Twickneys

"I've heard of them. Every scrounger alive has heard of them. But - is this really one?

— Ferlen Carriger to his girlfriend Darleen

"I found it Ferlen! I finally found something," the beautiful blonde girl exclaimed to the thin red haired scrounger as she bounced into the large entry.

"What is it?" he asked looking up from his hands and knees where he had been sorting through the garbage under the long chair in the mostly empty room. The fabric had long since settled into a rotted pile, and the springs were partially rusted through. He hadn't dared sit on the thing, but sometimes there was sellable stuff in the piles of trash that accumulated under the old chairs.

She looked at him pensively then handed him the slightly crushed faded box she had clutched to her skinny chest. "I think it's an artifact," she said. "No, I'm sure it's an artifact. It's our ticket out of the slums Ferlen. We finally found something that's going to get us and the a better life, maybe even the whole tribe."

"Are you sure Darleen?" he asked. "It just looks like another box of junk to me."

She sighed at his words, and he watched defeat settle on her shoulders. "I think so," she said uncertainly. "I hope so. "

He hated that. it was so much better when she had hope, no matter how futile that was. "Where did you find it?" he asked.

"I was moving a pile of rotted carpet and clothes from out of a closet and there was a ring in the floor. When I pried it up, it was like the handle on a door of a box set in the floor. This was inside it."

That sounded like a floor safe. "You know, we might actually have something here. The ancients did that sometimes with things they really valued." He watched with relief as her face lightened subtly.

He held the box up to the lantern he carried. One side of the box was slightly crushed, but it was otherwise in really good shape. The box edges were intact, and the cardboard was still glued together all the way around. What was once pictures and writing in brightly colored inks had faded to almost white, but there was a yellowish picture and faint lettering on it that he couldn't read. Not that that was about the faded lettering. No one he knew could read.

"Looks like it's never been opened," he observed. "I wonder what it is."

"Oh! I think I know what it is Ferlen," she exclaimed grabbing his arm. "See? That's a T and a W. It's a box of Twickneys! Didn't you pay attention when Lucid told us about them? He said the ancients used to eat them and they used to last forever. Imagine that! A food that isn't contaminated - that you can eat and it will make you live forever!"

He scowled at her. "That can't be true. If it were, the ancients would still all be alive and they aren't."

She let out an exasperated sigh. "I didn't mean really forever, but they did live for a long long time. Everyone knows that. The ancient humans lived to be eighty years old, and it was all because they ate Twickneys!"

He snorted in disbelief. His father had told him stories of the ancients while he was growing up. The ancients living for a long time was a common enough tale, but Ferlen didn't believe many of the stories about the ancients. Well, he believed some them - the ones about them being richer and there being a lot more of them. The evidence of that was in every building. No one lived eighty years though regardless of what the old tales said. The only people who lived longer than 30 years were the corrupted, and no one wanted to live like them. Even the fyrir bjod with access to the best medical care, fresh air and clean food and water only lived to 50.

"I've got to figure out what to do with this," he said slowly.

"You have to figure it out? I found it! I didn't have to tell you about it at all, but I wanted to share. So we can decide together what to do with it, but you don't get to decide without me."

"Fine, I'm sorry. But we need to figure out what to do with it."

"We bring it to Lucien of course. What else would we do with it?"

"Darleen, we don't really know what this is. What do you actually know about Twickneys?"

"I know all I need to know. I know that people believe they make you live forever. I know that they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for just a single one. And this is a box Ferlen, an entire box! We're rich. We can take the whole village and buy a small town near the ocean where the water breaks up the magichem . We can take the littles and the elders and grow our own vegetables and raise our own chickens and not have to scrounge for cans of barely edible stuff in piles of rotten junk, fighting rats and cats and dogs for even the smallest crumb of anything edible. We can live in a place without looking over our shoulders for the Knyja or Hrinda tribes or worrying about them taking over our street and losing the littles to a gang fight. We could get weapons to defend ourselves. With that much money, we could even hire someone to teach us to read."

Her voice was breathless with excitement, stars and hope shining from her face. It almost hurt him to look at her.

"Darleen, right now this is just a very old box with faded lettering and pictures on it. We don't know if there's actually a Twickney in it, or what they look like, or how many there are in there. We don't know if the Twickney, if it is in there lasted this long, and we don't know if it would make someone live a long time. We don't have any idea what we actually have and what it is worth," he reminded her harshly.

"We should open it then."

"Artifacts usually fetch more if they haven't been opened."

"If we don't open it, how do we know what we're selling and how much it might be worth?" she asked parroting the thoughts in his own head back at him in an almost reasonable tone of voice. He hated when she did that.

"We could just take a chance and bring it to the fyrir bjod market and see what we get offered for it," he suggested slowly.

She laughed at him.

He sighed. "You're right. Stupid idea. I guess we try to figure out how to check inside without tearing it up," he agreed reluctantly.

It actually wasn't too hard in spite of his Verja Gloves . the end seemed to be built to open and close and with his sharp knife and a small amount of pressure the top flap came open enough to let him peer inside the box but not enough to get anything out. The inside was surprisingly clean and white. By the light of the lantern, he could count eight, maybe ten clear packets in the box with something tubular and long and a dark gold brown in each. No bugs, no chewed up remains, no crumbs, just perfectly formed brown domed things.

This really was something. He felt hope rising. They were brown not yellow like the picture on the box, but - they were old. Even things that lasted forever were allowed to be brown after hundreds of years, right? He felt the excitement growing. Darleen was right. They could get out of this life they were living amongst the gang infested slums of Caledonia. They could get out of the city, make a new home for themselves and their village, a better life for them and those they loved. He could ask her to marry him even. It was s dream come true.

He let Darleen peer into the box. She stared and stared.

"What do you think?" he asked.

She got very quiet then looked up at him with a troubled look in her face.

"I think we should eat them," she finally replied.