Sphere

A US Navy operation discovers a massive spacecraft buried in coral on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. A specialist team is assembled and lowered to a deep-sea habitat near the wreck. Psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman is summoned because, decades ago, he wrote a government paper on first-contact protocols — and recommended the very colleagues now joining him. Beth Halperin (biochemist), Harry Adams (mathematician), and Ted Fielding (astrophysicist) round out the scientific team, with Captain Harold Barnes commanding the Navy crew.

Inside the wreck they discover a startling truth: the spacecraft is American, from approximately fifty years in the future. It traveled back in time after passing through a black hole. Whatever its mission was, the crew is gone, and a logbook records an event called "the unknown entry event." In the cargo bay sits an enormous, perfect sphere — gleaming, alive-seeming, and clearly not human-made. Harry Adams enters the sphere and emerges seemingly unchanged, but quietly altered.

A massive ocean storm seals the team in. Surface support cannot reach them. Strange things begin to happen in the habitat. Jellyfish swarm in deadly numbers. A giant squid attacks. Sea snakes fill the water lock. People begin to die — Navy crew, then Barnes himself.

The survivors realize the sphere has given anyone who enters it the power to manifest their thoughts into reality. Subconscious fears are spilling out into the world around them. The horror is being generated by them.

Suspicion turns inward. Each survivor begins to suspect the others. Ted dies. Eventually all three remaining — Norman, Beth, and Harry — admit they have entered the sphere. They have all had the power. The cascading horrors have been their own minds destroying each other.

Returned to the surface and recovering, the three confront the implications: humanity is not ready for power like this. They use the sphere's gift one last time, willing themselves to forget the entire experience and renouncing the ability. The choice is unanimous. The sphere lifts out of the ocean and disappears into the sky.

They are debriefed by the military, claiming to remember nothing of significance. The world goes on. Whatever the sphere was, it is gone — and so is the story it almost let them tell.