What's in the Box?
It was a box.
A plain cardboard box, it was indistinguishable from any of its thousands of siblings. Simple, brown, and cuboid, it looked perfectly suited to fulfill its life’s purpose: storage. It held all the best characteristics one looked for in a shipping receptacle. No ink marred its paper flesh and no stains soiled its outer shell. It was as nondescript as its countless clones, with nary a mark against it. Indeed, Luna was certain that the box, with its durable construction and firm lines, was well prepared for a lifetime of selfless storage duty.
Or more accurately, it would have been destined for a life of anonymous toil, but no longer. It had become something more. It had evolved. The long length of tape across the top effectively locked its contents – if any – behind walls of featureless but sturdy paper-product. What normally would have been a simple storage container was transformed into an unspoken question that hung in the air; an itch that could not be scratched; a thirst that could not be quenched.
Curiosity was a natural reaction. Everypony wants to know what is behind a closed door, locked away in a drawer, or hidden beneath a curtain. They were questions that demanded to be answered by right of their mere existence. While an open box was a functional tool, the paper cube before her had transcended its original purpose. It was no longer a box; it was a mystery.
On the other hoof, there were plenty of other sealed cardboard boxes in Equestria. This one, even with its secrets and tape, was nothing special in and of itself. Luna had seen millions of them in her long life, and one more would normally not warrant but the most fleeting moment of distracted attention. Not every question provoked a desire to seek out an answer because not every question was equal. Like the ponies that ponder them, some mysteries are just more attractive than others. One does not wonder how each and every grain of sand has found its way onto the beach. A mystery needs something more, some brilliant spark, to fill the breast of an observer with wonder.
In the box’s particular case, that essential spark came from its location, for it was sitting before Luna’s bed.
Luna slowly circled the cardboard box again. There was nothing to hint at its contents. No handles to peek through, no tag to catch the eye, not even a maker’s logo. No pony had written on its sides in marker or placed a note upon it to educate the curious. The box was a granite mountain in the distant mist, inscrutable and silent.
The only sound was the steady clip-clop of her hooves on the stone floor as she circled her nemesis. Luna had lost track of how many times she had passed around the object, her great mind obsessed with the mystery before her. The box told her nothing, yet promised so much. Like a carnival barker, it enticed and intrigued with tales of what could be found within its striped tent. Freaks, phantasms, and foreign treasures could all be found, it promised, if she would but step inside.
Yet the promises were hollow. The box made no guarantees that it would astound or amaze, yet that possibility couldn’t be denied either. With his gaudy suits, slick mane, and cheap smiles, the barker knew as well as any psychologist the power of imagination. His words were designed to feed curiosity, to let one’s own mind do the heavy lifting. He was the appetizer, the window display, meant to whet the appetite and leave the onlookers hungry for the main course. There was only one way to know, it said with a knowing smirk. Truth, lies, or something in between – whatever the fact of his claims were, the only way to know was to put down some bits and step inside.
The answers could be hers so easily, yet still she hesitated.
After all, obtaining the answer would kill the enigma – and with it, the very thing that made the box unique in a world filled with identical facsimiles. The box had become more than a container; the question was a part of its very being now. To destroy that was to destroy an essential part of the box. It had transcended its purpose as a mere receptacle and become a powerful question in its own right. The box and the mystery had become intertwined, symbiotic ideas that thrived beneath Luna’s curious gaze. And a question only lived as long as it remained unanswered.
If she were to open the box, she would end the mystery.
She would murder the question.
The fact that Luna herself was an existential threat to the box and its unanswered riddle was both frightening and intoxicating. After all, the question only existed in her own mind, and thus was hers and hers alone. Others might share curiosity about the unknown contents, but theirs would be a different question, a product of a different being with a different life and different experiences. She was truly master and creator of this mystery. It existed to either be answered or be forgotten, as her will dictated.
It was a disturbing concept, having so much power over another thing, even one that was merely a thought. Part of her rebelled against the notion of killing the question just to slake her own curiosity. Why not let it exist as it was, an unanswered question?
