the recipient of the letter. When the pigeon arrived at the destination loft another servant would complete delivery to the address on the letter.
The service, Pigeon mail, P-mail as it became known, was an instant success.
Aside:
I should explain the jargon that grew around P-mail.
Birds carried the messages in Philes (Pigeon Held Internal Letter Exchangers).
A servant who looked after the pigeons and was responsible for routing mail was called a Phile Server.
The place that pigeons flew to or from became known as a Pigeon Operations Point, or POP.
Sheets of paper on which letters where written became known as bits of paper.
Pigeons were rated according to the number of bits of paper they could carry. For example, an eight bit pigeon could carry eight sheets of paper, and a sixteen bit pigeon could carry sixteen sheets of paper. The bits of paper were inserted into Philes which were then tied to the pigeon’s legs.
One had to be careful not to overload the birds as they often crashed when overloaded, resulting in lost or damaged Philes.
A bite is what you got if you were a little slow at feeding time.
Pigeons suffered from two diseases that threatened at one time to wipe out the entire P-mail operation.
The first was a leg sector virus. The infected bird would seem quite normal until suddenly in mid-flight a leg would drop off,
resulting in lost Philes. Quite often the infected bird would crash on landing damaging the remaining Philes. Of course, once infected, the bird was useless to the P-mail service and recycled as pies.
The second virus slowed down one of the bird’s wings, so that it flew round in circles. Normally the pigeon managed to land so that no Philes were lost, but as the birds never recovered, they were recycled as pies. Rumour had it that if the bird couldn't land it would fly in ever decreasing circles until it suddenly went blind, followed by a loud pop. Then, save for a load of feathers, it would disappear completely taking the Philes with it. This second virus still exists today, which is why, sometimes when you're driving your car, you find loads of pigeon feathers spread across the road and no sign of the actual bird.
Back to the plot.
Like most good ideas the military soon heard about P-mail and wanted to control the media. The commander at the local fort was one General Pandemonious, he sent a company of soldiers to Plastikoktopous's pigeon beading farm, and promptly requisitioned all the birds. Plastikoktopous became hysterical, though after a couple of hours he did manage to get a grip on himself and went off to find Zorba; it took Zorba four hours to release the grip.
Zorba, staring bankruptcy in the face, thought up a plan to recover the birds, he would go before the General and beg for them to be returned.
The two brothers went to the local fort and knocked on the door. A rather tough looking soldier answered through a small window.
“Good morning gentlemen. I am Sargent Diaphanous, your guard for the day, thank you for visiting the fort, how may I be of
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