A glass contraption of magnificent proportions looked upon by many as a fantastic and dazzling display of accomplishment and beauty; the sphere would roll perpetually down a never-ending slope. Some suggested that the slope was actually a curve, and therefore the sphere was simply rolling downward in a constant circle, others believed it was a straight line, but all of them reveled in the presence of the sphere.

The slope itself was not a spectacle. Simply a concrete path, though paved smoothly, a bump here and there, but never enough to throw off the perfect rotation of the sphere. On the sides of the path was grass, not too tall, not too short, but the perfect kind of grass you play in as a child. A radiant shade of green that seems to be the essence of summer, had it been contained into a shade of green.

Inside the sphere there were people. Not too many when compared to those outside the sphere, but a good amount in themselves. They rode stationary within the sphere, as if by magic, but sometimes one dared to touch the edge of the sphere and would get caught up in the rotation, spinning sometimes for days at a time before finding a proper release.

To these people the sphere was not a construct of beauty, but rather a symbol of defeat and misery. A constant reminder that their freedom was lost to a wonder of the world. They never showed their misery actively, as not to disrupt the workings of the outer world, but they felt it cut deep into them, wrenching their souls and breaking their hearts.

Trapped, contained forever, with no escape, these people had not chosen this life, but were forced into it. Some of them had adapted to their life within the sphere. Some had almost come to peace with it. And even though they hated their entrapment, they did have moments of peace and happiness.

A boy inside the sphere looked out, viewed the perfect green grass of the path which stretched forever. Eventually the grass faded though, and in the distance he witnessed a thousand smokestacks spewing out synthetic and deadly dark clouds. They seemed to intertwine with the already vicious and natural thunderclouds in the sky... A storm broke out in the distance. Lightning struck down, causing an enormous fire. The attention span of the onlookers was taken momentarily from the sphere to the fire in the distance. It happened from time to time, but the fire never reached the territory of the sphere, and so the spectators reverted their gaze back to the sphere.

The boy sighed, and almost hoped the fire would one day reach them. Not to punish those who lived outside the sphere, not even for hope that it would somehow stop the sphere and give him freedom, but just for the novelty of something different happening.

He looked out again, and looked back, and he could have sworn he saw another sphere, barreling down the path behind his own. Was it a hallucination? Some bizarre reflection? He wasn't sure, but within the adjacent sphere his eyes locked with that of a girl in the other sphere who was watching the strange sphere in front of her own. They stopped, and for a moment the entire motion of the world around them came to a halt.

He had looked back before, and saw something way in the distance, but never made the connection of what it was. Now he realized that all along it was this second sphere. And that it was traveling just a little faster than his. He never took his eyes off the girl, and for the first time in what seemed to be an eternity he smiled.

He didn't know how long it would take, but one day the spheres would collide, and with that a whole new world of freedom would be theirs for the taking.