THE IRON SPHERE

By Bruce R. Jividen 5/13/2018

Paul was folding clothes when the door opened and Scott came in. Now in his senior year of high school, Scott was taller, lankier and hungrier than when Paul first met him four years ago. So not surprisingly, he tossed his backpack on the couch and headed straight for the fridge to find a snack.

“How’d school go?” Paul asked. Scott had recently been given an assignment to write about a period of the Earth’s history and create a visual display such as a diorama or poster. His teacher, Mr. Nelson, had randomly distributed different time periods amongst the class, and Scott had ended up with the Siderian period of the Paleoprotozoic, a unit of time two-point-three to two billion years ago.

At the time Scott had complained to Paul that while some of his classmates were getting to write about dinosaurs and wooly mammoths, Scott was stuck with a much less interesting time in history—in fact, some geologists had dismissed it as the “boring billion”—due to the lack of anything major happening in its duration.

“I’m sure you can find a way to make it interesting,” Paul had said cryptically, which Scott had dismissed in typical teenage fashion.

Now as Scott was making himself a sandwich, Paul gingerly breached the subject again. “So, how’s the geology report coming along?”

Scott was just putting the ham and mayo back in the fridge and his face brightened up. “Oh…I found something really cool! I think I can make this work after all. And wait until you see it!” He ravenously chowed down on his sandwich as he sauntered back over to his discarded backpack,  then put the half-eaten sandwich on the coffee table. Unzipping one of the back flaps of his bag, he fished around inside with his hand. He brought out something that was wrapped in a paper towel and handed it to Paul.

Paul unwrapped it and his face registered astonishment. “What is this? It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a sphere, obviously. But this one is made of banded iron formation, a type of rock from my time period! It’ll be a great hands-on addition to my poster.”

Paul lifted the sphere up close to his eyes and gazed in wonder at the layered bands of dull grey and muted dark red that were a hallmark of this type of rock.

Scott got his notes out. “There was no oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere at the time, and the only life was single cell organisms that lived in the ocean. As they produced oxygen from photosynthesis, it would react with the iron dissolved in the water, kind of like how rust happens in air.” He paused. “The oxygenated iron particles can’t dissolve in water so they precipitated down to the bottom. Vast fields of this iron accumulated in horizontal layers over long periods of time. The grey layers are the iron, and the red layers are other sediments that occurred in between blooms of these organisms, as would happen during summer and winter seasons. So that rock isn’t just pretty, it’s a signature of life.”

“Where did you find this?” Paul asked excitedly.

“The crystal shop, you know, the one owned by that eccentric older lady, Mrs. Smith?”

“I’ve driven by there before, but I don’t think I ever went in.”

“I asked her if she had anything from this time period and she just happened to have gotten this sphere in last week. It wasn’t even that expensive. She was telling me that she’s a Theosophist and that there’s so much we don’t know about history and how it affects the universe. She mentioned something I had to look up called the ‘Akashic records.’” Scott flipped his page over. “The basic idea is that all events are encoded in a non-physical plane of existence. A lot of bunk, I’m sure…but the rock sure is cool!”

Paul lowered the iron sphere and looked at Scott. “It’s true that a lot of the spiritual traditions on this planet don’t have a scientific basis, but most of them have some nugget of truth in them.”

Scott’s eyes grew wide. “Are you saying that these Akashic Records exist?” He picked up the sandwich again and bit a big chunk off.

“Probably not the way Mrs. Smith and her fellow beings believe, but yes—the experiences of an atom do leave imprints in spacetime that Earth science is not advanced enough to detect yet.”

Scott swallowed his bite of sandwich hard enough to make an audible “gulp.” He sat down across from Paul. “Whoa.”

Paul got his Algieban sphere out. “Here, I’ll show you.” He activated the silvery orb and its blue light filled the room. It grew bright enough that Scott had to squint and then finally shut his eyes. When he opened them again, it seemed as though he was no longer in their living room.

He was on the seashore, and the sun was setting over the ocean. He looked away from the horizon, at the barren outcrops of rock that rose from where he stood. “What is this?”

“An illusion, of course,” Paul said. “We couldn’t actually be here.”

“I hope not,” Scott said. “We wouldn’t live for more than a few minutes in this atmosphere. Hey, that’s a good line for my poster.” He looked up. “WHOA!”

“This is two billion years ago, remember,” Paul replied, after following Scott’s gaze. “The moon was much closer to the Earth at this time.”

“I can grasp that…intellectually. But seeing it like this…it’s stunning. I’ll have to draw this for my poster.” He looked down again at the sea. “Why is it green?”

“That green, Scott, is you, and Mrs. Smith, and everything else that will someday live on this world. Those are the organisms creating the rocks whose memory we are looking at now.”

“This is amazing,” Scott said after a big inhale of breath.

“Not so boring after all, eh?” Paul said. The sound of the sphere died away, and with it, the vision of the past, and they were once again in the normality of their living room.

“I wish I could have that in my geology project,” Scott lamented. “How long will it be before we can do that?”

“Hard to say,” Paul opined. “I’m sure you’ll start having virtual realities soon enough. The reading of the spacetime vibrations is still far beyond what humans are capable of…for now.”

“Look at how far we’ve come though, Dad. It’s incredible to think about.”

“Indeed, Scott, indeed. And humanity is just getting started. You should have some good material you can put into your project though.”

“Absolutely. I’m going to win with my presentation now. I’m actually excited about this supposedly boring piece of history.”

“Good,” Paul said. “I guess I’d better start dinner because I’m sure that sandwich was just an hors d’oeuvre. I’ll need to go to the grocery store—again.”

Scott shrugged. “Creativity makes me hungry, Dad.”

“I think everything makes you hungry, Scott. But stay creative, I have the feeling you’ll be a teacher someday. There’s a lot more out there to learn.”