Dream Come True

A pill cutter and a bottle of ginko. These were the items on a rather abbreviated shopping list, scrawled out on the back of an old dry-cleaning receipt that I pulled out of my blazer pocket. A list that short didn't warrant the trouble of searching for a pen and a scrap of paper. But somehow, by seeing the list set in drying ink, I was able to establish my resolve. Today, armed with this list, I will become the master of my fate.

It's only a zero-sum-game if you're breaking even. Fairness. Yet another multisyllabic word that's nothing more than a jumble of vowels and consonants to me now. A lot like justice. If you've ever been asked to define the concept of justice, you know what I'm talking about. It's an exercise in futility. We all cruise through life thinking that we know what's fair and what's just...what's normal. You're seven years old, in a classroom full of children, they are making you read stories about people with names like Jan and Ted and their little three-letter world. But your little mind can't focus because you're staring out the window at a multisyllabic world full of people and places and things that are so much more interesting than Jan and Ted who are telling their dog, Pug, to "Run, Pug, run." So you find yourself sitting in a doctor's office. Your parents standing across the room, conversing with the doctor in low voices. The doctor is talking to them but he's looking at you. And when he comes over to talk to you, he has a superfluous smile stitched to his face and he calls you names like sport and pal.

The pills make you like Jan and Ted. The pills make you normal. But the window still tugs at your heart as the years turn into decades. And it's not Jan and Ted anymore, it's differential equations and abstract algebra until one day you find yourself sitting at a desk in an office with your name on the door. A three-piece suit, a briefcase, an electric razor, and gourmet coffee. The blinds on the window are closed because you don't want to realize that this is not your dream-come-true. Because deep down, you know that it's their dream-come-true.

Turnabout is fair play. Dreams are fragile. I know. Because the pieces of all of mine still crunch underfoot whenever I move in life. The damage is done and it's irreparable. But I don't care about that anymore. It's not about my dreams anymore as much as it's about f##king theirs up and I'm going to start with a pill cutter.

"Cut the pills; reduce the dosage. Get yourself off of the stuff." I wish it had been my idea but it was Graham's. He'd told me this after we had sat down for a heart-to-heart in which I told him about what the CIA had done to me over the previous eight months. There was a sympathetic glimmer in his eyes and for the first time ever, I found myself actually liking the guy. I'd chosen to tell him because I knew that he had noticed the decrescendo in my work performance. You mention the CIA and eyebrows go up all around. Afterall, I needed this job and he deserved an explanation. And I deserved to get something out of the whole experience. F##k the CIA and their non-disclosure forms. I'd jumped through hoops for them for eight months only to have them can me despite the fact that I was multi-lingual and faster, stronger, and smarter than any of their other recruits. They wouldn't tell me why. They never tell you why. But I knew it was the Ritalin. You take it for twenty years and no matter how competent you are, people always treat you like you're a f##king half-wit when they find out.

The Swelling Pony-Sploder

The Bufo Inflarenis - also known as the "speckled puff toad," the "belching dozer biscuit," the "swelling pony-sploder," or simply the "sploder toad" - is a rare species of toad that is native to the Bufo Islands, a small island chain west of Guam. Mature female puff toads are known to reach weights in excess of 40 kilograms (88 lbs) but typically weigh anywhere from 20 to 30 kilograms (44 to 66 lbs) and grow to be about the size of a car tire. Mature males are considerably smaller; usually no larger than a tennis ball and they weigh between 300 and 800 grams (10 and 28 ounces.) Bufo Inflarenis is gray in color with a stripe of black warts down the center of the back. Males are identified by the yellow markings on the underside of their hind legs. Bufo Inflarenis' diet consists primarily of bauxite ore, a variety of plants and insects, and, on rare occasions, dead batteries.



Following the discovery of Bufo Inflarenis, a sharp and ongoing taxonomic debate arose within the herpetological community. The debate centers on two peculiarities that distinguish the speckled puff toad from other members of the amphibia class. Namely, the speckled puff toad's possession of teeth and the fact that two out of five female speckled puff toads give birth to live scoliotic snow turtles. It is the toad's teeth that allow it to masticate and ingest naturally-occurring bauxite ore that is abundant in and around the islands' numerous sulfur pits and hot springs.


