Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Kris Alexandros: The Key

"I think I like you," Rasputin said after a couple of minutes. I normally try to carry off a laid-back atmosphere, but my own mind was jumping all over the place, panicking as I wondered whether or not this guy was going to have me killed. He seemed to be completely in control of the situation, but that didn't tell me what his reaction might be to people who were simply in his way.

His words sounded insane, until you realised he could back them up with proof. Even things like his clockwork heart, you could say it was crazy but it was beyond any doubt that the artifact was actually there, and that it seemed to work as he claimed.

"So you'll let us keep the Box?" I shrugged. The only reason I could imagine for his comments was as a joke, so I had to respond in the same style.

"I like you, not that much. Plus, we must ensure that the Box of Mr Hook is not opened. However deeply you hide it, there always be someone coming to activate it, and you can't keep on winning forever. We have the people and the resources, and we are fully capable of keeping the Box safely until we understand its secrets."

"Safe?" I asked, "You keep using that word. What's in that Box? Is it drugs, or papers, or –"

"You really do not know, I think. Your own people did not think you need to know, maybe. So to spite them, I will tell you. That Box, it is a weapon. There should have been nothing inside. You turn the key, it starts to open, and everybody dies."

"No way," I was certain, "My uncle told me he wants me to open the Box and get some papers out. If it's a bomb or something, whatever reason they want it, he wouldn't want me to open it and have it explode here."

"Not quite a bomb. And from my researches, I can suppose that there is a living being inside the Box. It might be a demon, a succubus, a genie, all kinds of different names. Legends recount that it will claim anything, and promise anything, in order to escape its prison. Maybe your family is descended from someone for whom it offered to grant a wish a century ago, and they passed down that empty promise. But in reality, we are sure, if released this creature will lay waste the land, and bring about the end of the world as we know it. It was imprisoned for a reason, and if it should escape we no longer have the means to seal it again."

"But..."

"I have studied the ancient technologies and mysticisms for more than a century, and I have science at my disposal that modern geniuses are only now coming close to replicating. Is not what you have seen of my heart proof enough of that? And with all I have excavated and reconstructed, I have found only the faintest hints about the mechanisms of the Box or any means of fighting the monster within. If I do not have that power, then you certainly do not. The only way to preserve this corrupt and stagnant world you hold so dear is for that Box to remain closed until my investigations are complete."

I nodded. He sounded melodramatic, excessively so, but his story seemed to at least be consistent within itself once you accepted the existence of ancient technologies lost and rediscovered. Maybe the heart could be some kind of optical illusion, a construction of smoke and mirrors, but it would be an impressive trick to look convincing when I was so close, and to remain realistic from different angles as he paced around the room. I wondered how much effort it would take a magician or special effects expert to create something like that. However much effort it was, it would be too much. Because he had nothing to gain by me believing his story, and with similar effort he could surely have come up with a more credible tale.

That was the only solution I could come up with. To tell me this story, the only explanation was that he believed it himself. That still left the question of whether or not he was correct in those beliefs, a possibility that just the day before I wouldn't even have considered. But Rasputin was a charismatic man, despite the crazed ambition burning in his eyes, and I found that I couldn't dismiss this demon story out of hand.