HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#263 :: Spiky Ball

Alien technology: A spore decoy left by an organic star cruiser looking to mate. Thousands fell to earth that day a year ago, floating down from a decaying orbit, flash-frozen in the troposphere, then thawed by the cloud layer to plunge into a roiling Indian Ocean storm. They bobbed ashore, picking up seaweed, sand, the occasional nose-poke from a curious dolphin. And there they lay, until some crafty Calcutta wholesaler paid slave labor to scrub them clean in boiling water, blow them dry and ship them by the containerload to the United States, where Target bought them in bulk and distributed them in hundreds of stores nationwide. It's only a matter of time before their true purpose is known, before their siren call is heard, before thousands of schoolchildren and stoned college kids are suddenly sucked into space by their fingertips in the vortex of ferocious ship-to-ship intercourse at apogee, before our sense of entitlement to this universe is suddenly buggered sideways and we gain a soul-scarring sense of perspective as to our utter insignificance.

Either that or it's just a rubber ball, fun to toss around and roll across one's scalp.