Aaa Everything Box

Box of Everything

Copyright September 2023 by Fit529 Dotcom

Started 5/12/2020

Disclaimer:

All characters are over 18 years old.

All the names have been randomly changed to their complete opposite.

If you don't remember world events this way, in an infinite multiverse, remember the words of the immortal abiding Lebowski, "Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

== Chapter: Sept. 10th, Midvale College Soph. Year, Evening ==

Sometimes good things just show up randomly.

Biking home after cross country practice, I rounded the corner and cut through an abandoned subdivision past several forlorn-looking lots and was startled to see a small silver box by a mailbox for which there was no house.

Since I biked there daily, I would have noticed it on the unpaved dirt streets any previous day. This was new. Who would be stupid enough to leave a box by a mailbox when there was never going to be a house there?

The answer, of course, was probably one of those online delivery services who got it wrong but where the driver had no responsibility for getting the right answer as long as the GPS on their delivery device said, "Here's good".

A buddy (transferred to a different college the previous year) had worked for the BigCompany as a delivery guy. He talked about leaving stuff beside seemingly-abandoned houses. It was obvious it was some kind of stolen-credit-card scam with fake addresses, but it wasn't up to him to stop it.

He'd been tempted, he said, to just keep a package, but then he'd drive by again later and the package would be gone, or the lawn would be mowed so maybe the house wasn't abandoned after all.

Seeing this box there? Did it make any sense?

NO.

So, like I said, there was no house, only a mailbox, plus a crappy spray-painted house number on the curb in front of long grass and piles of dirt dotted by survey stakes. No one lived nearby, the whole subdivision went bust when the developer went bankrupt.

People were not moving to my town, they were moving away from it. This wasn't a growing place, it was mostly just breaking even, a college town in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

No one would live on this street, maybe ever.

And, yet, there was the box.

Curving over and pulling up to stop, I got off my bike and looked around. It was late afternoon but cloudy and dark. No one was around; my cut-through on my bike made sense only because I took a short-cut through a broken fence line near the train tracks - sometimes. When it wasn't raining and muddy, or when I was tired/hungry/hurried.

No one could be spying on the place, there wasn't anything there to do the spying with.

Not too many seconds later the box was in my backpack and I was off again, biking home, though I did take a slightly longer route just in case someone was tailing me.

Any of my paranoia was unfounded. Our town - Brandon, Manitoba, Canada - is 24,000 people and in central bumblefuck county. No one was following me. I knew everyone in town anyway, or nearly so.

Still, my heart was beating a little. I had a plausible explanation that I could be 'trying to return it' or something, abandoned stuff like that, but who were we kidding. No, I wasn't giving it up unless someone came after me.

It wasn't even wrapped, was the odd part. It was just there, a dull-metallic cubical box with vague designs embossed in it, about the size of half a shoebox.

Mom wasn't home when I got there, of course. Her nursing gig at the urgent care clinic sometimes meant longer hours, but it paid the bills, mostly.

We didn't live in luxury.

My mom had never married my biological father. She'd known him briefly, and didn't even tell him she was pregnant after he quickly proved to be a schmuck and, then, later, the rumor was he was doing meth. She moved us to Brandon before I was born.

She didn't talk much about having lived in Edmonton. I don't think she was happy there.

Anyway, back to that afternoon/evening. So, I got home, reheated some leftover stew while I dropped my stuff in my room, and went back out to the family room to eat and watch a youtuber I liked talk about Tesla cars and what was up with them lately. I was kind of obsessed.

After the vid (and a couple of others) finished, I went back to my room, booted up (I had to shut down during the day to save on power costs, Mom insisted), and started homework.

It wasn't too bad that night, some History 117 reading on how much of a dick Oliver Cromwell was.

Being Canadian, I didn't really care about Cromwell. I was a comp-sci major, so I didn't care about history at all, or much anyway, I just had to take it because Midvale's bachelor's degree had all sorts of gen-ed requirements for shit no one needed to know.

Still, I had a fun-seeming prof who told entertaining stories and then tested us on what we remembered. This wasn't my idea of complicated, compared to coding a heap-sort or hand-writing Dijkstra's Algorithm on freakin' paper in a test. No test runs? On paper? Give me some MORE history, please!