However, it is Bufo Inflarenis' bizarre defense mechanism that makes it truly unique. As bauxite ore passes through the toad's gastrointestinal tract, it is broken down, producing small quantities of aluminum that are stored in a small fistulous pouch that is located near the toad's anus. When startled or threatened, the toad injects muriatic acid from its intestines into the pouch that contains the aluminum paste. The ensuing chemical reaction yields aluminum chloride and hydrogen gas. The excessive elasticity of the toad's pouch and abdominal skin help to facilitate rapid expansion of the hydrogen gas. Consequently, the toad inflates almost instantaneously, increasing its total volume by approximately 5000%. It is not uncommon for a fully inflated female to occupy a volume comparable to that enclosed by a studio apartment or a two-car garage. In contrast, the average male is approximately the size of a dumpster when fully inflated. In either case it is no surprise that such rapid expansion can prove catastrophic for wildlife in close proximity to the swelling toad. As expected, the pony-sploder has no natural predators. This, however, does not result in the prolificacy of the species as might be expected. Lengthy gestation periods and the occasional birth of a scoliotic snow turtle combine to mitigate the risk of over-population. Furthermore, the high volume of hydrogen gas contained within an inflated puff toad causes the puff toad to float upwards as buoyant forces act upon it. Though this uncontrolled flight carries the puff toad swiftly away from danger, there are some associated risks for the airborne amphibian. Namely, the potential for the toad to be carried out to sea where it will invariably fall prey to sharks and trigger-happy pirates. Or, in the off-chance that it fails to deflate in a timely manner, the toad can be carried high into the atmosphere where the trapped gas will continue to expand until the toad's abdomen ruptures.



Despite the current absence of predation, the swelling pony-sploder has been exposed to predation in the past when non-native animals were introduced to the islands. Early Spanish visitors were the first to introduce such animals, arriving in the early 18th century with a variety of domesticated animals and livestock. In 1743, ignoring the warnings of the natives on neighboring island chains, Spanish colonists landed on the beaches, delivering a heavy blow to the islands' ecosystem as they unleashed their herd of ponies on the lush plant life. The islands were not without their defenses as the formidable and aptly-named swelling pony-sploder would demonstrate shortly thereafter. Naturally curious, with little in the way of discriminating culinary tastes following months at sea, the famished ponies discovered what they hoped would be a scrumptious delicacy. The Spanish colonists' journals are rife with accounts of the subsequent carnage.



Having no natural predators, the puff toads are remarkably docile and languid. Thus they were not particularly alarmed when the pony vanguard came prancing through the surrounding vegetation in 1743. The ravenous herd paid little heed to the larger female puff toads, choosing, instead, to focus on the somewhat smaller and thus more palatable males. These they devoured instantly and with tragic consequences. It is believed that the entire herd of ponies - 108 ponies in total - was destroyed in less than 2 minutes. Some of the toads inflated in the ponies' mouths, dislocating the ponies' mandibles and tossing the ponies themselves several metres into the air. Those ponies that survived the short flight starved to death without their lower jaws. Some of the toads, however, reached the ponies' esophagi prior to inflation. These ponies suffered more violent deaths when their heads were separated from their bodies in instantaneous and violent explosions. Still other toads actually reached the ponies' stomachs before inflating and in these instances, the carnage was more than some witnesses could bear. Dumbfounded and horrified, the colonists watched as their ponies burst, showering the surroundings with blood, bone, meat, and vital organs. And in the space that the ponies had occupied mere milliseconds prior, immense grotesque spheres, gray in color, appeared and floated slowly up into the air before the sea-breeze carried them inland over the tree-tops.


