Postal Trials Part 1

The Royal Postal Service did not care in the slightest that Ernest Teucher was a national hero.

It did not care that he held the premier engineering patents in the kingdom, that his roaring factories produced thousands of motorcars every month, or that his locomotive lines had stitched Belfast's distant provinces into a single economic fabric.

The Royal Postal Service had only one sacred duty: to deliver the written word of the kingdom.

It demanded that mail move on time.

Every single morning.

Through sleet, mud, blizzard, and rain.

And, above all else, without bursting into flames on the side of the road.

Ernest discovered the uncompromising nature of this institution at seven fifteen on a damp Monday morning, standing inside the vast, covered central yard of the Helmarte General Post Office.