notes

it's a title, concerning a package that "experiences an exception" (this is what UPS calls it when they lose one). It might just be a McGuffin (tip o' the hat to Devon Kappa for that expression), and/or it may be something Squatter-like, or more Fissure Monroe-like, really ... The Odyssey of the Package may be partially told from the package's point of view, or from the points of view of the people who encountered (and handled) it along the way. The package means something to someone, of course, and she (for some reason I believe it is a she, named Zoey Bridges) is determined to track it down. What does the package contain? Where did it come from? Where was it intended to go? Where did it actually go. What happens to the package and the person and all the people along the way? TBD, as it were. Like I said, it's only a title so far. Now that I think of it, Freak City also concerned a package, but a hand-delivered one ...

The package-narrator is a witness, it sees and "experiences" everything around it. It doesn't have much of an "inner life", so to speak. That is limited to its contents. It observes in every direction at once, except the direction it is sitting on (down) - unless it is placed over glass. It can describe its surroundings. It can sense everything. It may perhaps be able to discern such subtleties as when things are going wrong, when a scan is incomplete or erroneous, for example. It might have a sense of direction. It may understand its labeling, and know where it should be going, but it does not trust its own map-knowledge. As far as it knows, flying from New York to Minneapolis in order to fly from there to Miami, might make sense to someone (such as an airline). It is trusting and largely in repose. It has a mellow outlook and can go with the flow, doesn't mind being tossed around. It encounters other packages. Some of those are worse for wear. Some are shiny and important. There is a whole hierarchy to them, in the planes, in the trucks, in the warehouses, on the handcarts.

The narrative alternates between carton and human (if not always the same person).

It has an intelligence inside it. The package may contain a top secret device created by the mad inventor from World Weary Avengers. Zoey cannot tell anyone what it is (she is sworn to secreyc), and it is extremely important, one of a kind. She has to track it down. Meanwhile, the device has certain powers of its own. It has abilities. There may be an ongoing conversation between the package and its contents (clearly metaphorically the body and the brain, where in this case the brain only temporarily inhabits that body. It yearns to return to its rightful purse in life).

Zoey is a blackbox tester who has previously been selected by Chris@WorldWearyAvengers.com to do some other work - including the PMS (Personal Muzak System) and other gadgets (she does not know the inventor, Tom, only Chris, to whom she feels an inexplicable loyalty due to his near magical charisma). The new device she is given is so secret it is truly a black box to her. To test it, she has only to carry it with her in her pocket at all times. She tinkers with it to no effect, as far as she can tell. One day it flashes a message on the screen, telling her to ship it back to Chris. This is where it gets lost - on the way back.

Turns out the device is a sort of personality record/playback device. In record mode, it captures the personality of its "container" (whoever possesses it). In playback mode, it replays that personality into the container where it resides - in this case, the box itself is the container (Tom had programmed it a bit too literally), so it animates this inanimate object with Zoey's personality. The animated box comes alive, "experiences an exception", experiences its surroundings, and is, among other things, alienated from its fellow, inert packages. It is also unconscious of the device inside it. It thinks it is the thing that thinks (I think therefore i am) - body/mind duality, the soul, all of that stuff lightly referenced, analogized, but not sermonized or directly addressed in any way.

This new being (device+box+Zoey) begins to manage to direct its own way back home (in this case, Zoey's home, not WorldWearyAvengers.com) ...