http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/night-fire-trails/

Phil had been at it for three weeks. Radio waves, microwaves, lasers, hair dryers and plastic toy water guns. He’d blasted the little circle in the air with as many apparatuses as he could gather. The results were the same every time. The circle swallowed the wave or the laser or the hot air, did something unseen, and shot it out in a beautiful blast of sparks.

It made no sense. It couldn’t possibly exist.

The scientific community was, of course, in uproar. A thousand points were all being made, each louder than the last, about how & why the tests had turned up no answers. Phil tended to ignore most of it. Scientists tended to go in this direction whenever something curious was discovered. They preached haste, demanding to know as soon as possible what was going on.

That missed the point, Phil thought. This was an incredible mystery. In three months, a dozen of these circles of bent air had been discovered across the globe. A dozen rings of fire (Phil knew it was a nickname too on the nose, but he couldn’t help enjoying it) in a dozen countries. No one knew what caused them or how they transformed everything that crossed their Event Circumference into a shower of sparks. Also, no one could fathom the purpose of that transformation.

And in that, Phil thought, was the real truth of the matter. Scientists the world over demanded an answer, as soon as humanly possible, because they feared what they did not understand. They had been raised, schooled, nearly brainwashed into believing that science was, to every question ever asked by man, the answer. When science didn’t have the answer, it became imperative to shout at the top of their lungs, “Science doesn’t have the answer YET!!!!”

Maybe it would, one day. Maybe, over the next three weeks, Phil would throw something across the Event Circumference and it would spit out a shower of woodchips, or of confetti, or a hundred baby bunnies with flopping ears and roaring appetites. He had no idea. It was a mystery.

And he, seemingly alone in the entire world of science, found that thrilling. He didn’t fear the unknown, didn’t worry that science might lose its luster if it couldn’t answer every question right away. He wasn’t particularly religious, but then again he wasn’t particularly scientific either (at least in comparison to his peers). He liked the idea of something being unknown, of something staunchly defying explanation. The other scientists saw fear in those rings of fire, but not Phil. He saw romance, and possibility, and the chance to experience something new.

He turned on the fat, black flashlight and aimed the beam at the Ring of Fire. Like everything, the light was swallowed, invisibly churned, and came out in a roar of sparks, the biggest display yet.

If the others couldn’t experience the beauty in the unknown, especially when it was so tangibly displayed, Phil wasn’t sure there was much hope for them anyway. He smiled, set down the flashlight and went back into the box of goodies.

He had a few more things to try tonight. Maybe one would reveal something new. And maybe not. But he’d be rewarded, in some fashion, either way.