BLACK BOX
There was this light switch in my house. It was in a weird place—a little too high, and in the middle of a wall. It didn’t turn off any lights, or turn on a disposal. As far as I knew it wasn’t connected to anything. I got to thinking about mysterious switches and buttons. What if you were told never to flick a switch, or press a button. Would you be able to resist? No matter what the consequences?
BLACK BOX
The old man wore a playful smile as he beckoned them closer. Karin and her cousin Randy stepped across the yellowing floor of the immense den, deep within their grandfather’s ancient house. They were paying their respects to the old man, as their parents had insisted.
On a cherrywood table rested a menagerie of colorful origami animals—a folded-paper zoo. Karin wondered whether her grandfather spent all his time making them or if he had folded the animals to impress her and Randy, the way he used to when they were five.
He always spoke to them in Chinese first, as if his speaking the language would magically make them understand it better. Karin understood a little bit, but she knew that Randy didn’t speak a word—he just squirmed and looked annoyed. For his sake she said, “You have to talk English, Grandfather.”
“English!” spat their grandfather, then waved his hand as if swatting the thought away. “Ah! You children lose everything. All the old ways, you lose. How can you call yourselves Chinese?”
“We’re not Chinese,” Randy said defiantly. “We’re American.”
Karin gave Randy a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“Don’t get him mad!” she whispered.
The old man looked at Randy with hardened eyes, and then he laughed. “Yes. American.” He chuckled. “Apple pie!” Then he laughed and Karin elbowed Randy again.
“Don’t you know not to say things like that to him?” she said. Randy never did learn how to deal with Grandfather. Still, her cousin was right. They were both born in America; even their parents had been born in America. How much more American could they get?
Grandfather laughed a little too long, and Karin began to feel uncomfortable.
Finally, he shook his head and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yes. American.” He sighed. “The old world is gone. My world—gone. Soon nobody will be left to remember.”
“I’ll remember,” offered Karin
Grandfather smiled. “Sweet girl,” he said. “But stupid.”
Randy snickered.
“You should not laugh,” said Grandfather, wagging an arthritic finger at him. “Next to you, she looks like a genius.”
Karin smiled and gave Randy a smarter-than-you look, then she turned back to the old man. He looked very serious for a moment, then he glanced down at the dark cherrywood table and the collection of paper animals. He picked up a paper cat. “This world of new things—you think it is strong like a lion, when in truth it is fragile like paper.”
He crumpled the origami cat in his hand and flicked it with his fingers across the room. “There. Destroyed by a single finger.”
Then Grandfather let loose a hacking cough that rattled the room so much Karin wondered how his lungs could stand it. When his coughing fit was over, the old man turned to a shelf filled with old knickknacks and pulled down a black box about the size of a shoe box. At first Karin thought it held tissues, but there was no opening on it. Anywhere.
“This is very old,” Grandfather said, brushing his finger across the smooth, ebony surface. “Even older than me. Hard to believe anything is older than me, hah?” And he let out a laugh that sent him into another coughing fit.
Karin and Randy looked at the box.
“What is it?” Karin asked as Grandfather handed it to her.
“Puzzle box,” answered the old man.
Randy grabbed it from her and pawed his fingers all over it, leaving dull fingerprints on the shiny lacquered surface. “There’s no way to open it,” he said.
Karin grabbed it back from him and examined it again herself. Randy was right—it was solid all the way around!
Grandfather gently took it back from her. He tapped the top twice, then placed three fingers on one side, two on the other, then pressed inward with his thumbs. A panel slid open. Karin was amazed.
“No way!” said Randy, his eyes wide.
“Way,” Grandfather said simply. He pressed and prodded different pressure points, deftly and skillfully, as if playing an instrument. The box began to open up with dark, textured surfaces. When Grandfather was done it looked more like a black flower than a box, and in the center of that flower was another, smaller box, even blacker than the first one. It was perfectly square, about two inches wide.
Karin and Randy just stared. “Another puzzle?” asked Karin.
“No,” answered Grandfather. “A solution.”
Grandfather held the inner box in his hand and placed his fingertips on it. Instantly, a lid opened, revealing a carved jade panel, and in the center of all that sparkling green jade was a bright gold button. Not the kind of button you wear, but the kind of button you press. Tiny Chinese characters were carved into the jade all around the gold button, but Karin couldn’t read them.
“Oooh!” said Karin.
“It must be worth big bucks!” said Randy.
“Never mind that,” snapped Grandfather. He put the little box down on the table. Randy and Karin couldn’t take their eyes off it.
“I want to give this to the right person before I die,” Grandfather said. “Your parents and your older brothers and sisters—they are worse than you. They hate the old ways, and the old things. They want to forget them. This is how I know that one of you must get this gift.”
“Thanks!” Randy reached out his hand, but Grandfather slapped it away.
“Not so fast.” He picked up the little box and handed it to Karin. Her eyes lit up, and she gazed at it as if it were a diamond ring in a jewelry box.
