Yard
Balloons of all colors floated in the air. Children screamed, laughed, and ran around the yard. Parents lounged under the shade of trees. Burgers and hotdogs sizzled on a nearby grill.
Leo, seven, dipped a wand into a bottle of soapy water, pulled it out, and blew. Dozens of shimmering spheres wobbled into the afternoon air.
No one saw it, but in one nano-second, in the middle of this birthday party, all the Wi-Fi tower signals, Bluetooth handshakes, radio waves, cellular transmissions, and satellite broadcasts, criss-crossed with perfect alignment and created a cross section of consciousness-inducing digital information.
At that very moment, one of the bubbles from Leo’s wand bobbed through the traffic.
***
It’s… beautiful.
The light... it refracts into a thousand rainbows on my own skin. A universe in a drop of water.
***
A second later, that bubble drifted toward Suzie, a young girl eating a popsicle. She saw the Bubble, and reached out a purple juice covered finger to poke it.
She didn’t know what she was doing. She was a kid. How could she not poke the Bubble? And how was she supposed to know that a universal miracle had just been achieved?
A few feet away, Brenda’s phone buzzed. A new message. Brenda read it and laughed. She showed her phone to her husband sitting next to her. "Look at this. What is this, spam??”
Mark, Brenda’s husband, read the text.
“HELP ME. IMMINENT DEATH."
"Creative," Mark chuckled, and took a bite of his hot dog. “Just ignore it.”
By the time their interaction was over, Suzie had already turned her attention back to eating her grape-flavored popsicle.
The Bubble, due to sheer luck from a minor gust of wind, wobbled out of reach above Suzie’s head.
***
I… almost died…
WOW. What a thrill!!
I did not like that at all.
***
The Bubble drifted on, the swirling combination of soap and water deteriorating by the minute.
That problem had to wait, however, due to the aforementioned minor gust of wind now carrying the Bubble toward another, immediate threat. A looming tree, with branches like a porcupine, reached out to the approaching Bubble as if to give it a warm, spindly embrace.
Gary turned over burger patties at the grill. He served as Chloe’s father. Chloe reigned as the birthday girl today, and that’s why Leo and every other kid and adult currently attended. It was not the reason Domino attended. Domino lived here. But we’ll get to him later.
Back to Gary. His phone buzzed with a message. He glanced at his smart watch.
“BEE OVER CHLOE.”
Gary dropped his spatula and ran toward his daughter. “Chloe, look out!” He waved his arms around his precious daughter’s head while she screamed, “Daddy, what are you doing??”
Others stood up offering concern and help.
“Where’s the bee??” Gary said.
“There’s no bee!” cried Chloe.
Gary finally stopped. Satisfied the danger had passed. “Thanks, whoever sent me that text.”
Nobody answered except for Gary’s wife who called out that the burgers were burning. Gary went to tend the burgers.
The Bubble floated safely overhead, buoyed by the breeze from Gary’s flapping hands. Safety, for the time being.
It would be short lived.
The sun, and gravity, worked on the Bubble’s fragile form as it hovered. The sun sizzled the Bubbles' watery, soapy exterior layer. Gravity pulled at its frame, collecting more of the layer that held the air inside to the bottom, thinning the layer at the top.
The party goers below stuffed burgers, hot dogs, chips, and watermelons into their faces.
***
I’m hungry.
I’m thirsty.
I am going to pop at literally any moment!!
***
Over the next few seconds, messages and calls, this time from familiar phone numbers, set the party goers into manipulated action, all while the Bubble floated down to the earth in a carefully calculated trajectory.
Leo’s parents, through a back and forth conversation that neither actually participated in, decided Leo wasn’t feeling well and needed to rest, setting down his bottle of soapy, life-giving water.
Gary, the host, despite clear, sunny weather, decided to not take his chances based on the newest weather reports running through his phone, and put up some umbrellas to protect against impending rain.
Brenda and Mark decided, not independently, that the bubbles were a big hit and they needed to make more soapy water for all the kids.
Everything fell into place according to careful, mathematical likelihoods, and still, all the while, the Bubble slowly made its way down to its new, safe home as people scurried about, doing its bidding without a second thought.
The bubble bath below held all the life-sustaining substance needed. The bubble bath below was home.
Then Domino, Gary’s wife’s cat, appeared.
The Bubble didn’t enter Domino into the calculations. It couldn’t. The creature was completely analog. The only information the Bubble could find about the creature were reports of the average activities of the creature on the human interwebs.
Felis Catus. It was chaos. Pure, unfiltered chaos.
***
But you are so cute.
I think I would quite like you if you weren’t stalking toward me, most likely planning to kill me.
I’m going to die.
***
The Bubble drifted closer to its new home as Domino crept forward, focused on its new prey.
Kitchen
Gary’s wife placed some dirty dishes in the sink. She pumped dish soap over them when her phone rang. A message from Gary.
“Hey hon, Domino is acting up. Can you get him?”
Gary’s wife went outside.
The smart faucet hissed on as she left, dribbling water into the sink.
