You pull out your photographic film and get to work making something useful out of it. You're not quite sure what makes the film so extraordinarily flammable, but after finding a lighter in a drawer next to a pack of cigarettes, you discover it burns eagerly, the coloured flame chewing up the blackened paper strips greedily. However, the burning is far from clean, with the eager flame burping out rather unpleasant black, toxic-smelling fumes.

Perhaps not a great source of flammability for the Gretchinator, then. And even if there was a volatile chemical within the film suitable for flaming weaponry, you wouldn't be the one to extract it. Likely some sort of chemical apparatus would be needed, similar to the kind Al-Dimashqi and Pascale were working with in The Well. You wonder if other Chosen may have access to these tools, or possess the right skills to help you. Yet then again, even if they did, would they be willing to create deadly alchemical concoctions to fuel the Gretchinator? You can imagine not many other Chosen would see the potential glory of the Gretchinator as a weapon of mass destruction, particularly not in a Library which (despite occasionally being ravaged by natural disasters) seems to be otherwise pretty peaceful.

But you know best that peace is but a façade for the broiling anger that threatens to burst into wars. So long as there are people, there will always be fighting. Best to go in prepared for such inevitabilities.

Speaking of weapons built just in case, you turn to your Orbs, who are happily rolling each other around on your table into puddles of stale coffee. You don't have gunpowder, and photographic film doesn't seem to be a suitable alternative, but perhaps you have something even better…

Now you just have to figure out if they are willing to being set on fire.

You beckon a few of them towards you, of course excluding Mom Orb, your original orb-in-a-jar, from this testing phase.

Not because you're sentimental, of course.

With an orb in your hand and a thick glove on, you bring the lighter close to it and flick a flame to life. Rapidly, the flame coats the entire Orb. There is a shrill squeal as the Orb turns around in your hand, panicked. You can see that even though the Orb does take to the flame, it may not be enjoying it.

At this point you wonder if these creatures feel distress, or even pain. Does that matter?

You send the Orb up. It looks like a fireball from a fantasy story. Your heartbeat speeds up at the thrill of discovery. You fee like a wizard as you command the orb forward at speed. The Orb screeches and dutifully hurls itself into a set of empty metal filing cabinets you've prepared for this express purpose. The fireball clashes into its side and extinguishes, leaving a small dent and a black soot mark over the flash-melted metal.

With goggles and gloves on, you go over to investigate the damage. It would seem that fire-charge orbs, Fire Chorbs, if you will, are capable of doing some impact damage, but are mostly useful for setting larger objects on fire. An experimental success, you think.

You look for the Orb that you set on fire, moving the cabinet out of the way to see if it has stuck itself into a corner, as Orbs like to do.

Instead you find a whole huddle of Orbs, all gathered around a very small lump of coal-like material. Pulsing multicoloured light emanates from where the hardened, black, clay exterior is cracked.

“Hey! ARE YOU GUYS OK??” you yell at the hoard of orbs, a horb, if you will. Without faces, they turn up to look at you with the disposition of soldiers crowding around a dying comrade. “FUCCCCCCCCCK!” they all scream in unison. As you reach out. Some of the Orbs shield you from touching the orb coated in coal.

You are left to watch as the light beneath its hardened exterior pulses slower and slower, until it goes completely black. At this point, the other orbs allow you to pick it up and examine it. It looks like a dense, rough marble and smells faintly of coffee and sugar.

Two lines of thought go through your mind at the same time.

The first is the realisation that while setting orbs on fire works, you can only aim them through command rather than in your canister, which is arguably more precise. You also only get one shot per orb you have in your possession. Which is perfectly fine, because you can always breed more Orbs to use as ammo.

The second line of thought lies in the weight you feel in your palm, cold and hard and so clearly dead. Sure, through your experiments you've been vaguely aware that the Orbs were sentient: they had personalities, wants, likes and dislikes. But never has it been so real. You once had hundreds of Orbs, and yet the feeling that one is no longer with you, that is indeed a feeling, some feeling. Maybe.

You look down at your hand, the soot painting your palm black. You push it and it rolls back and forth for a while in the crevice of your palm before becoming still again.

In all the weapons you've ever created, have you ever witnessed the death and destruction they cause first hand?

Sure, you've seen test blasts in the Mexican desert, and sure, you knew that war and even potential wars result in lots of deaths on either side. But you wonder… have you ever actually seen your inventions kill anyone? Seen flesh charred and blackened by an enveloping fireball, like the charred and blackened lump in your palm? Seen the families gather round to mourn their dead, as these orbs gather around you now? Seen the fear in the eyes of someone knowing they would die, just as this orb had shrieked and cried while aflame?

You feel a foreign feeling in your stomach as you stare at the lifeless form in your palm. The familiar arguments ring through your mind, but for some reason they feel more hollow than you remember them. If you hadn't invented those bombs, someone else would have. The same number of people would have died, except maybe on your side.

But someone else didn't. You did.

And this orb wouldn't have.

The unfamiliar feeling in your stomach rolls and churns. You've never had these thoughts before. You know they're unhelpful, childish. You try to banish them from your mind. You had a job to do, and you did it exceptionally well. It is because of you that so many Americans can sleep safe at night. It is because of you that so many people sleep scared at night. It is because of you that so many die.

That's supposed to be an achievement?

You used to be a simple miner. You used to make things to improve people's lives.

What have you become?

“Fuck me… I've led you to your death, huh Orb?” you whisper to yourself as the Orbs gather about your shoulders and arms to mourn the little soot ball. They seem scared, but you see that their loyalty remains to you, even now. You have led them this far, provided them with coffee, let them breed, trained them, even played with them in your own way; you sense that they aren't going to go rogue anytime soon.

“Death!”

“Led!”

“Fuck me!”

You look down at them as they yell up at you, the Orb you sent to death still heavy in your palm.

They say a good general is one who knows how to send his troops out to face their fate.

Mom Orb squeaks, and you remember how you reacted when they almost drowned in The Well.

Since when have you become this weak?