Mr Hook's Big Black Box

«Understanding»

"The monkey was the personification of his guilt," Dwayne pointed out, like some ancient sage revealing the mysteries of the universe, "It was like an imaginary friend. But his sister was all a dream, he never had one. It turned into a big thing about this old girlfriend, how he couldn't forgive himself for hurting her, and he externalised his anger by imagining a nemesis he was sworn to kill. The side of himself that had hurt a girl like that."

"Wow, that's a big change," Ferrari shrugged, "You still remember that, like fifteen years later?"

"I cosplayed Zagi at a convention this year, for the retro panel. Ended up watching the whole series again, and the anime adaptation, the movie, and both sequels."

"Anyway, yeah, that's the story. I was going to betray my friends and let the CIA take the Box, but I fell asleep before I could."

"That's fair enough," Marco gave a kind of half shrug, "You were doing the best thing for us, keeping us safe. Not like any of us could hold that against you."

"Yeah," Kris joined in, "If you'd actually pulled it off we might have been pissed. But we would have forgiven you when the society wasn't disbanded. We'd probably be thanking you by now, for pulling us all out of the fire when we were too dumb to realise we were burning."

"How about you?" Ferrari turned to Destinee, who was standing by the window looking out at the grounds now. "If I'd been a little more organised, do you know what would have happened to you? Can you forgive me?"

"Of course!" she was as light and bouncy as ever, "You didn't want to hurt anyone. You thought that you were doing what was best for your friends, you can't be blamed for things you didn't know about them. Every time you talk about keeping secrets, it makes me think that I had so many more secrets than any of you. But you'd never blame me for that. If you did what you thought was right, based on the information you had, then you did the right thing. To me, that's always going to be true, and I won't have bad feelings about anything you did for your friends. The things you only thought about doing, that's even less important."

"Thanks. All of you. So... did I miss anything while I was sleeping? No midnight subterfuge?"

"It was all pretty quiet," Dwayne confirmed, "We were just as shattered as you, and by the time the video finished we were all half asleep on the couch or on those bean bags. I wondered about heading to the spare room, but I didn't know where it was and it seems kind of weird wandering round somebody else's house at night, you know? So I kind of reached over and grabbed the remote, and kept watching TV with the volume turned down low until I fell asleep too."

"Well, you're last to bed I guess. So who's up first in the morning? Shall we start with the story of waking up first, or can we skip to everybody going their different ways for Thursday morning?"

"Well, actually," Marco started, and then hesitated.

"Actually?" Ferrari raised an eyebrow, "Something you want to share with the class?"

"You know by now we're not going to judge you," Destinee added, after a few seconds passed and Marco didn't continue. "I just want a complete story to remember. I want to know..." a look of sadness flashed across her eyes as she looked down at the figure in the bed. She hesitated a few seconds, "I want to know what happened. And how, and why."

Marco nodded, cleared his throat, and carried on speaking.