Local media
reported that when the presidents of the US and Egypt and the Saudi monarch caressed the pulsing sphere, it “officially activated” the Saudis’ new Global Centre for Combating Extremist Ideology “and launched a splashy welcome video”.
The internet had other ideas, of course, and images of the bizarre ceremony paired with scenes from The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars
spread rapidly online, to general if predictably short-lived hilarity.
Hubbard reveals that after Trump went home, “an unusual accessory showed up in a hallway at the US embassy in Riyadh: one orb, slightly used”.
The Saudis, he writes, had noticed US visitors to their Centre gleefully taking pictures with the orb, so they decided to give it to their American guests.
Alas, the orb’s fate matched that of
many who come into contact with Trump: after shining brightly for a brief but brilliant moment, it was consigned to the chilliest outer darkness.
“It sat in a hallway for a number of days, where diplomats passing by would pose for photos,” Hubbard writes. But then “someone apparently worried that the photos would make their way online and cause a scandal, so the orb was hidden away in embassy storage”.
Hubbard does not report that the orb now lies, like the
Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones movie, in a forgotten crate deep in some vast government warehouse, glowing with a faint but ominous pulse.
The Guardian prefers to believe that it does.