Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: Damsel in Distress

"So, you heard about the Box?" I started the conversation, as it seemed she was still trying to think what to say. I was kind of curious about that anyway, as it had been less than an hour since I saw it, and the rest of the club probably didn't know yet unless someone like Martin Cheese had spoiled the surprise.

"Yeah," she nodded. "The college volleyball team had it last year. I played a little, was a substitute for a couple of league games against other colleges. I wasn't that good, but I could hold my own. The thing I remember most is the shorts, I swear that kit was designed by some guy who wanted to see as much of our bodies as possible. But anyway, we had the Box, some time around the middle of the last term. Huge list of rules pinned to the top: don't open it, don't turn it upside down, don't leave it unattended, don't let anyone steal it, all the little things. But it was heavy, we had to get a couple of guys from the soccer squad to help us move it into the corner of the room. It's a bit top heavy, but if you're careful it stands on its end just fine, so we were going to leave it standing in the corner of the club room out of the way."

"And that didn't work?" I asked, just to keep the conversation flowing. She seemed happy to tell the story anyway, as if she'd already rehearsed every word and phrase. I wondered if this was related to what she'd been worrying about earlier, but it didn't seem likely.

"Well, it did," she smiled a little, "Until Brandy and Drake bumped against it when they weren't paying too much attention, and it fell over. It's heavy, I guess you know that already. And it came open just a fraction, and they decided to peek inside. And you'll never guess what they found."

"A letter from the college committee automatically expelling them?" I cursed my sarcasm as soon as the words were out, but she didn't seem to spot it. Maybe she was just too wrapped up in the tale she was telling.

"No, it was another set of rules. Just like the first one, but they were different rules. Every society opens it eventually, right? Started out as somebody's sociology experiment, telling people different stories about the penalty for opening the box and then measure how long it is before each of them tries it. Some people are too honest to open it, maybe you're one of them. I always thought you're a genuine nice guy. But there's never going to be a whole society of people who play by the rules, so the box gets opened. And you see what the previous keepers have put inside."

This time I didn't have any smartass response. This was information that would help us worry a lot less about our own time with the Box, so I was trying to remember every detail. She waited a few seconds for me to say something, and then carried on anyway.

"It's like a time capsule. There's a load of smaller boxes in there, like shoebox sized. And there's a journal, with the rules stuck on the front. You look at the different packages inside the Box, and you can take two of them and look at what's in them. You write down in the journal who you are, what date you opened it, what was in the boxes you looked in, and what you thought about it. Then you make a box of your own, for future students to check out. You put in what you think is the most important things to represent the era, the zeitgeist, it calls it. The memories that you'd hope would tell someone in the future what they need to know about this year. You don't write what's in the new box, that's down to whoever opens it. And it has to be at least five years before anyone looks in your items, so they have to stand the test of time. It's a load of fun, really, like we're trying to work out what will be important in fifteen years, or fifty."

"Wow, that sounds pretty neat," I had to agree, "But why are you giving me the advance hint? You sounded worried before, is there something..."

"Yeah, there's something," she paused and looked down at her knees, waiting a second that seemed to go on forever. "Lance – that's Monica's brother – had just got this new thing for his computer, he could make like pro-quality videos. Pretty amazing stuff, Monica talks about how she's so good with that stuff, but we all know she has trouble writing an essay on the computer, so it's got to be Lance doing the work. So we took a video of our final match against Derby in the cup, and made like a proper DVD of it. Interviews with the team and everything. They'll still have DVD players in ten years, right? And we made a proper cover for it and everything, it looked like a real professional job. And that goes in the box, with everything else. Right?" I just nodded.