar and dismissed it as a strange fluke in the cement.

- Originally mailed to J. Knight from Pascagoula, Mississippi

Saturday Night Trooper

They called him the Saturday Night Trooper, the Sequined Sargeant, the Disco Commando. They teased every time they raided a rebel outpost, saying his sparkling helmet would attract blaster fire, that his three piece suit offered no protection. He gave the usual replies, that a blaster clipped right through armor and maybe being lasers, the beam might be deflected by the sequins and glitter. His dancing skills and fancy footwork certainly helped him dodge his share of heavy enemy fire, and no one could argue that his sense of style often put him front and center of any post-battle victory photos. In truth, he didn't mind the friendly ribbing, but when a disco convention on Coruscant saved him from the first Death Star explosion, and suspension without pay for countless uniform violations spared him from the second he found he could no longer stomach the jokes about “Stayin' Alive.”

- Originally sent to B. Nowell from Newport News, Virginia

Ming

Ming loathed his nickname. It was wholly unfair. He wasn't merciless. Yes, from time to time opponents would threaten his power or his life and he would be forced to dispense righteous violent justice upon them. This, he would say, was not a lack of mercy but simply common and reasonable practice. One cannot abide traitors or assassins if one's government is to have any sort of stability. For this they called him merciless? What about the puppies he adopted, or the time he took everyone in the office to lunch at the food court? No one would dare call him merciless now, not if they wanted a brownie with their sandwich and lemonade.

- Originally mailed to B. Bowser in Brandon, Mississippi

Fake Cat

The creature did its best to impersonate a cat. Its fur was a perfectly thick glossy black and its ears had the proper points. It pretended to enjoy activities like batting at things and snuggling with carpeted pillars. Its disguise wasn't perfect, though. It had no tail, its eyes lacked the proper slits, and it misunderstood that cats claw at things for the sake of clawing, and not to prepare a thing for eating. Still its disguise was good enough to keep him undetected on the planet for many months, in which time he learned that though mankind seemed eager to serve him, any being which could not tell the difference between a real cat and a lousy fake would make for terrible slaves.

- Originally mailed to S. Gill of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Bartender

To say Bartholomew Higgans was a bartender ahead of his time would be something of an inaccuracy. He was a bartender who wanted to be ahead of his time and for a brief time was in a very literal sense. Bartholomew, determined to be the greatest bartender in the world, borrowed a time machine from one of the many wild west aficionados from the twenty-third century, and sought about seeking a comprehensive collection of all the greatest cocktail recipes of the past, present, and future. Alas, for when Bartholomew, who found his book, returned to 1876, he discovered that though he had the secrets to alcoholic perfection within his fingers, he could still only get his hands on the cheapest rotgut whiskeys. Thus, instead of being an innovator, he relegated himself to fulfilling the the role of prophet of the highball.

- Originally sent to A. Navoy in Jackson, MS

Jetpack

-->

There were those who teased when Lela Jenkins swore she would never ride in another stinking crowded elevator again. Their laughter turned to jeers when she said she would create a jetpack to avoid long walks up steep stairs. For weeks she toiled, adjusting the fuel lines, calibrating thrust, aligning it to local and federal aviation law, and finding an outfit to match its brass and bronze design. At long last, she had perfected the pack and arrived to work one overcast September morning, ready to put her co-workers in their place and take to the skies in triumphant style. The pack worked spectacularly, and the jeers had turned to wild cheering. She cut loops and carved a clean spiral around the towering office building. The day should have been a smashing success, and if it were only a matter of science, it would have been. Her plan was flawless in its execution but for one tiny detail. There were no external doors on the twenty-third floor.

- Originally sent to M. Bennett of Plano, Texas