Sphere

Barnes is unimpressed, feeling that the message is too simplistic. Barnes pushes Harry to ask Jerry its full name, but Harry insists on starting with a declaration of friendship. Harry teaches Jerry the English equivalent of its number code. Jerry initially struggles with the concept, but Harry believes that it’s playing with them. Harry is proven correct when Jerry switches to English. Jerry asks them if they’re made in Mexico or in the US. Harry indicates in the US. Jerry asks for the person in control. Harry names Barnes and asks where Jerry is from. Jerry gives vague responses, saying it began at awareness and made a journey. Barnes pushes Harry to ask about its weapons, but Harry says it won’t understand. They argue. Jerry asks if they traveled far, and Harry asks it to wait a moment. Jerry asks that they not stop speaking, but Ted convinces it to wait. Norman points out that it mentioned being happy and they should take that into account as they continue interacting with it. Ted scoffs. Ted and Norman argue, and Norman feels as though Ted is disregarding his expertise. Barnes yells at them to stop. Jerry begins talking on the screen again, responding to what is happening in the room without input from Harry or Ted.

The team believes that Jerry is reading their minds. However, Norman attempts to send thoughts to Jerry, and it doesn’t respond. Ted asks Jerry to leave them to their discussion, but Jerry insists on continuing to speak to them. Norman uses charm and compliments to soothe Jerry’s ego before explaining that they would like to speak among themselves before continuing a conversation with Jerry. Jerry willingly ends the conversation. Norman explains that emotion and intellect aren’t related, so intellectual understanding is useless when dealing with emotion.

The group breaks up. Norman remains in the communications room with Tina and Beth. Tina is activating the external perimeter sensor array (EPSA) under orders from Barnes. They hear the tapping that Norman and Beth heard earlier and see a human form outside the portal. Beth and Norman go outside to collect the body. It’s Rose. They study her body, which appears to have been chewed on by something. Every bone in her body is broken. As they study her, they discover some odd eggs floating in the water. Barnes orders them back to the habitat because the perimeter sensors are going off.

Barnes yells at Beth and Norman for going into the water, telling them that this is a military operation, and they should follow his orders. Ted argues with him, insisting Barnes admit that it has always been a military operation to procure weapons from the craft. Harry interrupts, asking why Rose was outside the habitat. Tina explains that Rose was visiting the sub, placing new tapes inside, and resetting the 12-hour timer. Harry asks about the perimeter alarm. Barnes admits that they had a strange reading, indicating something outside the habitat that was too large to set off the perimeter alarms, so he had Tina adjust them. Tina tells them that whatever the creature is, it’s larger than the habitat.

While Beth is in the lab investigating the eggs, alarms begin going off again. Chaos ensues as Barnes and the other Navy personnel work to shut off the alarms and fix an unknown equipment failure. When the alarms finally stop, Barnes explains that the enormous creature they detected earlier was back but they can’t see it because all the portals are covered by eggs. They hear sounds like something hitting the habitat. Tina uses sonar to track the creature. They can see something about 40 feet long on the radar but can’t identify it. On the screen, the message “I am here” flashes. Then something attacks DH-8, banging against the habitat repeatedly until it begins to leak. Barnes goes outside with Tina. The team listens as they attempt to identify and neutralize the creature. However, Tina is injured, and Barnes disappears seconds before the creature resumes its attack.

Everyone is bruised and battered. Teeny goes around making repairs but warns they can’t survive another attack. Norman visits Tina, who is recovering from injuries to her legs. She describes the creature as long and flat, like a leaf. Norman goes to Beth’s lab, where she’s rewatching the video of the sphere’s door opening for the first time. Beth tells Norman that she thinks the creature that attacked them is a giant squid based on how Tina smelled when they pulled her from the water. She explains that the leaf-like structure Tina describes could be the manus at the end of the squid’s tentacle. She says a squid can easily be killed with an explosive charge aimed at the eye.

Norman goes to the communications room to talk to Jerry, but Jerry doesn’t answer. A sailor Norman has never seen enters the room. Norman thinks he’s from the surface ships and is part of a team sent to evacuate them. However, although the interaction appears on the videos, no one but Norman and Harry saw the man. They hypothesize that he’s an illusion created by the sphere. They debate whether Jerry is hostile. Teeny points out that regardless of whether he is, another attack will damage the habitat and the life support system beyond survivability. She explains she had to adjust the pressure inside the habitat in order to stop the leaks and that they can create a slight electrical charge on the surface of the habitat to try to scare any creatures away. She adds that they haven’t used the electrical charge sooner because it sometimes causes fires.

