Warehouse 23

Somewhere, beneath the cover of an innocuous-looking retail operation, those with true Power have built a facility to imprison forces man was not meant to know . . . things we were never meant to comprehend. The Ark of the Covenant. The Crystal Skull. Alien spacecraft . . . and aliens. Documentation of conspiracies and cover-ups. And more.
Are you ready for Warehouse 23?

• A plain box of unsharpened No. 2 pencils, without any visible brand name. Any electronic scoring machine for standardized tests will score any answer marked with one of these pencils as being correct.
• Seven identical (and apparently original) paintings of the Mona Lisa. In all of the pictures she is smiling happily, as if the artist has just made a really funny comment.
• An ordinary, audio compact disk, labeled “I cannot be played.” If the disk is played in any CD player, it will produce audio vibrations, optical reflections, feedback noise, and so forth, that will destroy the equipment it was played on within a minute or so.

—Warehouse 23

Organic soup awaiting the lightning bolt? I’d classify it as a playful literary exercise, rather than either a game or a short story, but whatever you call it, it’s a collection of decontextualized inventory items as flash fiction. Open another box. Mike Arnzen may wish to proceed directly to the dumpster.