The Mystery Box

The Box of Life and Death

2022
         When Georgia was 40 and had been back in the United States for 4 months after returning from international teaching in China, the box arrived. It came by drone, gracefully falling to the ground in the midst of the beginning of a tropical storm. Old Mrs. Jenkins, Georgia's neighbor who lived two units down, yelled "it's a bomb!" when it dropped.
         Georgia happened to be on her porch and walked over to where Mrs. Jenkins stood, looking at a small box about the size of the box of takeout Chinese rice. "It's for you!" Mrs. Jenkins said. "One of your young Asian men do that?"
         Georgia looked closer. It had her name on it, printed by computer and laminated, and under it the words: "Do not open until your death is imminent." No return address or sign of who it was from.
         "I don't think so," Georgia said. "We probably should ask the office for help."
         Mrs. Jenkins went to go get Amanda from the office, who ran to the grass in high heels as neighbors began to leave their apartments and come over to watch. "I guess I better call Ernie Myers," she said, shaking her head. Ernie Myers had been the postmaster on the island for 40 years.
         Within 30 minutes, Ernie and a crew of policeman wearing "hazmat" vests, who rushed over from Wilmington, were on the scene. One of them, a bald man who seemed to have a perpetual scowl, loaded the box on a robot that took it to a van marked "hazardous materials unit." Five minutes later, he came back out, his face ashen. He gently held the box, which had been repackaged with new tape.
         "The box is safe, no hazardous materials," he said. "But I recommend you follow its instructions."
         "What was in it?" Amanda asked.
         "Some things are better left off unsaid," said the man. He wished them all a good day and took off in the specially-marked van.
         Georgia put the box in her coat closet.

2025
         When Georgia was 43, she found herself giving birth to her first and only child. She had married the year before to Stanley, a kind and gentle Haitian divorcee. The baby was born with an extra set of chromosomes but otherwise strong. But Georgia's placenta would not detach, and she began hemorrhaging. She heard scary words around her: "bleeding out," "blood pressure low," "barely a pulse." She glanced over at Stanley who was holding her hand at her bedside.
         "Bring the box," she said.
         "You won't-"
         "Just bring it."
         She had insisted on packing it in her overnight bag, even though everything was supposed to be fine. She just somehow knew she wanted it. Henry hesitated, but got it for her.
         With frail hands, Georgia touched the box. And just as she was about to take the first strip, "got it. Just in time. You should recover fully."

2029
         When Georgia was 47, Windrain Storm Candy arrived. Windrain storms were a new type of storm, with winds up to 5X as high as hurricanes and warning times of minutes. Georgia's parents had both died 2 years earlier, along with 70 other residents and 12 staff members, when a windrain storm flattened their assisted living center.
         Portia, Stanley and Georgia's daughter, carefully carried the box as they entered the master bath, their storm center. There were 5 of them: Stanley, Georgia, Portia, and Stanley's 2 teenage children, who had come to live with them the year prior so Georgia could help with online school after all face-to-face schools closed due to teacher shortages. They huddled as the wind began.
         "We will only open this if it looks like we will all pass on," Georgia told Portia, taking the box. She was open to Portia about death, after what happened with her own parents.
         "We won't," said Portia, sitting on Georgia's lap, her favorite place.
         But the wind started. Then loud thunderclaps, that made all of them jump. There was the "clap of death": the loud sound like a close gunshot that signaled that the Windrain was literally tearing the earth apart. Once that hit, death was all but guaranteed for anyone in a 4-mile area.
         Georgia started to tear the tape off. Just then, the noise abruptly stopped.
         After waiting a few minutes, Stanley left the shelter. Outside, he saw where the earth had started cracking and had taken out every house on the street, but had stopped right in front of their home. Later, they learned that they had been the only people home during that time who survived in ten blocks. There was some damage to the foundation, so they used their insurance money to buy a new home further inland.

