It was in October. Monday the second. Nine o’clock in the morning. I was in the stats lab at HiTek, struggling with a box of clippings on hair-bobbing. I’m Sandra Foster, by the way, and I work in R D at HiTek. I had spent all weekend going through yellowed newspapers and 1920s copies of The Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator, trudging upstream to the beginnings of the fad of hair-bobbing, looking for what had caused every woman in America to suddenly chop off her “crowning glory,” despite social pressure, threatening sermons, and four thousand years of long hair.

I had clipped endless news items; highlighted references, magazine articles, and advertisements; dated them; and organized them into categories. Flip had stolen my stapler, I had run out of paper clips, and Desiderata hadn’t been able to find any more, so I had had to settle for stacking them, in order, in the box, which I was now trying to maneuver into my lab.

The box was heavy and had been made by the same people who manufacture paper sacks for the supermarket, so when I’d dumped it just outside the lab so I could unlock the door, it had developed a major rip down one side. I was half-wrestling, half-dragging it over next to one of the lab tables so I could lift the stacks of clippings out when the whole side started to give way.

An avalanche of magazine pages and newspaper stories began to spill out through the side before I could get it pushed back in place, and I grabbed for them and the box as Flip opened the door and slouched in, looking disgusted. She was wearing black lipstick, a black halter, and a black leather micro-skirt and was carrying a box about the size of mine.

“I’m not supposed to have to deliver packages,” she said. “You’re supposed to pick them up in the mail room.”

“I didn’t know I had a package,” I said, trying to hold the box together with one hand and reach a roll of duct tape in the middle of the lab table with the other. “Just set it down anywhere.”