A message on the computer monitor indicates that Jerry is coming. They turn off all the lights and wait. Soon they see a green light glowing in the distance. Beth identifies it as a squid. Ted calls out to it, but everything is turned off, so they don’t think it can hear. However, as it nears the habitat, Ted calls again, and it hesitates. Ted communicates with the squid through a series of blinks. He then grabs a flashlight and communicates through flashes of light. He leads the squid to a hatch in B Cyl. The squid sticks a tentacle into the habitat through the hatch. Teeny orders everyone back. Ted attempts to close the hatch, but the squid grabs him and tosses him around the room, killing him. The others leave the area and turn on the electrical grid. The squid inks and leaves. A fire starts in E Cyl. They rush to put it out as Teeny announces a fire in D Cyl. Something explodes in E Cyl, knocking Tina off her feet. Norman loses sight of her and rushes toward D Cyl. In D Cyl, he accidentally touches exposed wiring and loses consciousness.

Norman wakes up, disoriented, in D Cyl. Beth tells him that he and Harry both were mildly electrocuted. Tina and Teeny are missing. E Cyl has been sealed off. Norman goes to check on Harry, who is okay but exhausted. While Harry sleeps, Norman finds Ted’s notebook and is saddened by the picture of a corvette, a gift from Ted’s new wife, tucked inside. Norman finds Beth in communications. She tells him that everything is up and working, but because they had to seal off E Cyl, they no longer have access to food. She reminds him that someone must go to the sub in three hours to reset the timer. Norman suggests that they use the sub to ascend to the surface, but she says the sub is unstable on the surface and will be torn apart if the storm is still raging. She also reminds him that they must decompress for several days and can’t do so if the support ships aren’t there.

Norman attempts to communicate with Jerry but receives no response. Beth says she tried too but had no luck. She gives him printouts of their earlier conversations with Jerry. She expresses a desire to return to the spacecraft because she thinks they can learn more. They both realize that they’re only trying to keep themselves occupied. Beth turns her attention to the recording of the first time the door to the sphere opened.

Norman decides to go to the sub while Beth watches the monitors for any sign of the squid. Norman slowly makes his way to DH-7 (the divers’ habitat) and the sub moored behind it. When he enters the sub, interference cuts off communications with Beth. He looks around and finds the timer reset button. He then calls up the general menu on the computer and discovers that it has a help program that will walk them through deploying the sub to the surface. This reassures Norman that they can ascend if necessary. Norman drops out of the sub and discovers that Harry is frantically attempting to contact him. Norman sees the green glow of the squid. He enters DH-7. He climbs inside the hatch, followed by two of the squid’s tentacles. He can’t close the hatch, so he climbs higher inside the habitat, searching for a weapon. The tentacles grab him and swing him around, but he escapes. He finds spear guns but doesn’t know how to use them. Eventually, he manages to fire one into the squid’s manus, and the squid retreats.

Norman takes five of the spear guns and returns to DH-8. Harry is there alone, explaining that he woke to find Beth gone. Beth calls them over the communications channel, saying she found another compartment in the spacecraft. Norman is angry that she left him without support, but Beth insists that Harry volunteered to watch over him. Harry denies this.

Norman and Harry meet Beth in the crew’s quarters, where they share nutrition bars and soda. Beth notes that the craft has a fully stocked refrigerator, which wouldn’t make sense if it took off without a crew. She then leads them down a tunnel, where they find various glass tubes. One tube holds the body of a woman. Beth hypothesizes that the crew died going through the black hole and the craft picked up the sphere later. Harry says the woman looks like Beth, suggesting she might be a future relative of hers. He asks what Beth thinks happened, and she says the crew messed up and left this woman to pilot the craft home. Beth and Harry argue over female stereotypes. Norman leaves the room, returning to the galley to eat more nutrition bars. Harry and Beth come to apologize.

They walk back to DH-8. On the way, they all note the increase in marine life. Norman notices a sea snake, and Beth notes that many are poisonous and that the most poisonous animals tend to be marine animals because ocean life has existed far longer than life on land.

Beth expresses concern over Harry’s state of mind because he denied their conversation regarding Harry taking over observation while Norman was at the sub. Norman suggests that they’re all under strain, and Beth becomes annoyed, feeling as though Norman is suggesting that she’s the one who misremembers the situation. Harry joins Norman in the communications room just as Jerry begins to speak to them over the computer system. Jerry says he dislikes Barnes because he wasn’t friendly and indicates that he didn’t like the others who died. Norman asks about the squid, and Jerry calls it a manifestation. Jerry says he likes to manifest things, but the squid was difficult due to its size. Jerry says he likes Harry and Norman’s manifestations too. Norman doesn’t initially understand but believes Jerry means emotions. Jerry then requests that they bring back those who have died. Norman and Harry try to explain that they can’t, but Jerry doesn’t understand and becomes upset. Finally, he stops talking.

Later, while Beth and Harry sleep, Norman returns to the communications room, struggling with some of the things Jerry said during their conversations. He finds it odd that Jerry speaks robotically most of the time but then uses phrases like, “Hey man get off my back” (353). Norman wonders whether Jerry picked up these phrases from Harry or from television shows. However, he believes that if Jerry learned to communicate through observation, he wouldn’t sound so robotic most of the time. He also wonders about Jerry’s behavior, how he seems playful yet killed Ted while playing with him, and why Jerry manifested a giant squid. He deciphers the code the same way Harry did. However, when Norman deciphers the code, the name given isn’t Jerry. It’s Harry.