Midvale College was a small liberal arts school, and it was only by accident I lived in the same town as the college. There aren't that many small colleges in small towns in Canada like in the states, I think, so at least I could save on housing costs by living at home.

We didn't have a lot of money. I think I mentioned that.

Mom got home about 11 and came in to say hello and kiss me goodnight...

But... She saw the box! I'd forgotten to hide it. Just sitting there on my desk, in plain sight. I was really stupid.

She asked, "What's that?"

"Uh... A box."

She looked at me and instantly saw I was acting guilty. My face flushed, I could feel it. I had to come clean, so I did, and told her where I'd found it, and about what my delivery-driver friend had said.

Considering my story, she said, "Huh. You think it's full of drugs or something?"

I picked it up and turned it over, having not really examined it too much, "Nope -- no openings. Just a sealed, welded-shut box."

Her face made a 'Huh. Irrelevant.' -- eye roll. "Well, if anyone asks, we have to give it back. I don't want legal trouble over some crap piece of metal."

I readily agreed, "'kay."

She kissed the top of my head and left with a "Don't stay up too late."

I was feeling tired. It was only early September so it was still hot out during the day, but the cool breeze coming in felt nice and I called it a night.

== Chapter: Normal Life Continues ==

Nothing much happened for the next few days. Life went on as normal. I did have a lot more tiredness than usual, for sure -- I crashed pretty much after coming home from classes and almost missed turning in an essay; I'd had to write it during my lunch break.

Unlike lots of colleges, Midvale's classes were organized just like a high school's classes, in that they had every class as a one-every-day thing, even if it was technically a 3-hour class. The idea was, there'd be less homework even for the 3 hour courses because we could do it in class and as exercises in small groups.

I loved the format, and so did a bunch of my 'townie' friends, since we could save on college costs by living at home and get a decent education. Tuition was pretty reasonable, too, which helped since Mom didn't make much as a nurse, and I didn't have a part-time job outside of summer lawn-mowing and sometimes (paid) yardwork Father Carlos set me up for.

Making it even easier, a bunch of Midvale's classes were run as 'reversed' classrooms where we watched lectures at home on video then worked the problems in class or asked questions where we had them. I liked that part better because sometimes I'd get distracted and miss something, then go back and re-watch the video and it'd get clearer.

I liked my profs, they were mostly cool, though sometimes the workload got harsh, much heavier than high school, so I had to keep up with the work. I supposed that went with any college, but I didn't have a lot of comparison points.

I could have gone to UBC, or U Toronto, or any one of them, but... that would take major bucks or better test scores than I had. I knew, I wasn't that smart, generally. Better than average, maybe, but I worked hard and I watched a friend or two who were smart but lazy really struggle.

It may sound bad, like I was kicking myself for no reason, saying I know I'm not the most brilliant guy. Sure, that's right, I know it. It's fine. I've always had to kind of had to muddle through and earn stuff by hard work instead of inspired built-in brainpower brilliance.

Alas.

So... back to that week.

For some reason I didn't mention the box to my friends.

I did have friends, plenty. I knew a lot of people at Midvale, as many as I knew through most of my school, since a lot of people from town stayed here instead of going to colleges elsewhere. I ran track in high school and continued it at Midvale, it worked about the same. I played in band (French horn) and continued that. I sang in chorus, and continued that.

KJR

I should mention this - how 'friends' worked at Midvale.

My friends were mostly people I knew from classes, some from cross-country or track, some from band.

My previous-year girlfriend had lived in a dorm, so I knew some people from there, too.

Most students lived in the dorms, only maybe a third in apartments or shared houses. Technically there were a few fraternities and sororities, but that was pretty limited and they weren't on my radar since that was more econ-degree business-school.

Quite a few 'townies' just switched from Aardmore High to Midvale (as I'd done); it was convenient and relatively inexpensive. Midvale drew from a larger area around the province because we weren't in Winnipeg, the biggest city around.

With about 2000 students, Midvale was a primary reason the town existed. It was also about the size of my high school, so the switch from one place to another was easy.

