An avalanche of primary-colored balls bounced vigorously along multiple chutes emptying into a non-stop stream of shipping containers. The technology of these playthings gave them a never-ending happy shine and when held were firm like a racquetball. On impact they became soft and pliable, but would quickly firm up, and be ready again for play. It made them ideal for throwing and catching without a mitt, and the recoil made them seem to bounce of their own accord.
Hit the ball with a bat and it would absorb the force for a moment, seeming to stop in mid-air, and then suddenly burst with light and streak across the sky like a firework. If the ball hit a window or a person, it would simply pancake out, burst with color, and gently bounce to the floor and glow softly until it was used again. The inventor, Tim Benchley, had been working on a new type of safety reflector that would use the energy of road vibration to remain lit when he came upon the ball. He set up a Kickstarter project and raised three million dollars in under a month. Toy corporations offered to buy him out before the first ball rolled out of the chute. His Kickstarter site went viral and remained so for the year leading up to the first balls being delivered to his investors. Tim was in greater demand than Elon Musk and never missed the chance for an interview, podcast or appearance. He was offered book deal for his life story and Netflix wanted to make a biopic about his early days as an unknown inventor before he revolutionized children’s toys.
As his Kickstarter funders started receiving their balls YouTube had to create a separate channel to handle all the videos being released. The balls were shown to be completely safe, with people throwing and hitting them at each other and balls absorbing all the impact as a benign pancake, and then bouncing away as bright as a klieg light. Extreme sport types started using the balls as cushions, leaping off ledges wearing a suit of sew-together balls, and landing safely in a blinding burst of color. Three months later, the balls went into wide release. Tim cut a distribution deal with Amazon, Ali Baba and Target and despite producing a million balls per day they could not keep up with demand.
Competing toy companies feared the balls and tried to understand them. The dissection was not easy; the balls were self-healing for the most part but finally gave up their secrets when cut open with an ultra high-pressure water jet as thin as a razor blade. When dissected, the balls had the consistency of frozen ice cream and continued to glow, but sticky fluid would sweat out of the halved balls and eventually heal over the wound. One of the halves would reform into a ball at half the size; the other half hardened to stone. The only non-rubbery part they found in the balls was a tiny clear bead in the very center. Whichever half got the bead, formed into the smaller ball. They extracted the beads, crushed them, and looked at them under microscopes, UV light, gamma rays and anything else they could think of without any gaining any clues to its purpose. The only thing they found inside was a clear, coiled thread.
All the while, the world was falling in love with Tim’s amazing toy that could be enjoyed by children and adults, the rich and the poor. Nearly everyone had one on their desk, one for their dog, and several for their children. The National Baseball Commission had a meeting with the team owners and it was decided that the Benchley Ball would become the official ball of professional baseball, adding more action and thrills to a game that had been losing market share for decades. Bocce players were trying to use them, as were golfers, lacrosse teams, curling teams, soft ballers, and any other sport with an object that could be hit, tossed or caught.
The Benchley Balls Company was privately held, and many Wall Street types approached Tim for an IPO, promising him wealth that would make Mark Zuckerberg weep. Tim politely declined, as his company was pulling in mighty profits and building an enormous cash reserve. He saw no upside to dealing with shareholders. But he did collaborate with other manufacturers, especially those in the safety industry. The balls floated well, and two of them sewn into a vest could keep an adult’s head above water indefinitely and provide a signal beacon. The balls were incorporated into auto manufacture to absorb impacts, into ships to stabilize them during high seas, into helmets and safety padding of every type. And still the balls rolled ceaselessly into containers carried by trains, ships, planes and trucks.
