Balanced on the point of a cone that was suspended somewhere in the middle of the cosmos was a flat, circular platform. In the middle of this platform was a small population of supposedly intelligent, spherical creatures that rolled around on the smooth surface of their home.

For as long as they could remember, they had lived in relative harmony, but for whatever reason, that harmony had lately begun showing signs of dissonance. Some blamed the adventurous youth of the society while others blamed the narrow-minded traditions of the past. Some blamed the males while others blamed the females. And some, with nothing better to do, blamed anyone who blamed anyone other than themselves for the troubles of their world.

It began with what many claim to be the original disturbance. A rogue sphere had become tired of rolling around at the center of everything and, against the wisdom of the wise, elderly spheres of the group, decided to wander off on his own, saying that it was his life and that he could be as unwise as he wanted to do as long as he didn’t hurt anybody. Well, the wise, elderly spheres were greatly hurt by this bit of disrespect, and they decided that they didn’t really want him there anyway, so they cast him off as the platform’s first exile.

News of the banishment spread like wildfire, as much as that could happen in a world without wildfire. It spread amongst the youth as well as the elderly who had become too old and forgotten that they were no longer a part of the youth, but no one was more affected than a young, female sphere who had secretly fallen in love with the rogue sphere. She admired his good looks with his near perfect roundedness, his ability to roll faster than any sphere she had ever seen, his daring spirit, his indifference toward her. That last part, especially, made him terribly charming.

In her yearning, she decided to go off in search of her true love, telling only her best friend her secret. But the problem was that the platform was not very big, and everyone in the community could see as far as the perimeter of the circle if they just squinted their minds a bit. At all moments, they could see the exiled sphere as well as the infatuated female sphere who had approached him in the distance. Not surprisingly, this outraged her parents who then spent the next several hours rolling around in small circles and quarreling about which one of them had raised her the wrong way.

At this point, it may be of help to know that one of the chief pleasures of this community was for a male sphere and a female sphere to roll into each other, bouncing off lightly and repeating the process until they were satisfied, an activity called “bumping.” This is exactly what the angry parents saw as they stared in the direction of their daughter. She and the rogue had talked at length, and now, they were bumping.

“Oh, that’s just great!” said the father. “Just like her mother. She’ll bump almost anyone she sees.”

“What?” exclaimed the mother. “Why do you keep bringing that up? That was a long time ago. I made some mistakes when I was young, OK.”

“I suppose you were young yesterday as well.”

“What?”

“You didn’t think I noticed, huh?”

“Oh, that was just an accident. I didn’t mean to bump him on purpose. It just happened on its own.”

“Five times?”

“I was feeling a bit uncoordinated, and I just couldn’t keep my balance, so I kept bumping into him.”

“Well, just to let you know, I plan on becoming uncoordinated and losing my balance with someone later today.”

This discussion was quite ironic because the mother’s explanation was precisely cause of her daughter’s current actions, though no one looking on from the distance could have suspected as such. Close to the edge of the platform, the two spheres found it a bit more difficult to control their movement. Being entirely smooth, they could muster very little friction to combat the mysterious pulling forces from beyond.

Needless to say, the uncontrollable bumping was a slight embarrassment for the girl, though the rogue who had previously neglected her did not seem to mind it. Sensing this, the girl mistakenly nurtured the notion that he might at last have succumbed to his dormant feelings for her, but when she revealed the truth of her emotions, she tragically witnessed his reversion to his previous mode of indifference.

“I really need a little space,” he said to her coolly. “That’s why I rolled out here in the first place.”

“But, I thought… Didn’t we just?”

“Oh, yeah. That was great fun. I’ll be very happy if you come back for more a bit later.”

The girl, losing control of her spherical orientation in her sadness, suddenly rolled too close to the perimeter of the platform, and, with a final bump, both she and the rogue fell over the edge into the great vastness.

“How romantic!” said another young female sphere to her boyfriend. “After sharing such a precious moment, they’ve taken a plunge into eternity together.”

“What’s the big deal?” asked the boyfriend. “They bumped, and now they jumped. They’re both crazy if you ask me.”

“You mean, you wouldn’t do that for me?”

“Why would you ask me to do that?”

“That’s the point. I shouldn’t have to ask. You should do it on your own.”

This heated, utterly useless argument did indeed drive the boyfriend over a metaphorical edge, though not the literal one his girlfriend had hoped for. In protest, he staged a sit-in at the exact center of the platform, vowing never again to sacrifice his own principles merely to please the unreasonable whims of another sphere. He was his own sphere, and that was that.

And what of his girlfriend? Well, after some moments of intense self-pity, she miraculously found another sphere, the sphere of her dreams. This one was much more romantic than the protestor, so she easily convinced him to display his love for her by rolling off the edge of the platform. At this, she declared that she had truly found her sphere-mate and that it was such a sad fact that he was gone forever. Believing herself to be cursed by the stars, she slowly, dramatically rolled to the edge of the platform, contemplating the scene as if from an external perspective. Then, at the last moment, realizing just how far she would have to drop in order to create this sweet tragedy, she hesitated just long enough to realize that she hadn’t hesitated soon enough.

Seeing this, other members of the society, out of sadness, delusion, insecurity, or simply the wish to be trendy, soon continued the pattern for themselves, resulting in a chain of mass sphereicide. The instability brought on by all the movement caused yet more unbalanced spheres to roll off unintentionally, and chaos soon ensued. Some tried to “help” others by bumping into them, a few intentionally pushed others off the edge, and the rest were busy looking after their own safety. In the end, however, there was too little cooperation, and the platform wavered violently, sending all but two spheres over the edge.

The protestor in the center of the platform had stopped his momentum by running into a nearby irregular sphere who was immobile due to a flat bottom surface, a normally disadvantageous attribute which turned out to be of the greatest advantage in this current situation. The two quickly became friends and, amongst all the commotion, managed to talk about life, love, and other seemingly important things. This flat-bottomed fellow didn’t have any girl problems because he couldn’t get any female spheres to begin with. They were fond of being chased by male spheres, and since he couldn’t really move, they had all excluded him from the field because of his irregularity, though very few of them would have admitted it. His initial contention that his mind was perfectly round was insufficient to convince them, and he had eventually given up further attempts to justify his worth on the basis of inner sphereity.

Learning this, his new friend consoled him by telling him how lucky he was to have never played the mindless games of conventionality, that he should consider himself blessed and be done with it.

“So, now what do we do?” asked the “blessed” one.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of this. It was peaceful at first, but now I’m bored out of my mind. Actually, I don’t think I can take this much longer. Let’s jump.”

“I don’t want to, and anyway, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, you know, with the immobility from the flat bottom and all.”

“OK, suit yourself. Here I go!”

With only one occupant left, the platform was perfectly still again. There was very little left for the surviving sphere to do but look around and count the stars. It seemed strange to him how, for the first time, the distant objects reminded him of various members of his platform community, as if they themselves were spheres falling from an infinite platform that stretched in all directions. He didn’t know where they would end up, but he had all the time in the world to wait and see.