The Optimum Project

Chapter 3

The Important shipment

As we walked toward the warehouse I again noticed the hover bike leaning on the wall, and now a poster hanging above it for a junkyard, I nudged my dad with my elbow and pointed at it. He looked over and nodded, acting as though he wasn't interested, though we both knew there could be some good stuff there.
As we walked into the warehouse and talked to the manager I heard him ask quietly, "how far is that junkyard?"

The man talked with him quietly for a moment and then replied gruffly, "take a left at the port entrance and drive for about five minutes."

I quickly did the math in my head, five minutes to get there, about an hour to look around and then another five minutes to get back. We weren't due to leave port for another three hours, two of which were to be used to prepare the shipment. I looked over at my dad and he answered my unasked question, "you can go if you help me load up first."

I smiled and nodded as the manager called over a worker to bring out our shipment, the worker nodded and lifted his arm tapping on the small computer mounted there, trying to find out where it was in the massive building. After a few more taps he jogged off into the jungle of shipping crates and forklifts. Unlike most vehicles, the forklifts still used wheels so that they would be more stable when they moved stuff. I tore myself away from my thoughts as the phone rang and the manager answered in a surprisingly pleasant manner, " depro shipping warehouse, how may I help you?"

After a moment the pleasantness left and he snapped at the person on the other end, "Yes, I know...ok...yeah? whatever,"

he slammed the phone down and sighed, looking at us."your crate is outside, pick up Dock nine, have a nice trip."

My father nodded and I followed him out to where the crate was, it was a fairly common crate, long, with thick metal walls and no windows. As we walked closer I noticed that the crate seemed to have nubs on each corner, I pointed them out to my dad, he glanced at them and nodded, then his eyes narrowed and looked closer. He leaned over to me, explaining "they're like mini hover coils, they stop the crate from being jostled, this shipment must be pretty important, I had a feeling when that lady told me the pay out, but this just confirms it." I nodded and now noticed that the crate was hovering a quarter inch off the ground, very important.