Her tail twitched in irritation as she circled the box once more. No, she could not leave the box to sit unmolested, never revealing what the truth of its contents were. That was only a different form of death sentence. As much as it pained her, the mystery of the box was, like all life, destined to one day perish. Its existence was not eternal, for it relied upon her curiosity like a flower required sunlight. She could stash the box somewhere else, somewhere far from her gaze, it was true. Inevitably though, the box and its contents would slip from her mind and the mystery would die. Even if she were to keep it close enough to keep the idea refreshed, familiarity would rob the question of its impact. In time, boredom and complacency would do what her hooves had not, sapping her interest until there was nothing left to feed the mystery.
The moment Luna had laid her eyes upon the cardboard box, its fate had been sealed.
The mystery at the core of its identity would perish at Luna’s hooves one way or another. Certainly, then, the manner of how she ended its existence was irrelevant if the outcome was inescapable. Or did it possess the–
Her thoughts were interrupted by a muffled shriek of frustration from outside her room. Luna spun around and spread her wings in alarm as the heavy oak doors were thrown open with a powerful burst of magic, splinters of ancient wood tearing free around the broken hinges.
The towering figure of her sister stood framed in the doorway, burning brightly like a phoenix reborn. She glared at Luna through narrowed eyes as she ground her teeth together, the veins on her forehead visible as she flared her nostrils. “It’s a cake! I put a cake in the box! It was an early birthday surprise!” She jabbed an accusing hoof at her sister. “And I’ve been watching you just walk around the damnable thing for the past two hours! Two hours, Luna! Two hours! You don’t need to treat everything like some great philosophical quandary! Sometimes a box is just a box!”
With an exasperated groan Celestia turned and stormed back out, muttering something about ‘moon-addled foals’ under her breath. The sound of her furious hoof-steps only ended with the distant bang of her own bedroom doors being slammed shut. Silence reigned, broken only by the occasional soft cry from her wooden doors as they struggling to remain upright.
“Oh,” said Luna eventually. She turned back to glance at the box, frowning.
“Well, way to ruin the surprise, sister.”
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Can boxes poise a philosophical, moral, or existential challenge to how we think? I would like to believe so.
You need to get bored more often.
This was incredibly good.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3244180
Maybe not a challenge, more of a realization. Though, some of us were already aware of our natural curiosity to look behind closed doors and peek into locked drawers.
BEST MOTHER'S-DAY GIFT EVER!
Oh god, I
this!
That was surprisingly great.
Clever, poetic, thought-provoking, and a funny end.
Not much more to say really. Good job.
Had to, sorry!
encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdXBMyangZwSgXCJ5orXkCmYkFh24K4urw7UA4FDUeznVkFVAL
it was good just one question.
Demon of Decay where in the list of priorities Ponified without consent stands at the moment?
~Leonzilla
whATS IN THe BOOX?
......uuhhh i think being on dat moon too long kinda messed something up there for luna.
still pretty cute.
3244259
2 things
1: THE CAKE IS A LIE!
2:"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Plato's Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato#Philosophy
3244259
What's in the bo-...
DAMN IT! Too late!
*shakes angry fist!
I'm guessing "Kitten". I'll reply to this comment after reading.
This is fantastic.
I thought of curiosity (the app) immediately when I saw the title. Anybody else?
Oh and, great story!
Storage Locker Auctions...
Ahh, yes, the infamous Skype chat has spawned a devil child once again.
Oh, wait, this one seems normal.
Mother of Celestia....
>luna
downvoted, called my teacher, called the cops, called the kremlin, and called my mom
tinyurl.com/mbho6go
(I added it to several other groups as well.)
knew Celestia had something to do with it
3245811
What I don't get called? I don't count? I have to find it on my own?
Also I called Spetsnaz before you could, so HA!
It should have contained a cat that may or may not be alive.
You open this box with the key of imagination. Inside it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of ponies. You're moving into a land of both shadows and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Luna Zone.
A cat.
Don't open it, or you might change the outcome.
//dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Luna_lolface.png
That was great
Fantastic! The writing style remembers me of the story Thunderstruck.
I love those philosophical, enigmatic stories with little or no dialog. They make you seeing these simple things in another way.
Very well done, especially the end with Celestia. Way to spoil the surprise.
3244435 personally, before I read this I was going with a empty box set out by tia as a prank. kinda like princess-twilight-vs-the-pointless-button
hilarious story, though I really am not sure that hilarious actually fits the description of this story
3244223
It's what happens when you take a random writing prompt and run with it.
3244226
I think we're all aware of it, to a degree. Hence why we seek out those empty places on the map.