“You are the trustworthy one. Your cousin Randy here, he would trade this for a baseball card, yes?”
“No!” said Randy, but Karin knew that it probably depended on how good the baseball card was.
Grandfather turned his gaze back to Randy. “I bring you here, Randall, so you will always remember the honor you did not receive from me. Someday you will learn to respect old things.”
Randy scowled and pouted, and then said under his breath, “I don’t want it. It’s a girl’s thing, anyway.” But he knew that it was not.
Karin moved her finger across the rough jade and around the smooth gold button, then her fingertip came across the button and she started to press it. Grandfather gasped and pulled her finger away with his bony hand.
“You must not!” he cried out. “Can’t you read?”
“It’s in Chinese,” she said, looking at the Chinese characters written around the button.
Grandfather sighed.
“This has been in our family for forty-nine generations,” he said. “Fifty-one, now that I pass it on to you. It has been our family’s task all these years to guard this button with a clear heart, and a clean mind. Show no one. Tell no one. And never, everpress it.”
“But what does it do?” asked Karin.
Grandfather leaned closer, speaking in a raspy whisper.
“This,” he said, “is the button that ends the world.”
That evening Karin sat on a lumpy bed in one of the many upstairs bedrooms of her grandfather’s huge house. She puzzled over the puzzle box, practicing how it opened and closed. She had only seen her grandfather do it once, but once was all it took for her to memorize it.
Randy, who lay on the floor tossing a ball at the high ceiling, watched in disgust at how easily Karin could now open the box. She had a photographic memory, and she knew that it irritated Randy no end.
“He gave it to me because he knows I’ll take care of it.”
“And because you kiss up to him.”
Karin closed the puzzle box and practiced opening it again. There wasn’t much for the two of t
hem to do on these annual family get-togethers. The other cousins were all either much younger or much older than Karin and Randy. The young ones were all asleep in the maze of bedrooms within Grandfather’s immense house. All the adults were downstairs, babbling about nothing important. Their jumbled voices drifted up the great staircase and echoed down the winding halls.
“You don’t believe any of that stuff about that stupid button, do you?” scoffed Randy, tossing his ball and watching how close he could come to hitting the light in the center of the ceiling.
Karin pulled out the little box from the center of the puzzle box.
“No . . . ” she said.
Randy smirked. “You dobelieve it—I can tell.” He tossed the ball again. “You’re as loony as he is.”
“I believe some of it,” said Karin. “You remember last year I showed everyone that genealogy I did?”
“Genie-what?”
“Genealogy—the family tree.”
“Oh yeah, that thing.”
“Well, our family does trace back to some sort of royalty. I’ll bet that this box really waspassed down from our ancestors.”
“And do you believe it could destroy the world?”
Karin flipped open the little box. She regarded the gold button. It seemed so harmless, and yet . . .
“No,” she said. “Of course I don’t believe it. But it’s strange to think that people didbelieve it, maybe for thousands of years.”
“You think anyone’s ever pressed it?”
“Probably not,” said Karin. “They wouldn’t press it if they believed in it.”
“This is what I think,” said Randy. “A thousand years ago, we had this ancient Chinese nerd relative, and one day his friends gave him this box as a practical joke—and that idiot believed the joke.”
Karin tilted the little black box in her hand, and the button reflected a pinpoint of light that danced across the peeling wallpaper.
“I’ll bet you don’t even have the guts to press it,” said Randy, and then his ball went a bit too high, hitting the light above him and smashing it. Randy rolled out of the way just as the glass showered down to the warped wooden floor. Karin froze, closing her eyes and gripping the little black box.
In the silence that followed she could hear shouts from downstairs and the sound of feet running down the hallway toward them. Several people were wailing—it seemed a bit much just for some broken glass.
Randy’s father appeared at the door first.
“I’m sorry,” said Randy in a panic. “I didn’t mean it—it was an accident.”
But Karin could tell that her uncle wasn’t looking at the glass.
“Randy, Karin,” he said, not looking at all well. “I’m afraid something terrible has happened. It’s your grandfather.”
Grandfather’s funeral was held just a day later.
It was more convenient that way, since the whole family was already in town for the annual reunion. No one had expected him to die that night, especially the way it happened. He had fallen through a termite-eaten floorboard, right in front of all the relatives. Leave it to Grandfather to make such a dramatic exit from the world.
Karin’s mom had cried hysterically for most of that night. She had been talking to him when it happened. “Just like that,” she kept telling everybody. “He was talking to me—he was in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word—and then suddenly he wasn’t there. All that was left was a hole!”
To Karin this was more than an accident. Somehow the old man knew his time was coming. It made Karin wonder what else he might have known.
At the funeral, Karin watched as Randy, on the far side of the casket, squirmed away from his parents and came around to her. His mind, like hers, seemed to be less concerned with Grandfather and more concerned with what Grandfather had left behind. Randy began whispering to Karin while an old woman spoke a Chinese eulogy.