Our class schedules were 9 classes a day, but most people took for-fun classes, too, to fill in the time. There's only so many academics you can handle. Thus I was in band (I'd played French Horn for 7 years), I took a PE class because why not, and I ran on the cross country and track teams, though we were technically intramural since there weren't a lot of other colleges our size anywhere nearby.

Socially, mostly it was band and track and lunch, with some hanging-out. Lunch was pretty lively since we ate all together in a 'student atrium' that everyone called the lunchroom because, well, yeah, that's what it was.

Mostly the people I saw at lunch talked about the same stuff I had my whole life - geeky topics. It wasn't just guys - there were more girls than guys that went to Midvale, but only maybe 60-40, ish.

In terms of going out? Yeah. Not so great for options there. There wasn't much to do in town. Sometimes I hung out with Beth, a cross country friend, and Anne, a girl who played trumpet in band with me (I played French Horn), and Josh or Dave or both, running friends.

I should mention, Beth and Anne had friendzoned me long ago at that point, but I was happy to get some insight on what girls were like. Our town wasn't that big, and they were fun to be near.

==

I found the box on a Tuesday. That friday, after school, again, I just fell off to sleep when I got home.

Sometime in the middle of the night, though, I woke up and realized I was still dressed, so I got up, peed, brushed my teeth, and headed back to bed. Laying there, though, I noticed the box on my dresser, kind of ... glowing? It wasn't bright at all, it was just more plainly visible than the stuff around it.

Something about it was ... calling to me. I wanted to go get it, so I did, just sitting on the edge of my bed with it in my lap.

I realized there was noise coming from it, a low static sound, like radio between stations.

Wondering what it was for, I thought about what kind of box it COULD be. Maybe, if it was a magic box or something, what the magic would DO.

After a minute, I had to kind of chuckle at myself, dreaming like that, but it was a fun question.

If it could do anything? I definitely wanted to be smart. I hadn't done too well on my calc 3 test the day before, so -- smart was a good idea. Then, I thought, no, not just smart, insightful, too. Wise, maybe. None of that would matter if I couldn't remember stuff, I thought, so I'd need to have a great memory.

And, if I had a great memory, having a great body would be nice, too. And, playing the piano, and becoming an expert french horn player, and being really good with women, with some kind of superpower to ... do what?

Superpowers were a topic of conversation at the lunch table sometime. In movies, sometimes they would be so overpowering there'd be no competition. Or, people would turn evil if they got too powerful - and make slaves out of everyone on their way to World Domination!

That was a hoot. I had no plans for world domination.

But, what would being 'good with women' translate to?

I could 'mesmerize' women, I supposed?

But, if I dominated them too much, I couldn't have the kind of interesting conversations I had with my friends Beth and Anne - they'd never disagree with me, and I knew that'd mean I'd turn into a dick. It was universal, in movies, power turns people into assholes.

Getting a little less authoritarian (given lessons of movies), I decided on wisdom, and persuasiveness. Also, because of cross country, I wanted 'endurance' and 'tenacity', which I knew I'd have to balance with the wisdom somehow.

In case people tried to trick me, I wanted the ability to 'see through things' and 'notice important details'.

By this time I was tired again, so I got under the covers again, though the box was above the covers with my hand on it, by my side. Somehow, I felt good about all this, and drifted off to sleep.

== ==

When I woke up, it was almost 2 pm. Sleeping in on Saturday wasn't something I usually did, so I felt more than a little out of it. Hungry, for sure, but the kind of groggy disconnected feeling that usually comes from sleeping too long dominated my awareness.

For some reason, I was inordinately hungry, too.

Two ham and everything sandwiches later, I figured I was catching up from staying up too late reading or working on my Data Structures and Algos project.

My mind went back to when I was growing up, people had talked about getting a 'growth spurt', whatever that was. Fun thing was, I'd had one (a LONG time before) and added like 2 inches in that summer. I also got a thick fill-in of beard hair, which was mostly a hassle because I'd had to start shaving like every day or I'd be a beaver-face (when my beard first came in, it was kind of patchy).

Thinking about that growth spurt, I rolled over and let my eyes adust to the morning light and breathed in deeply. It was sweet and relaxing, and sometimes I just liked to sleep in and where was the harm in that?