3244235
I thing the only Borderlands reference I would get is the butt pony one.
3244241
Well thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
3244243
I wanted to just have some fun with the idea of taking something mundane, like a cardboard box, and just going to town on it with a faux intellectual debate about some philosophical point that could be seen as serious and meaningful. I'm just glad it was still interesting enough to keep people interested.
3244259
I can guarantee you that you're not the only one thinking this very thing when they read the title.
3244283
It's a tough question. I would be game to write more for it, but it is a collaboration. I'm only one of five authors.
However, I do hope to get something written for it eventually, if just to give people a little more to read. It was a big hit and I'd love to see more done. What might happen is if the group doesn't feel up to continuing the story, I might just continue it myself, and have the other authors insert chapters of their own when and if they decide to do more.
It's hard enough to keep a story going by yourself, though, so just imagine how hard it is with five authors!
Anyway, I think I'll do a blog post about it this week, once I know more.
3244293
A broken keyboard?
3244310
She's a deep (space) thinker.
... oh god I can't believe I just made that pun.
3244328
I have that movie on DVD. Classic!
3244368
Ah, the Greeks. Famous for philosophy, sodomy, and financial incompetency.
... aaaand now a burly Greek brony is going to beat the living crap out of me.
3244394
Hehehe! There is always someone faster on the internet, it seems!
3244435
Maybe I should thrown in an OC called Schrödinger?
3244546
Thanks comrade!
3244679
Thanks!
3244774
So Luna is gonna end up with 37 plaster figurines, the entire 1987-1992 catalog of National Geographic magazines, and a basket of hair-clips?
3245775
Oh this was actually long before Skype. In fact, I think this might actually have been before Asylum.
3245811
Regidar is in the box.
3245822
Yay! Thank you so much!
3245914
Of course!
3246007
Why are you trying to get Russian special forces to kill me?
3248435
Do it more often, dammnit.
It was awesome.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3248504
You're welcome. Oh, and this is just my opinion, but you may want to add the Comedy tag to the story as well.
3246074
Schrödinger should be someone's OC. He has a cutie mark of a live cat on one side, and a dead cat on the other.
3246143
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/2/18/247936__safe_twilight+sparkle_crossover_human_artist-colon-ragingsemi_twilight+zone_the+twilight+zone_rod+serling.png
3246381
Well, I think if it were a cat I'd be fine leaving the little shit in the box, honestly.
3246994
Thank you kindly!
3247101
I would hope they would read the story rather than jump down through the comments to figure out the answer... you devious man, you.
3248417
Yeah, it's why I didn't give it the Comedy tag - it doesn't seem to fit what I would traditionally call a Comedy story. I mean, something that is humorous because it takes its philosophical and intellectual points far to seriously is, in a way, about as much a Comedy story as something that is so bad it becomes funny.
Plus, having a Comedy tag would make people expect a punchline before they started reading it, which would kinda defeat the whole purpose.
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
3248518
I may have to add Schrodinger to my story idea about ponies with unfortunate cutie marks now.
3248456
I saw the story added to a group, brought up the story and Youtube instantly. No hesitation. Then I read the story
3248480 hits you with a switch. bad pun, bad pun!!
3248500
Ahh, so the box has a legacy. Interesting....
3248500
One of just many possibilities.
3248504 not sure she was happy about watching luna walk around a box for 2 hrs
Obviously, the box contains a parallel universe. What else do mysterious boxes hold?
3248504
No, just a tactical surprise hug!
That was... something.
A good something through... I think.
On the Schrödinger tangent:
I think it is both kind of funny and sad that he is only really remembered for his mocking parody of an hypothesis of quantum mechanics that he disagreed with .
It's also somewhat funny/sad that the most widely know analogy for that bit of quantum mechanics is a story originally made to ridicule it and make it seem absurd.
Oh, Celestia claims it's a cake. But Luna has no way to prove that theory until she opens the box.
And even if it is a cake, that doesn't answer the question of what kind of cake it is. It could be Germane chocolate or strawberry or upside-down pineapple. It could be a cupcake or shortcake or ice cream cake, fruitcake or Black Forest or bundt.
We'll never know. Not until she opens the box.
The mystery lives on.
I had many theories as to what would happen, from whatever's inside being broken, to Discord popping out due to near suffocation waiting to jump out, or Luna giving the box to Celestia, who just tears the thing open without a second thought.