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"One can see the free software movement as a precusor for a "free hardware" or "free wetware" movement--one that will provide free libraries of designs for biological or nanotechnological products that replicators can be programmed to churn out."
- Charles Stross

Post Office  
  A vault used to store time capsules left by travelers to the past; not your usual delivery service.  

Time travelers would sometimes send themselves messages in the far future. They had to be kept someplace safe; you also need to make sure that they are not opened prematurely; that might cause a paradox.

We use the Fed to house the vault somebody nicknamed the "Post Office" many years ago, no doubt because the vault is clogged with packages that are not delivered for years or centuries.

The Post Office is one of those weird side-effects of time travel. It proves once more that paradoxes are possible, though only strictly limited ones. ..

Technovelgy from Millennium, by John Varley.
Published by Berkley Books in 1983
Additional resources -

It is an unusual package delivery system. The business model of most such systems is based on the shortness of the delivery time; this system is based on the length of the delivery time - sometimes many millennia. See also Time Capsule from the same novel.

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  More Ideas and Technology from Millennium
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