Yay! I am still somewhat socially relevant. It’s probably band instruments.
(the cannon would explain the weight).
And whoever brought up that 14 k stuff should be pummeled by wet trouts, repeatedly. Agh!
How hard is it to break into a lock box thingy? Where is the OP? <cue Twilight Zone music>
All right, let´s call it a draw. 
I think that the relevant question is, how hard is it to break out of a lock box thingy? :eek:
Is it big enough to hold…ninjas?!
:eek:
Balance: may he R.I.P.
Would that be “resting in pieces”, eleanor?
I appreciate the concern, and I’m sorry to have left you all on tenterhooks for so long. I have been rather busy.
Once upon a time, the lock would have been no great obstacle, but my skills are rusty. I couldn’t open it without proper tools, and mine were destroyed in an incident last year. I suppose I could have taken it to a locksmith, but that seemed wrong, somehow. I love a mystery, and wanted to open the box myself. Fortunately, I was able to prevail upon an associate of mine to provide the necessary items this morning.
I began working on the lock immediately upon returning home. After thirty patient minutes, I began to wonder if I’d been overconfident. The lock eventually yielded, however, and I managed to tease it open. Inside the box was another wrapped parcel, nestled in padding, with a letter lying on top of it. The spiky handwriting looked familiar, although I could not immediately place it. Here is what it said:
I haven’t seen Digger—I hope you don’t mind if I use our old nicknames, in the interest of privacy-- in years. He stayed at the University to pursue graduate work when I left, and we fell out of touch. Of all the friends I made while dabbling in archaeological studies, he was, I think, the most stable—a careful, meticulous thinker. I can’t picture him inventing a tale like this. I’m worried about him. Either he had gotten too much sun, or he was in real trouble when he sent the letter, trouble he probably isn’t prepared to cope with.
The “artifact” he sent seems to be a smallish box of extraordinary design. The entire outer surface consists of rounded, overlapping tiles. Each tile can be pressed inward slightly, as if supported by a spring. It is roughly a foot in all dimensions at its widest point, tapering to perhaps six inches wide and four high at the opposite end. The whole is composed of dark—almost black—wood, with a slick, waxy feel to it.
I suppose it will come as no surprise that there is no obvious way to open it.
We need pictures!
It is a great story; but, I’m feeling WHOOOOSHED!
Well, if this is a WHOOSH, I say bring my a jacket to keep me warm in the wind. (although I do feel like I’m in the middle of an Agatha Christie novel–or better yet–a TinTin story!)
<goes to make popcorn>
Balance–I hope you’re not in pieces!
Psssssssst, Balance, if a couple of Templar Knights show up at the door, you probably shouldn’t answer it.
Whoosh or not, I’m happily suspending my disbelief.
You have good taste in mail, Balance.
I just hope balance gives the story a neat symmetry by including a few clues from the opening.
( Maybe fit Lisa’s light blue jacket into the plot towards the end ? )
And lets all have fun!!! 
You don’t happen to own a whip and a fedora, do you Balance?
My best guess is that balance is actually Steven Spielberg and he is admitting that he and Harrison Ford are stuck on the story details of the next Raiders Of The Lost Ark episode.
By the time this whoosh thread hits page five, Nazis will have whisked balance off to Tibet to open the mysterious box by the light of a full moon as it reflects through an ancient prism that was stolen from an Incan temple.
brings her own bowl of buttered popcorn and settles in with a warm blanket and a mug of tea also
Well? More!
Well if Balance is an author, s/he’s written the beginning to a book that I’d read!
I don’t mind being a focus group-
I’m already a focus groupie!
Bullshit.
<applause> Well done!</applause> 
No popcorn and tea for YOU!
I predict a beautiful woman with a secret past, stuck in Egypt due to lack of funds; a suspicious stranger of Oriental descent; a pragmatic Frenchman with two letters of transit, and a legend regarding the Cairo box.
…and a fish.
Are there fish in Egypt? What kind of fish comes out of the Nile?
<insert joke about gay fish here>