I was allowed one peek inside the box and then I had to describe the contents with complete

accuracy to the man. If I could, without the slightest error, I would be allowed to keep

the thing or things inside.

The box, he said, would remain with him, and another copy of the item which I could possibly

possess as my own would be newly generated by the box itself.

The man had approached me almost out of thin air.

I hadn't actually seen from where he had come.

I had been walking home from work and had passed through a derelict department complex scheduled to be torn down, but until then, tenanted by the homeless.

A logical assumption about the man's origins would be that he was one such person, but his clothes,

withdrawal and gray condition, bespoke of a comfortably wealthy life, not one of squalor.

He wore a nice-colored gray cardigan, crisply ironed black slacks and

shoes that, despite the rain sloshed ground, looked freshly polished. His face seemed

to belong to someone in their early 60s and yet he moved with the dexterity and grace more befitting someone my age.

There was a certain showmanship about his gestures as he first introduced himself and then gave him this spiel regarding the small black box.

Now ordinarily I would have thought a well-dressed man prancing about in the rain

offering promises of value within a strange box to be a lunatic,

or at least some recently unhinged suburbanite.

And while the man's eyes were alive with fiery excitement, they were also clear, focused, not the glazed, cloudy look you'd normally expect to find

in the eyes of a deranged man.

For once I had actually heeded the morning's forecast and had brought with me a thick raincoat.

I wore this and the rain's unyielding sheets felt no colder to me than the building's hair conditioning.

So I humoured the man and agreed to his proposal.

...