Suggestion Box

[LittleFrieda]

How Matt Ended Up With A Smartwatch

(This story may deviate from Suggestion Box canon by spacing out the appearance over many weeks.)

For amusement purposes only. Although Superevil has graciously given permission for this story to step into his Smartwatch universe, this is not a true accounting of its origin. The watch was created in a research laboratory.

Prologue

The seemingly innocuous 'Suggestion Box' is one of the Bored God artifacts. It is a cherry wood box with brass fittings, a small brass lock, and a slit in the lid, with a brass plaque on the front that reads 'Suggestion Box', which can be found mounted to the wall in some random location.

No one can ever remember installing it, or it being there before, but it draws the attention of those who are fed up with the way things are, inviting them to write a suggestion for how they think things should be. However the Suggestion Box is a monkey's paw artifact, that will twist their suggestion into a perverted wish, and grant it when next that person wakes.

All of reality will have changed to reflect the suggestion, and only they, and anyone else who has written a suggestion in the box, will know that anything is different or wrong. For most suggestions, this is rather minor and unnoticeable, such as instituting a new rule from that point forward in a school or office, but a poorly worded suggestion can have truly far reaching effects for the unwary. Events will often conspire to prevent someone from revoking their suggestion, and after three suggestions are made, the Suggestion Box vanishes, whisked off to some other location, to work more perverted wonders.

The Suggestion Box was created by Danaume Rook, and the Bored God universe was created by AnonyMPC.

Towel Boy 0

A month into his freshman High School year, Masterson had the boys’ pecking order figured out. It was very similar to the Junior High ranking. The big strong athletes were at the top, the not-so-strong athletes were next, followed by the masses. Then there was Masterson. He was never bullied but did get some teasing that was mostly good natured.

One day in the second month of the school year it rained, so Masterson’s (Mast to his friends and acquaintances) class spent gym class indoors playing basketball. It was here that the pecking order for boys was put on full display.

Mast did his best to be useful to his team, which ended up with him staying off to the side and out of the way. Halfway through one of the games he was standing at the edge halfway down the court, and this put him in position to make a critical difference. The star opposing athlete had the ball in his own court and saw an opening where he could race down the sideline and score against Mast’s team.

Mast understood the situation. “All I have to do is stand here and block him. He doesn’t have room to go around.” That was the plan, just stand there. The reality unfolded such that the star simply crashed through Mast, sending him sprawling on his ass, and continued on to make a basket.

Mast slowly got up amid the sounds of giggles and laughter coming from all the other boys, even from his own team. He looked over at the coach, expecting a “charging” foul to be called. But all he saw was a smirk. Thinking “So that’s the way it’s going to be. The star can do anything and everyone else must make him look good. Stuff that.” Mast very obviously and pointedly retreated from any opposing player with the ball that came toward him. None of his teammates passed the basketball to him, so he didn’t need to ramp things up by batting it aside or passing it along to an opponent.

Still, the coach was VERY annoyed at what Mast was doing, making a mockery of the game. At the end of class the coach drew Mast aside to berate him for ruining the basketball game for the other boys.

Mast said, quick enough to get it all out before coach could react, “Oh, that was basketball? Pros and college have rules, like against charging. We don’t have that here, so what were we playing?”

This infuriated coach into “don’t you dare disrespect me” and threats of giving Mast a failing grade. Mast calmly and sweetly replied “Let’s get the principal involved in this so that he can support you when my parents meet with him to inquire about my grade. They will also be curious about this big bruise.” As he reached around to tenderly touch his backside.

Coach almost launched into a rage, but calmed himself in time, thinking about exactly what his role at the school was and the talents of the kids he had to deal with. “Mast, see me tomorrow and let’s find a way to help us both.”
`
And so it was that the next day the coach had a chat with Mast. “Kid, you’re not an athlete. Maybe you could be someday with the right training, but I don’t have time to help you. Plus the other boys will not accept you as one of their own as things stand now. At best they will tolerate your presence. And speaking personally, you’re too damn smart for this class. How about you become the Towel Boy for the school athletic program? I will give you a guaranteed ‘A’ for the year. We will both get a problem solved.” “And some of my ‘stars’ are dumb as a box of rocks. If I don’t launch them into a college athletic program, they got nothin.” Coach did not say.

