The Promise of the Orb

by Marshall Cobb

  We’re in a barn, and it’s quite authentic. She had been in enough barns back home to know what to expect inside. The more she looked around, the more she understood this was exactly the same as the Millers’ barn (a family farm down the road from her house). She walked quickly next to the board and its tools and her eyes caught on a set of keys hanging from one of the nails. She squinted at the other end of the long-covered area and was pretty sure she saw the large tires of the tractor that went with those keys. The Millers’ ancient, baby-blue Ford tractor.

  “Contestants,” Malcolm’s voice resonated in their skulls. “Please approach a hay mound and await further instruction.”

  “Where are you, Malcolm?” Jenny asked.

  “I am here to aid and monitor but I have no physical presence. You will hear me in your minds and I will hear your thoughts, and questions.”

  Jenny took a quick scan anyway but saw no one, including Malcolm, hiding. As she slowly walked back to the hay mounds, she heard something behind her, then felt the wind disturbed by Chime as he passed her, running back to his spot in front of the mound on the right. He had taken a full tour.

  “Malcolm? Does it make any difference which mound I choose?”

  “No.”

  She nodded, walked up to the mound of hay on the left, and looked over to Chime, who was busily studying the mound in front of him.

  “Good. This challenge is one of the hardest. You will need all your patience.”

  Jenny listened to Malcolm’s vague, unhappy description and had an ugly thought. Is this the find-the-needle-in-the-haystack game?

  Her family had gone to the county fair almost every year she could remember. There was always a needle-in-the-haystack game where you paid fifty cents for thirty seconds of scrambling through the much-trodden haystack looking for candy and prizes the attendant had, at least theoretically, hidden in the hay. There were no actual needles in the haystack at the fair, but Jenny had never had any luck finding anything within the hay. She loathed this game.

  “Yes, Jenny. Once we begin, the first one of you to find the needle hidden within your haystack wins. In keeping with the spirit of your team, Jenny, you have a set of rules to follow to avoid disqualification. Using only your hands, eyes and internal senses, you must start from the top and work your way down the mound.”

  Jenny frowned. She had tried all kinds of approaches while fumbling through hay at the county fair and had nothing to show for it. “What size is this needle?”

  “It is a standard needle, Jenny, with a length of one-and-a-half inches and a width roughly the same as a safety pin.”

  Great. I couldn’t even find candy bars hidden in the hay at the fair.

  She teetered on the edge of a self-pity party, but then a few things happened. First, she recognized that everyone was counting on her. If she failed, it was the end of all of them. Second, she looked to her right and saw that the haystack in front of Chime was going to pose the exact same challenge for him. What you need is a lot of energy, and the patience to do it correctly, or else end up searching the same bit of hay over and over.

  She stared again at her mound. And luck. I’m going to need a lot of luck.

  “Chime,” Malcolm continued, “you have no rules and may proceed however you wish. If you emerge as the winner, this cycle of the Game will be over and you and the others on your team will return to your lives.”

  Chime nodded at the mound (there was nothing else to nod to), then turned and nodded at Jenny. She found his gesture oddly comforting and nodded back to Chime.

  “Are there any questions?”

  Both Chime and Jenny shook their heads no. Jenny tried to ignore her sweaty palms and her racing heart. I’ve got to stay calm, be patient.

  “Begin!” Malcolm’s voice boomed.

  Jenny ran up to her mound, and carefully cupped then removed a small clump of hay from the top. She put this small amount down on the right side of the mound then leaned down and used her long fingers to push through the stalks. This process was neither quick nor easy as the bright light from above glistened off the hay stalks. She was certain several times that she had been lucky enough to find the needle at the very top of the mound. Each time her heart sank a little when she saw that all she had was more straw.

  She avoided looking over at Chime and his mound, reminding herself that the only thing that mattered was in front of her, but eventually she snuck a peek. To her surprise, Chime was nowhere to be found and his mound of hay remained just as it was before the contest started.

  Jenny spun fully around and, though her eyes could not pierce the darkness, her ears told her that the scrapes and metallic bangs she now heard spoke of a great deal of activity at the far end of the building—the end with the tractor.

  “Malcolm? Is something wrong?”

  “No, Jenny. Chime is simply pursuing an alternative path to discovery.”

  Jenny, still clutching two fistfuls of hay, pondered what exactly that meant, then decided she did not care. Chime could do whatever he wanted. She was going to win.

  She returned to her search, always careful to put the inspected hay to the side. She also did her best to ignore the clangs, grunts and pops coming from the other end of the building.

  Over time, her eyes a bit blurry from the effort, she cleared the top third of her mound. There was, to her knowledge, no needle as of yet, but since Chime had not even started on his bale it appeared that she still had plenty of time.

  No, I can’t worry about him. I have to find my needle!

  She forced herself to stay on task and keep inspecting the hay in her mound. She tried to pick up the pace but found that to be impossible with the strong light reflecting off the hay stalks. It would do her no good to go too quickly and miss the needle.

  As she worked, she became aware of a loud noise coming from the far end of the barn. It sounded as if something large was being dragged across the floor. The grunts coming from Chime indicated that the object was also quite heavy.

