Black Box Read online

  Clara wondered what was going on. Everyone that had participated in the session and put an idea in the box wanted the idea back, apart from herself. What were the odds, she thought.

  It was 4.50pm already and almost time for close of business, so Clara started to get ready to leave. It was then that she noticed that the photocopy of her driver’s license she had made was no longer under her desk. She searched for it everywhere, because she needed to use it first thing the next morning before coming to the office. She didn’t find it.

  Just when she was about to give up the search, she found her idea, neatly folded... and just like the others, she had put something else in the Ideas Box. She then realised that she might have put the photocopy of her licence in the box instead. She needed to get it out of there as soon as possible. She looked towards the pool office and half of them were looking at her — the half who had come to retrieve their ideas, or rather, their ‘something else.’

  The advantage she had was that the Ideas Box was now on the floor, so she could use her chair to cover herself while she filtered through the box and took the photocopy of her licence because there was no way she could allow anyone look at the licence. She glanced at the pool office again, and people weren’t really looking at her anymore. So she turned to her left side, stretched her hands to the box and was about to open it when her office door swung open after a mild knock. She almost had a heart attack.

  When Clara looked up and checked who it was, she saw Happiness, the office cleaner who had just come to empty the trash, as usual, before 5.00pm, so that she could leave by 5.00pm sharp. Clara immediately left the box, then stood up to go and use the toilet — which was just opposite her office, before it was time for her to head home.

  By the time Clara had finished using the toilet and gone back to her office, Happiness had left and everyone else was preparing to go home, too. Clara didn’t want to stay back simply because of the Ideas Box or the photocopy of her licence she had put in it. So she decided that she would take care of the problem the next day.

  ***

  Chaos broke out the next morning when everyone came to the office and the Ideas Box was nowhere to be found. It was gone without a trace.

  Abu was the earliest person to get to work, and he said he hadn’t seen the box at all. Then it would definitely have to be the last person to have left the day before, they all reasoned with themselves. Enoh was the last person to have left, and she swore that the box was still there when she left.

  Abu also added that the back door of the office had been left open all night, so anyone could have come back and taken the box. Enoh shook her head. She had locked it herself and taken the key to the appropriate key-box at the security stand... or did she? She wasn’t really sure anymore. Either way, no one believed either of them, because the box couldn’t have suddenly developed wings and flown away.

  Clara looked at all of them and felt that they were all in it together. She had gotten to work late, and for all she knew, they might have all taken back what they had put in the Ideas Box, and pretended that the box was missing. She didn’t know what to do... her mind went to the photocopy of her driver’s licence and she shook her head.

  She picked up the intercom and called the security post. After a few rings, the security man picked up. She put the call on speaker. “Hello, Courage.”

  “Good morning, ma,” Courage replied.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, ma.”

  “Tell me, did you see anyone come back to the office last night when everyone had gone home?”

  “I don’t know, ma. I wasn’t on duty yesterday.”

  Clara sighed. They had a security team that stayed overnight, but they were each on two-day shifts. Courage was going to be on Thursday and Friday shifts, which meant that he would have resumed by 7.30 in the morning and wouldn’t have seen anyone come in or leave before then.

  “The only person I saw this morning was Mr. Abu. He came by 7.40am and he hasn’t left the office since then,” Courage concluded.

  “Okay. It was Moruf on duty yesterday, right?” Clara didn’t know why she asked that, since she already knew that it was Moruf.

  “Yes, ma.”

  “Can you give me his personal phone number?” Clara realised that she didn’t have the phone numbers of the security team, and was going to get them later.

  “He doesn’t have a phone, ma.”

  “Hmm.” Clara sighed. “So, it’s until Monday before we see him again.”

  “Yes, ma.” Courage answered, although it wasn’t a question.

  “Okay, thanks, bye.” Clara dropped the receiver and looked at everyone. They all looked confused, or rather, very worried.

  The office was so quiet the whole morning that Clara wondered how bad a secret they all had in the box. She, for one, knew that hers was bad, and there was no way on earth anyone could see it.

  The only noise that was heard that morning was the sound of the garbage truck operated by LAWMA — Lagos Waste Management Authority — that came to empty the dumpster they had at the back of the office.

  ***

  Mr. Charles got to the office by midday and walked into Clara’s office first. “Morning, how are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, sir, thanks.”

  He looked at the table where the Ideas Box should have been kept and been accessible to all to put their ideas in. “So, where’s the box that you’ve guarded so much with your life?” he joked.

  Clara saw him smiling, but she didn’t return the smile. She shook her head. “I don’t know where the box is.”

  Mr. Charles’s smile immediately turned into a scowl. “What do you mean?”

  “We came to the office this morning and noticed that the box was missing. Enoh was the last person to leave yesterday and the box was still here, Abu was the first person to come in this morning and the box wasn’t here.”

  “I was actually the last person to leave yesterday and I saw the box there before I left.”

  “On my table?” Clara raised an eyebrow. Mr. Charles had pointed at her table.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Clara knew that it wasn’t true. She had kept the box on the floor, so he couldn’t have seen it before he left, because he was still looking for it on her table this morning. He had probably left the office without even thinking about the box or noticing that it wasn’t there. He was surely trying to blame the earliest person, or people, to have arrived by mentioning that he had seen it before leaving.

