// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
In the basement of miniaturized relics
Carol Scheina is a deaf speculative author whose stories have appeared in publications such as Nature Futures, Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod and others. You can find more of her work at carolscheina.wordpress.com.
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For some suitcases, the journey ended in Melba’s office: the Lost Luggage Department. It was a cramped space in the basement of the Interstellar-Plus Flight Headquarters on Planet 462. Where the lights flickered and formed shadows in every cranny. Where planetary dust sneaked in every time a door to the outside was opened.
Melba always made a point of brushing the grey specks off her clothes, but dust still followed her as she slipped through the heavy doors of Headquarters.
Headquarters was mostly empty now — most people were in the process of relocating to Headquarters 2, newly built near the more popular interstellar travel routes. The elevator was empty as she rode three levels down.
In one corner was her small workstation. The rest of the space was filled with suitcases and bags, every one of them shrunk to just a few inches tall.
It was standard practice to put luggage through the molecular-reduction device at the start of an interstellar journey. Space travel didn’t allow for a lot of extra room and weight on a ship, so shrinking allowed people to bring more on their journey; they would just re-size everything when they arrived.
Except, sometimes, luggage was accidentally stowed on the wrong ship. A huge problem when you consider the immense times involved in interstellar travel. It could take decades to realize a bag was heading the wrong way, then decades more to ship a suitcase back across the stars. Tiny pieces of luggage often ended up being transported from ship to ship before reaching their final destination: Melba’s office. Most people didn’t even contact the company to file a lost luggage claim; they just gave up hope of ever seeing their bags again.
There was no guidance on how long to wait for a claim, but Melba didn’t mind. She spent her days walking through little towers of suitcases, stacked like dominoes. Using her X-ray scanner, she could peer inside luggage, officially checking for mould or damage, but really, she loved getting brief glimpses of another time and place.
A miniature knitted hat for a planet where the climate was a lot chillier than the constant 21 °C on Melba’s world.