The Last Letter by Fritz Leiber

 
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    Who or what was the scoundrel that kept these couriers from the swift completion of their handsomely appointed rondos?
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    The Last Letter
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    By Fritz Leiber
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    On Tenthmonth 1, 2457 A.D., at exactly 9 a.m. Planetary Federation Time— but with a permissible error of a millionth of a second either way— in the fifth sublevel of New- New York Robot Postal Station 68, Black Sorter gulped down ten thousand pieces of first-class mail. This breakfast tidbit did not agree with the mail-sorting machine. It was as if a robust dog had been fed a large chunk of good red meat with a strychnine pill in it. Black Sorter's innards went whirr-klunk, a blue electric glow enveloped him, and he began to shake as if he might break loose from the concrete.
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    He desperately spat back over his shoulder a single envelope, gave a great huff and blew out toward the sorting tubes a medium-size snowstorm consisting of the other nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces of first-class mail chewed to confetti. Then, still convulsed, he snapped up a fresh ten thousand and proceeded to chomp and grind on them. Black Sorter was rugged.
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    The rejected envelope was tongued up by Red Subsorter, who growled deep in his throat, said a very bad word, and passed it to Yellow Rerouter, who passed it to Green Rerouter, who passed it to Brown Study, who passed it to Pink Wastebasket.
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    Unlike Black Sorter, Pink Wastebasket was very delicate, though highly intuitive— the machine equivalent of a White Russian countess. She was designed to scan in 3,137 codes, route special-delivery spacemail to inter-planetary liners by messenger rocket, and distinguish 9s from up- side-down 6s.
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    Pink Wastebasket haughtily inhaled the offending envelope and almost instantly turned a bright crimson and began to tremble. After a few minutes, small atomic flames started to flicker from her mid-section.
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    White Nursemaid Seven and Greasy Joe both received Pink Wastebaskets distress signal and got there as fast as their wheels would roll them, but the high-born machine's malady was beyond their simple skills of electroshock.
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    They summoned other ma chine-tending-and-repairing ma chines, ones far more expert than themselves, but all were baffled. It was clear that Pink Wastebasket, who continued to tremble and flicker uncontrollably, was suffering from the equivalent of a major psychosis with severe psychosomatic symptoms. She spat a stream of filthy ions at Gray Psychiatrist, not recognizing her old friend.
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    Meanwhile, the paper blizzard from Black Sorter was piling up in great drifts between the dark pillars of the sublevel, and flurries had reached Pink Wastebasket's aristocratic area. An expedition of sturdy machines, headed by two hastily summoned snowplows, was dispatched to immobilize Black Sorter at all costs.
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    Pink Wastebasket, quivering like a demented hula dancer, was clearly approaching a crisis. Finally Gray Psychiatrist— after consulting with Green Surgeon, and even then with an irritated reluctance, as if he were calling in a witch-doctor— summoned a human being.
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    The human being walked respectfully around Pink Wastebasket several times and then gave her a nervous little poke with a rubber-handled probe.
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    Pink Wastebasket gently regurgitated her last snack, turned dead white, gave a last flicker and shake, and expired. Black Coroner recorded the immediate cause of death as tinkering by a human being.
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    The human being, a bald and scrawny one named Potshelter, picked up the envelope responsible for all the trouble, stared at it incredulously, opened it with trembling fingers, scanned the contents briefly, gave a great shriek and ran off at top speed, forgetting to hop on his perambulator, which followed him making anxious clucking noises.
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    The nearest human representative of the Solar Bureau of Investigation, a rather wooden-looking