Sparks

Looking at the box, sealed in all its glory with packing tape, it was a 1 by 1 foot box and not hearing the ball rolling in it made me feel at bit more at ease at Fred's packaging capabilities or whoever he slugged the work off to.

I walk into the second smaller bedroom that I remodeled into a small workshop about a year ago to tinker with a few of the products I get to get slightly better sales. I sit down on my office chair while slowly opening my new found treasure.

Opening it up, it was surrounded with small plastic airbags and the ball itself was wrapped in bubble wrap which should come in handy on a late Friday night with nothing to do. Pop bubbles to compensate the loneliness.

Anyways, without much in the way of packaging I squeeze out the ball and finally take a good look at it.

Surprisingly, smaller than I expected but shockingly heavy though I do remember it being mentioned it was heavy for its size.

The ball was a smooth surface of silver like black metal with strange carvings going around the center all around. The carvings looked like some of those runes you would find in a magic based mmorpg or something which left me even more intrigued. They formed 6 intricate designs on the surface of the ball and I couldn't see any line or switch of any sort indicating this thing could be opened which left me a little unhappy as I had the odd feeling that there must be something inside this heavy little thing. I couldn't say why but it just gave me the odd presence of something else besides metal being present.

That thought didn't last long as I felt the slight chill coming off the 15cm tall ball of metal. I then proceeded to run some test to see if this thing would have anything special as I didn't have a microscope strong enough to tell its metal I focused on the carvings to see what could be seen on the crevices they formed from being engraved.

I put the ball in place under a strong lamp light while getting my portable microscope to zoom in on the engravings. The zoom was only able to go about 40x which was the limit of my 100$ investment but did most of my microscopic needs justice. What's growing on my toe? What is the 40x zoomed equivalent of an ant? and such scientific things. I should really stop boasting about such things but sadly, my lack of real world communication with people led to an inflated ego to keep myself from going insane from the hermit lifestyle I decided upon myself.

Back to the ball, I zoomed in on the markings with 20x for a preliminary test only to see that they seemed to have been extremely precise as I couldn't even see any rough edges along the engravings making me believe this might have been some sort of laser or they smoothed the edges out, after which the ball just upped in its value in my head from 200$ to about 700$ if I market it right to the proper geeks. Which left me jubilant at getting back my money with profits as a bonus.

I switched the magnifying lens to 40x zoom and I was surprised a little as the engravings turned into a miniature canyon where in between were… slightly blurry but smaller black spots with a hint of silver in them.

I tried getting a better look but the lens wouldn't allow for much precision and I happen to make out a slightly larger black spot in between 3 of the engravings borders while studying further. Leaving me a little speechless, to be honest. Reason being the slightly larger black spots under the lamp light and magnification looked to be another smaller engraving but I wasn't a hundred percent sure as they were still a little blurry which kind of put me off.

'The precision on these things, if engraved within the engravings, are incredible if that's even possible.' I was a little dazed at the possibility of what I just examined because those things must be tiny as all hell and if all the other tiny black spots were similar markings as well then this thing was something entirely different from what I originally thought.

As my gaze rested on the ball for a minute, I slowly realize that I, Jupiter Ortus, have just made… BANK!

I start laughing like a maniac at the thought of this thing being one of the most desired piece for science enthusiasts and if I bloat the story with my "mostly probable" hypothesis of being shot from space then I might make something in the upper few thousands… maybe more if I can get more concrete research done on the thing!

Right away, I start doing more tests to see just what this thing is and can do. My eyes were burning with a fire, I had long thought extinguished! I thought:' This is it! This feeling, this is the feeling I haven't had in such a long time. Simple and pure excitement.' The feeling was exaggeratedly good, I felt like a child again getting his hands on a new toy and had to run around showing it off.

Calming myself a little from the excitement, I started with a submerging test in water which showed nothing strange, then pure alcohol ( technically, it was rubbing alcohol) to see if that were to change anything but still no reaction.

I followed up with hammering the thing to see if it reacts to any impact which left me quite disappointed as the thing didn't even scratch when the full force of my weight was put behind a hammer strike. Tough I shouldn't be surprised if my original theory proved true as it still looked smooth after a tunneling through the sea rock. I tried drilling afterwards to test the metal, though the drill broke, I was a little relieved as that just reassured me this thing is anything but normal though the drilling might have been a little overboard.

Finally, running out of things to do I figure I could perform one last test just to get my evil genius alter-ego desires satiated.

I grab an old toaster in the corner of my workshop and cut the wire connecting to the toaster and plug in the other end to the wall outlet and voila.

"Hehehe! Prepare to be… SHOCKED!" Another childish giggle at the bad pun and I submerge the ball in a pool of water after peppering in salt for added conductivity which still gave the ball no reaction but electricity should do something right?

I put on some gloves, a full leather jacket and safety goggles just to avoid getting shocked from residual electricity and go to slowly put the cut off end of the wire into the water with a pair of barbecue tongs for added safety. What happened next left me utterly in shock! No pun intended.

The moment the live wire touched the salt water with the ball inside at the center of the bowl. It attracted all the electric current that was going in the water but the really scary thing was the tip end of the wire was fully attracted to the ball and next thing I know, the ball and the wire were connected without me having done anything. I gasped and dropped the barbecue tongs while staring at the ball slightly lighting up from the electricity running over it and a few moments into the experiment the apartment lights started to dim and that left me worried as I stared at the ceiling lights flickering from low to high as if the house was haunted.

And before I could do anything to remove the wire, the light popped with a bang and all the power in the apartment went dark.

Silence

It filled the air and my apartment as if death was looming in the dark corners while I stood there dazed at what just happened. My mind reeling from the shocking event while my eyes were fixated on the ball in the water which had all the engravings glowing a small soft white which left me feeling a little unnerved as I did not know what I just did and the unknown is really fucking scary when the ball you play with may or may not be from goddamn space!

My breathing a little ragged from the rush of stimuli and I slowly inch closer to the ball to see what is happening.