  Mr. Charles stood up. “This is unacceptable. I need to understand how an Ideas Box would go missing in an office. It simply means that we have to beef up our security and start locking up our doors now, even during the day. I don’t know what culture we would portray then, if we send a message that we are afraid of each other and we don’t trust each other. Our people have trusted us with their ideas, the least we could do is to make sure that those ideas are well protected, and eventually developed and taken out to the market.”

  Clara didn’t know if he really cared about the ideas or just retrieving the document he had put in there, and secondly, she didn’t know if to tell him that there was not a single idea in the box. She kept quiet and listened.

  “I need a report on everything that happened within the last twenty-four hours on my table before close of business.”

  He walked out of the office, not smiling.

  Clara put Enoh to the task and asked her to prepare the report. She didn’t know what she was hoping to get back from Enoh and didn’t know what Mr. Charles was hoping to achieve with the report, but since he wanted it, it had to be done.

  Enoh started by interviewing Clara, and she mentioned how everyone had come to ask to take their ideas back. Clara didn’t give the real reasons — that they had all put in the wrong things and what the things were—, she just said that they didn’t think their ideas were good enough... All of them? Yes, all of them.

  Enoh went around interviewing ever
yone, or rather, investigating them, because that was what it appeared to be. She had other things to do during the day, so it was by 5.25pm, that the report was finally ready — typed, edited by Clara and printed.

  Clara put the report in a folder and took it to Mr. Charles. She knocked and entered his office, then handed him the report.

  “Oh, you really wrote the report?” he asked, as he took it.

  Clara was tempted to roll her eyes, but she didn’t. Of course she wrote the ridiculous report, or rather, she supervised the writing of the report and edited it.

  Mr. Charles read it quietly. It was just a five-page report, but Clara hoped that he would ask her to leave, then maybe read it on his way home... he didn’t. She glanced at her wristwatch, trying to calculate when he would be likely to finish the report.

  Ten minutes’ time, she thought.

  By the time he was done with the report, it was 5.47pm. It had taken him approximately twenty-three minutes to read the report, and Clara was pissed off. He placed the report on the table, and with no expression, he said, “Really?”

  Clara raised her eyebrow.

  “They all wanted their ideas back?” he asked.

  Clara nodded.

  “For the same reason we set up the Ideas Box? It’s anonymous, so why would they all think their ideas weren’t good enough? Wasn’t that the idea behind the box? To curb negativity?”

  “I have no idea.” Clara shrugged. “They just all wanted the ideas back.”

  “It just simply means that they all connived to get the ideas back, if they really wanted it.”

  “You, too, wanted your idea back, sir. It doesn’t mean you could have connived to get it.”

  “I don’t hang around with them, so if they were conniving, they would have excluded me,” Mr. Charles replied. “But I get your point.”

  Clara didn’t say anything. A thought flashed through her mind that maybe Mr. Charles had taken the Ideas Box. But he would have noticed that there were no ideas in it at all, just a load of ‘something else.’ What if he was just messing with her? What if he had the box and he saw that there was nothing reasonable in it? What if he just wanted to know how she would cope in a real life similar situation? What if, what if, what if, yet again.

  “Did you hear me?” Mr. Charles interrupted Clara’s thoughts. “I asked you a question.”

  “Sorry, sir. Please, what was the question again?”

  “How come it was only you that didn’t want your idea back?”

  If only you knew, Clara thought.

  Clara was confused, though. She couldn’t tell if Mr. Charles knew what was really going on or not. He seemed to be playing some sort of game, but he still appeared clueless.

  “I guess it’s because I didn’t think my idea was stupid. It was anonymously put in there.”

  “So is it safe to assume that you are hiding the box, to release it tomorrow?” Mr. Charles was starting to smile.

  “It’s not safe to assume that, sir. Because I don’t have the box.”

  Mr. Charles flared up. It wasn’t the answer he had been expecting. “Okay, then, we should hold an emergency meeting first thing tomorrow morning, by 8.00am, and everyone must be there. I cannot emphasize enough on the point that everyone MUST be there, seated before eight. We will get to the bottom of this. Please, send out meeting invites before you leave. Thanks.”

  Clara felt that it wasn’t as serious as Mr. Charles thought, but she went back to her desk, drafted an email and sent it with the meeting invite to everyone. Then she called it a day.

  ***

  Nobody had accepted the meeting invite, but by 7.55am, they were all seated in the training room, waiting for their boss. They knew what the meeting was about, because the subject of the email said ‘Missing Ideas Box,’ but they didn’t think it was necessary. At exactly 8.00am, Mr. Charles called Clara’s phone and asked for the meeting to be moved to 2.00pm. He had an impromptu meeting that he had to attend and wasn’t going to make it back to the office before 1.30pm. Clara informed everyone and they went back to their desks to work.

  The day went without incident and by 1.40pm, Mr. Charles came into the office and went to his own office directly. After about ten minutes, he called Clara and asked her to inform the staff that the meeting was going to hold by 2.00pm as planned, upstairs in the training room. When it was five minutes to the time, everyone went upstairs, including Mr. Charles.

