The One Impulse Buy

She couldn’t have known. How could she? She was just a normal woman, spending her weekend doing normal things. Relaxing after a stressful week of working overtime, watching movies, and hanging out with all three friends of hers. She was just looking through Amazon for some cheap impulse buying, a guilty pleasure of hers, when a particularly stunning marble caught her eye. It didn’t cost much, and was extremely beautiful, with an almost unearthly glow to it. The perfect deal. So she bought it.

Two days later, there was a debate on the television. Earth had been surrounded by oddly shaped ships, which contained technology definitely not of earth. Scientists had received multiple messages, some threatening, some not, but all of them with the same message.

"Return that which is ours," they said, "and you shall live. If not, then be prepared for war."

Terrifying, yes, but the humans had no idea what it was they had to return. And neither did she. 

Two weeks, the humans spent, tracking down everything they could think of that remotely resembled something alien. They failed. It is said, isn’t it, that sometimes the solution to the most bizarre is often something so incredibly mundane it escapes your notice? The solution to this inevitable war lay in the shape of a marble on the mantelpiece in her living room. Pity she didn’t know. And now, her planet was at war against half the universe. Just because she thought that marble looked nice.

                         ~The Trickster