The Box

She is asking so I am explaining. I say, I'm reading a book about it so should have more to tell shortly. Just not quite yet. She seems most anxious to know.

It is a box made out of some material they will maintain for all of us in the Home Office, I say. In there will be samples or readings or actual processes from our innards, and they will have us all wireless electrodes so that any change at all in our workings while out in the field, even as far as mental pictures, shall be noted and contrasted.

I go into detail explaining all I know about the box, which seems substantial and of a granite flavor, although it is probably some degree of heavy alloy. She didn't seem satisfied. My daughter, she said, she is going away. Tell me what you can of this box and these electrodes.

But that was all I knew. I didn't really even know what we were to be sent out about. Some sort of mission, I surmised, but that didn't satisfy her either. But what mission? Surely you must know where you are going and why you are going there? Else, why bother?

It is for the box, I say, but now I didn't seem convincing even to me.

Look, I say. I'll finish the book in a few days, and then I shall write you all about it. I say, the book is issued to all participants; surely your daughter has one?

But she merely looked very doubutful, gazing out along the trail we'd all be taking shortly. She unnerved me, did this mother, and I didn't know exactly why that should be. She's just from the old school, I decided. They're great worriers.

Look, I'll read the book, I said again. But she was no longer paying any attention to me. Singly and in pairs, youngsters were tripping off down the path.