The real meaning of the sphere had little to do with the occult.

The occasion was the opening of a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, based in Riyadh, and the orb was in fact a translucent globe, with the world’s waters represented in light gray and the continents in black. Its purpose appeared to be decorative.

The futuristic look of the darkened room may have helped to fire observers’ imaginations.

It was filled with computer terminals. At one end was a wall of monitors displaying feeds from news networks. Employees of the center were segregated by gender, as is common in Saudi Arabia.

The design felt to a pool reporter who was present like a hybrid of a game-show set and a television thriller’s idea of a counterterrorism operations control room.