Towel Boy 1

‘Towel Boy’ did not fully convey the responsibilities of the position. That worker needed to collect dirty uniforms as the after school sports activities finished, and pass out towels when the dirty kids took showers. All of the messy clothes needed to be put through the laundry machines. The school laundry is located between the girls locker-room/showers on one side and the boys on the other. Each side had a door with a set of tables nearby for the Towel Boy to work.

After three weeks of working as a Towel Boy, the job was losing its appeal. It mostly consisted of first washing school towels that were used throughout the day, then after that was done it was time to hand out towels for the dirty kids to use after showering. A few minutes later, after the kids finished their showers, bins for dirty uniforms would fill up. Mast had to empty the bins into the washers and wait for the machines to finish. Then the clothing had to be prepared for pickup the next morning. This made him very late for going home. No more taking the normal school bus. He couldn’t even make it to the late buses. Mast had to take the very late bus, which was an enormous waste of his free time.

As Mast worked in the laundry, he thought about some way, ANY way, to speed up his tasks. He also had another problem of an occasional item of washing going missing. Deep in thought about what he could do, he saw a suggestion box attached to the laundry room wall. “What an odd place to put that.” he thought. “Who is going to see it there?”

Despite his confusion, Mast pulled paper and pen out of his backpack and wrote “Please devise a monitoring system for the school laundry to determine why some washed items go missing.”

The next afternoon when Mast reported for work, he looked around for new surveillance cameras. But no, nothing had changed. Not that he expected a response so soon, so he plodded on with the job. Students dropped messy uniforms in baskets and he put them into the machines. As the wash cycle ended, he pulled the lever to open the washer door. In a flash that was almost too fast to track, a small short gnome shoved the door fully open with one hand and held a sports bra in the other. The little imp jumped out with his trophy bolting for the outside door. Unfortunately for the little guy, he slipped on a small water puddle on the floor, causing the gnome to crash down hard. This jolted his hand open dropping the bra. Quick as a flash he scrambled back up, abandoning the bit of clothing he had stolen, and an instant later he was out the door and gone.

Mast could only stand rooted to his spot, slack jawed. “What the Hell was that?” He cautiously peeked into the washer to see if any other creatures might come out, but there were only clothes. In his churning thoughts he came up with the crazy idea that, due to the suggestion, HE was the monitoring system. “Now I know why clothes go missing. It’s exactly what I asked for. I thought Underpants Gnomes were pure fiction. Is that what my suggestion did? I gotta try that again … where did the box go? Someone must have taken it down.”

Towel Boy 2

Over the following few weeks, there were no more missing clothes incidents. Still, he was always late leaving school, and worse, the only bus he could take was that dreaded very late bus.

“I have to think up some way to speed up my Towel Boy job.” he thought. “Maybe combine some of the things I have to do. Run some of these operations in parallel. Hey! Now I’m thinking like a big executive … ‘operations’ … ‘run in parallel’. Just like my dad would think up.”

While doing the athletics laundry the next day, Mast saw that the suggestion box had been hung back up on the wall. “Uh oh. I better get prepared for more gnomes.” He armed himself with a softball bat, but nothing unusual happened that day. With his duties done, he had about 10 minutes before he needed to go to the school parking lot and board his bus home. “I have time to make another suggestion. Something to speed up my job so I can go home earlier. I’ll write this up using Business Consultant language. ‘Something something something, ‘Concurrent operations’, ‘efficiency’, ‘optimizing work flow’. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Mast wrote up his suggestion, plunked it in the box, and scooted off to his bus. He was almost late due to the delay of writing down his thoughts back at the laundry, causing him to forget all about any expectation of improvement.

==========

The next day when Mast entered the laundry room to start his after school job, the first thing he noticed was that the suggestion box was gone. “Sheesh! Someone took it down again. Already. As if it was precious like the Crown Jewels.” He was puzzled, but the physical possession of the box was not really his concern. Mast busied himself with washing and folding the towels that were used up during the day, that he would need to hand out when the students came in from their practices.

