In Transit

 

Edited itinerary: A very short snapshot from a long modern journey that rivals anything Marco Polo or Genghis Khan ever tried. Shipping from east to west in detail. Logistics are a fine art these days and every event is logged. This is just a small portion of the great chunks of random information available about this item's journey from there to here.

I tune in most days. Just so they'll know, in the AI system, that I care. I'll never visit any of the exotic sounding staging posts and markers that flash up on a regular basis. I've nothing to reference what or why they are there. I'm a faraway spectator.

Weather is often a feature and an excuse as well. What the driver had for lunch or whether he had a good night's sleep. Sometimes I imagine it's travelling by mule train, bicycle or tuk-tuk and not in some frigid container stuffed with other stuff. Some days by train, other days by road, maybe a ship at some point if it ever gets close to a body of water.

Not green, not clever, I know. Just relentless, slow progress over a few months. It's how things are done. What's the precious cargo? Can't say too much about it at the moment, but I doubt it's no more than a reasonably sized and battered Jiffy bag identified with a grubby barcode label.

So in the foreseeable future the doorbell will ring. I'll open it and meet this seasoned traveller, dumped ignominiously onto the front step on a wet Friday afternoon. The delivery man is already walking off with his back to me. I wave a feeble "thank you" wave but he doesn't turn around.

The Jiffy bag is in my hands. I'm in no hurry to open it. Take a little time. I suspect that there will be yet another Roy Batty "tears in the rain" moment for the package and me, now that its epic journey is finally over.