We were walking through the south end of an overgrown park in my hometown.

We hadn’t seen anything like it before. It stood four feet tall and glowed bright green in the middle of center field. It was smooth on all sides.

Scott touched it first.

He seemed fine for a minute, but then the spots formed. His skin turned a pale yellow and then broke out in millions of tiny red spots. It was off-putting, but the other side-effect is what made Phil touch the damn thing. Right after Scott’s skin turned yellow, he found he could fly. As he darted upward into the atmosphere, Phil reached for the glowing green rock.

As soon as his fingers brushed the radiating surface, he disappeared.

Wow. Cool, I thought to myself as I too, like the child I was, reached for the glowing green rock.

I wonder what powers I’ll get.

As my fingers grazed the pulsating facade, I looked out at oblivion and I saw the distant dying stars.

It was just me and the stars and the deep black emptiness of space.

Suddenly, I experienced the vibrant green as it drifted across my field of view, growing opaque as it consumed the darkness. I heard the slow rumble of rustling leaves form in the silence. I felt the stems brush the back of my invisible hand and I felt between my fingers the intricate veins upon its leaves. I imagined the light whose photosynthesis let it grow and the light appeared before me. The flower took form. I conceived of the forces, centrifugal, centripetal, and gravitic that it worked with and against to take shape. I envisioned the seed that sprouted it and the moist soil that contained it, and all at once a meadow formed. I imagined the water that fed the flower and the rivers appeared, meandering across the meadow’s face. Then I perceived the process of its growth and my meadow curled into a ball and chased the light that fell from above. The light recoiled and fell into itself. It wobbled in the darkness as the meadow laid chase.

I envisioned cities upon my meadow and discovered their existence. I headed for the densely packed electrical lights over my new North America. I dove down into the atmosphere and hovered over the ground, the rivers, and the people I had made. Finally, I settled over a small town in the middle of what should be America. There I found a small baseball diamond near the south end of an overgrown park. I lowered myself through the air I had created and landed upon the grass I had built.

There in the middle of center field I waited for someone to find me.