"The Sphere" - poster design featuring a short story written by journalist and playwright Sophia Magasanik. Personal work, 2024.
The world was a patchwork of hushed greens and deep browns. It was alive, but in that subtle, half-dreamed way that made it feel as though it could vanish at any moment, dissolving into the milkwhite mist that lingered between the ancient trunks of the woods.
The world, however old it already was, was still in a sense new, unsculpted.
Argh and Urgh were two altogether content beings. They had no sensation of self and other, held no grievances against what could have been, nor concerns about what could be. They had neither answers nor questions. As they trekked through a luscious and untouched pre-everything woodland, they did so with a sense of aimless survival, a mindless enterprise.
"Argh," said Argh, the larger of the two, and pointed forward.
"Urgh" replied Urgh, and they'd continued on the same trail as always and forever before. High above, the canopy of leaves formed a patchwork of shifting light, creating a tapestry of shadows that played across their faces, like phantoms from a forgotten time.
The big above glimpsed through gaps in the branches, was a pale, washed-out blue, and the sun hung low, casting long fingers of light across the forest floor. The air was filled with whispers about the oncoming night. The forest told tales of nights lost and nights ahead, stories of vibrant sundowns and glistening mornings. Urghs' nostrils filled with the earthy scents that filled the forest. Damp wood. Fresh moss. The tang of something unseen, but alive, blooming nearby. Under it all, something faintly metallic hung in the air, something unknown.
As Urgh and Argh pressed on, the dense underbrush began to thin, the woodland pulling back like silent sentinels retreating into the mist. The grove gave way to a small clearing—a glade, bathed in soft, pale light.
The air here was different. Lighter, yet thick with something unspoken, an electric charge that seemed to hum just beneath the surface of reality.
Then they saw it.
In the center of the glade, hovering just a few feet above the ground, impossibly perfect, round, and featureless, a massive, black sphere. Smooth as obsidian, it reflected nothing, absorbing all light that touched it, a void amidst the living world. Yet it seemed to pulse, as though it possessed some hidden life force.
Urgh and Argh stood frozen, their primitive minds unable to process what lay before them. Gone was all they had known about the world from before, gone were the earthy musk of damp wood and moss. In its place was something colder, sharper. Metallic, yet not quite. It prickled their senses, like the scent of a storm just before it broke, when the sky held a strange, charged tension.
"Urgh," Urgh murmured. Urgh took a cautious step forward, as though they expected the ground itself to collapse beneath their feet. But the earth remained firm, and the sphere – still, hovering, otherworldly – made no movement.
Braver now, Urgh moved closer, their steps slow, deliberate. They could feel the pull of the sphere, as though it were calling them—silently, without words—to come nearer. The closer they got, the more the hum in the air grew, faint but unmistakable, like the distant buzz of insects at the peak of summer, just on the edge of hearing. They reached out a hand, their fingers trembling as they hovered in the air between them and the orb. The black surface reflected nothing—not their hand, not the grove, nor the big above. It was a void, a piece of the universe that had fallen to earth.
Urgh stopped their hand inches from the surface. The sphere remained still, silent, yet the air seemed to vibrate with a hidden energy. They hesitated, their hand trembling, and reached out to touch its surface.
Then, ever so slowly, the black surface began to ripple, as though it were made of liquid rather than something solid. Tiny waves cascaded outward from the center of the sphere, distorting its perfect surface in slow, hypnotic motion. The hum in the air grew louder, not in sound, but in presence, as though the atmosphere around them was tightening, drawing in.
The air around the sphere grew heavier. It pressed against Urghs' and Arghs' skin, droning in their bones. The ripples across the black surface quickened, the liquid-like motion becoming sharper, more defined, as though the sphere itself was waking up.
Then, as if the fabric of reality had been torn open, the hum became a low, thrumming resonance—a sound that bypassed their ears and settled deep within their minds.
Argh clutched his head. His thoughts churned in unfamiliar patterns, surging with a new intensity, a chaotic clarity he had never experienced before. He opened his mouth, but instead of the "argh" he had known all his life, a new sound, strange yet familiar, spilled out. And with it, an unfamiliar concept – a question.
"What... What is this?" he asked.
"What is what," Urgh answered, suddenly aware of the otherness of the world. This thing was not Urgh, nor Argh, it was not the woodlands, the great wet, nor the big above. What was once one, was now split into different things. "What is me?" she asked herself, Argh, and the sphere.
"You?" Argh looked at the human he had always known as Urgh. "You is... You is Gertrude".
Urgh, no longer Urgh, opened her mouth. "Ger…trude," she whispered, a name abiding shape by mouth and mind. Gertrude. "Yes, yes, Gertrude," replied now-Gertrude, and pointed towards Argh. "And you be..."
"You cannot name me, for I have already named myself," declared Argh – who had always been Argh – and pointed to himself. "I am Carlos".
"Not fair," cried Gertrude. "You name me and I name you?".
"No need. We have names now, and that's what they'll be. Carlos," said Carlos—Argh no longer—as he tapped his chest, his voice still rough but full of intent. He was claiming this word, this name, as his own. He had never had such power before. To name oneself. To exist in a world where everything had a name. His lips curled into a half-smile, the strangeness of it thrilling and terrifying him all at once.
They stared at each other, these two beings who had once been Urgh and Argh, their identities shifting beneath the weight of this new knowledge. It was as if they had been born again, not into flesh, but into language. Names. They had names now. They could speak.
The world around them seemed brighter, sharper as if the act of naming themselves had lifted a veil. Carlos turned toward the edge of the glade, towards the ancient trunks rising like pillars into the sky. He had seen them his whole life, had walked among them, slept beneath their sheltering branches, but now… Now they needed a name.
He pointed at the closest one, his brow furrowing in concentration. "Tree," he said, the word coming out slowly, deliberately, as if he were carving it into existence. Tree. It felt right. "I name thee tree".
But the forest was now silent.
