The Orb

By Paul Ponce & Hernan Radic

Boston Tower, 3:02 AM

“Boston Tower, this is Astra Airways 417. We are bingo fuel. Request immediate clearance to land.”

Static.

“Astra 417, say again?” The controller’s voice was tight—the kind of tight you get when you’re responsible for hundreds of lives, your instruments are flickering like a busted neon sign, and there’s a snowstorm eating the runway.

The pilots—Captain Elena Ramirez and First Officer Barry Lee—locked eyes. Is this guy serious?

“We are low on fuel. We cannot hold. We need vectors for immediate approach.”

Control Tower. Logan International.

The graveyard shift crew exchanged glances that screamed this is about to be a very bad night. The weirdness had started an hour ago, right after a flight from Belgrade touched down. First, minor glitches—security doors refusing to unlock, baggage scanners looping the same frame like a skipping DVD. Now? The whole damn airport was having a seizure. Radar screens jittered, ATC comms lagged, and Logan’s automated systems were throwing tantrums like a toddler in a supermarket.

Astra Airways 417. Seat 29A.

The plane jolted with turbulence. A seven-year-old boy pressed his forehead against the window. Nothing but blackness, but he knew something was wrong.

“Mommy, we’ve been in a holding pattern too long. I wanna see Grandma.”

His mother tucked a loose curl behind his ear. “We will, sweetheart. Just a little longer.”

The boy frowned. “We’re gonna run out of JP1.”

His mom blinked. “JP1?”

He sighed, exasperated. “Jet fuel, Mom. We’re going in circles. We’re gonna run out of gas.”

A few passengers glanced over. A flight attendant caught the exchange, her forced smile faltering.

I knew exactly how that kid felt. Forty years earlier, that wannabe flyboy would've been me. But no amount of aviation knowledge could explain what was about to unfold in the next twenty minutes. And besides, I was nowhere near Boston that night. Or reality as you know it.

Back in the tower, the senior controller rubbed his temples. “Any word from Sanders?” He shot a glance at his colleague, hoping airport ops had some answers.

The younger guy took a long, resigned sip of his energy drink. “Nope.”

Fantastic. Just what they needed—an inbound, fuel-critical 757, a blizzard, and Logan’s systems going full Twilight Zone on them.

The controller hesitated, then keyed his mic. “Astra 417, maintain present holding.”

A beat of silence.

Then—

“Boston, negative. We do not have holding fuel. We are proceeding to final. Expect us.”

3:07 AM. A few buildings down.

Manu had just eased into the dead-eyed rhythm of the zombie shift at Logan’s Lost & Found—where Ray-Bans go to die and dignity gets ghosted—when his earpiece crackled to life.

"Yo, MP. Secure storage. Now."

Manuel Puente’s job title? Lost Property Assistant.

His real job? The guy they called when reality started glitching.

Eighteen months in, and he’d learned: if TSA was waving you through locked doors without the usual badge ballet, something had gone sideways. Hard.

They needed MP. Their in-house, mate-slurping tech whisperer.

Certified underachiever. Reluctant genius. Manu could code in more languages than he spoke, built weirdly addictive apps for audiophiles and data nerds, and saw patterns where others saw white noise. His mother still called his college dropout move La Gran Estupidez—The Great Stupidity.

Tonight, though? With 247 souls circling in metal coffins above Boston? Stupidity was someone else’s problem.

He walked the sterile back corridors of Logan, past humming vending machines and flickering lights—the kind of liminal space where time forgot to finish loading. His mate kit bag swung from his shoulder, patched with old prog metal band logos—Rush, Tool, Dream Theater—and one lonely badge for Ferro, Argentina’s scrappiest second-division soccer team.

It was the only color in a sea of airport beige.

A nod to security, a badge flash, and he was waved into the belly of the beast: secure storage. Cement walls. Redundant locks. Vibe: haunted bunker meets hostage negotiation.

More security personnel than usual. Long guns.

Two suited FAA agents radiating "I didn't sign up for this" energy.

And front and center—her.

A woman in a don’t-mess-with-me pantsuit, jaw clenched tight, barking into a walkie like it owed her money.

