First contact. A banker fleeing from failure, a well-meaning carjacker and a runaway refugee girl meet on a lonely California beach and encounter a scientifically impossible object from who-knows-where. Panicked by the object and the military response to its arrival, they flee to follow their own lives. The banker gets lucky beyond belief. The carjacker gets inexplicable healing powers. The girl gets - pregnant? Trying to lead quiet private lives, they are manipulated by other more ambitious characters, loosely but inextricably bound by their shared experience. As the world struggles to come to terms with the significance of the silent alien object, conflicts grow from unresolved questions. Was the object hostile or benign? Are Aliens from space to be welcomed or resisted? Are hidden Aliens amongst us now? Was it a sign from God? These conflicts finally erupt into violence when the girl's child grows to be a prophet of doom, fount of a terrorist religion. Can the three avoid death at the hands of the opposing groups? Is Armageddon at hand? Where are the boundaries between science, religion, magic, madness and coincidence? Can life, private or public, ever return to normal after we know there is something else out there? EIGHTBALL explores the reactions of individuals and groups when faced with a glimpse of the incomprehensible yet undeniable existence of an alien race, or perhaps an unwelcome God.