The Mysterious Geode
By Sam Boland
As seventeen year-old Ben walked out of the museum, he examined the giant geode he had bought in the gift shop. It was blue with darker blue stripes on some parts of it. He got in the car and went home, and thought how he wanted to show it to his friend, Christopher.
When Ben got home, he put the geode in his room on the shelf where he had his geode collection. It was now the biggest geode in his collection, but it was also one of the lightest. Then he sat down at the computer and emailed Christopher. “Can you come over to my house tonight? I got a cool new souvenir from the science museum, and I think you should check it out!"
Christopher replied, “Okay, can I spend the night? Tomorrow we could go to the movies.”
Ben wrote back. “Sure thing! See you soon.” Ben’s favorite geode in his collection was the opened one with large red crystals. He bought it a few years ago at the same museum.
When Christopher arrived at his house, they looked at Ben’s geode collection, then played Oculus Rift, Ben’s virtual reality game console. They finally crashed at one o'clock in the morning. Later that night, after they went to bed, they were woken up by a scraping sound. “What was that?” Christopher asked.
“I think it was one of the geodes,” Ben replied. He got out of bed and went over to his geode collection. “It looks like it just budged towards one of the other geodes,” he said as he examined it. Then he noticed a compass pointing to the geode. “Maybe it’s magnetic,” he said.
“I think it is,” Christopher replied. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Ben said, “Crack it open? Are you sure?”
“Yes. We’ll do it tomorrow. Let’s go back to sleep.”
The next morning, they got up and had breakfast. They brought the geode and a hammer outside. Ben hit the geode with the hammer and it effortlessly cracked open. Instead of being crystals, the inside was metal! It was smooth and silver. Ben picked it up. “It’s only about a pound,” he said.
“What? I thought it would be crystals and stuff,” Christopher said.
“I’ve never seen this kind of metal,” Ben said. “Let’s call our science teacher, he might know.”
Christopher picked up the phone and punched in the number while Ben examined the watermelon-sized sphere. As he touched it, it turned blue. Their science teacher, Mr. Quark, always helped them if they had any questions. Someone answered. “Hello,” their science teacher said. “Can I help you?”
Christopher replied, “Hi Mr. Quark, there is a, um… mysterious geode at Ben’s house. You might want to come see it. We could meet at the park in one hour.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
Ben got the geode out of the car and brought it to Mr. Quark. He examined the geode. “I’ve never seen anything like this. In fact, there’s only been one other sighting on Earth! This metal is only used by aliens. It might be an old alien ship,” he said.
“Aliens? Those don’t exist,” Christopher said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Well, surprisingly, they do exist! And I know because, you see, when I was in the military about twenty years ago, I was assigned to area fifty-one. And one night, I was peeking around in the archives, and I found a record of an alien ship landing, appearing to be made of the same kind of metal. So I guess this is an alien ship, but there might not be aliens inside it. The geode around it might have been formed by the ship landing in a volcano, then minerals seeping inside the cracks and eventually hardening. So I’d say that alien is long gone,” he explained.
“You can have it if you want, Mr. Quark.” Ben said.
“Oh, no. I think it better go to area fifty-one. You might even get famous!” Mr. Quark said.
Ben thought about it for a minute. “Okay, I’ll ship it off later. Hopefully it doesn’t cause any problems,” Ben said. “Now, let's go to the movies!”