| It was there when he woke up. He didn’t notice it though, when he turned off his alarm. Heading toward the shower at 6:32 AM he walked right past it. It wasn’t until he returned to his bedroom, toothbrush hard at work, mentally going through his list of chores for the day, that he noticed it. It hadn’t been there the night before…or had it? He wasn’t sure. He would have said he had never seen it before…but he didn’t know if that was true. He had no idea what it was, but felt like he knew it, like it belonged there, with him. True, he could dig out a picture of his room, proof that it had not been there before, but it felt so right, hanging there in the middle of the room, he didn’t dare to question its being there. He stared at it. It was so perfect. It was mesmerizing. Floating chest-high, an immaculate silver sphere, perfect in every way imaginable, it hypnotized him. Like a chrome bowling ball, it hung motionless in midair, suspended by nothing. He gazed into it, he could not look away, he didn’t want to. He saw that the silver of the surface was not really silver. Looking at it he found the silver to come from myriads of specks and flashes of colors blending together, like dozens of prisms bound together somehow blending their jumble of lights and colors into flawless harmony. He looked at it and saw perfection. Over ten minutes he stared at it; awed by its presence. A mixture of toothpaste and saliva had collected on his chin – originating from the toothbrush still protruding from inside his cheek – and was falling in great globules onto his foot, rousing him. He looked to the clock. 6:57. To be still undressed, unshaven and brushing his teeth at seven o’clock on any other morning would have him cursing fifteen minutes of wasted time he’d have to make up on the highway. This morning, he didn’t care. He spit into the sink, washed off his face and went back to the bedroom. He stepped toward it. Almost before he knew what he was doing, his hand was inches away from its surface. Everything about it was so perfect, he wasn’t sure he ought to touch it. He felt some childish fear of defiling it, upsetting its pristine balance. Then his hand was on it. And he died. More accurately, the world died around him. Making contact with the orb, he united with it, became a part of it. His senses were overwhelmed, reached the breaking point, shut down. Everything around him, his room, his apartment, his life, faded and died. He was in a new world when he was inside the orb. It wasn’t heaven; he knew that. The orb wasn’t paradise, it was perfection. It was like all the senses of the human world witnessed fault and error on a daily basis so they had been replaced. Later he could have said he saw things in the orb, things that were amazing and breathtaking. But he didn’t see them, he experienced them; and that is what made them so unbelievable. The orb was his world. Inside the orb he became complete. He was not asleep, but he wasn’t quite awake. The orb was like a vacation from existence. |