"Where the hell is the bomb squad?"

Crackle. Static. Nothing.

Then her eyes landed on Manu.

Everyone stared like he’d wandered in from an alternate universe.

He blinked back. Still groggy. Poured hot water into his gourd—his viejo’s old ritual, now his own. Mate: the drink of friendship, focus, flow, and for Manu—keeping the weirdness from flooding in.

Derek Johnson—his boss at Lost and Found and low-key aspiring hip-hop legend—clapped him on the back.

“Yo, this is MP. Not official IT, but he’s who we’ve got until Stephenson gets back from Denver.”

Pantsuit Lady gave Manu the once-over. Wrinkled uniform. Belt full of illegal-looking gadgets. Mate kit swinging like a grenade.

“We’ve got planes circling and systems failing. Why should we put our trust in a guy who looks like he fixes cracked iPhones at a mall kiosk?”

Derek sighed. “Because when ransomware nuked our baggage system last month? This dude had it back up before IT even got off hold with Microsoft.”

Pantsuit Lady pressed her lips into a line. Then gestured toward a sealed container.

“This came off an unclaimed suitcase from Flight 3327 out of Belgrade. Some kind of metal sphere. Since it hit secure storage, we’ve had… anomalies.”

Manu stepped closer. Inside the bombproof case sat a softball-sized orb. Smooth, metallic. Perfectly still. Nobody in the room could see what it really was.

Well—almost nobody.

Manu closed his eyes. The patterns came alive—shifting geometries, impossibly ancient, impossibly precise. The kind of design that makes your DNA hum.

He felt it. The hair on his arms rose.

He opened his eyes. “It’s old. Like, really old.”

Blank stares.

Pantsuit Lady stiffened.

See, what Manu saw? That was a temporal impression. According to the O.S.—Omniverse Scriptures—that’s a recorded echo of time. Anything and everything that ever is, was, or shall be. A history of the cosmos tattooed onto spacetime. Manu just… tuned in.

Most people? Nothing. But Tuners—mortals with this rare kind of receptiveness —could see these echoes. Feel them actually. And Manu? He was a natural. No implants. No training. Just yerba mate, metalhead playlists, and neural wiring that made no sense.

Even I needed multi-billion-dollar gear hidden away in some underground bunker to do what he did bare-handed. And I still sucked at it.

Julio, his late father, used to shake his head and say, “Este pibe está conectado.” (This kid is connected.)

Yeah. But not to Wi-Fi.

“Can you figure out how it’s jamming our systems?” Pantsuit Lady asked.

Manu slurped his mate. “I can try.”

She squinted, like bilingual hackers weren’t supposed to exist.

Manu ignored her. Found a table near the case. Set down his tablet. Pulled two more gadgets from his belt like he was unsheathing daggers.

One of the FAA suits squinted at the mate leaves. “What are you drinking, son?”

Pantsuit Lady didn’t even look up. “That’s yerba mate, Johnson. Gross. But legal. They love it in Colombia.”

Derek shot her a look. “It’s Argentina, actually.”

She shrugged. “Same difference.” And went off to take a call.

“Doesn’t matter,” Manu said, eyes on his screen. “Mall cops don’t know shit.”

Johnson stepped forward, all chest. “She’s Homeland Security, asshole. And we’re FAA.”

“Same difference,” Manu deadpanned, still not looking up.

Pantsuit Lady marched back from her call. “Better step on it, Yerba Mate.”

“I can’t,” Manu replied. “This thing’s pinging multiple frequencies. I need a Zeus terminal.”

“You don’t have clearance.”

“You’ve got planes circling and systems failing. Right?” Sip.

Long stare. Then she nodded at Johnson. A minute later, a Zeus terminal—a hardened size extra laptop connected to Logan’s digital nerve center—thudded onto the table.

Manu tapped the keyboard. “Password?”

Johnson scowled, hunched over the machine, keyed it in like he was shielding launch codes.

Manu and Derek traded a quick grin, then got dead serious.

Two tablets connected. One custom tool booted. Manu’s fingers danced across the terminal. Code flew. Fast.

