Daniel pulled his head back from the powerful telescope at the observatory he was using to examine and evaluate the asteroid that was streaking across the western night sky. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He looked back at the image he saw in the telescope and thought that he had to be seeing things. “Hey Debbie, come here quickly,” he called out to his fellow astrophysicist who was on duty that night. Stepping down from the platform on which the telescope was mounted, he said, “Take a look at this and tell me what you see.”
Debbie stepped onto the platform, removed her glasses, and positioned her right eye over the cup of the eyepiece of the telescope. She twisted the focusing knob slightly until the image came into crisp focus.
“Tell me what you see,” Daniel insisted. Debbie stepped back and gave her fellow scientist a quizzical look. “Well?” Daniel asked.
“It’s the asteroid we’ve been following for the past several weeks, Daniel,” Debbie said.
“So you don’t see anything unusual about it?”
“What do you mean by unusual?” Debbie asked.
Daniel hopped onto the platform and looked at the asteroid again. “You don’t see any resemblance to a soccer ball? You don’t see those uniform black and white pentagon shapes across the surface of the asteroid? Am I hallucinating?”
Debbie smiled. “Well, there are what appear to be indentations on the leading surface of the asteroid that one might say gives the asteroid a slight resemblance to a soccer ball if one uses his or her imagination. That’s why the other day some of the team members jokingly nicknamed it the Beckham asteroid.”
“Oh thank God,” Daniel said. “I thought I may have been having an acid flashback and it was freaking me out.”
“Okay, then,” Debbie said, “can I get back to work now?”
“Sure, Debbie. I’m sorry to have interrupted you.”
“No worries, Daniel,” Debbie said, “but you might want to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.”
Written for the Sunday Writing Prompt from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. Image credit: Pixabay.com.
The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.
Why on earth, you ask, would I select a consistently conservative congresswoman who voted with Trump on substantive issues 93 percent of the time as my winner? Have I lost my marbles? Well, one could argue that all of the Republicans in Congress have lost their marbles.
Welcome to May 16, 2021 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.
This, That, and the Other 