At first the rising noise from the rustling of shoes and sporting conversations of returning students was simply the signal that Mast needed to stand at attention. Not in a formal military way, but he needed to be alert to make sure towels were available for pick up as the kids went to their showers. He had heard it every day since he started as a Towel Boy. Then the noise changed. On both sides of the laundry room, from the boys on the left and girls on the right, there were snarls and complaints.

A girl’s voice came out of the din first, to nobody in particular, “Crappy rules. No one ever explained to me why we have to turn in our dirty clothes BEFORE the shower.” Then more complaints and grousing. Then it started up on the boys’ side of the room. Girls complained the loudest but boys were more colorful in their gripes.

Then it happened, the reason for all the discord. He was looking toward the girls’ door when the first one came into view. She was naked, trying to cover up with her arms and hands as she dumped her sweaty uniform into a large canvas bin. A stream of more girls followed her in and waited as if they expected something from him.

Mast was confused to the point of paralysis. The trance was broken when a senior boy’s voice bellowed out behind him “HEY YOU DONUT, WHERE’S OUR TOWELS?” Turning around, he saw a growing crowd of naked boys also dumping dirty uniforms and cupping their hands over their crotch, trying to modestly cover up while in view of the girls. Mast instantly jumped into action, purely by muscle memory, rushing down the room to a box of clean towels. Picking up the box he scooted over to the boys’ door and placed it on a table. Mast instructed, “Here, everybody grab one.”

Returning his attention to the girls’ door Mast saw the naked crowd watching him, waiting. “I’m supposed to do something? What?” he thought. A second later it dawned on him. The girls wanted clean towels for their shower, just like the boys. Mast scrambled back through the room for another box of clean towels and brought it to the table on the girls’ side. This time he stayed with the box, handing the towels out individually to each girl. “Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Look them in the eyes. In two or three weeks they might get used to me, forget I am here. Then I can look.”

Well, the coach DID say that Mast was smart. He was able to finally stare at the last few girls as they walked away back to the showers. One of them forgot he was behind her and didn’t hide her ass. That made him forget that even with these changes, he still had to take the very late bus home.

Several weeks went by, each day getting a little better than the last. Mast changed the room layout so that the boys’ hamper and towel supply was just outside the door on their side. No need for them to come into the common area and ogle the girls. For the girls' part, they were getting used to his presence at the laundry table as they turned in dirty uniforms. Some of them lost the urgency to cover up, making only half hearted attempts at hand-bras. “Maybe another week and a few will simply walk their laundry here naked.”

Towel Boy 3

Just another day at school, with Mast joyfully working his afternoon laundry shift, waiting for the naked girls to pick up towels. “Hey! The suggestion box is back. My first suggestion got an Underpants Gnome. My second got girls naked for me … well and boys too, but who cares about them? Holy Shit! This is NOT a normal suggestion box, it’s a WISH box.”

As Mast slowly processed everything about his experience, he became convinced that it really was a WISH box. “Yeah, it must be a wish box. But it says ‘suggestions’ right there on top. So maybe a wish has to be in the form of a suggestion, like ‘answer in the form of a question’ on that Jeopardy game show.”

“I have at least an hour before practice is done out there. What can I wish for? I know. An APP for a phone or tablet. And what should this APP do? Let’s see, I want This, and That, and … no, don’t need Those. Let me write this down carefully as a suggestion.”

==========

The next afternoon Mast came home after school, late as always. The very first thing he noticed was a mail package on the telephone table in the front door entryway. “The label says it’s for me! The suggestion box came through! The package is too small for a tablet. A software APP could be sent by email, this is a ‘thing’. I wonder what it is … Could it be one of those odd-ball smart watches?”

Unfortunately, life got in the way. As Mast picked up the package to take to his room, his parents diverted him to some less interesting family activities. He was not able to get back to the package until the next day.

“MOM! Where is the mail I had from yesterday?”

“Oh. It came here to the wrong address. It should have gone to Matt, with our same last name. And we live on a Cul-de-sac COURT where the package said STREET. I took it back to the Post Office and told them to try again.”

All that night Mast was near tears, murmuring “SHIT. SHIT. SHIT. I had it in my hands, So close. So close. So close. …”

==========

For amusement purposes only. Although Superevil has graciously given permission for this story to step into his Smartwatch universe, this is not a true accounting of its origin. The watch was created in a research laboratory.