Everyone stood back like he was disarming a bomb.

“Status?” Pantsuit Lady asked.

“Almost there,” Manu muttered.

He hit Enter.

The Zeus terminal freaked out. Code exploded across the screen—not gibberish. Structured. Intelligent.

Lights flickered, then dimmed.

Like the airport itself was holding its breath.

"¿Qué mierda...?" Manu whispered.

The orb pulsed. A soft glow. Blue, rhythmic. Like it had a heartbeat.

“We’ve got twelve aircraft holding,” the other FAA suit shouted. “And ATC’s still blind. Whatever you’re doing—make it count.”

Manu’s fingers blurred. But the deeper he went, the more obvious it became:

This wasn’t interference.

It was communication.

He tapped a key. The orb flashed red.

Another key. Blue.

“It’s trying to talk,” Manu said. “But I can’t parse it. It’s… ancient. Familiar.”

“Then tell it to stop hijacking our goddamn systems!” Pantsuit Lady barked.

Manu took a long sip. “It’s not hijacking. It’s sending rhythm patterns. Signal sequences. It’s talking.”

Derek leaned in. “Then talk back, dawg. Send it one of your grooves.”

Manu paused. That was… actually a solid idea.

FAA suits exchanged looks like they’d wandered into a sci-fi jazz club.

Manu worked furiously. Then reached for his thermos—and froze.

Empty.

Shit.

Dopamine crashing. Focus slipping. The mate had run dry.

Derek clocked the panic. Grabbed Manu’s thermos, shoved it in Johnson’s hands.

“Go get hot water.”

Johnson blinked. “What?”

“You heard me, dawg. And hurry the hell up. We got planes to land, yo.”

Manu’s hands twitched. Focus shredding.

Pantsuit Lady locked eyes with Johnson. “Move it.”

He grumbled, took the thermos, and stormed off.

“And don’t boil it!” Derek called after him.

03:15 AM — Astra 417, Final Approach

Captain Elena Ramirez squinted through the thick soup outside the windshield. Boston’s skyline was gone. The North Shore might as well have been the moon.

The fog wasn’t just low. It was alive—swirling, crawling, pulsing against the glass like it had ideas.

Not that this was her first rodeo. Ramirez had put big heavy flying machines down in worse places. Bagram, Karshi Khanabad, and sketchy strips behind enemy lines.

But Logan with no ILS, no tower, and a fog thicker than chowder? That was a new one.

“Flaps thirty. Gear down,” she called out.

Lee, her civilian only first officer, was sweating through his collar. “Still no comms. Still no lights.”

“Nice. Add it to their Yelp review.”

He toggled the mic again. “Boston Tower, Astra 417 on final for runway one-three-left, southeast vector. Requesting emergency clearance. We are—repeat—flying blind.”

Static. The kind that says you’re on your own, buddy.

Elena didn’t blink. “Okay. Full manual it is. Toggle your sixth sense, Barry. Gonna need it.”

Barry nodded not fully convinced. Yeah, right.

Seat 29A

The boy now had his nose pressed to the window. Nothing but ghost-fog outside, streaking with the shiver of descent.

The cabin rattled. Turbulence getting nasty.

His mother’s hand squeezed his knee. “Are they... is this normal?”

The kid had overcome his initial fear—thinking it through like it was Flight Simulator.

“It’s normal, mom. They’re bringing her in manual. Probably adjusting pitch, maybe some trim... just settling it in. Get a grip.”

She smiled and nodded, not the least bit reassured.

Cockpit

Altitude: 1200 feet. Still nothing on visual. Fog like wet cement.

“On glide. No runway in sight,” said Lee. “You sure we’re not over the harbor?”

“Can’t smell salt,” Ramirez replied, eyes locked forward. “We’re still over ground. For now.”

“One thousand feet,” barked the altimeter.

Lee checked her face. Stone.

“You really did this before?”

“In a C-130, total blackout, heavy crosswinds, with half a wing shot off.” A pause. “And worse coffee.”

Barry eased up—just a little.

