A delivery man in
a green van carried a package down my dock later that afternoon. He should have delivered it to the house, but we were out back fishing, and he needed a signature.
I watched him as he walked out the dock. He wore a green long-sleeved uniform and a small pair of silver sunglasses. When he got close, he pulled a green pen out of his pocket and held out a clipboard. “Delivery for Mr. Waverly,” he said. “Can I get a signature?”
I took the pen and clipboard and wrote John Doe in the signature box. The loops on the J invaded the neighboring boxes. “Here you go.” I handed him the clipboard and glanced at the embroidery on his shirt pocket. “I didn’t think delivery companies worked Sundays, Robert.”
“Ours does,” he said. “And my name’s Bob. Not Robert.”
“Did you change your name after you ordered your shirts?”
“Another Bob started before me.” He shook his head. “They told me I could add an initial at the end, but then it would say Bob O. That sounds like a clown.” He looked at my signature. “Mr. Waverly, can I see some identification?”
I was still wearing the bathing suit from the airport work. “It’s in the house,” I said. “You got the right address. What’s the problem?”
“You signed John Doe in the box.”
“You claim your name is Bob, but you’re wearing Robert’s shirt.”
His frown made his forehead crinkle between his eyebrows. “I need to be sure that I deliver this package to Scott Waverly.”
“You have. That’s me.”
He sighed and pulled a small handheld computer out of his pocket, flipped open its cover, and typed on its miniature keyboard. “Just a second while I verify, sir.”
“Verify what?”
“You.” He tapped the screen. “Here we are. Five foot eleven, medium build, brown hair, hazel eyes.” He tilted the screen my way. “It’s you, all right.”
A photo of me standing in the airport this morning graced his screen, along with my address and information about our company. “So it was you talking to Jane this morning,” I said. Jane was right; he was a little freaky looking.
Bob flipped the handheld’s cover shut and shoved it in his pocket. “Yes sir.” He handed me the package and headed up the dock.
“Hey, you forgot your pen!” I called.
“You’ll need it, sir.” He climbed into his green van and drove away.
Dad examined the package. “It’s from Soul Identity—do you know them?”
“Nope,” I said. “Wait, I do. Somebody from Soul Identity called on Friday. I gave him the spiel about our security auditing services.” I handed him the bait knife.
He slit the package open and pulled out two yellow envelopes. He pointed at a READ ME FIRST label. “We should start with this.”
“I’ll get the other.” I tore the end off my envelope and pulled out a yellow plastic device, oblong in shape and flat on its sides. It looked like a bright yellow slice from the middle of a hard boiled egg. Instead of the yolk it had a button labeled “Soul Identity reader.” A lens the size of a pea glinted from the small end, and a key ring dangled from the other.
Mom plucked it from my hand. “It looks like a keychain flashlight.”
“It’s not a flashlight,” Dad said. “Listen to this. Dear Mr. Waverly, blah blah blah, we wish to engage your services, but in order to commence the engagement—” He looked up. “Commence the engagement? Who writes like that anymore?”
“Old people. Old companies. Old lawyers.” I said. “What do they want?”
“In order to commence the engagement, you must signify your acceptance by providing us your soul identity. Kindly use the enclosed reader, blah blah blah, return the reader by the same delivery company, blah blah blah, instructions for using the reader are attached.” He read to himself. “The rest is just legal stuff, and then it’s signed by Archibald Morgan, executive overseer of Soul Identity.”
“Scott, what kind of wackos are you involving us with?” Mom asked.
“Beats me,” I said. “We’re not involved. Yet. Let’s see the instructions.” I took the sheet from Dad and read:
Using the Soul Identity Reader:
1.
Press and hold button for five seconds, until lens flashes red.
2.
Place lens two inches directly in front of right eye. Do not blink.
3.
Press and hold button for one second. Lens will flash green if successful. If lens does not flash green, start over.
4.
Place lens two inches directly in front of left eye. Do not blink.
5.
Press and hold button for one second. Lens will flash yellow if successful. If lens does not flash yellow, start over.
Just then the tip of my fishing rod jerked down. I handed the paper to Mom and grabbed the rod. I adjusted the tension and fought the fish in close. It was a bluefish, the only kind in the middle bay that puts up a decent fight.
Dad snagged him with the long handled net, and together we lifted him onto the dock. “Careful with his teeth,” he said as I grabbed the fish under his gills.
Bluefish love to bite, and they have razor sharp teeth. Many bluefish fishermen have lost a finger or two by not paying attention.
I got the hook out with my digits intact. “You’re one lucky fish,” I said. House rules: the first fish caught is returned to the bay to appease the fishing gods. I was about to toss him back, but then I stopped. “This guy can help us out,” I said. “We’ll read his soul identity.”
“From the fish?” Mom asked.
“They want an identity, so we’ll give them one. Dad, bring that reader over here. I’ll hold him steady.”
Mom looked at the instructions. “They say press the button for five seconds. Did it flash red?”
“It’s too bright out here.” Dad cupped his hands around the reader. “Let me try again. Yes, it’s flashing red.”
“Two inches from the right eye,” Mom read. “No, the fish’s right eye—that’s his left one. Press the button for one second. Did it flash green?”
“It’s flashing red,” Dad said.
“You must have held the button too long,” Mom said. “Do it again.”
Dad did the fish’s right eye, and the lens flashed green. He shifted to the left eye, and the lens flashed yellow.
Mission
accomplished.
I tossed the bluefish back into the bay and watched him swim off. I wiped my hands on my towel. “Now what?” I asked.
