It was late, already past midnight. Pung didn’t feel like changing his clothes for
bed or washing up. He turned off the light and lay alone in the dark, haunted by emotions
and thoughts that wouldn’t probably allow him go to sleep for hours.
Instinctively, Pung reached for his plasma ball. He always flipped it on at night. It
had become like a night light for him. Sometimes he stared at it when he couldn’t sleep.
The ball had been a source of much inspiration for his experiments, experiments he was
nearly ready to give up on. As Pung's fingers touched the switch, he paused briefly. This
stupid ball had led him down a costly dead end road, and he was sick of looking at it.
Why bother turning it on? It belonged in the garbage can along with all the ruined power
cells and worthless stacks of paper.
―I’m sorry, Grandpa,‖ the young man said quietly into the night air. ―I’ve failed
you. Looks like I won’t live up to your expectations of me, after all.‖