In the basement of miniaturized relics

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.

A tiny tea set, the porcelain near-transparent in the scanner’s view. No one drank out of teacups at Headquarters — sturdy lidded vessels were essential for keeping the dust out.

Melba’s favourite was orange suitcase 72, with the itty-bitty chess set, the pieces so small she’d need tweezers to move them.

As she dusted every individual suitcase, Melba imagined setting up permanent scanners in front of the luggage so people could walk by and admire the hand-painted swirls of the teacup, the carving of the chess pieces. People wouldn’t be able to open a suitcase, of course, because they should only be enlarged and opened by an owner, but people could still peek into the past. Many of those miniature time capsules dated back to long before Melba was born.

She imagined how she’d display the suitcases, how she’d create little labels to put beneath them.

Let the world know these items still existed.

She smiled as she squeezed around the luggage towers to her desk.

Strangely, there was a message today. She never got messages; just little suitcases dumped on her workstation.

But today, per the blinking note, someone had requested Suitcase 21. Referencing the catalogue in her mind, Melba knew that was the brown case packed with books, the print too small to read, even with the scanner. Melba often thought about how someone had cherished those hardbacks enough to bring them across space and time. Well, a new journey awaited them.

Melba tried to force some joy into her heart. The books had a new home. Hooray, right?

Then she noticed the destination: sub-level 6. The trash level.

Another message beeped in. Two messages in one day?

This one requested Suitcase 35. The red bag with the little knitted blankets folded and nestled together like a woollen nest. Also to sub-level 6.

Gently, she meandered through the towers, retrieving the little cases. She dusted the smallest of flecks off them as they rested in her hands.

A third message flashed.