The ordeal

I stood outside my apartment enjoying the fact that it was a warm enough day, despite the fact that it was approaching the end of November, the sun was shining warming the mild breeze that was in the air. I had gotten into a project, just a simple one that would barely take up five minutes of my time, then I would be heading over to visit a friend who lived a few blocks over.

It was at that time that I heard the mild buzzing sound. It wasn’t a bee buzzing around my head, as it was too cold for them to be out anyway, despite the warmness in the air. Besides, the sound was mechanical in nature and was getting progressively louder as it approached me. I turned my attention to finding the source of the sound, a small box was floating through the air. It wasn’t a very large one about the size of a shoe box.

I wasn’t at all surprised by the fact that a box was floating through the air, after all it was the 21st century and it wasn’t such an uncommon event to have delivery services deliver their packages in such a manner. Not anymore, in fact it was almost commonplace.

My question then wasn’t how a package the size of a shoebox could be floating through the air, but who it was for. I wasn’t expecting a package, not on that day, so I wasn’t even expecting that it was for me as my apartment was one of several apartments in the complex, yet, as the drone carrying the package came down lower it turned its attention towards my presence, more specifically the numbering on my door.

It would seem as if this package were for me. Curiosity swelled up inside me as indeed this package was left at my feet. As soon as the package was delivered the drone flew off over one of the trees in the area, leaving it at my feet.

My attention turned towards the box. It had no printing on it. It certainly wasn’t from Amazon or eBay as anything from them would be clearly marked with one of their stamps on the side. There wasn’t even a barcode or QR box so I could scan that with my phone to at least discover who had sent me this mystery package.

I stood there looking at the package for almost a full five minutes before deciding what to do next. Should I call the police, saying that I received a mysterious package? The police in my area, while not problematic, wouldn’t be a part of the solution either and would certainly get a laugh at my calling them out for such a trivial matter.

After all, no criminality was involved. At least I didn’t think so. But then again, there could have been a bomb in the package. I touched at the package ever so gently, so as to feel for any wiring. There was none that I could see, however there was ample amounts of packaging tape around the edges of the box, mainly around the lid, which was removable, as such as one would expect with a shoe box.

Despite its appearance, I was convinced that it did not contain shoes, and just happened to be the shape that the box was formed. I lifted the box up around an inch from the ground. It was lite, at least too lite for it to be any form of shoes. Not that the box felt empty either, for there was some weight to the box, just not enough for there to be shoes inside it.

I pulled my tac knife out of my pocket and flipped it open so I could slide the blade through the packaging tape, and motioned the knife ever so slowly as I still wasn’t fully convinced that the package was completely safe and was prepared to jump back if I noticed anything off.

I was cutting through the tape on one of the longer sides when the knife came to a stop at midpoint, certain I had hit a wire, I jumped back and watched for what would happen next which was absolutely nothing. I looked at where I stopped my cutting through the tape. It would seem that I merely hit a point where the tape had overlapped itself.

At this point I was so nervous that anything commonplace with opening a package, even one of mysterious origins, was making me jumpy. I continued on with the cutting of the last bit of tape. However, I did not remove the lid. Not just yet. I still needed to be cautious about opening the box. I needed a way to pull the lid off from a safe enough distance.

Leaving the package where it was for a total of 30 seconds, I went into my apartment and picked up a long broom handle, one of those that was almost five foot in length and slid it under one of the edges of the lid knowing full well that there was the possibility of the package still blowing up in my face. I pried the lid up with the broom-handle not by inches, but by centimeters.

The box had not blown up upon the removal of the lid but I wasn’t totally convinced that the package would bring me no harm. Whatever was in the box still hadn’t been revealed, as there was a lot of Styrofoam packing peanuts in the box. An unusual amount even for a package of that size. As a final act of caution, I moved the packing peanuts around with the broom handle, nothing came out and nothing happened.

After finally deciding that the package was safe, I again left it where it was and got one of those brown paper bags that Amazon usually send out their food orders in and began to transfer the packing peanuts to the bag, making sure that each packing peanut was just that; a packing peanut. I was about halfway going through the packing peanuts, yet the true contents of the package still had not been revealed. I was beginning to think that whoever sent the package had forgotten to put whatever item they were supposed to put into the package to begin with.

I let out a sigh of frustration, wondering what the use of was of sending me nothing but a box of this stuff. It was a waste of their time and money, and certainly a waste of my time, effort and even frustration of going through a basically empty box.

It wasn’t until I got close to ¾ of the packing peanuts out of the box that the true contents were revealed; a small, tiny item was wrapped in so much tissue paper it was like I was holding a rock. Again, I was filled with fear, as I wondered what was in the much smaller package. In seeing no harm in removing the tissue paper from the tinier package, I began to rip at it like a child opening a Christmas gift.

Finally, the contents of the package were revealed: a 64 GB flash drive. Now there was something new to worry about. What was on this flash drive? I turned it in my hand, I somehow recognized it. While I have several flash drives at my disposal they were all accounted for, right?

Upon inspection of my small collection of flash drives, I noticed that one of them was missing; a 64 GB drive that I most commonly use and take with me so I could use the information on it on other people’s computers. I inspected the one that came in the package it had a little dot of whiteout on the underside. It was my way of identifying my flash drives at a glance. So if it truly was mine how did someone else get ahold of it, and why send it back to me in such a manner?

I didn’t want to put it into my computer, at least not my main computer, not just yet. However, when I got my new computer, I kept hold of my older one for emergencies, so it wouldn’t matter if someone had installed a computer virus onto my own flash drive.

After turning the old computer on I cautiously put the flash drive into the appropriate slot but didn’t open any of the files. Not just yet. Even though I was almost certain that it was my own flash drive I wanted to be certain that it indeed was mine and was safe to use. Before I opened anything I let the computer scan for viruses; not once, but twice.

I finally looked at all the files on the drive. Everything was there, but there was one file that I didn’t recognize. It was marked with: OPEN IMMEDIATELY. Which was what I did not do. I scanned the file specifically for viruses. There were none, and the file size was so small that there couldn’t be more than a few words on it anyway. I opened the file, which indeed contained only a few words: “You left your flash drive here the last time you were here. Tina”

I picked up my cell phone and called up Tina’s number, she answered on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Tim. I just got the flash drive back that I left at your place the other day.”

“How?”

I began to tell her the entire story about the drone bring a shoebox sized package and the entire ordeal of the way I had to open the box.

“Oh, my God!” Tina said with a sound of shock in her voice. “That was not my doing!”

“What do you mean?”

“I told my 10-year-old son to make sure you get this back the next time you come over. Not to do what he did.”

“So all of my worrying about what was in the package was for naught. At first I thought it was something that would do me harm, then when I got to the flash drive I was afraid of there being a virus on it.”

“I’m sorry. I should have simply sent you a text telling you that it was here. I don’t know what that kid was thinking. So, when’s the next time you are coming over anyway?”

“If it weren’t for the ordeal with the package, I would have been there already!”

“I’ll see you in five minutes then.”