Toe in the Water

A Mysterious Package

A Mysterious Package

I had a strange dream a few nights ago. That in itself is unusual, since I rarely remember dreams longer than a moment or two after waking. But this one has held on and remains quite vivid.

There may have been stuff before in the dream, but my memory tells me that it opens with my receipt of a package in the mail. Awake, I would have been suspicious immediately as I haven’t ordered anything by mail for years. But in dreams we happily accept the most preposterous of things and events. Without even asking myself a question, I began to unpack the thing.

The package contained a box about the size and shape of a shoebox. In my recollection there was no indication of its contents. I opened the box.

Don’t you love the way things happen in dreams? We just think an action and it’s done, the task itself dismissed as if completely irrelevant. This box had that feel of the convoluted packaging granted to high tech items protected by the most ingenious and complex containers ever invented. If you’ve ever bought computer software for instance, with its crafty design of locking flaps and boxes within boxes, you’ll know what I mean.

And this box felt exactly like that. It should have required at least half an hour of concentrated examination and deduction before yielding to my exploration but not this one. This was a dream so I wished it open and there it was, open.

Carefully fitted inside, like a tetris puzzle of fitted shapes, was a machine in various parts, mostly orange plastic but with a few silver or black objects included. There appeared to be two of each part, as though the machine would have two equal sides to its whole. Something like a pair of binoculars, for instance. In fact, that was my first guess as to its function - that it was to be a very small set of binoculars of amazing and unexpected powers. Those silver bits, round and flat as they were, could be the lenses, I guessed.

Clearly, the next step was to fit the parts together to see what exactly the thing was. I extracted one of the largest pieces from the box and examined it. A very complex shape, it was covered by a clear, protective film, vacuum packed to its exact form and dimensions. I picked at it with a fingernail, managed to get an edge to lift, and began to pull the covering away from the object.

This proved to be more time-consuming than expected, as the film kept breaking and I had to find another bit that I could pull away from the surface. While I was doing this, I noticed that another part, still in the box, appeared to have been damaged. Part of its shape was a plastic net forming a hemispherical bulge erupting from the top of the piece. This was now flattened as though it had been crushed at some stage of its journey to me. I knew that it was not supposed to be flattened in this manner because a glance at its partner component revealed the bulge as it was intended to be - truly hemispherical as it protruded from the rest of the piece.

I presumed that I’d be able to push the damaged portion out into the required shape and returned to my struggles with the clear film.

And now I have to disappoint you in the same way that I was at this point. This was the moment that the morning decided to awaken me and I found myself in bed, wondering what on earth the machine’s function had been. I lay there for some time, trying to make sense of the parts and the need to protect some of them with a clear plastic film.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I could use the experience to write some kind of story. But I have spent days trying to finagle something out of these bare facts and they have turned out to be obstinate in the extreme. There’s a story there somewhere but it may be years before I manage to extract it. In the meantime, I have this all down now so I can’t forget it. And, if you can think of what to do with it, go right ahead.

Something in the science fiction line would be most appropriate, I think.


Word count: 736