87 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
87 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
# Octothorpe Productions Title:"Sphere's Warning" By: The Cruiser Date:8/14/87
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And thus the Earth propelled itself through space, as uncountable numbers
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of reactions occured throughout the cosmos, revolving in one large cycle...
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Phillip sat on his patio and looked silently at his backyard, squinting
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in the slowly sinking sun. His mom lay on a lawn chair, circa 1975, under a
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fairly small apple tree. It was old alright, and taller than Phillip, but as
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apple trees go, it was a midget. An empty clotheline hung from two poles
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across the yard. Poles that once were the legs of a swing set when Phillip
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and his brothers were small. Now Phillip was thirteen, and he had a sixteen
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and a fourteen year old brother. They tended to ignore him most of the time.
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As a matter of fact, they were inside right now, watching TV with their six
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year old sister. Father was in the garden, watering the plants.
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The garden. It took up half their backyard, and was Father's pride and
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joy. Every year he would get a truckload of manure piled in it, and he built a
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trough in one corner which he filled with grass when they cut the lawn. It
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would pile up and eventually become 'good soil'. In the fall they'd use
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leaves. Father said that leaves were just as good. There was a shed in the
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back of the garden, with the lawnmower, a broken snow blower, an old bike and
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various garden tools. Unknown to its owners, a family of mice took residence
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in the back behind an old bag of mulch. The rest of the garden was full of
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tomato and onion patches. One section had a few walls of grapevines that made
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a neat little cave in the summer. Sometimes Phillip would go in there with a
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book and just read for a while. There was a small wooden fence around the
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whole garden, broken in some areas, and patched with wire mesh in others. The
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garden was quite an eyesore, being that they lived in a middle-class suburb of
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Chicago.
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Itching his Hawaiian-print shirt, he got up and grabbed the aluminum
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baseball bat he spotted across the lawn. Not finding a baseball, he kicked a
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golf ball that was embedded in the dirt by the patio. Hitting it with the
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bat, it sailed through the grass and landed somewhere on the other end of the
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lawn, scaring away a congregation of robins. He ran up to it and hit it again.
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This time it sailed in the air and hit a tree. Father saw it from the garden
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and looked slightly angered. Phillip picked it up and threw it against the
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house.
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"Watch where you throw that thing!", his mom ordered.
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Phillip ignored her and whacked it to the corner of their propery. It
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landed by a four-way property division. He jogged down to it, where it lay
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next to a drainage sewer. He could see all of the houses that were behind
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theirs by standing here. Someone down the street was having a barbeque -- the
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smell of hickory was rampant, and he saw the smoke above some trees. The sound
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of kids playing tag squealed in the distance. He bent over and picked up the
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ball, not noticing a small, gold spherical object in the grass.
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He walked back to where his mother was laying and tried to hit the
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sewer from there, which was a good 10 yards away.
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WHOOSH!
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The bat was a streak of silver, and the golf ball a projectile as he hit
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it with all his might. It missed the sewer and hit the sphere which lay next
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to it.
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"Shit! Missed!", he shrieked under his breath.
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But he was loud enough for his mother to hear. "Phillip! I don't want to
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hear that kind of language from you!"
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He ran up to the ball and picked it up, not seeing the crumbled remains
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of the sphere, which hit his heel and fell into the sewer.
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The sphere, only a half-inch across, had come from a far place in
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a future time, and had a warning message in it. Its creaters had spent many
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eons building and designing it, for the sake of warning our people of a danger
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only they knew about. And it was sent through time and space only to land
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there, undiscovered by anyone. No one was to ever be forwarned of the danger
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that lie ahead.
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Phillip walked away and whacked the ball in the other direction. It hit
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a cherry tree at it's base.
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"Phee-lip, don't do that, " Father said in his heavy Italian-Argentinean
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accent. "Phee-leep! Put-a that ball away, no?"
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"Okay, Father."
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And thus the Earth propelled itself through space, as uncountable numbers
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of reactions occured throughout the cosmos, revolving in one large cycle...
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