Mr Hook's Big Black Box

«Pictures from the Past»

"You must be psychic," Dwayne grinned, "Dreaming about the Box like that, before we even had it." Everybody smiled, knowing how sceptical they would have been at the time if someone had told them about those kind of dreams before it happened. Now, it was clear to everyone that there were gifted people in the world, and even the engineers knew that they would never reach all the answers through science.

"I would liked to have seen those pictures," Kris added, "I believe I saw one on Monty's sketchbook while we were reading the instructions for the Box. It was a drawing of the Box and several parachuting Nazis. I thought she was sketching what she saw in front of her and adding a fanciful background, so I didn't pay much attention to it. I never imagined it had come from a dream."

"It's one of the things that still connects me and Monty," Destinee shrugged, "We have the same kind of dreams, even prophetic ones sometimes. And..." she trailed off and walked over to the side of the room. She knelt on the floor, and lifted a piece of scattered rubble to extricate a sketchbook. It was a cheap pad, the kind that came from a supermarket rather than an art shop. The whole of the cover was taken up by the price, '.99' blown up to fill the whole page. Ludicrously cheap by today's standards, but that could be said for pretty much everything.

"Right where she left it," Dwayne muttered, "I guess we should have come for things like that earlier. I hope it's not damp, or dusty, or whatever degrades art over fifteen years in a derelict room." But despite all his misgivings, the pictures were mostly intact. Sketches with pencil, or marker pens, a few pages torn out. She had always removed paintings when she finished them, because paint could cause the paper to curl up a little and stop the pad lying flat. But pencils were her favourite medium by far, so there were only occasional pages missing among all the drawings.

One after another, the images were spread out on the folding desk. It was personal, intimate, a glimpse into the life of a person who no longer existed in any meaningful way. Montgomery Jude Darwin wasn't with them any more, but after so many years they had found these memories. The pages were stained with dust, and a little rain had managed to creep through the layered tarpaulins and stick the pages together at one corner. But the pictures still showed them just how wild their friend's imagination could be, how talented she was if she could just have brought herself to defy her parents. The pictures of the Box were the last ones in the pad, followed by a dozen blank pages. The pictures she'd never managed to draw; Destinee wasn't the only one to shed a tear.

"So," Marco tried to draw the group away from their sadness, "We'd left the Box in the freight elevator. Shall we continue when we met up the next morning?"

"That's not next in the timeline," Ferrari pointed out, "Dwayne put together this great plan to get to the Box first, and we never even suspected. But I did notice the edge of the crate was kind of battered, though. Splinters where someone tried to force it open while it was standing up. Want to tell us how it went?"

Everyone looked at Dwayne, and he was silent for a moment.

"Come on, you already told us the plan. Can't you elaborate on what happened?"

"Wasn't me," Dwayne shook his head emphatically, "I was shattered after running around all evening, didn't wake up in time. That brilliant plan went to waste."

"Who else could it have been?" Ferrari looked around.

"Marco?" Destinee fixed the athlete with a curious stare that was quite a contrast to her normal all-trusting expression, "You were in the lift with the Box for a while. Something you want to share with the class?"

"Yeah, fine," he shrugged, "I tried to open it on the way down. That's why it took so long before I got out and sent it on down. I couldn't get it open, though." Now it was Marco faced with a circle of friendly but inquisitive stares. After a few moments, he shrugged and resumed his story.