“Do you have it?” whispered Randy.
She knew what he was talking about. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“It’s in my purse. Leave me alone,” said Karin.
“Are you carrying it with you everywhere now?”
Karin sighed, and her parents threw Randy an angry look. Randy shut up, for a little while.
When the ceremony was over and everyone was walking back to the cars, Randy pulled Karin off on a detour through a maze of high tombstones—a place Karin didn’t want to be, but she didn’t resist. She didn’t want to think or talk about the button anymore, and yet at the same time, she wanted to talk about it more than anything.
“You must be curious,” said Randy.
“I thought you didn’t believe in the button,” Karin said.
“I don’t, but I can still be curious about it, can’t I?”
Karin reached into her purse and pulled out the little black box. She opened it to reveal the gold button.
Randy stared at it, practically drooling. He wanted that button, and Karin was beginning to wish that their grandfather had given it to him instead.
“I mean, look at it,” he said. “It’s not attached to anything.
If we took it apart, it would probably just be a gold button and a hollow box. Nothing but air inside.”
“You are nottaking it apart,” Karin said sternly.
Randy leaned up against the back of a huge black stone and crossed his arms. “So what do you think it’s supposed to do? You think it’s supposed to send off nuclear missiles or something?”
“Don’t be dumb,” said Karin, chalking up another mark on her list of Stupid Randy Comments. “When this button was made, there were no missiles.”
“So then how is it supposed to end the world? Is it supposed to release evil spirits or something? Or send out poisonous gas? How?”
“I don’t know,” said Karin, and then she smirked. “Why don’t you go back to the grave and ask Grandfather?” And then she whispered, “Put your ear close to the ground. He might answer you.”
Randy punched Karin in the arm for that, and Karin whacked him back, hard.
“I don’t believe in that dumb thing for a second,” insisted Randy. “It’s not scientific. I don’t believe it.”
“Well, whether you believe it or not,” said Karin, “you don’t have to worry about it anymore, because you’re never going to see it again.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m putting it away for good, just like our ancestors did. I’m putting it in a safe place where no one will ever find it, until it’s my turn to pass it on.”
Karin slipped the little box back into her purse, thinking of all the places she could put it where it would be safe until she was about ninety years old. The problem was, she didn’t know of such a place.
That night was their last in Grandfather’s house. No one wanted to stay there anymore. It wasn’t just that he was dead, it was the way wood creaked when you walked on it—as if it could give way any moment the way it did beneath Grandfather. It was frightening to think that a house so big, which looked so sturdy, could be so fragile.
Karin did not sleep that night—not because of Grandfather’s death, and not because of the termite-eaten floorboards. She couldn’t sleep because of the box. If a box could have a spirit, then it was beginning to possess her. It seemed Randy had the same problem.
When he crept into her room an hour before dawn, Karin was sitting up, holding the little box in her hand and staring at the button.
“I knew you’d be awake,” said Randy.
She was glad he was there, because she couldn’t go on sitting alone any longer. She just had to tell somebody. She had to talk about it.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she told him. “I put it back in the puzzle box, and then I put the puzzle box under my bed, but I could still see it there in my mind. It’s like a photograph that won’t go away. Then I put it in the hall, but that didn’t help, so I snuck outside when everyone was asleep and put it in our car. But no matter where I pu
t it, I still kept seeing it.”
“So you went back out to get it?” asked Randy.
Karin nodded. They both stared at the button. Its gold face now seemed silvery blue in the dim moonlight.
“I don’t want it anymore,” said Karin. “You can have it.”
Randy shook his head. “You keep it.”
They stared at the button in silence.
I’m not going to push it, thought Karin, although every fiber of her body told her that she was going to do just that. It was like trying not to look at her grandfather’s body when they opened the coffin in the chapel. No matter how hard she tried not to, she just had to look.
Randy seemed to read what she was thinking.
“Let me do it,” he said.
“No.” Karin pulled the box a few inches away from him. “I mean, it’s just a superstition, right?” said Karin.
“Right.”
“And if we push it, nothing will happen, and we can stop worrying about it and get back to sleep, right?”
“Right.”
Karin slipped her finger across the smooth, cold surface. She rested it on the button.
She could hear her heart pounding, and swore she could hear Randy’s as well. Silently, she cursed her grandfather for giving her the button.
“Get it over with,” hissed Randy.
Karin took a deep breath, felt the cold metal beneath her fingertip . . . and pressed.
She held the button down, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes.
But nothing happened.
No explosions, no demons, nothing. Only the silence of the night, and faint snores coming from the other rooms.
Feeling stupid, they both breathed a deep sigh of relief. This was what Grandfather wanted, Karin was sure now. He wanted to show them how weak they truly were. He had called them stupid—was this his way of proving it?
Karin stared at the button a moment longer, her finger still firmly pressing it down. Finally, she relaxed and took her finger off it.
“Well,” she said as the button snapped back up, “I guess that’s it. I guess nothing’s going to hap—”