The Problem of the Delicate Sphere
The man races down the dark and winding concrete stairs. His mind is filled with hundreds of thoughts and ideas, contradicting, flowing, developing, and bombarding him with the futility of it all. Everything has been going wrong, and the complications were compounding too quickly to create any sort of swift solutions for before the problem at hand was no longer relevant. The entire undertaking was looking like an encyclopaedia of failure. One that could end with all of humanity turned to ash.
When it all began the project was utterly pregnant with possibilities. The initial discovery sent the scientific world into great revelry, and soon all of the hopeful tests and examinations of the top minds in the world began. Soon it was discovered how to use this new project to the benefit of mankind, world hunger could be solved, and complete sustainability was fully within reach. With this plan of the Delicate Sphere, life on this world was dramatically altered for the better. People felt freedom, they truly felt it for many years, and the transition period was minimal, as everything was bountiful, even good humours.
Nobody knows what exactly went wrong or when, only that all those who were hungry could no longer survive on the food they so appreciated. At this point, however, the plan of the Delicate Sphere was already fully integrated into the world’s crops and soil. The air itself was as clean and clear as science could find it, and there was nothing inherently or genetically wrong in any way with the food or water, but almost all humans could not breathe easily, become quenched, or attain nourishment.
There was something entirely unearthly at play in this scenario. The man knew it now, he finally has it all figured out. Bursting into the sealed room at the end of the stairs, he stumbles over some loose papers and notes, dropping his own, but it was not of any importance. He continues to rush to the room at the back where the others have been gathered for him to unveil his discovery. Arriving in the room, he stands behind the podium, a screen behind him.
“Are you all tired of being men with Delicate Sphere problems? You can solve it all naturally and easily! If disease attacks and you can’t find defence: All you need is in one place!”
He explains to his peers that the reason billions have been dying by ingesting the Spherically altered products is because the problem of the Delicate Sphere was one of a solution to what mankind has always dealt with. Mankind has learned that when they are hungry, to eat, and when they are thirsty, to drink, and when they need air, to breathe, but the Sphere has changed what was. What was is now what is making them perish. What is the fact that they kept eating to no longer feel their former hunger is what made them starve to death, and what is the fact that they kept drinking to quench their former thirst is what made them die of dehydration.
“We have finally overcome the need to even breathe”, the man ends his presentation with, as he opens his shirt to reveal to his colleagues the noose he had hung himself with the week prior, after giving up hope on finding the solution to the problem of the Delicate Sphere.
July 27, 2009 at 11:43 am
Amazing ending.
July 30, 2009 at 4:38 am
this needs to be a short film.
July 30, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Thanks! and I’d have no idea how to film it,,, maybe have most of it be the scrawling of notes on a page with a voice over, and the bookends be him running/his presentation.
June 1, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Short stories based on spam subject lines? It’s brilliant. Spam is free advertising for your story and website.
June 20, 2010 at 2:51 am
Thanks! Though, I’ll always llike to imagine it the other way ’round.