  Her pile of now-inspected hay continued to grow. She was closing in on being halfway through her bale when the dragging noise ended, replaced by a soft thud and a loud sigh. Jenny turned and saw that Chime, using a large chunk of rope, had pulled an old, wooden pallet across the building and placed it next to his mound. She carefully put the hay in her hands back on her mound and took a few steps closer to Chime.

  She saw that on top of the pallet sat an oversized battery. There were cables attached to the battery that led to something Jenny could not see.

  Jenny tried to process the scene in front of her. Why would Chime want a battery—probably taken from the tractor—to find a needle? She stood, thinking, while Chime scrambled around the pallet and its contents. She needed to get back to her mound. She needed to stop worrying about what her competition was doing, but something tickled the back of her mind. She remembered something about batteries that made them useful in this setting—what was it?

  As Chime stood, holding a long piece of rebar with cables attached to either end and something wrapped around the middle, the answer clicked inside Jenny’s head. A magnet! He’s built a magnet!

  Jenny had come in second place in her seventh-grade science fair to a classmate who had constructed a variety of homemade magnets. The magnets of varying strength were used to perform mechanical feats. It was, it turned out, fairly easy to create a magnet—much easier than her experiment with terra-forming—and only required a battery, copper wire, an iron rod and a bit of tape.

  She bit her lip, hard, and thought back to the size of the batteries her classmate had used in her exhibit. Many were the “D-sized” variety, but the most powerful had been one normally used for a motorcycle (about 10 times the size of a D cell). The magnet attached to the motorcycle battery had been very strong—plenty strong enough to pull a pin through a handful of straw.

  She walked even closer still. The magnet that Chime was using, however, was more than five times the size of the motorcycle battery and
, instead of a bit of copper wire wound around a nail, Chime’s magnet featured a two-foot length of metal rebar with a thick cable of wire wrapped around its middle. Chime looked up from his work, nodded again, and connected the cable still dangling from one end of the rebar to the battery. There was a brief spark, then Chime stood and began weaving the rebar through his stack of hay.

  Jenny saw that her head-start meant nothing. Chime was going to tear through his mound, and in less than five minutes any stray bit of metal would be stuck to his powerful magnet. She ran back to her mound and began scrambling through larger chunks of hay. She moaned to herself angrily as she went through her hay at a maddeningly slow pace. Patience. Freaking out now isn’t going to help.

  She lost track of time, focusing only on the hay in front of her. Grab, inspect, place in other pile. Grab, inspect, place in other pile.

  A piece of old, tough hay pierced her palm, and she pulled back her hand angrily, sucking on the side of her hand where a drop of blood had oozed out. With her hand still in her mouth she looked over to Chime, who was standing in the middle of the remains of his mound, waving his piece of rebar over the small amount of hay still below him. He would find the pin any second. Patience was no longer her friend. What she needed now was luck. Pure, simple luck.

  Ignoring her palm, she used both hands to tear into the remains of her mound, which still had more than a third of itself piled up. Her eyes darted among the newly exposed stalks, which she threw to the side as quickly as she possibly could. With all my digging around, a needle up at the top would probably end up on the bottom. I’ve got to dig to the bottom.

  She worked feverishly, trying to push away her own doubts as well as the looming fear of what would happen if she failed. Hay flew into the air, little bits of dust checkering the air around them as the light reflected off every surface.

  Jenny’s eyes now burned. In addition to the strain of trying to find a needle, all the dust in the air had dried them out. She fought to avoid wiping them as that only made it worse, but found she had to use the back of her hand to try and wipe off dust crusted in the corner of her eye. Rubbing her hand across her eye did not remove the lump of dust, but did make a large scratch. She winced and squeezed her eye shut, then screamed with rage and despair.

  Her wail died away and she stood, right eye now swollen shut, in the middle of the remains of her mound. She dropped to her knees, refusing to acknowledge defeat, and shoved her hands into the hay beneath her again and again, now throwing it into the air in a desperate attempt to find the needle falling back to earth. Again and again she plunged her hands into the straw, no longer concerned about Chime’s progress, and again and again she emerged with hay, and nothing else.

  She thrust her hands in once more and this time felt a sharp pain in her left index finger. Something had punctured it. She automatically pulled it back, away from the source of the pain, and saw not a hole in her finger created by a sharp piece of hay, but instead a needle sticking out at a right angle from the end of her finger.

  Dazed, and more than a little surprised, she used the thumb and finger from her right hand to pull the needle out, then held it above her head and let loose a scream that purged all her angst, rage and pain. She then looked over to Chime, who nodded with just a bit of sadness on his face, then set down the rod of his homemade magnet, which had failed him.

  She nodded back and noticed that the cable he had used had a thick rubber coating. She smiled as she remembered that in the seventh-grade science fair bare wires—without any kind of coating—made for a much stronger magnet. The more insulating material between the wire and the metal bar, the weaker that magnet. Chime had been on the right track, but he had forgotten to remove the insulation from the wire.