The factory was mostly automated, Tim had only a handful of technicians making sure the loading bays ran smoothly, as well some guys who ran around unjamming the chutes and picking up stray balls. He had tight security on the compound, mainly due to constant attempts by his competition to sneak drones or other surveillance onto the floor. Even if the security was breached, there was little to see. The balls poured out of several doors near the ceiling with rapidly spinning blades feeding the balls into the chutes. What went on behind those doors was a mystery. Tim had never shared how the balls were manufactured and it was unclear what materials were being used to make them. Shipments only went out; nothing was brought in, yet the supply of balls was seemingly endless. Tim mostly stayed in his office high above the floor looking down occasionally through floor to ceiling windows. In his office was a door that led to the room from which the balls came, but it was locked with a DNA passcode triggered only by a fresh drop of Tim’s blood.
&&&
When Tim was working on his original safety reflectors he spent much of time in the remote desert near the Owyhee Mountains. He was trying to develop something that could operate and recharge with moonlight or headlights, and that could capture the weight of passing vehicles and convert it to energy. He wasn’t having any luck. But his solo activities did attract the attention of a passing visitor. Up in the clouds, a vessel hung silently in the air. The pilot observed Tim putting shiny objects in the road, then driving away and driving back over and over. Tim would retrieve them, measure them, hold a light meter up to them, but after several months of this the pilot did not observe Tim making any progress. Then one night the pilot borrowed an old pickup from a ranch hand, stole his clothes, and drove out to meet Tim.
“Whatcha workin’ on?” the pilot asked.
“Nothing. It’s not working.” Tim replied.
“That’s not what I asked.” The pilot stepped out of the vehicle, looking exactly like the ranch hand but his skin was so dark he was nearly invisible in the night. He wore sunglasses and walked with the stagger of a man who had broken many, many horses. “I asked you what you was workin’ on.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to make a better road reflector that will be safer and last longer than the standard type. They’ll glow and not wear out.”
“Sounds like a good idea. What’s the problem?”
“It doesn’t work. I can’t make it work.”
“Well now, this is gonna sound sort of crazy, but I know a place where you can find all sorts of glowing little things. They found ‘em out here way back when they used to mine for uranium. Never found a use for them, so they abandoned the mine. But it’s full of ‘em.”
“Glowing little things in an old uranium mine? That doesn’t sound too safe.”
“Well, I don’t know what they are but they’ve been glowing for fifty years. All sorts of animals nest down in the mine and they’re just fine. You wanna see it?”
After some more back and forth Tim’s curiosity won out and he agreed to see the mine. He would meet the ranch hand the next night, and would bring a Geiger counter.
“Bring whatever you like except for another person, this place is secret. Just you and me.”
Tim worried he might be kidnapped and wind up as a sex worker in Romania, but for some reason decided to trust this black cowboy.
The next night they headed deep into the desert on unlit dirt roads, turning this way and that like the ranch hand had it memorized. They arrived at a small hillside, with a small cave barely visible through the sagebrush.
“This is it. Come on.”
Tim followed, waving the Geiger counter like an aspergillum at an exorcism, but no clicking was heard. As they entered the mouth of the cave, Tim could see dim light in the distance. Further along he saw thousands of glowing balls partially embedded in the walls of the mine.
“How many are there?” Tim asked.
“The mine has fifteen miles of tunnels, I don’t know if it’s all full but I’ve seen ‘em everywhere I’ve been.” The ranch hand pulled one from the wall and tossed it to Tim, “Try it out.”
&&&
There was no industrial manufacturing at the factory. Automated vehicles zoomed through the mine’s tunnels as robot arms collected the balls, dumped them into a screw drive chute covered in mesh to allow the dirt to fall away and deliver them cleanly through the bladed doors to the waiting chutes below. The entire complex was built over the mine to both mask and secure it. After all, Tim was credited with inventing the balls. His partner suggested this misdirection would help to confuse his competitors. In truth, the balls grew out of the walls shortly after Tim’s partner had completed work on the tunnels.
Tim was reading his biography “Tim Benchley and the Ball Heard Round the World,” when his phone rang. It was his partner. A counter in Tim’s office had hit the one billion mark earlier that day.
“We’re at one billion, correct?” his partner asked.
“Yes.”