Cabin

People braced. A few prayed. Someone threw up in the aisle and didn’t apologize.

The boy didn’t move. Just kept watching. The pilots had the plane under control, but something else was out there. He could feel it.

His mom gripped the seat in front of her like it owed her rent.

The boy grabbed her hand.

03:17 Secure storage

Manu’s fingers were flying through the keys. All were witnesses to the show. The Zeus terminal and its connected gadgets were processing the signal emitted the orb and converting it to sound. To musical patterns in the Solfeggio range. Pantsuit Lady and the FAA suits were not impressed. Derek was nodding—come on, MP. You got this.

Manu took a long sip of his mate, and hit enter. His algorithm created a response musical pattern in response to the one it got but with a groovy rhythm added.

Derek noticed it first. “Look, dawg.”

The orb began glowing bright.

“Nice job, Neo,” Pantsuit Lady said sarcastically. “Now you pissed it off.”

Manu ignored her, hit enter, and sent the orb the pattern again.

The orb grew brighter.

Pantsuit Lady motioned toward the security personnel. They drew their weapons, locked a round and pointed at the orb.

Manu focused.

Derek couldn’t believe it. “Don’t shoot, you damn fools!”

The orb—even brighter.

Astra 417— 800 feet

Lee descended the Boeing thick into the fog. Visibility…

“Still nothing.”

“Hold course,” Ramirez said.

“Six hundred.”

Lee’s hands hovered over the controls. “Captain... decision altitude coming up.”

“Keep it together. Barry.”

Secure storage

Orb lighting up the room.

“On my command,” Pantsuit Lady said. “Open fire.”

Then—

The orb went dark.

Manu nodded to Derek.

Cockpit — 500 feet

Still fog.

Then—

Boom.

Light.

Not thunder, not aliens. Just—runway. Out of nowhere.

The landing lights snapped on like a curtain being yanked back.

Centerline. Edge markers. Approach path. Glowing like Vegas at midnight.

Lee swore. “Where the hell did that come from?”

Ramirez grinned. “Guess Boston got its shit together after all.”

Touchdown

The 757 hit the tarmac hard, like it meant it. Reverse thrust kicked in. Brakes screamed. They rolled through the mist like a ghost ship with somewhere to be, heading for the terminal.

Behind them, other aircraft were in a queue to do likewise.

Seat 29A

The boy blinked. The lights outside were back. The airport real again.

His mother exhaled. “Yeah. Why did I even worry?”

The boy said nothing.

He wasn’t so sure.

Whatever was out there wasn’t done yet.

Tuners came in all sizes.

03:20 Secure storage.

Derek was giving the FAA suits the I-told-you-so speech. They didn’t care. Johnson and the other guy were eyeing the big clock on the wall. They just wanted to go home. That wasn’t going to happen.

Pantsuit Lady was on the phone, screaming at somebody else. “No, I already took care of the emergency, but FAA stays here until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

Manu? He discreetly copied the mysterious code stream to his personal encrypted drive. Sip.

The orb still inside the secure container. Presumably turned off or on standby.

As he left the storage facility, his phone buzzed. A message from Mila, his girlfriend.

Still saving the airport at 4AM?

Manu smirked, texting back.

Some glitch in the system. Had to take care of it. Sorry.

Three dots pulsed. Then:

Food's in the fridge. Don’t forget my parents arrive tomorrow. Tata wants to watch "soccer" with you. He got you a Modrić jersey. Love you.

Manu chuckled.

Haha. Fútbol with Tata sounds amazing. I got him a Messi one. But don’t tell him. Love you too.

Pocketing his phone, he let the warmth of it settle. Mila Bogdan, Mass General resident, the Croatian doc who’d stitched him up when he’d sprained his wrist playing indoor soccer. Things took off from there.

Tomorrow was supposed to be normal—meeting her parents, watching a game, maybe sneaking a peek at that little velvet box in his drawer.

Instead, he was taking home the code of something that didn’t quite play by the rules of reality.

Much like him.

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Ponce / Radic © 2025 All Rights Reservedd

Ponce / Radic © 2025 All Rights Reserved