A mysterious object lands in Rogers Park and has residents wondering: What is it?

The orb just appeared one day. That’s what everyone says. They were coming home from work one night, they made that sharp turn you make from Sheridan Road onto Eastlake Terrace. Boom, there it was: a large silver sphere, at the edge of the park, overlooking Lake Michigan. To be precise, it sat at the north end of the park, which is the northernmost park in Chicago, which also happens to be the northernmost point in the city. Surely, that location couldn’t be a coincidence? What did the orb know that the rest of us didn’t? Why was it there? Who was its leader? “It was weird,” said Harrison Cain, who lives in a building next to the orb. “Very strange. I left for an hour and a half. When I came back, it was there. I wish I knew what it was.” The orb did not answer. The orb did not hum or vibrate or vanish. The orb sat still for weeks, surrounded by police tape, with no sign to announce its origin, no marker to declare its purpose. If you approached it at night, you saw in its polished reflection the swoosh of expensive cars racing across the city line to Evanston, a few feet away. You saw the twinkling curls of early Christmas lights being turned on, and the steady cobalt horizon of the lake, dark and silent. If this were a science fiction movie, the sudden appearance of a 700-pound silver ball in a public park would be cause for a military mobilization, a rash of mysterious headaches and Forest Whitaker.