She rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to get a notice saying you have a package.”

Yes, well, and you were probably supposed to deliver it, I thought, which explains why I never got it. “Could you reach me that duct tape?” I said.

“Employees aren’t supposed to ask interdepartmental assistants to run personal errands or make coffee,” Flip said.

“Handing me a roll of tape is not a personal errand,” I said.

Flip sighed. “I’m supposed to be delivering the interdepartmental mail.” She tossed her hair. She had shaved her head the week before but had left a long hank along the front and down one side expressly for flipping when she feels put-upon.

Flip is my punishment for having tried to get her predecessor, Desiderata, fired. Desiderata was mindless, clueless, and completely without initiative. She misdelivered the mail, wrote down messages wrong, and spent all her free time examining her split ends. After two months and a wrong phone call that cost me a government grant, I went to Management and demanded she be fired and somebody, anybody else be hired, on the grounds that nobody could possibly be worse than Desiderata. I was wrong.

Management moved Desiderata to Supply (nobody ever gets fired at HiTek except scientists and even we don’t get pink slips. Our projects just get canceled for lack of funding) and hired Flip, who has a nose ring, a tattoo of a snowy owl, and the habit of sighing and rolling her eyes when you ask her to do anything at all. I am afraid to get her fired. There is no telling who they might hire next.

Flip sighed loudly. “This package is really heavy.”

“Then set it down,” I said, stretching to reach the tape. It was just out of reach. I inched the hand holding the side of the box shut higher and leaned farther across the lab table. My fingertips just touched the tape.