“We’re done,” Dad said.
The tricky part was figuring out where to send the reader. We could not find Soul Identity’s address in the documents. Bob was right about the pen: written on it in white was “Delivery,” followed by a toll free phone number. I used Dad’s phone to call.
A cheerful man’s voice answered on the first ring. “Dispatch.”
“May I speak with Bob?” I asked.
“Which Bob?”
“Sorry, it’s not Bob. His shirt says Robert. He’s a delivery guy.”
“Please hold while connecting to Robert.” I heard a click, and then another ring.
“This is Bob.” I recognized the voice of our delivery man.
“Uh oh. I was holding for Robert.”
Silence on the other end. Then, “Is this Mr. Waverly?”
I must have made an impression. “Yes, Bob, it’s me. I want to send the package back to Soul Identity. What do I have to do?” I slipped the key ring onto my finger and twirled the reader.
“Sir, I can be there in five minutes.”
“You left here a half hour ago,” I said. “Do you have turbo in that green van?”
“No, sir. I am waiting at the end of your street. I was instructed to stay close and wait for you to call back.”
“Am I your company’s only customer?” I spun the reader faster. It made a pretty yellow whirl.
“No, sir. Soul Identity is our only customer.”
The reader flew off my finger and landed inside the bait cooler. “You’re kidding,” I said.
“No sir, I do not kid. We are Soul Identity’s delivery service.”
I examined the green pen. The word Delivery and the phone number stood out in white lettering. But then in dark green I saw the initials SI. And after the phone number, again in dark green, I read “est. 1732.”
“Okay, Bob,” I said. “You’ve got me interested. But give me a half hour to clean up before you return.” I hung up and fished the reader out of the bait cooler. I flipped it over and brushed the seaweed off the back. A strand clung in a crack near the key ring, and I wiggled it out and saw small dark yellow lettering underneath. Holding the reader up to the sun, I read “
Access
Port.
”
“Where’s that bait knife?” I asked. Dad passed it to me, and I wiggled the blade into the crack and twisted. The key ring end flipped open like the cover on a Zippo lighter and exposed a Universal Serial Bus, or USB connector. I could use it to see what was on the reader. “We’ll have to check it out before Bob gets here,” I said.
We packed up the fishing gear, grabbed the package and envelopes, and walked up the dock to my house.
I live on
Kent
Island
, smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, on the western edge of
Maryland
’s
Eastern Shore
. My parents and I must cross the four
mile
Bay
Bridge
to visit each other. This gets tedious on the summer weekends when the highways are stuffed with cars bound for
Ocean
City
, but my house faces west and gets gorgeous sunsets, so usually my parents come my way instead of me going theirs. The fishing also helps bring them over, and since we run our company out of my house, they commute here to work a couple days each week anyway. This morning they had come early for our trip to the airport.
Dad put away the fishing gear and Mom got a mailing package ready. I fired up my laptop, plugged the reader into the USB port, and watched as the system grabbed and installed the driver software.
The reader had a mini file system, which meant I could read its data from a regular folder window, much like an MP3 player’s music files or a digital camera’s pictures. My laptop popped the reader’s folder onto my screen, and I saw one file named “1608-233052.SIR.”
Dad looked over my shoulder. “What’s a SIR extension?” he asked.
“I’m guessing Soul Identity Reader. The sixteen-oh-eight looks like the day and month, and the rest is probably the time.”
“It wasn’t eleven thirty when we did the bluefish,” Dad pointed out.
“Universal Time,” I said. “That would be seven thirty for us.” I pointed at the screen. “Sixteen minutes ago, and that matches the time on the file.”
I pulled up the file’s contents. It contained two sets of date, time, map coordinates, altitude, and spatial axis data. I scrolled down and saw a reader serial number and a large binary chunk.
“Can you figure out what it says?” Mom asked.
“We sure can.” Dad pointed at the screen. “Male bluefish, age six years, puncture wound on the lower lip and jaw.”
Mom crossed her arms. “How can they know all that?”
“He’s kidding, Mom,” I said. “Bob’s on his way, so I kept a copy to decode after he’s gone.”
She slipped the reader into the package and taped it shut. “I still think these guys are wackos,” she said. “Do you really want to send this?”
“We could use the work.” I walked out of the office and into the living room. “I’m going to wash off that bluefish smell. Say hi to Bob for me.”
While I was in the shower I wondered what had triggered Soul Identity to contact us. We do more than airport security work; we provide computer security consulting. Most of our business comes right after our clients discover somebody has stolen their customers, money, ideas, or intellectual property. They call us to protect them from further losses; they are proof that people really do love to fix barn doors after their horses are gone.
Soul Identity hadn’t yet told us what had been taken, but that was typical for our clients. Nobody wants to advertise their losses.
I walked back to the office and saw Bob sitting in my chair and drinking a cup of tea with my parents.
“Bob’s waiting for your signature,” Mom said.
“You look good in that chair, Bob,” I said. “You want to join our business? We could get you out of that green uniform and into a nice pair of shorts.”
Bob shook his head. “No thank you, sir. I have been with Soul Identity for many years, and they have always treated me well.”
Bob didn’t look old enough to have worked anywhere for more than a few years. “What does Soul Identity do, Bob?” I asked. “Why scan people’s eyes?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Sir, I am not authorized to talk to you about our organization.”
I grabbed the clipboard and scribbled another John Doe, this time with my left hand. The loops stayed inside their borders. I stuck the pen in my pocket and handed him the package.
“Well, sir, maybe I will see you again.” Bob opened the door and stepped outside.