Ball

I don\’t exacty remember the first time my fascination with the ball as a three-dimensional object started. I do know, however, that it has been quite serious since early childhood. I liked everything rounded. I would not put any fruit in my mouth, unless it was the shape of a ball, and as a ten-year-old, I joined a sports club to start with shot put. I wished for a fortune-telling ball for Christmas and I would call our kitty Little Ball.
Later on, I fell in love with bowling and I started celebrating the full moon as if it was the most important holiday. And I will probably always remember the mathematical definition saying that in the Euclidean space, a closed ball of radius r is the set of all points of distance less than or equal to r away from x.

I am now writing my new sci-fi novel, CALIGO and, hooray, I have finally found a place for my ball. A beautiful, magical, mysterious ball. It fits perfectly and I have been playing around with it for some time. To me, a ball in a sci-fi novel is a marvelous idea.

But when I mentioned this to a couple of my friends, they tried talking me out of it. A ball has already been mentioned in hundreds of other sci-fi stories, they said, and I should probably take it out…

My dearest friends! My ball is different. It\’s completely different from any other balls. What the hell do you all have against it? A ball is the most perfect shape, after all. And it\’s all around us. Should I give up all the beautiful sentences I have already written in my novel for my majestic ball? Should I give it up when it already has a name? I call it INCOGNITA and will not reveal why. I already have feelings for it… Can’t you understand??

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I\’m not changing the shape of the Incognita. No one can expect me to turn it into a cube.

I gave it a supporting role in the novel. Nothing huge and nothing that would move the plot one way or the other. It doesn\’t have a shining eye, it doesn\’t expand, nor does it levitate. It does not make sounds and it definitely does not speak. It is the size of a cantaloupe and its role lies in clearing things up a little, giving clues and then „rolling“ away on a whim.

It\’s not that significant in the novel but it is to me. I know it wouldn\’t fit into any of my future books I\’ve already been playing around in my head with. So, please, let me have this one, ok? Do not take my ball from me! I\’m not giving it up.

HOWGH!