Another cause of fatalities among pony-sploders - and hapless bystanders - is open flame. This, of course, is attributed to the volatile nature of the hydrogen gas that is trapped within the toads' inflated bodies. The islands to which the puff toad is confined were not inhabited by humans until the early 1900's when science won out over local superstition and lore. Theretofore, the natives who inhabited nearby island chains feared and avoided the puff toad's habitat, believing the strange creatures to be the physical manifestations of malevolent spirits. Thus, fire was uncommon on the islands except in rare instances when natural phenomena such as lightning strikes and meteorite impacts served as ignition sources. According to anthropologist, Dr. David Nelson of Cornell University, the first human-witnessed incident involving open-flames and the pony-sploder occurred as early as the 14th century when a fleet of Yapese fishermen landed on one of the islands to wait-out a passing storm. The account has survived in Yapese oral tradition for nearly 7 centuries. According to legend, after landing on the island, the fishermen, who were prudently reluctant to venture any further inland on the unfamiliar island, made camp high on one of the island's leeward beaches. Dusk had left them huddled around their roaring bonfire, anxiously waiting for the storm to pass. Towards midnight, a fully inflated female puff toad came rolling down from the tree-tops, eclipsing the night sky as it landed on the screaming party. The bonfire ignited the trapped hydrogen instantly, producing an explosion that wiped out the entire camp, leaving in its place a crater the size of an Olympic swimming pool (supposedly producing what is today the island's main harbor.) The only surviving witnesses of the disaster were a pair of young boys who had been scouring the beach in search of firewood. The boys, though badly burned, managed to salvage one of the canoes and carry their fateful tale back to Yap. Various forms of this tale propagated throughout what is today Micronesia, reinforcing the dread and superstition that perpetuated the unmolested and pristine state of the islands' unique ecosystem.



In 1897, two Guamanian brothers, together with their extended families and the families of several of their friends, fled to the Bufo Islands after murdering a Spanish priest. It was a truly desperate flight. "We knew of the peril that awaited us and yet we paddled madly into the sunset, trading one fate for another; believing that nothing could be as insufferable as the perfidy of those Spanish bastards." said the elder brother, Malaguana, in a 1953 interview with National Geographic. In answer to the question, "Were you frightened?", Malaguana chuckled derisively and mused: "It is amazing how silly centuries of superstition look when juxtaposed with the logical deductions of science. And we know that things are always clearer in hindsight. But yes, we were very frightened...then."



Malaguana and his relatives landed on the largest of the Bufo Islands that would later come to be called Isla Iranna (which, in the Chamoru language means: Toad Island.) Exhausted, yet wary and cognizant of the old legends regarding the fate of the Yapese Fishing Party, the families refused to burn fires for cooking or warmth. "We knew that the dark spirits were angered by fire," said Malaguana. Theretofore, the islands' "dark spirits" were ensconced in mystery. Human eyes had only ever witnessed the toad in its inflated form, a form devoid of the toad's identifiable features. The enormous, buoyant, gray sphere was a sight so alien and surreal to ancient Micronesians that it elicited supernatural explanations. Thus the reservations harbored by Malaguana and his family served to confine them to the beaches upon arrival. For no one in the party dared to venture inland. Instead, they erected lean-tos constructed with driftwood, palm fronds and materials that they scavenged from the shore and they subsisted on raw fish and what meager victuals they had managed to procure before fleeing Guam.



"It was hardest on the children." recalled Malaguana. "We all know that children are not vigilant when danger is latent. They could sense our [the adults'] apprehension, but they could not comprehend it. We were always shushing their laughter; hissing at them to sit down and keep quiet. Oh, they were incorrigible," Malaguana chuckled reminiscently. His eldest son, Hanomtano, - who was six years old at the time - recalls: "I remember their somber faces; my father always begging us to be still and quiet, begging us through clenched teeth as if he were angry, but in his eyes you saw only the fear. And at first, this frightened me. But day-after-day, the breezes and the sound of the surf spoke not of fear but of playful bliss. And so we began to squirm under their watchful eyes, eager to run and play and explore." It was on their sixth day of exile that Hanomtano wandered up into the lush tropical forest that lined the beach. "My mother, she was asleep; my father, he was cleaning fish. And I was irritable with the boredom and I was determined to do something. Anything. I took a few defiant steps towards the trees, looking back over my shoulder as I did so. And then I ran. I had not gone very far when I encountered the toad. It was a welcome sight, this toad. I remember thinking that he would be my pet." Hanomtano grinned sheepishly as he related the anecdote. He lunged, bringing his hands down swiftly to trap the toad.




