Prologue: The Puzzle Box

Jack Phillips sat on the couch, flipped on the TV and surfed the channels. Finding nothing much on, he settled on a "Seinfeld" rerun, then out of habit reached for the puzzle box. He had pretty much given up on ever solving the damn thing, and now just fiddled with it to relieve stress or boredom.

The box had come from his aunt, or more accurately his late aunt. She had been a loveable but peculiar old bird, never marrying, spending all of her spare time and income traveling wherever her fancy took her. Over the years she had filled every corner of her little bungalow with an incredible collection of what he always though of, fondly, as junk. It was mostly trinkets and exotic objects that caught her eye during her travels. She had never written much of a will, so after her death the family gathered and sifted through her collection, each taking anything that interested them or that held special meaning, and giving away the rest to charity or the land fill, whichever was appropriate.

Jack was still surprised that this particular family meeting had happened with no bloodshed, much less any major arguments, over who got what. Ultimately he had come away with only a few items. Most of them were simple things that held some personal sentiment connected with his aunt.

The box, though, was an exception. It was about six inches wide by two inches tall by three inches deep. It was covered by an incredibly detailed inlay of different types and shades of wood. He had picked it based solely on its beauty, and hadn't noticed until he got it home that the lid was locked. In searching for a latch or keyhole he discovered that the inlay pieces moved. They seemed to actually be some sort of puzzle, kind of like the tile puzzles he had as a kid where you shifted around the tiles to order them in a number sequence or to form a picture. This puzzle was much more complicated, though. Each piece was about half an inch square, making for 48 pieces to arrange on the lid.

That might not have been so bad, but it wasn't long before he discovered that the pieces could be shifted from one side of the box to another and over the seam between the lid and the body of the box. He had yet to figure out how that worked, but basically it left him with a 6-sided puzzle of some 287 pieces that could only be shifted one at a time, and no idea of what the finished puzzle should look like. So, after a couple of weeks playing with the box his wonder at its workings and hopes of solving its puzzle and actually opening it had mostly faded.

Jack shifted the pieces randomly as he tried to get into the Seinfeld rerun, but it just wasn't holding his interest. He finally clicked off the TV and sat staring at the box, his thoughts meandering. He felt a vague tinge of guilt that he wasn't working, as he had a deadline rapidly approaching for a project that wasn't quite done.

Jack was a free-lance web and graphic designer, and worked out of his studio apartment. He usually had no problem separating his work and personal time, but this particular day he just couldn't get going. It was now early evening, and the whole day looked pretty much like a write off. He stared at the box awhile longer, bringing it in and out of focus as he tried to get some idea of what the completed puzzle should look like, if indeed it even was a puzzle.

He was about to put the box down and peruse his DVD collection for a movie to watch when a light bulb went off almost painfully in his head. He rushed over and woke up his graphic workstation, then placed the box on his flatbed scanner. He scanned all six sides of the box, and then started the painstaking work of tracing each inlay piece. Two hours and three pb&j's later, he had each inlay piece displayed separately on his monitor, and could move each around as kind of a virtual jig saw puzzle. Satisfied with his evening's progress, and tired of staring at pictures of little pieces of wood, he saved his work, watched a movie and went to bed.

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