“Get the press releases ready, notify the publicist and ad agency and have the advertisements ready to go. We’ll have to respond in about a week.”
“I’ll have it all ready.”
Tim’s partner had left his ship hovering directly over the factory. It was hidden in the jet stream, where it sat perfectly still, unperturbed by the turbulence and gale force winds. The pilot hit a button on a remote and the ship began to release a pheromone into the stream where it invisibly rained down on the entire planet.
When the pheromone reached the balls, any of them near a sleeping cat, dog, or human would stop glowing. The tiny bead inside the ball would release its glassy thread, which crawled free of the ball and painlessly burrowed through the skin of whoever was near. Once inside it would enter the bloodstream and work its way to the brain and lodge in the prefrontal cortex. Two threads would burrow into pregnant women to infect the fetus as well.
Around the world people began to notice that some of their balls had turned to stone. They no longer glowed and were no longer responsive. Tim had the publicist and ad agency dump the press releases and advertisements on all media streams. It explained that the energy reclamation nexus of some of the balls had a flaw that caused them to lose power. All anyone had to do was contact their retailer and would be given two free replacement balls. The return policy had a two-fold purpose: it made infections easy to track and kept fresh balls in the mix.
Inside the brain, the threads gently rewrote the minds of the people and pets. The changes were modest, but made a large impact. People started eating only healthy portions organic food, they lost weight, exercised, stopped texting while driving, drank moderately and overall started living more healthful and happier lives. A few people made the connection between the change in the balls and the change in behavior, calling into right wing radio programs and posting their theories on conspiracy websites.
Tim responded, “So now the balls are not only the world’s favorite plaything, they’re making the world a better place? I don’t understand, is that a conspiracy theory or are you trying to further increase my market share?” The story died, and as more people in the media became infected the balls barely made the news at all.
Violent crime began to drop dramatically, as did drug addiction, theft, fraud and corruption. Many were calling it the new Golden Age of Humanity: people were happy, fulfilled, made healthy choices, there was a significant increase in the birth rate, managers treated employees with kindness, CEOs lowered their compensation to reasonable levels and shared profits with employees, people were polite and dogs and cats continually brought more balls into people’s bedrooms.
After about a year, nearly four-fifths of the world’s population had a thread in their head.
The pilot again signaled his ship, which in turn signaled several cargo ships that had been hidden behind the moon. The ships could hold eight hundred thousand people in comfort: plenty of activities, excellent food, comfortable rooms, yoga classes, free massage, every cable and streaming channel on earth and an electronic library with a copy of every book ever written. A dozen of the ships landed at various points around the globe, and people gathered patiently for their turn to enter the ship, chatting and checking their phones as they waited. They all knew where to go and what to do, and understood they were about to have an exciting adventure that would be fulfilling and deeply restful. The few people left who were uninfected thought everyone had gone mad, but Facebook blocked their posts and there was no uninfected media to help tell their story. Many of them watched their families and friends happily walk onto the cargo ships.
The phone in Tim’s office rang. His partner was calling again.
“Hello. How is the project going?”
“Very well, you’ve done a wonderful job.” his partner responded. Tim didn’t know it, but had been the first person infected, back in the mine. The thread made him think he was a genius inventor enjoying the spoils of his work. The little thread kept him pliable, but let him keep his independence.
“Tim, I have to go away for little while, but keep on distributing the balls. We want them to get to everyone possible. There are always a few holdouts, or isolated people, but we’ll get them in the end.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Couple of days. Once they’re filled, I have to take the cargo ships back to my planet.”
“Can I go to you planet someday?”
“I need you here Tim, at least until the infection is closer to 100%. Plus, I don’t think you’d like it there.”
“Are your people not friendly?”
“No, they love humans. There’s a big demand for them. But even on my planet, people want to be healthier. So they demand that the humans be free range, cruelty-free and organically fed.
“Well, have a good trip. See you in a few days,” Tim said, and turned back to watching the balls spill down the chutes and into the world.