  She let loose a loud sigh—fully aware that she had been more than a little lucky—then announced the updated score. “Two-to-two, Malcolm.”

  “Yes, Jenny. Well done.”

  The needle, and a curtain of blackness, fell.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Peter

  Orb, who had been conspicuously quiet during most of the rounds, positioned himself directly in front of Peter’s face as soon as Jenny and Chime disappeared. Peter continued to sit on the bench but peered around the hovering Orb at Jigme and found that he was faring no better. The two small cubes indicating victories hung over Jigme’s head while the actual Cube hovered just next to Jigme’s left ear.

  “Peter, it is imperative that we prevail.”

  Peter smiled grimly at Orb’s proclamation. “I don’t want to cease to exist any more than you want to be divided up again to endure another cycle of free will—but what you and I want doesn’t matter if Jenny doesn’t win her round.”

  “She will emerge victorious, as will you.”

  Peter just nodded, not exactly sure what to do with the suddenly chatty, wildly optimistic Orb. A thought that had troubled him on and off chose this moment to reappear.

  “Orb, if we do win, what happens when we return home? You’ll be the absolute ruler of the world, right? How is that going to work with all the countries, governments and people that already direct their lives?”

  “A good question, Peter, and, to confirm, we will win. Normally when I gain power I provide a short grace period to allow all involved to adjust to the new order of things. At the end of the grace period I will begin my rule.”

  “And what if certain governments don’t want to adjust?” Peter asked.

  Orb had no shoulders, but for some reason the vision of Orb shrugging filled Peter’s mind.

  “It is not as though they will have an option to not comply.”

  “And all their weapons?”

  “Will be seized and broken down into more friendly, usable base elements to better serve me.”

  Peter thought about this statement for a minute. The “to better serve me” statement definitely creeped him out, but a world free of weapons and fear sounded very intriguing. Since Orb had already absorbed all the information that existed, and could read the minds of anyone he wished, it was not as though something could be hidden from him. Then again, Orb had completely missed the wolf back in Real de Catorce and had miscalculated the energy required to travel to Real de Catorce.

  “The nuclear bombs too?”

  “Yes. Your civilization, via the encouragement of free will, has chosen a perilous path fraught with dependence on and subsequent enslavement to technology. We will change that.”

  Peter let that proclamation sink in and then had another question. “What will all the people who have jobs because of technology do when you take it away?”

  “They will return to a more practical, simple existence in which they grow their own food and use any spare time to reflect on, and worship, me.”

  Ugh, Peter thought. There’s the downside—the worship of Orb. And what would happen to those who refused?

  “And what if someone refuses to worship you?”

  Orb pulsed. “That is not an option I will allow.”

  Peter was about to ask how exactly Orb would enforce his wishes, when Malcolm’s booming voice interrupted him.

  “Team Orb was victorious. The score is now tied two-to-two. The final match between Peter and Jigme will take place momentarily. The victor of this match wins this cycle of the Game for his team.”

  Peter again peered around Orb and saw Malcolm standing in the middle of the room, smiling as he pulled at the end of his mustache.

  She really did it! She won! Peter let that thought sink in for just a second, reveling in how close he had been to no longer existing. His joy was short-lived, however, as he realized it all now came down to him. He stood up, clenched his jaw to relieve the stress building up within him, then released it. Orb tracked his actions such that he rose up and continued to hover in Peter’s face.

  “You must concentrate, Peter. Win now and we will have ample opportunity to discuss all your questions. Your life, which will last as long as three times that of a normal male of your species, will
be powerful and meaningful. I do not forget those that help me.”

  Peter, only half-listening to Orb, continued to try and manage his own thoughts and fears. He nodded to Orb and began walking toward Malcolm.

  “Your mate, should you wish to have one, can also be given an extended life—or perhaps you wish to have multiple wives—either at the same time or one after the other.”

  That caught Peter’s attention. He remembered the electricity that had passed through his body down to his toes when Jenny had given him a peck on his cheek. He was not ready for conversations about his future wife, or wives. Technically speaking he had not yet even kissed a girl.

  Peter slowly walked to the center of the room, where Jigme and Malcolm already stood—Cube still hovering beside Jigme’s head. He nodded at Jigme, who nodded back. Peter remembered a question he had wanted to ask.

  “Jigme, when we began you mentioned that you felt Cube had lied to you and your team. Malcolm said there were no lies, only misunderstandings.” Peter, very much aware of Cube hovering just a few feet away, then asked, “What is different than you expected?”

  Jigme stared at Peter for several long moments, then broke that interaction to stare at Cube. Jigme rolled his tongue over his teeth, obviously taking great care in what he said and how he said it, then answered.

  “I believed that through this process, my companions and I would receive what we have spent our lives searching for—total enlightenment.”

  “You and your companions now know more about the universe than any other member of your species,” Cube murmured in their heads.

  Peter looked at Cube sharply, and Cube added, “Of course Peter and his companions share this knowledge for the moment, but that will end when they pass to other forms after your victory, Jigme.”

  Orb pulsed, angrily. Peter only smiled, bemused. Both Cube and Orb seemed to be more than just a little overconfident.