Crystal Life?

I was given a £350 present.
It was a slightly elongated hemispere with a flat glass base. It was 'wearing' a green coat. It had two long flexible arms. I discovered that these were variable focus fibre optics. Each one had a different F number. It seemed to point at things it (or I) might find interesting.
When the arm was pointed at the ground, a hugely magnified picture of the ground would appear on the flat glass (or crystal) base. It looked like the hemisphere was made of solid glass or crystal, with an ability to magnify.
I pointed the arm at a guy called Zak, who was around half a mile distant and doing cartwheels. After a fuzzy few seconds he appeared on the base as if he was about 3 feet away.
Another guy (JF) looked at the hemisphere and said that it appeared alive and 'felt' sentient. I agreed.
But, just because we couldn't decide how it might possibly work was no reason to confer 'life' onto it.
We waited for it to walk off in the huff.