"Sphhhhh! It was just like that! Sphhhhhhh," Hanomtano, wide-eyed, thrust his hands apart to indicate an explosion. The force of the toad's inflation flung young Hanomtano's little body nearly 200 metres after dislocating both of his shoulders. He landed face-down in the ocean where he was rescued forthwith. Malaguana reminisced: "I was cleaning goatfish on the beach when I heard this strange noise, like when skinny people fart, except much much louder. Like 'Phhhhhttt!' And I looked up and saw Hanomtano come soaring out of the trees and into the heavens. We all saw this happen, except for my wife, who lay sleeping in the lean-to. My brother was running to the canoes before Hanomtano even hit the water. But I was in shock; paralyzed and speechless. I was tracing the arch of his flight when I heard my brother's wife shrieking. I turned and saw a giant gray ball rising slowly out of the trees. 'The dark spirits!!!!' I thought. They [family] tried to restrain me, but it was no use. Quivering with rage, I grabbed a sharpened wooden pole and rushed up the beach. And with every fiber of my being, I hurled the spear at the hideous thing. 'Phhhooot,' the spear made a strange noise as it went in. 'Psssssssss,' always the farting noises with those things. It shrank back on itself like a balloon and together with the spear, it fell back down into the trees. And into the trees I went, with my machete drawn and ready. Aye! you would have laughed had you seen it then as I did. It was a wee toad that looked up at me. Wee (Malaguana uses his thumb and index finger to indicate the toad's diminutive stature.) His head was tilted funny because the pole was running straight through him and he looked up at me like he had a crick in his little neck. I shook my head and took the spear in hand."




Frantic family members gathered in the surf as Malaguana's brother paddled ashore with a soaked and disheveled Hanomtano slumped over in the bow. They pulled the boy from the canoe and carried him to a lean-to where they made him as comfortable as they could. "There were so many faces, all of my family trying to crowd into our lean-to. My little cousins and brothers and sisters were wedged between the thighs of aunts and uncles. Their eyes were so big that it made me laugh in spite of the pain. That calmed them a little. Then my father came charging through their midst. When he saw me, there were tears in his eyes and he made to embrace me but my mother restrained him for the sake of my arms - we thought they were badly broken. 'What happened?' He asked in a trembling voice. Everyone nodded and mumbled their approval of the question. I replied: 'It was a toad, father. I wanted to catch it but when I tried to, it went Phhhhhhht!' I tried to move my arms to show how the toad got big and the pain made me wince. Mumbles of disbelief followed. But Father smiled knowingly and turned and shushed them. 'It's true.' He said. 'Our ancestors are fools. There are no "dark spirits." There are only these strange toads.' My father lifted his spear in the air, from which dangled the impaled body of the wretched toad. It was a magical thing, watching eons of superstition and fear vanish in the passing of a moment."



The Guamanian exiles moved inland where they learned to peacefully coexist with the toads. This arrangement was a beneficial one from the outset. That is, the sploder toad's legendary guise served to stave off a much-feared Spanish reprisal. There were, however, a few inconvenient trade-offs. Namely, the prohibitive risks associated with the use of fire for cooking and heating purposes. Malaguana and company had nothing to rely on aside from the Yapese fishermen's legend. Nevertheless, they were quick to deduce from it that the toads were somehow violently opposed to open flame. Hence, a precautionary edict, forbidding the use of fire on the islands, was issued and unanimously accepted. This edict remains in effect today. While it is rigorously adhered to by the islands' residents, visitors to the islands have historically been somewhat less compliant.


In 1942, an Imperial Japanese Naval reconnaissance team landed on one of the islands to conduct surveys. Though the islands were not occupied by enemy combatants at the time, the team did suffer nine casualties when Junior Grade Lieutenant Hitaro Yuki absent mindedly stumbled over a female sploder toad whilst he was lighting a cigarette. The sploder toad ballooned instantly, uprooting surrounding trees; hurling Lt. Yuki head-long into a ficus plant where it is said that he likely suffered only minor wounds. An otherwise memorable encounter with exotic wildlife became terribly tragic when the forces of fate turned on Lt. Yuki. The toad had already begun to rise into the air when Hitaro's cigarette ignited a patch of parched underbrush. Ensign Itsuko Ikaru recalls the tragedy in his memoirs.

