Finances

Future Teleporting Post Services

satchel bagsThe way technology is going lately, I’d be surprised if we aren’t just beaming objects to each other instead of waiting for postmen to deliver them. Back a few decades, I used to be a big fan of Sun Romp, the daring and ground-breaking tale of a ship heading into the unknown to find new aliens to press into manual labour for the glory of the human race. It was a different time. They had teleporters, if I recall correctly. Imagine the postal service back on planet Earth! If they even had one in that glorious, enlightened time.

Too bad it happened to coincide with me starting a job as an actual postman. I looked at my postage satchel, thought longingly of Sun Romp and felt a little bit inadequate. Why couldn’t I have been born 200 years or so in the future, when people didn’t have to lug heavy courier bags around and deliver mail? Nothing about it seemed fair at all. I was half-tempted to look up the whole situation on the internet to see if anyone was close to inventing teleport technology, except that internet wouldn’t be around for a good few years after that, so basically…it was a matter of reading newspapers, magazines and maybe giving some scientists a ring to see if they had anything to say on the matter. All I could find were crackpots and sensationalist pieces, so I just had to shoulder my heavy satchel bag and go about my rounds for the next few decades. Fortunately, I didn’t know how things would still be in 2016, with postmen still lugging around the post even now, when I’m retired. My seventeen-year-old self eventually grew out of childish fantasies, but even now, I’m still waiting. Not that I won’t be keeping my trusty courier satchel bags. Once people start teleporting their post, these things will be collectors items!

-Alvin