Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery (short story)
Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Lupan Evezan and illustrated by Aristide Twain. It was the first to star the Blue Feather characters, although the organisation had been introduced earlier in a Fact File.
Contents
Plot
In the headquarters of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' little-respected “backup taskforce” (which are really an abandoned warehouse), the Blue Feather, team leader Acquaintanceship-982 is sulking at his “desk” (which is really an overturned crate). Just as he is mulling over how much he would love his team to be put to the test with an actually important assignment, Philatel-426 of the Department of Postal Services walks in. He recruits the Blue Feather to investigate the disappearance of a mailbag from the D.P.S. building. Although he does tell them that, as far as he knows, no especially important documents were to be found therein, Acquaintanceship is overjoyed at having a real investigation to sink his teeth into.
He rallies his teammates — cheerful Ally-1243, brooding Pessimist-242, mischief-loving Larrikin-1029 and preening, stuffy Dandy-432. They decide to begin with their investigation by finding Philatel again to ask him for further details. They meet him in his office, which Acquaintanceship notes with much envy is well-decorated, even having a cushion in a corner. Philatel is tetchy and, after Larrikin almost attacks him, sends them out with no further data. They make their way to the mail-sorting station to look for clues. Finding none, they get the idea to interview Lord Thymon, whom they find in the delivery wing. Thymon convinces them that he is not to blame for the bag going missing, but reports having seen one Cupid not employed by the D.P.S. in the area: Marksmanship-522.
Convinced that he's the mail-bag thief, the Blue Feather head to Marksmanship's house, where, this being his day off, Marksmanship himself is having a nap. Larrikin picks the lock and they surprise him in his bedroom, capturing him in a burlap sack. However, the innocent Cupid quickly explains that he was merely at the Post Office to borrow a few stamps from Philatel for his own stamp collection.
Elsewhere, Foreman-964 is meeting with the other Head Construction Cupids of the Department of Construction to plan out the Department's next superfluous warehouse — “the biggest one yet, six stories tall and with twelve rooms on each floor”, which they intend to build on the current location of the Post Office's west wing after demolishing the latter. As it transpires, the work has halted due to the blueprints having failed to arrive in the mail. An irate Foreman decides to contact Philatel and give him a piece of his mind.
Meanwhile, the Blue Feather have continued interviewing “suspects” who'd been glimpsed in the vicinity of the Post Office recently, to little avail. Acquaintanceship is called on his two-way communicator by Foreman, who explains that he got in touch with Philatel about the blueprints and was told that they were among the items of mail in the stolen mailbag. Her further states that he is going to have the Blue Feather taken off the case and place it in the hands of the Scarlet Wings, the Crew's actually competent primary taskforce. However, after he hangs up, what Foreman lets slip turns out to be just what Acquaintanceship needed to hear to solve the mystery himself: Philatel has now shown that he knew what was in the bag, meaning his earlier claim otherwise to the Blue Feather was a lie. He absconded with the mailbag to halt Foreman's work, which would destroy part of his Post Office, and put the Blue Feather on the case to divert suspicion, under the assumption that they were too incompetent to find him out.
To get definitive proof, the Blue Feather Cupids resolve to get Philatel out of his office. However, Dandy's attempt to convince him to go on an innocuous walk fails miserably, and it falls to Larrikin to tackle him to the ground after having hung in wait, upside-down, from the ceiling light, and then trap him in a burlap sack. While Ally locates the mailbag — which was disguised as the cushion Acquaintanceship saw earlier — a frantic and shame-faced Philatel admits to the theft, explaining that he saw no other choice to salvage the west wing, where he stores his stamp collection.
Ultimately, rather than turn Philatel over to the Department of Discipline, the Blue Feather use their discovery into letting them set up shop in the west wing itself, while the Department of Construction are persuaded to bulldoze and replace their old headquarters instead. Just as they're finished settling in, Colonel-028 rushes in with a case for them: his pie has been stolen, with a paper fish as the only clue left on the scene of the crime.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- This story takes place in the Cupid Homeworld.
Other
- The Department of Postal Services is prominently featured. Its building has a “west wing” which is not used in the normal operation of the Department, and is instead used by the Prefect, Philatel-426, to store his stamp collection.
- Concerning Pessimist-242's strangely downcast disposition, “amateur researchers at the Department of Cupid Anatomy” once hypothesised that he had a negatronic brain instead of a positronic brain. The Department of Physics found this coinage “ridiculous and entirely unscientific”.
- It is mentioned that it “hardly ever rains” in the Cupid Homeworld despite the widespread presence of clouds.
- “Tachyon particles” and “inter-dimensional residue” are among the substances the Cupids look for as clues.
- The Mainland Cloud is the central cloud of the Cupid Homeworld. The Post Office is built there.
- The plans for the new warehouse were drafted up by the Department of Architecture.
- There exists a Department of Permits, whose permission the Department of Construction needed to demolish parts of the Post Office.
- Some Clockwork Cherubs have pain receptors, but Foreman-964 had his own “removed” to “better withstand” the more physical aspects of his construction work.
- Foreman is said to have “sprained his wrist that morning after falling down stairs while yelling at a Mark 17 Cupid to get off of his yard”.
- The Scarlet Wings are mentioned.
Continuity
- Philatel-426 mentions the Department of Discipline's propensity to send people on protracted romanticising assignments as punishments, as previously seen in PROSE: The Labors of Juliet.
- Lord Thymon is still a recent, mistrusted addition to the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' Department of Postal Services following the revelation of his having been hired by them in COMIC: Whatever Happened to Lord Thymon?.
- The story ends where the earlier PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish began, with Colonel-028 enlisting the help of the Blue Feather.
- This story marks the second appearance of the burlap sack motif, a recurring joke in the series, after PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race introduced it. When Marksmanship is captured in a sack by Larrikin-1029, it is even mentioned that he half-expected that he “would then be forced to judge a race”.
- The two-way communicators introduced here made their next appearance in PROSE: The Drove of the Demesmaekerite-Dyed Discordias.
- The feud between Foreman-964 and Philatel-426 would be seen again in such stories as PROSE: New Warehouse To Be Constructed In The Homeworld and PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box, with the latter also mentioning that the West Wing of the Post Office had recently become the Blue Feather's new HQ. The running joke of the Department of Construction's obsession with building warehouses would also occasionally come up independently of the Philatel-Foreman feud, such as in PROSE: The Metafictional Meddler.
- The events of this story were referenced in PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol, with Philatel recalling how the Blue Feather made their headquarters in the stamp wing of the Department of Postal Services' building after they “exposed a scheme of Philatel's and blackmailed him into allowing them to keep their office among his precious stamps”.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.