So, yeah, it was Saturday, I could sleep in more, or sometimes less, and with cross country, I never knew what ... OH My God, I was missing the meet!!!!!

I'd completely forgotten about the cross country meet. I panicked, and jumped to grab my phone, but just as I got to my room I realized it was long over. It had started at 9 am, so I'd missed it by hours.

Thinking I'd text my coach, I saw her messages, as well as some teammates' ones. Ug.

I texted back into the group chat telling them I'd been feeling bad and it kind of crept up on me, and I just woke up, and I apologized.

Moments later I got some replies back saying they'd done okay, about normal, and that they'd missed me. It was just a small meet with 2 colleges from an hour away, both Catholic universities that were mostly nursing schools who had about 4 men each (mostly it was women), so we'd 'won' (being the biggest school) but otherwise no big whup.

The way coach phrased it, we were running to beat Ourselves, not so much others. Sure, others were important to the game aspect, but really the goal was to better ourselves and let which place we came in be secondary to getting PR's (personal records).

Filled up from my pig-out brunch (my mom's phrase), I plopped down at my desk and got back to work on my homework. I had a bunch of stuff to do for calc 3, but when I read through it, I realized I wasn't sure of some basic stuff from a previous chapter, so I dug out my ancient trig book from the previous year and started reading through it.

This made me think, hey, I should work on some of these problems so I'm confident.

I wasn't sure I had them all right, so I just kept going. It seemed like a good idea to make sure I knew all of the material, after all, it was popping up in calc class a lot. And, I didn't really know it. I had to do a bunch of stuff over until I got it down, and I started feeling better about myself.

Mom had gotten home at some point that I missed, but when she poked her head in, I realized I hadn't eaten dinner, either, and it was night time. We laughed and she made me a quick omelet.

I watched everything she did carefully. I decided I wanted to be able to do it, too, so I asked her advice about what she was doing.

This led to a long discussion about cooking eggs, cheese, all kinds of breakfast food, etc. It was a lot of fun to hang out with her. We weren't, like, over-close or anything, but I did think I had a better childhood than a lot of kids who had parents that didn't pay much attention to them.

Being a nurse, she was pretty matter-of-fact about things. Feeling good about her, just then, I wondered how long I'd have her as a mom, since some families had problems where a parent died or something. I looked at her, not in a creepy way or anything, but just enough to try to figure out what her health status was.

She saw me looking, though, and ... just then, I felt a connection with her, as our eyes locked, and I sort of felt what she was feeling? It was like I had an insight into her that I hadn't had. Her back hurt.

I asked, "Does your back hurt?"

She laughed, "Of course, honey. It always hurts at night after a long shift, it goes with being on my feet all day."

That didn't seem right to me. I asked, "What did you have for dinner tonight?"

Again, a chuckle, "The leftover potato salad, and a frozen burrito." She was tolerating my question, like I was some smartass newb asking about medical stuff when she was the nurse and therefore more-expert.

I wasn't totally ignorant. "If you have a lot of... fatty food, does the backache get worse?"

Her eyebrow went up, sharply. "Uh... I don't know."

"Think?"

She did, and said, "Now that you mention it, yeah. Doc Kerry had ribs for lunch, and he bought me an order, too. I guess that's pretty high fat."

I thought for a minute, and realized I knew something I shouldn't know, so I hedged my bets and invented my source. "Uh, I think I read once, or you mentioned, that gall bladder problems sometimes present as muscular backache pain, I think. Maybe? Is that right?"

It was right, but I didn't want to sound too certain.

"Well, I don't know. Look at you, acting all doctor-ee... I'll ask Doc Kerry if it's true. If it is, maybe he can fix it."

I touched her hand with mine, and even more suddenly, I knew I was right, and what to do. Somehow, I reached into her with my awareness, and ... whatever it was, I felt like I fixed it.

My sense of this was SUPER vague and intuitive, but I can't help it, that's how it felt.

She got a funny look in her eye and said while getting up, "Silly boy."

I corrected her with a smile back, "Silly MAN, thank you very much. I can drink alcohol now, legally." Drinking age was 19 in Manitoba and I'd passed that so I was Golden.

As if I went to bars. The idea was funny, not my crowd.