Journal Entry (May 10th 1942): "Captain Motsuki is a douche bag. Today we were on our first patrol and Hitaro said he needed a smoke. He said he would catch up to us. But I knew better because he had the dirty magazines and an urge for the excitement. I looked back and saw him go into the trees. Captain Motsuki was shaking his head because he knew about Hitaro's dirty magazines too. We continued inland but stopped when we heard a shrill hissing and the cracking of shattered timber. We turned, unslinging our rifles. 'Americans,' Captain Motsuki breathed as he signaled for us to fall back on his flanks. We heard Hitaro scream. A hideous death-scream. 'Get the magazines! Save the magazines!' cried Captain Motsuki. But we dared not advance for we could see a vast and ominous silhoutte looming in the trees and we fired upon it in panic without the Captain's bidding. We knew of these toads, but we had never seen one and, at the time, panic dictated our actions. Our bullets whistled through the air. 'Phoop phoop phoop' the strange noise the bullets made when they struck the disgusting thing. I remember thinking: 'Damn.' And then the hissing: 'pssssssssstttt.' And 'Boooooom!' a bright flash of light. When I awoke, I was in my bunk aboard ship and had bandages from head to toe. My body was on fire. 'Lt. Yuki has perished.' they said,'Killed by a toad.' By a toad no less. This is highly dishonorable."

Evidently, when the toad's skin was perforated by the volley of bullets, the escaping hydrogen was ignited by the cigarette-induced brush fire; precipitating the massive explosion that claimed Lt. Yuki's life and critically injured eight other members of the reconnaissance team. Had the team held their fire, the toad would doubtless have floated clear of the small brush-fire and Lt. Hitaro Yuki's life would have been spared. Historians surmise, though, that had he survived, Lt. Yuki would likely have died regardless when the rest of his team got attacked and eaten by feral wallabies three months later.

Sadly, the vast majority of human encounters with sploder toads end in tragedy. An inundation of tourists in the early 90's accompanied an alarming rise in sploder toad incidents. In an ongoing effort to combat the rising rate of toad-related fatalities, local fire and rescue squads have initiated an ad-campaign to warn tourists and residents of the dangers of molesting and handling the sploder toad. Signs with messages like "Don't touch the f&%kin' toads!" were posted in the airports to be read by arriving tourists. Billboards were erected throughout the island chain. One billboard depicts the aftermath of a pony-sploder incident in which a 747 sucked a sploder toad into its engine during takeoff. Nameless, faceless, charred bodies litter the runway with a seemingly unscathed baby-doll lying in the foreground; big, blank, blue eyes staring at the camera as if to say: "What the f&%k just happened?" And in a flaming font, the billboard's caption reads: "Toad-al Devastation!"

Gunther Boghart, a Canadian seismologist, is well acquainted with the toads' destructive capabilities. In 1995, Gunther, his wife, his eight-year-old son, and his twelve-year-old daughter chose Isla Iranna as their summer vacation destination after watching a promotional DVD that featured the island's ever-popular Yak rodeos and world-famous Man-Bullet Festival - a coming-of-age festival where adolescent boys are encouraged to don costumes representing various sexually transmitted diseases and parade around town before being loaded into a giant pneumatic cannon and blasted out into the harbor.

Late on the second day of their vacation, after enjoying a picnic lunch together in one of the island's numerous parks, Gunther and his wife reclined in the shade while the children threw lawn-darts at a homeless rodeo clown. Seth, Gunther's son, ran into a nearby bamboo grove to retrieve a stray dart. "At first, I thought it was a rock." he remarked glumly to reporters later that day as he described his encounter with the male sploder toad. After picking up the toad and placing it carefully in his shirt pocket, Seth continued to search for the lost dart. After half an hour, he abandoned the search and returned to find the family preparing to leave. They climbed into their tiny rented Cushman van and set out for the resort.

About five minutes into the ride (3:28 PM local time), Seth and his sister, Claire, began to quarrel over the lost lawn-dart. Mrs. Bogart turned in her seat to shoot a reprimanding scowl back at the fighting children. "I was telling them to stop when Claire struck Seth in the chest with her elbow." Said Mrs. Bogart. "Pow! Just like that. Pow! And I blacked out." Claire's elbow struck and startled the sploder toad in Seth's pocket. The toad exploded, pancaking the van's occupants against the walls and windows. Mr. and Mrs. Bogart's seats were ripped out of the floor of the van. Mrs. Bogart, who had turned in her seat prior to the explosion, was pinned with her back to the ceiling and her buttocks to the wind shield. Gunther was pinned to the dashboard with his face plastered against the wind shield like an over-eager fat-kid at a pastry counter.

