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

Going Underwater

After taking hurricane related flooding for the fifth straight season, the residents of Makepeace, MS decided they would no longer fight the inevitable. If the universe wanted their beloved town beneath the waves, so be it. They hired mechanics to make their vehicles amphibious. They installed airlocks on their homes, and those top scientists not already modifying their genetic code for improved lung capacity and/or gills worked diligently day in and day out to waterproof the cable TV infrastructure. When the first major storm made landfall the following year, all the residents of Makepeace waited in rapt anticipation. After months of planning and waiting, Submersion Day had come. The storm was only a category one, however, and the town only partially flooded. They were disheartened, sure, but the American spirit is an indomitable beast, and they tuned their waterproof televisions to the Weather Channel and waited. There would always be another storm.

- Originally mailed to J. St. John of Picayune, Mississippi

Hipster Food

 

It's hard to believe this unassuming photo would change pop culture history. In the early part of the 21st century, portions of society known as “hipsters” would routinely share digital photographs or “pics” of their food before eating it, though the reason for this practice is the subject of much debate. Historians do agree, however, that Hugo Carpenter (1983-2092) changed this practice on a fundamental level in 2013. While others posted “instantgrams” of food to Facesbook, a primitive social media network where people bragged, plagiarized, and complained to win the most Likes, Hugo decided to embrace the hipster philosophy of celebrating a thing before it is another thing by sharing a photograph of his dinner “before it was food.” Soon, others emulated this food regression, which in turn inspired Noah Wilkins (1998-2088) to share an image of a cow in a wheat field with the caption “My cheese burger before it was ingredients.” This photographic regression escalated with photos of lakes which were “sodas before they were well water before they were clouds” and parents who were “macaroni and cheese before buying ingredients after having a kid and changing their eating habits to 'whatever the brat will eat' (my parents don't understand me).” The trend culminated in 2025 when Arabella Jones wrote a hundred thousand word annotated caption to a photograph of pure blackness, tracing the origins of her sushi all the way back to the Big Bang. This comment would eventually be published as the best-selling book My Dinner Before It Was Anything: How I Won the Hipster Internet. Following this seminal scholarly work that combined physics with geology, anthropology, history, sociology, and many other disciplines, the hipster movement fell apart, and camera sales plummeted to pre-internet lows.

- Originally mailed to M. Haley of Lake Orion, Michigan