  It was very hot in the training room. There was power, but the current was too low to carry the air-conditioning systems, and Enoh, the Admin Officer, didn’t think it was wise to run the generator and use up part of their diesel supply just because they wanted to power up two air-conditioning units in the training room. All the other offices were cool, even when there was low current. It was only the training room upstairs that got super hot, almost oven-like, when the air-conditioning units were turned off.

  Clara proposed that they take the meeting to the pool office, where they could enjoy the coolness of the open space and even open all the windows to have some cool breeze. Mr. Charles refused. He was beginning to sweat, but he refused. He started the meeting with a speech about trust, mutual respect and understanding, communication, honesty, and finally, security. The speech took almost thirty minutes, and everyone was getting tired because of the heat.

  During the speech, Mr. Charles would stop at intervals to read messages on his phone, when he got notifications, and reply to some of them. He did that at least ten times. Then after the speech, he started asking individual questions to ascertain where the missing box was.

  “Sir, it’s okay. If the box is lost, then it’s lost. We don’t mind. We have more ideas from where the other ideas came,” Evangeline said.

  “That’s right,” Eugene complemented.

  Mr. Charles shook his head. “But the question is: Would you be willing to share them again after what has happened now?”

  “Why not?” Chinelo replied.

  “Then you would all troop into the HR office again and ask for your ideas. And when Clara doesn’t give the ideas back to you, the box would go missing again? That doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Charles said.

  Everyone kept quiet. Individually, they didn’t know that each person had gone back to ask for their idea. Only Clara, Enoh and Mr. Charles knew. Now every other person knew — that is, if they were fast enough to understand what Mr. Charles had said.

  While they were still debating, Mr. Charles turned to Clara, and asked, “Can you go to the fridge downstairs and get me a cold bottle of water?”

  Clara didn’t raise herself from the seat. She simply raised her eyebrows.

  “Sir, let me get you the water,” Enoh proposed. She felt that she should get the drinking water instead, since her job included buying the water. She got up.

  “Sit back down,” Mr. Charles said, sounding strict. “I asked Clara to get it.”

  Clara frowned, but she got up and went downstairs to get the drinking water. When she came back to the training room, she was still frowning. She handed Mr. Charles the bottle of water and went to take her seat. She looked at her wristwatch. It was 3.00pm... she couldn’t believe that they had wasted one hour because of an Ideas Box that didn’t contain any idea.

  After Mr. Charles had taken a few gulps of the cold water, he sent a few more text messages or maybe replied to the tons of text messages he received. Then he talked about the Ideas Box again and said whoever was found with the box was going to face the music, but he didn’t say what type of music. He then dismissed everyone about five minutes later, since they were not getting anywhere, and since he also claimed that he was feeling hot. Clara rolled her eyes. She had proposed they use the pool office before, but he had refused. Everyone dispersed, angry that there were no meat pies or cold soft drinks served as usual, emergency meeting or not.

  When they got downstairs, chaos broke out, for a second time. Eugene was the first person to notice the black box on Clara’s desk through the glass wall. He ra
n past Chinelo, almost knocking her down on her mega high heels, as she was going to use the toilet. He then barged into Clara’s office before she could, and grabbed the box.

  “I have found the Ideas Box, on Clara’s desk,” he announced.

  Everyone looked at Eugene, amazed, as he held up the box.

  Chinelo didn’t go to the toilet anymore. She made a detour and entered Clara’s office as well. “Are you sure it’s the box?” she asked Eugene.

  “Of course.” Eugene turned the box to the side, revealing what Clara had written on it in bold letters ‘IDEAS BOX.’

  Mr. Charles was coming down the stairs at that instant, sweating as if he had just run a marathon. He immediately looked towards Clara’s office. Almost everyone was inside the office — those who could fit in, and who had interest in the box —, while the others stood by the door, stretching their necks to see. A few seconds later, he noticed Eugene holding the box. “What is the meaning of this nonsense?” he asked, looking at Clara.

  “I don’t understand,” Clara replied.

  “I asked you yesterday if you had kept the box away, so that no one would come and take their idea before the session today, and you said ‘no.’ Now we have wasted one hour talking about a missing box only to find it in your office.”

  “And I told you I didn’t keep the box. I have no idea who took it and who brought it to my office, but it wasn’t me.”

  “But you are the only one that came downstairs during the meeting,” Abu said.

  “I passed the other door and went directly to the conference room to take the water. I didn’t come into the pool office or even to my own office,” Clara replied.

  “It’s your word against ours,” Otito added, and Nichole nodded.

  Clara looked at him. “But it’s the truth.”

  Mr. Charles looked at his wristwatch; it was 3.15pm. “Since we are all here now, let’s move to the pool office and have the ideas session. We might not be able to finish it today, but we can pick about three ideas at random and discuss.”

  Nobody replied immediately, but Clara broke the silence after a few seconds.

  “Sir, why don’t we hold this session on Monday? The day is already over.” Clara did not want the box to be opened. She needed at least one more day to get a hold of the box and take the photocopy of her driver’s licence.