"I could feel the steering wheel digging into my hip, but I could not budge it." Said Gunther who had starred helplessly out the wind shield as the van veered off of the road and into knee-deep grass. "It was VERY confusing. I couldn't see what was pressing me against the wind shield. I couldn't breathe or wiggle my fingers and toes. I thought maybe I was having a stroke or something." Police reports indicate that the van's tire-tracks left the road and veered into a grassy meadow and continued for thirty-six metres where they ended abruptly. The van was found lying on its side in a banana grove three kilometers from the meadow where its tire-tracks ended. It was Gunther's testimony along with supporting evidence from the radar facility at Iranna International Airport that rounded out the investigation and silenced the alien abduction theorists.

"After the van left the road, I was relieved to find that we were slowing down. As we coasted through the grass, I saw what looked like a rock that was about the size of a basket ball. I could tell that we were going to hit it. And then, BANG!!!" Said Gunther later that evening after being released from the hospital with a shattered clavicle and a sprained knee. "The jolt was incredible. I saw the sky and the clouds and then I saw the ground again only then it seemed very far away and I felt tickly in my stomach like I was falling." At 3:29 PM, radar operators at Iranna International Airport picked up two unidentified objects in the air over the southern tip of the island where the Bogarts had been picnicking. The first object traveled approximately three kilometers due north from point-of-origin, covering that distance in less than six seconds. Radar operators tracked the second object for three hours in which time it climbed to an altitude of thirty thousand feet before it vanished.

Randal Tate, the airport's senior radar technician stated that anomalous objects like the second one were commonplace. "Sploder toads. We see 'em all the time. They inflate and float up into the upper atmosphere where they bust open. F&ckers'll come outta no wheres 'n' f&ck sh!t up, you know?" He said. It was the first track that baffled Tate and his staff and eventually led investigators to the Bogarts' van. Miraculously, the Bogarts survived the ordeal, suffering only minor injuries.

It was a female sploder toad that catapulted the van and its passengers, sending them on a wild three kilometer long flight. Ironically, it was the male sploder toad inside the van that saved the lives of the passengers by absorbing the energy of the impact. When asked if he would be returning to the Bufo Islands, Gunther Bogart replied flatly: "I'd rather run through Mecca wearing nothing except a yarmulke."

The French Magic Alpha-G Box

French Magic Alpha-G Box. The words were painted in gold around the perimeter of an oval on the lid of the little green tin box. And in the oval was the portrait of a man, also painted in gold. He wore a leather aviator's cap, with goggles pulled down over his eyes. His bushy mustache framed a jovial smile and his scarf danced in the wind. I held the little box in the palm of my hand and stared at it distractedly. Lori and I were in a little general store somewhere deep in India. Rough-cut, splintery, lumber planks for floor boards and the same served as wall paneling. A layer of dust a mile thick on every exposed surface, and half of the merchandise looked as if it had faded in the sunlight of a shop window. But there were no shop windows in this shop. It was dark, lit by a single bulb that dangled from the ceiling by a frayed cord.

I had been trying on T-shirts when Lori handed me the peculiar box. It was clearly old and seemed to be marred from years of use, like so many of the little trinkets that clutter grandparents' garages and attics. I bounced it in the palm of my hand, noting its weight and the strange vibration of jostled contents. Little lines of rust peeped through the scratches in the paint and there was a shallow dent in one side. The perimeter of the lid was outlined with rope that had been painted on, once again, in gold. "French Magic Alpha-G Box," I said to myself as Lori held a shirt up against my back. There was something special about this little box.

I thumbed the lid open carefully, and was surprised when it seemed to open by itself. A strange mechanism popped up as the lid swung back on its hinge. There was a little sheet of wax-paper, brown with age, that was thrust aside by the little spring-loaded mechanism. I pushed the rest of the wax-paper aside with my index finger. There was a little, red, die-cast, metal, toy-car beneath. It, too, was old and worn with handling. I let the wax-paper fall back over the little car as I turned my attention to the little spring-loaded mechanism. I pushed it back down into the box and noticed a little pinion gear rolling down a rack. The clickety-clack of tiny machinery made me smile inside. I could feel gyroscopic forces acting on my hand. I quickly closed the lid and waited for the little machine inside to wind itself down. Instead, I could feel a rise in tempo, and the mechanical clickety-clack crescendo-ed into a whirring hum. I tightened my grip on the little box to ensure that it did not escape my grasp.

