Recently, I asked for your assistance to help
Identify an object. I would like to thank all of my ad-hoc LJ Scooby Gang who helped me solve the mystery. All of the replies were most welcome; they were helpful and entertaining.
We now believe this was a phial of perfume. I have since found out that the tip, which had only recently broken off, was colored light green. I also had the opportunity to examine it first hand this weekend. The contents were evaporating and leaking out over recent time. There was a scent, which was clearly not poppers nor smelling salts; nor did not smell like Ginseng. It was more reminiscent of amber & lilac.
Now far be it from me to say that some of your conjectures were wrong; all I'm saying that in the greater realm of rightness, it was very kind of some of you to give others such a huge head start.
Let's review some of the postulated theories in light of our findings:
- Drugs
Given the nature of the people involved, we felt rather confident that it was neither legal nor illegal drugs. Given the packaging, we felt rather confident that this would not be intended for ingestion nor injection, as it would be too easy for the fluid to contain small amounts of broken glass.
- Bio-Weapon
We felt that the idea this might be a biologic WMD did not hold a lot of merit. We based this conclusion on the age of the object, and the casual manner in which it has been stored for so long (not frozen, for instance); and the fact that no one had died yet (nor exhibited any dramatic changes in their behavior or undead status). This made us relatively confident that it was not a bio-weapon. As a side note, I did later test it for radiation and found no appreciable radiological "hotness" (which is a good thing). The lack of government agents crashing in upon us at the last minute was, we felt, also an indication of the tameness of this object.
- Spiritual Essence
While a creative point, and perhaps a bit debatable within the context of sentiment associated with the object; nonetheless we were fairly certain this was not the distilled essence of either virtue or sin, nor personifications thereof. The total lack of supernatural portents helped bolster our confidence in this conclusion as well. It should be noted that the recent sighting of Alanis Morissette was, we felt, wholly unrelated to our study of this problem, merely coincidence.
Let's just suffice it to say that, in the end, it looked like perfume, it smelled like perfume, it tested in a non-exhaustive manner consistent with the profile of perfume, it felt like perfume, and the history of the object is consistent with a perfume expectation. In the end, the object was exhausted due to leaking & evaporation as a result of the recent breaking of the tip (containment breach).