Equestrium

06/25/16

I don’t quite know how to accurately describe what happened today.  Honestly I’m still trying to process it all myself.  Having been something I've done in the past before hand, I decided to scribble my thoughts onto some paper. I always felt at ease when allowing my thoughts to flow freely with the ink. My parents had told me to never hold in my feelings, they said it wasn't healthy. I digress, however, I am getting off topic.  The events of today are still fresh on my mind, and I can't seem to think straight. After all, the events of today were like none other that I have experienced before. This is the kind of thing you would see in films, fiction most would call it.

It was noon, or around that time, I can’t be 100% sure.  I work at a manufacturing plant, everyone in this town does.  It’s a small town, so if you are one of the few people that don’t work at the factory then you have a close relation to someone that does.  It was lunch time, and we finally got a break from the oppressive heat of the facility.  I personally like to take my lunch and enjoy the outdoors for the brief amount of time we have.  And I’m not the only one, I’d say at least half of the workers do this.  There’s a nice area set up just outside the front door for us to eat our food.  Across the street from us is an open field that was at one point in time used as a baseball field, but it has long since been unused and is mostly covered in weeds and vines now.  Today, lunch started out normally enough.  I took my blue lunch box and went to my normal spot on a small hill that over-looked the area.  I rested my back against one of the trees and started to retrieve my lunch.

Then things started to change very subtly.  I didn’t even notice at first, but after a few minutes I realized that there was a faint humming noise in the air.  But the noise wasn’t the only thing.  I started to feel really...tingly.  That’s really the only way I can describe it.  I had tingles all throughout my body.  It didn’t hurt or anything, but it was a really strange feeling.  The humming continued to get louder and louder.  I looked around and could tell that I wasn’t the only only with this weird sensation.  Many of the other workers were looking around with a very confused expression, others were scratching their arms trying to make the tingling sensation go away.  Then I took a look across the street.  I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing things correctly.  The landscape was starting to bend and twist as if it were a very thick soup being stirred in a pot.  The swirling continued to get faster and faster and eventually the field took on the appearance of a whirlpool of dirt and sand.  A small ball of light rose out of this vortex and started pulsing.  With each pulse the ball of light grew bigger and bigger.  After a few minutes it was about 30 feet or so in diameter.  Then it simply stopped.  It wasn’t growing, it wasn’t pulsing, all activity seemed to stop instantly.  It was just a giant shimmering ball of pure light.  The humming had stopped as well but the strange tingling feeling still persisted. It was at this moment that I realized that I had risen to my feet at some point as this was happening.  When I looked around others had joined me on the hill staring transfixed at this ball of light.

Suddenly, the ball of light exploded with enough force to knock us off of our feet across the street.  We got to our feet as car alarms started to go off and looked at what had happened to the ball of light.  The ball was gone, but in it’s place was now a swirling disc of light.  I moved a couple of yards over to try to see it from the side.  It seemed to be perfectly flat, like a mirror hanging from a wall.  The vortex beneath it had stopped spinning and seemed to be solid once more, although it was now perfectly flat, almost as if it was a stage for this strange phenomenon.  It seemed like the show was over, this swirling disk of light seemed to be the final product of what we had witnessed.  Still, we held our ground to make sure that nothing else was going to happen.  After several minutes there was still no change and everyone began conversing amongst themselves.  Most of them were trying to be quiet and whisper to the people next to them, but I could still hear what some were saying.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one thinking it because I heard a few people mention the word “portal”.

Now, I work a lot, but in my free time I’m a gamer.  I’ve played Oblivion and Minecraft and others like that, but let me tell you that nothing can accurately depict what a true portal looks like, if that is indeed what this thing is.  I was one of the first ones that dared to go nearer to the “portal”.  Me and a handful of others made our way across the street to get a better look at whatever this thing was.  As we got nearer to it we realized that the tingling sensation was getting stronger.  It seemed that whatever was causing this sensation was coming from the “portal”.  We got to about 50 feet away and didn’t dare to go any further.  We took a minute to closely examine it.  The disc of light was rotating, but it wasn’t giving off any sound.  In fact, in the general vicinity of the “portal” it was oddly quiet.  We could still hear car alarms behind us, and we could hear ourselves breathing, but the environment around the area seemed to stand still.

“Someone should go touch it,” one of the workers said.

Another one replied, “Are you nuts, we don’t know what this thing is.  The last thing we want to do is touch it.”

Now, I like to think of myself as a logical person.  I agreed with the fact that we shouldn’t touch it, but I was drawn to the fact that I had to test it out somehow.  I reached for a stick that was sitting a few feet away from me and picked it up.  Then I slowly started to walk towards the “portal”.  Some of the other workers started to protest, but I put up a hand to silence them.  I reached the edge of the “portal” and stuck the stick through it.  I was surprised by the result.  It passed through it without any resistance at all.  I could see that the end of the stick was indeed sticking into whatever this thing was, but it felt like I was just putting it through open air.  I moved it around a little bit and then extracted it from the “portal”.  The stick seemed unchanged, there were no scorch marks or any damage of any kind to the stick.  It was as if nothing happened.

It was at this point in time when we started to hear sirens and after a minute or so police showed up at the scene.  They quickly escorted everyone away from the area and quarantined it.  They didn’t know what is was, and they weren’t going to let anyone near it.  It was at this time that the bell for work rang, lunch break was over.  I knew that there was no way any of us were going back to work though.  As I turned around to head back across the street I could see that the entirety of the workforce was now standing outside to see what the fuss was all about.  Eventually an announcement did come over the intercom stating that work was indeed cancelled for the rest of the day and would be indefinitely shut down until further notice.  This seemed like a wise idea, given the proximity to the “portal”.

With work being cancelled I headed home to mull over what just happened.  I only live about a block away and as luck would have it the window in my room has a view of that park.  So I have a great place to see anything and everything that goes on with this “portal”.

That was a couple hours ago.  The scene sits mostly unchanged since then.  The “portal” is still sitting there, glowing and rotating.  It’s the scene around the “portal” that’s changed.  It seems that every news station within a hundred mile radius wanted to be here to do a story on it.  Makes sense to me, this is a big deal, after all, nothing like this has ever happened on Earth, much less in our little town.  I had to close my window when they started showing up, it’s so loud now that it’s hard to think straight.  This whole day feels like a dream but the more I think about that the more I realize that it’s all happening for real.  I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I have a feeling that whatever is going on...this is just the beginning.