Without warning, the lid swung open all by itself. I watched in amazement as the little car slowly rose into the air where it hovered about three or four inches above the box. My jaw dropped and I could feel Lori staring over my shoulder. The car moved off to the side and another tiny round object the size of a walnut rose to take its place. The little round ball expanded instantly and was transformed into a World War II era combat helmet. The helmet spun around and around. I shook my head in disbelief.

Suddenly, the machinery began to slow and the helmet and car re-stowed themselves in the box, the lid slamming shut behind them. A chill ran down my spine, the hovering objects were strange enough, but before the helmet and car had returned to the box, my eyes had been drawn to the box's interior and what I saw there was inexplicable. Cold desolate emptiness. A darkness that seemed to suck the light from the room. I sensed a surge of energy deep within myself, a strange fear and awe, as if the secrets of the universe were about to unfold before me. And then the machine had stopped, drawing its wandering contents back into itself.

I stood breathlessly and transfixed, unable to shift my gaze away from the tiny box. My mouth hung open, my lips forming a silent "Oh." The cackle of geriatric laughter startled me and I looked up to find a small wrinkled hag of a woman, grinning a toothless grin. "You did not wind it properly!" she barked in a derisive tone. "It does so much more than you can possibly imagine!" Her eyes flashed from behind the milky cataracts. "How much?" I asked. But she spun on her heels and hobbled off into the darkness beyond the cone of sepia light that painted the store's interior in shades of brown and pink. I turned to Lori. "Babe, where'd you get this?" I asked. The scratched paint and dented side seemed to suggest that the French Magic Alpha-G Box in my hand was a display model. "Over here." Lori replied, signalling for me to follow. We wound our way through the labyrinthine sprawl of shelves and overflowing bins. Dust bunnies scampered into the shadows for cover. We made our way down a long display case whose glass panes were scratched and smokey. Daylight crept half-heartedly in through a small window, it lingered indecisively as if weighing the consequences of remaining inside the dreary shop or violating the laws of physics that had sent it there to begin with. And after what I'd just witnessed, the laws of physics suddenly seemed rather silly and irrelevant.

"Here." Lori pointed at a basket of trinkets that sat next to an old cash register. Perhaps the little box was for sale after all. I rummaged through the basket as Lori scoured the display cases. Nothing. This was the only one. I held the box tightly, like a dreaming child; afraid to lose his fantastic, newly-acquired toy as his dream dissolves. And then, to my horror, the box was plucked from my grasp by the old woman as she scurried past and took her place behind the counter. "Not for sale!" She croaked. "But it MUST be!" I replied in a desperate tone. I wasn't going to let it go that easily. In this part of the world, EVERYTHING was for sale. A little haggling and then a quick transaction that would leave me broke. Broke, but satisfied because something inside told me that the box's worth transcended the primitive concepts of wealth that permeate the human perception of value. I had to have the box. It was not enough to unlock its secrets there in the store. I wanted to own its secrets.

My attempts at haggling were met with silent disdain and I was dragged from the store and thrown out into the street after leaping over the counter to pry the box from the old hag's hand. I found myself walking alone, down an old dusty desert road. Far in the distance behind me, I could hear the groan of an engine and the crunching of tires on the gritty road. I turned, squinting into the sun as it was setting behind the car's dust-trail. It was an old, black, 1950 Ford Pilot sedan that seemed to hover on the mirages. I stopped and watched the approaching car. I strained to see the driver as he passed, but the sun was in my eyes. I fanned the dust off of my shirt as I watched the old car rattle down the road. A hand shot out of the window, tossing a small green box out onto the roadside. I caught my breath. Surely not. The box hit the ground and tumbled end over end, pieces flying everywhere. I ran and retrieved the battered tin box. French Magic Alpha-G Box. Written in gold on the lid. It's priceless contents were gone! I turned in circles, searching the ground near my feet. The little toy car, the morphing walnut helmet, the strange little machine, it all had to be here somewhere. But it was getting dark and I knew not where I was. Darkness fell as I groped about in desperation on hands and knees. It was then that I awoke from the dream and for nearly an hour, I lay awake, wondering what secrets the strange box had contained. Before I drifted back to sleep, a train whistle blasted in the distance, somewhere across town and in my slumber-induced delirium I remarked: "Wouldn't it be hilarious if locomotives had turn signals? 'Where the hell are you going to turn, fool?' I would say to the engineer. And it would be scary if they had brake lights because you would never really need them...and if you did...you still wouldn't. That's not a world I want to live in."