2035
         When Georgia was 53, she got news she never wanted to hear. Portia had leukemia, common in people with extra chromosomes. Georgia and Stanley took leaves from their jobs, raided their retirement accounts early, and took Portia to the last children's cancer center still open, in Memphis, Tennessee. The doctor grimaced as she looked at test results.
         "There used to be a very effective treatment," she said. "Ten years ago, I could cure your daughter with no problem. But the only manufacturing center for it is in China-"
         "and we have no relationships with China," Georgia said. China was engaged in a cold war with most of the west over water rights in the Tibetan Plateau. "Can you make it here? We would give everything-"
         "The exact formula is unknown," the doctor said. "We can't recreate it. I am so sorry."
         Three weeks later Portia was gone. Georgia took the box out of her suitcase.
         "I don't think I can live through this," she said.
         "We need you. Me, and our other two," Stanley said, meaning his children, whom Georgia had started to claim as her own.
         "I feel like my heart is giving out," Georgia said. She began to tear at the tape. And suddenly, she felt a voice saying, "you have more to do." She put the box back in the suitcase, and broke down crying.

2042
         When Georgia was 62, she got "the final plague," an untreatable illness worse than any of the many that had hit in the last 20 years. It was blamed on the loss of Asian forests, and killed 90% of people who got it.
         They were living in Colorado, in a ramshackle cabin they had bought for next to nothing when the Carolinas became uninhabitable from flooding and fires. Lexia, Stanley's daughter, had contracted it while in the hospital having her daughter, Cheri. She hadn't started showing symptoms until she got home. Georgia was caring for her and thus got sick.
         Lexia died within 2 days of her first symptom. Georgia expected she would follow soon. She asked for the box, and weakly began to open it once she started vomiting blood, the last symptom before death. Suddenly, her vomiting spells stopped, and she recovered within 3 days.
2051
         When Georgia was 72 and newly widowed, bandits pulled up to the cabin, wearing blue and red checked bandanas. From their clothing, knew they were the "Male Warriors," who were going through the area raping and then killing women in response to their feelings of "loss of masculinity" after all logging and thus logging jobs ceased. There was no way to escape; the trees that had surrounded the house were all gone due to drought, and Cheri and her couldn't run fast enough to get to the closest neighbor, 2 miles away, without being caught. There was no longer any phone service and there were no longer police forces, anyway. The bandits had machine guns; there was no way two women could outfight them.
         After Stanley died of yet another sickness, Georgia had picked up 2 arsenic pills, one for her and one for Cheri, to take if attack was near. She would not let her granddaughter or herself be assaulted. She managed to put both of them on little plates, waiting until the last minute to take them. Maybe she was wrong. It wasn't likely, but possible.
         "Bring the box," she told Cheri. She obediently brought it, silently, and sat and held Georgia's hand. The bandits were at the door now. She heard the door rattle. She wept as she told Cheri, "I love you." She began to open the box. Suddenly, she heard a gruff voice, shouting.
         "Abort mission," she heard.
         "But this is a house with women-"
         "I said, we're moving on." And the bandits left. Georgia put the pills away, along with the box, and hugged Cheri close.
2060
         When Georgia was 81, she stepped on a viper, which was now common in Colorado, while foraging for food. She managed to kill it with a rock and hobbling back to the cabin. The nearest hospital was an hour away-they would never make it in time, even if by some miracle there was enough gas in the car to get there. Cheri, holding back tears, propped up her grandmother's foot and, silently, got the box. Georgia's foot was four times its regular size and turning black. Georgia had ripped half the tape when the swelling began to go down, and her unbearable pain began to subside. Within a day she was walking, and a week later it was like nothing had happened.
2069
         When Georgia was 90, she was confined to her bed, not even able to put her hands over the nearby open stove positioned near the foot of her bed. She was ready to leave the world, after an unusually long life in her time. "I am going to die today, no matter what," she told Cheri.
         Cheri got the box. She was watching Georgia intently when she noticed her toddler son going out the flimsy barbed-wire door. She went to catch him, and when she got back, the remains of the box were in the stove, and Georgia was gasping for breath.
         "It-is-finished," she said, and her eyes closed for the last time.