Music cue: "Mission Impossible" theme...

Dun, dun, daah daht, Dun, dun, daah daht, Dun, dun, daah daht, Dun, dun, daah daht, Deedle-ooo, Deedle-ooo, Deedle-ooo, Doo-doot!

Ok, you try writing out the Mission Impossible theme. See how easy it is.

So at about 6:00, I come in to work and on my desk is a "mysterious package" containing a USB floppy drive for my model of laptop, and three strangely marked floppy disks. No note, no explanation, although I do notice that the markings resemble my recently acquired minion's handwriting. I set the potentially volatile mixture aside while I went through my daily routine. I was going to wait until he got in, and ask him what that was all about.

But, I'm just not that patient.

7:23 AM - Begin. Write in italics to give it an air of... oh, I don't know. Tension? Mystery? Whatever.

OK, I tear off the packaging, and plug in the USB floppy drive, casually tossing the torn plastic and twist ties aside. Windows pops up it's little thought bubble, stating that it found new hardware. Bully for you, Windows. An NEC USB Floppy at location 0. Oooh...

I have no idea which disk to put in first. One of them has agent M's handwriting on it, so I'll go with that first. It appears to be a Windows XP setup disk, for an unattended setup...

D:\Documents and Settings\david>dir A: Volume in drive A has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2A87-6CE1

Directory of A:
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA2.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,753 EGA3.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 58,870 EGA.CPI
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 21,607 KEYB.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 34,566 KEYBOARD.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,942 KEYBRD2.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 31,633 KEYBRD3.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 13,014 KEYBRD4.SYS
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 29,239 MODE.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 93,040 COMMAND.COM
06/08/2000 05:00 PM 17,175 DISPLAY.SYS
07/30/2005 09:41 AM 0 AUTOEXEC.BAT
07/30/2005 09:41 AM 0 CONFIG.SYS
07/30/2005 09:24 AM 329 unattend.bat
07/30/2005 09:24 AM 1,355 unattend.txt
15 File(s) 450,393 bytes
0 Dir(s) 887,296 bytes free

Curiouser and curiouser. Let's check the other disks. The second of three disks, labeled incongruously "4 of 5" yields a series of compressed system files. As does disk "5 of 5".

What to make of it? I have no idea. I can only assume that he was returning some disks to me, but why labled so strangely and with an unopened floppy drive?

Some mysteries will have to wait. Until then, please post your speculations in the comments.

Thanks... er...

Thanks,

Agent D.