They’ve given me a new desk. They being the university, and the stated reason being that health regulations require everyone to be able to adjust the height of their desk.

Now this is obviously nonsense. We already have height-adjustable chairs, which give you the full range of body-to-desk relative positions. The real motivation, I suspect, is more sinister.

Because there’s a power cord coming out of the back of the desk. It’s not connected to my computer, or my extra speaker set, or even the phone. It’s connected to a small box on the back-underneath of the desk, concealed in a larger metal framework that looks structural but apparently is only there to keep the box and the power cord out of sight.

What could it be? My guess is something like the “black box” flight recorder on an airplane. So that if I crash and burn they can retrieve whatever research problem I was attacking just before the end. (I imagine a commission of enquiry and a dusty ledger of forbidden research areas: “This one has accounted for seven PhD students and one Assistant Professor already, we cannot allow you to pursue it I’m sorry.”)

Although if that’s the case then either they’re pretty sure I’m not going to crack, or they don’t expect it to be research-related.

The black box isn’t actually plugged in.