STABILISING THE ORB

I'm stabilising the orb. I'm stabilising the orb. It's rolling around the– uh, well, it's just rolling, anyway – and it's diffusing waves of energy outwards, sending beams of plasmic discharge spraying off like a fuckin, uh – what's it called... what's the thing. The, you know, when it comes... when it comes out a little... like a, uh... a corona. Radiating outwards in a corona, and if it catches... if the energy infects other things around it... the orb needs to stay under control. So I'm stabilising it. I've grabbed it with two hands, I'm like, half-crouched, I've got my ass sticking out, I'm like, eyeballing it, right down on its level, up close, checking for signs of criticality – checking for signs of like a runaway series of events, just watching for... it could get real bad real quick, so I gotta get them under control. I'm tilting it, to the left, forward, little more left, back, right, forward, left again, left, back, forward, back again, back more, then forward, then right, then back, then left, then back and then forward quickly, wobbling it, trying to get a little more control out of it, left, left, right, back, right, forward, left. I'm fucking – I'm focusing every fucking atom of concentration I have on stabilising – I know concentration isn't measured in atoms but this is, like, the way I'm thinking about it, like it's down to the smallest units, and I can't let anything go wrong. I'm shaking it gently, I'm getting down on my haunches, getting my forearms under it, trying to chill it out – because if it tilts – bad. If it spills – bad. If there's a random event that I can't get under control, like a flare – real bad. If it pulses, bad, if a capillary bursts, bad, if there is a block or a jam or a clot, if something sticks, all bad, and I know this – I know it for sure – it's happened before, and basically it just can't happen again. Because I've seen it happen and I've been the one who had to sit in the wreckage, pretty much, of my own lounge room, overwhelmed by the raw quantity of absolute fucking bull shit – you know what it's like – can't clean the dishes, can't sweep up the debris, can't even recognise all the shit I own, all the fucking shit I bought myself and put in this room – none of it familiar. You know what I mean? When you look around and it's like you're in a stranger's house, and you don't even like the house, you sit there feeling like all your skin and hair died at once and you're sitting in a cloud of your own dust and stink. And it fucking – it fucking sucks – so that's why I'm doing it. Phone rings. Can't answer it. Sun's going down, mouth's getting dry. But if I look into the inside of the orb I can see the energy at the centre, and it's going a little pink, and that's a bad sign. And the energy is spiking a little – which happens right before the crackling starts – and it's the reminder I need that right here is where I need to be, right here – stabilising –