The first thing he noticed, now that he had light to see by, was that the rock was dark gray, but covered in some kind of decorations in a few colors: pink, yellow, and green. Nick didn't think much of the color scheme. It looked like an avante-garde kid's doodles, frankly.

The next thing was the shape. At first he had thought it was just an irregular blob, but that wasn't true at all. There were smooth curves, and sharp angles, and those angles looked far too neat and orderly to be random. It was vaguely cylindrical, kind of like a big crystal with five sides and two ends, and looked as if the whole thing had gotten a little melted.

One end had a pattern of bumps that vaguely reminded Nick of a cheese grater or shoe soles designed for gripping. He noticed that they were hard like metal, but not very sharp; he didn't cut himself touching them. On the other hand, after holding it there for a few seconds, it was actually hard to pull his palm off of that end. Even after he got his hand free, it almost felt as if it were being pulled back like a magnet. His palm had that crushed-in-a-waffle-iron sort of look afterward, too.

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The other end was very smooth and slippery, a complete contrast. It had very little color, looking almost black but a bit reflective. Nick couldn't get anywhere staring at it, so he moved on to the sides.

The decorations didn't make any sense to him at first. He slowly turned the rock over, examining each of the five sides. Finally, he found a small, empty pink circle on the smallest side, and stared at it. It was less than half an inch across, but aside from that, it reminded him just a bit of an ON button, so he tried pressing it.

Nothing happened. He pressed and held it; he pushed hard on it and tapped it. He tried double-tapping it. No reaction.

Nick took a minute to turn the whole thing over in his hands and examine every side again. Maybe the circle wasn't a button. But he couldn't find anything else that suggested an approach. Nick scowled. He pressed the circle and said, “testing one two three? Testing? Can anyone hear me?”

He tapped the circle over and over. He tried swiping it sideways. He tried pressing lots of random other places. Nick was getting frustrated and bored. He started tapping out rhythms, like Shave And A Haircut, Calendar Girl, some classical piece he couldn't remember the name of, and We Will Rock You.

As soon as he pressed the circle short-short-long, the decorations changed.