TIM: Oh, ah, nothing urgent, um, it’s just Elias was asking a couple questions about the delivery.
ARCHIVIST: Delivery? What delivery?
TIM: Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?
ARCHIVIST: No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.
[SOUND OF PACKAGE BEING RETRIEVED AND OPENED]
ARCHIVIST: A lighter. An old Zippo.
ARCHIVIST: No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!
TIM: Okay. Is there anything unusual about it?
ARCHIVIST: Not really. Just a sort of spider web design on the front. Doesn’t mean anything to me. You?
ARCHIVIST: Well… show it to the others, see what they think. You said there was something else as well?
TIM: Oh, ah yes, yeah, it was sent straight to the Artifact Storage, a table of some sort. Ah, looks old. Quite pretty, though. Fascinating design on it.
ARCHIVIST: Tim… Tim, it doesn’t have a hole in it, does it? About six inches square?
TIM: Ah… I don’t know. Maybe? Um, I’ll be honest I didn’t really notice. It was quite -
ARCHIVIST: Hypnotic, yes. Do you know who made the delivery? Did they sign in?
TIM: Um… ah no, ah, sorry, no, I don’t know.
ARCHIVIST: I need to talk to Martin. Uh, end recording.
He talked on like this for a while but I stopped listening about that point, as I’d become enraptured by the table on which he’d placed my tea. It was an ornate wooden thing, with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre. The pattern was hypnotic and shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion. I found my eyes following the lines towards the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole. Graham noticed me staring, and told me that interesting antique furniture was one of his few true passions. Apparently he’d found the table in a second-hand shop during his student days and fallen in love with it. It had been in pretty bad shape but he’d spent a long time and a lot of money restoring it, though he’d never been able to figure out what was supposed to go in the centre. He assumed it was a separate piece and couldn’t track it down.
i SWEAR that there had been mention of the lighter before, but i can’t find it
and they were delivered by breekon & hope deliveries, which are also seen in e2 and e20