“Boss, there’s no point writing that.”
Haru flicked a box into the air. It spun lazily, drifting toward a corner of the cargo bay.
“There’s no up or down out here. Doesn’t matter how you stack it, how it tumbles — it’s all the same.”
Gen didn’t answer. He just gripped his brush and painted four characters onto the box in front of him: THIS SIDE UP. Then he moved to the next box and did it again. THIS SIDE UP.
“See, that box is already upside down. Writing it doesn’t change anything.”
“I write it anyway.”
That was all he said. Gen had been in the business forty years — back on Earth, every box he packed got the same four characters. Moving his shop to the space station hadn’t changed a thing.
Haru rolled his eyes and packed his own shipment his own way. Orientation? Who cared. Plates, bowls, the mantel clock — he crammed them in edge to edge and tossed them in without a second thought.
“This way’s faster anyway.”
The shipment went out to a colony with gravity.
Three days later, the call came in. Gen set down the receiver and looked at Haru.
“Your shipment arrived upside down. Every bit of it. Plates smashed, the clock ticking away face-down. The client’s furious.”
”…What?”
“There’s a down over there. Just because there’s no up or down here doesn’t mean there isn’t one anywhere.”
Haru went quiet for a while.
From the next day on, Haru started writing on his boxes too. He picked up a brush and, carefully, wrote: THIS SIDE UP.
Fair enough.
What was strange was that he started writing it on boxes that never left the cargo bay. Boxes headed straight for a shelf. Boxes nobody was shipping anywhere. Boxes that would just drift around this gravity-less station forever. On every single one, Haru ran his brush with a dead-serious face. THIS SIDE UP. THIS SIDE UP.
“Hey, that box isn’t going anywhere.”
“Yeah, well — you never know where down might start.”
Gen said nothing. He just turned his back on Haru and let himself grin, just a little.