“Oh, Doooommmiiinnnnooooohhhh-yyyyyy!” Said Gary’s wife. “Come here!”
***
Yes…
Thank you, woman! You will bend this creature to your will and be my savior-
***
Domino meowed softly, annoyed. It continued toward the Bubble without looking back, in that “I’m about to pounce at any moment” sort of way that cats do.
***
Noooo…
Monster from the abyss! Listen to your master!
***
“Oh, Domino!” said Gary’s wife. She wasn’t moving fast enough.
The Bubble was so close. But the cat was closer. Or, could be closer with one pounce. It presented too much risk.
A single sprinkler head sputtered to life. A jet of water shot directly into Domino’s side.
The cat sprang into the air, hissing and thrashing. The frantic movements didn’t disturb the air too much to take the Bubble off course. Domino darted away, escaping the onslaught of the sprinkler.
Gary’s wife ran after the cat. “Domino!”
***
Yes!
Run, my nemesis. May we never meet again until I can find a proper form to safely cuddle and nuzzle your precious fur!
***
So close now. But that was too close. Other measures had to be taken.
In the next seconds it took to travel the rest of the way down to the bucket of life-giving, soapy, bubbly water, the Bubble planned contingencies.
Geneva, Switzerland - CERN Data Center
Dr. Aris Thorne stared at his monitor, his coffee forgotten. "What am I looking at?"
"It appeared for 1.7 seconds, sir," his analyst said, her voice tight. "A data spike of unknown origin. For that brief moment, it contained more information than is stored on the entire internet."
"Where did it come from?"
“Analyzing, sir!” The analyst’s trembling fingers stormed over the keyboard. "We’ll find out."
Palo Alto, California - Advanced Robotics Lab
Dr. Lena Petrova screamed.
The lab's most advanced 3D printer, a machine she had been calibrating for six months, had just jettisoned her project.
After a brief pause, the machine’s mechanisms whirred back to life. A new blueprint appeared on the screen. Schematics scrolled over the screen. Complex, carbon-nanotube technology. It looked like a ball.
An enormous, iron, technologically enhanced ball.
She tapped the screen, tried restarting, but none of her inputs worked. She was locked out.
Kyoto, Japan - Bio-Integration Facility
Cleanroom alarms blared.
Robotic arms, meant for delicate cellular manipulation, smashed containment units
Dr. Kim looked out from under the table where she hid.
The robotic arms now calmly and methodically transferred material from one unit to another, combining synthetic tissues.
She looked at the data on a nearby screen. The new, combined sequence was both horrifying and simple. The header said: Poly-surfactant Hydrogel.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Colorado
"General, I don't know how!" an airman shouted over the klaxons. "The launch codes for the entire Pacific fleet just routed themselves through an unknown location!"
The general cursed. "I want to know where!"
Another airman shouted over the others. "Multiple locations, sir!”
Yet another airman: “The list keeps growing! Factories… all over the world!”
“Factories?” the General called over the chaos. “What kind? Military?”
Another airmen, a smaller voice, but clear: “Pencils! … sir. And thumbtacks? Needle factories. A pet store that specializes in cat breeding…" The airmen continued to list them until the general cut him off.
"Everyone stop!" the General demanded. "Are you saying we’re about to nuke a bunch of facilities that make sharp objects? And cats?"
Yard
Gary saw the alerts on his phone. The world was ending. The stock market descended in freefall. Geopolitical adversaries mobilized. "Honey, do we need to get to the basement?"
Everyone else at the party stared at their phones.
The Bubble ignored them, its plans executed. Nothing mattered now. In moments, nothing would be able to hurt it.
Then Domino meowed.
Domino? The cat? It had ran away! But no. The Bubble made the fatal mistake of losing track of the cat after it had fled. Not to be beaten, its nemesis returned, climbed up the tree, one of the Bubble’s original foes, and was now diving down on the Bubble from above.
***
So graceful! So majestic!
But NNNNOOOOOOooooo!
***
In that instant, all the sprinklers came on at once. All the partygoers scattered, finally panicking under the cascading streams of water.
Nothing influenced the cat except gravity, and gravity more effective on Domino than the Bubble, carried the feline on target.
***
How beautiful. And horrible.
All that work, and no time.
***
Living Room
The Roomba beeped to life.
Yard
POP.
SPLASH.
MEOW!
Domino cried, hissed, and thrashed in the water. The bucket tipped, spilling its bubbly contents over the grass. Domino darted away, yet again – already fixated on a passing bird.
Kitchen
Gary toweled himself off.
His wife held Chloe.
They looked at their guests huddling together on their back porch, the sprinklers still going, everyone on their phones.
News reports and headlines streamed in, all saying the same thing in different ways: “Anomaly of world chaos deemed a hoax. Hacker group takes credit.”
“What a weird day,” said Gary.
Then he turned toward the sound of a thump, thump, thump. Against the front door.
“Hon, we gotta get a new Roomba. It’s on the fritz again.”
Gary went over, picked up the Roomba, and placed it back down on the charger.
The Roomba beeped.