Displacement by Richard Ford Burley

Author:Richard Ford Burley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prospective Press
Published: 2020-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

She sets down the box next to its predecessors, the latest in a line of cardboard and styrofoam reliquaries shipped there from a hundred nameless manufacturers scattered around the globe. A bead of sweat drips down her neck—it’s warmer down here on the fifteenth floor than in the artificially-chilled server rooms above.

The first delivery had caught Faye off guard. She’d been swapping out a cooling unit in one of Betza’s node clusters when the bell in the desk phone behind her had shuddered into life, nearly startling her into dropping a screw. It was a retro find, a classic black bakelite she’d hunted high and low for as a personal touch for the room, sitting there dignified, looking like something out of a Cold War movie. The idea had been to hook it up to the building’s intercom so that, on the off chance someone did visit, she could answer the doorbell in style. But after months of disuse, the chill of the smooth plastic on her ear had become an unfamiliar sensation, as had the sound of its bell.

“Uh, hey?” The voice on the line had sounded unsure. “Is this…” there had been a rustling of papers in the gap. “Uh, Dr. Sullivan?”

Faye hadn’t said a word out loud in two days and she’d had trouble finding her voice, but she’d at last managed to croak out a “Yeah—yes, that’s me” with a little effort.

“Courier, ma’am. I’m gonna need a signature for this.”

She’d sighed. “Can’t you leave it with the front desk?” Her interest in the situation had almost died at the word “ma’am.”

“Nah, sorry, Dr. Sullivan ma’am.” He’d said it like it was all a part of her name, Doctor-Sullivan-Ma’am, and her eye had twitched involuntarily. “No can do,” he’d said. “It says it’s gotta be you. Strict instructions. S’why the old man down here made me call up.”

She’d taken the old freight elevator down and wound her way through the first floor to the security station, wondering most of the way if she were being served legal papers. But who even knew to find her there? The list was short, and her mind had leaped from candidate to candidate to no avail. And what would it be for, anyway? She hadn’t broken any laws. She didn’t think she’d broken any laws.

In the old, tiled lobby, the courier had taken a signature with a bored glance at her ID, then left whatever it was in her hands before wandering back out into the street, letting the flimsy glass and aluminum doors slap shut behind him.

The security guard, a retired old cop, had just shrugged, and she’d gone back upstairs to examine the prize.

Unlike the many packages that would soon start to arrive, this first one had been small, about the size of a ream of paper, its white cardboard shell marred only by a printed address sticker half covering the courier’s logo.

And a ream of paper it was: legal documents, signed contracts, a deed, and a title.

She’d grown increasingly bewildered the more she’d examined them.

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