Alex Gore - The Cube

She remembered what that sailor had written.

They did not stop to think that a young life was lost. Where? What happened to him? What about the rest of the crew? Where had they vanished. Did they suffer a lot while dying? Nobody knew and maybe nobody cared about people and their life.

She had heard about incredible things happening to live matter on the boundary with the impossible. Why, just a month ago she saw a movie, ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’. It was about a U.S. Navy destroyer escort being rendered invisible by the military so it cannot be detected by Japanese radars. Nobody knew where it had been and through what deformations of time and space it passed, but after people from the team go on board they see something horrible.

Some of the sailors had totally lost their minds and behaved irrationally, others were found just dead on the deck, while another group were embedded in the metal structure of the ship. It was as if their atoms had passed through the molecules of steel, turning them into martyrs of matter. Surely, the reports about those events were top-secret. The last thing military staff cared about was the suffering of those young innocent men who had to pass through hell.

She hated everything military and all people in uniforms! All of them were dumb parrots who could not think independently and were only able to repeat commands and rules. Greedy bastards, deprived of human feelings and common sense.

She shook her head to chase away the depressing thoughts and inhaled deeply the cool freshness of the night desert sea. Her temples were pulsating with pain. She knew herself, that was the effect of tension and sleeplessness with her.

She did not resist the strong desert wind, that was tousling her long black hair and was pulling her white shirt as a sail in the sea. How she longed to surrender to it as a virgin in her first night and that it would take her far away… She only wished not to remember anything about this place and be far away from it… Way beyond the horizon, far from this cursed spot…

She felt like having a drink. She disliked alcohol and rarely touched it, but now she really needed a drink.

“Sir, you must come at once, Sir!”

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Norman entered the control room with energetic pace and crisp voice, as if he had not been devoid of sleep for the last five days.

“It’s coming right at us, Sir!”

“How bad is it? Degree?”

“Very strong, ninth degree and going up… Its eye will pass about thirty miles away from the base, Sir…”

“What did the Headquarters say?”

“The order is for immediate and full evacuation Sir, but in view of the latest events and the report we sent to them the recommendations are not very clear…”

“What do you mean, not very clear? What recommendations? We follow orders and act according to statute, we don’t like recommendations.” Norman was really amazed.

“Well, yes… We have not received such orders till now. It says evacuation is a must, but ‘in view of the circumstances and of the fact that the information in the enemy submarine is of vital importance for the national security, we recommend your staying in position until further orders’…”

“In other words, ‘you have to get the fuck out of there, because the storm will kill you, but we need the submarine, therefore don’t you dare move your goddamn asses from the fucking desert!’ Is that it?”

“More or less, Sir…”

“Lieutenant, we stay despite the danger. Prepare the people and the base for meeting the hurricane.” The canteen, Day 5, 6:17 a.m.

“All right, it’s fairly simple. How can you not grasp it?!”

Marcela and Hans were sitting all alone in the canteen, she had a full glass of vodka in front of her and this time was drinking for real. There was also a glass of orange juice but she had not touched it. Hans was sipping his juice with unidentified expiry date directly from the box.

He was too excited to sleep and when she came in for a drink, she found him bent over a piece of paper, biting a pencil and looking at the ceiling deep in thought.

Some odd bond of friendship was created between the two of them, which was felt also by the others in he group. They too saw that Hans and Marcela are of the same blood type and speak the same language.

“Sorry, dear, it’s more abstract than I can absorb.”

“Right, we’ll start again from the beginning, okay?” Hans smiled at her and went on. He was obviously enjoying being able to instruct such a smart and beautiful lady. “1+1 makes what?”

“2 of course”, Marcela replied timidly.

“Hmmm… No, wrong. What about 2+2?”

“Obviously 4”, she answered more confident this time. “Have you ever heard of the Theory of Subjective Numbers?”

“No.”

“There is one queer professor, super eccentric, slightly mad, but exceptionally innovative with his statements. Professor McDowell. Several years ago he blew up the mathematic world. It’s simple, there is only one condition…”

Marcela raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

“That he would be believed. Half of the world renowned mathematicians pronounced anathema against him, the other half declared him ‘the new Einstein’. It was fun.” Hans sounded exhilarated.

“Tell me how 1+1 is not 2.”

“Well, imagine you have two apples. They are not exactly the same, are they? They differ in color, ripeness, taste, shape and especially in weight. Right?”

“Yes, this is correct.”

“If you cut these apples precisely through the middle, exchange the halves and put them together, will you have two apples that are exactly the same?”

“Of course not”, Marcela answered, trying to imagine it. “Of course not, because the two apples and their halves correspondingly are not the same.”

“So, if we have two pears in a basket and add them to two other pears in another basket, we won’t get the equivalent of 2+2=4 equal pears, right?” Hans smiled again.

“Yes, that’s right”, she admitted, “but it does not correspond somehow with the mathematics I studied.”

“Mathematics is an idealized and correspondingly untrue reflection love, dear…” Hans was beaming. “It is a beautiful but just as much incorrect abstraction of reality…”

“Crazy stuff. I still cannot comprehend it…”

“The same goes for distances. For example, do you know how much the difference of the distances along the figure axis is between 0 and 1 and between 1 and 2?”

“Err… the distances are the same. They are both… 1…”

“No, I absolutely disagree. The distance between 0 and 1 is much greater, than between 1 and 2… accordingly that between 3 and 4 is less than that between 1 and 2, but bigger than that between 4 and 5. And so on…”

“That cannot possibly be correct”, Marcela argued.

“As I told you, it is very easy to be understood… Imagine you are poor and sick and you have no money for bread. If you have 0 dollars, you cannot buy food and will soon die. Right?”

“Well, I suppose so…”

“While if you have 1 dollar, you’ll still be alive.”

“Yeah, but no for long with food for 1 dollar.”

“True, but the difference between being alive or dead is quite substantial, as I’m sure you will agree. And it is present.”

“You convinced me” she said with a note of irony in her voice.

“It is the same with bigger numbers: the difference between having $1000 and $1 000 000 is great, but between 100 billion and 200 billion it is insignificant.” Hans took a pencil and paper and started writing. (0-1)>(1-2)>(2-3)>(3-4)…….(1million-10million)>>(10million-10 billion)>>>(10billion-100billion) etc.