"Urizen separated out a region from the rest of eternity, shrank it into solid matter, weighed it in his scales, measured it with his rods and plumblines, circumscribed it with his compasses, and wrote laws for it in his great brass-bound books. This sorry region, the region over which Urizen rules, is the universe in which we live..."

The children are kidnapped, then meet a visionary in a field of skylarks, and hear a new story about the creation of the world. They are pursued by baddies in black cars, who seem to be after the box.

http://www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox/

- Edward Picot
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website

Also of interest:

Netpoetic.com - http://netpoetic.com/ - by Jason Nelson. A number of video presentations by Jason Nelson on the subject of digital poetics. There are three of them so far, and so far they all deal with the creation of digital poetry using Flash. By turns fascinating, funny, inspirational and infuriating: Jason is a very engaging presenter, obviously completely at his ease in front of the camera, but there are times when he seems so determined not to take himself too seriously that he almost winds up saying nothing at all. A bit more critical analysis and hard-edged technical information would have been helpful; but this remains a quirky and absorbing introduction to digital poetry of the Flash variety, with incidental sidelights on Jason's own working methods.

The Graveyard - http://tale-of-tales.com/TheGraveyard/index.html - from Tale of Tales. Tale of Tales is a game-design studio aimed at people who find ordinary games unsatisfying. Their work often contains mythic/poetic material. In this one, an old lady stands at the gates of a cemetery: you have to guide her through the gates and along a path until she comes to a bench in front of a chapel; then you have to sit her down. When she sits, you hear a song; and after the song, you get her up and guide her out of the cemetery again. The pace is slow, the possibilities for interaction strictly limited, and the end result makes you wonder where games end and works of art begin. A "full" version can be downloaded for $5, which "adds only one feature, the possibility of death".