Alex Gore - The Cube

“It is the same, of course, to the left of zero, with the negative numbers. The bigger the suffering is, the less it is distinguishable from the neighboring, near in measure.”

“Say again?”

“Imagine, like we said, that you are poor and sick at the point of zero. But the temperature outside is also zero and your teeth clatter with the cold. Not only that, but someone steals your trousers and you fall down to minus one on the number axis.”

“It sucks… Hungry and with no pants”, Marcela shook her head.

“It sucks, yes, but after some time your shirt is stolen too and you are sent to minus two, right?

“You are walking stark naked in the street, I get it…”

“Not until someone steals your underwear for good measure.”

“Come on, this is too much. There’s no way someone could take off the panties off your ass, Hans”, she laughed.

“We are talking just hypothetically, Marcela. Tell me, please, there is no big difference in being naked or half naked, is there? Even smaller the difference is between being naked and stark naked. In both cases you’ll die of freezing.”

“Yeah, I think so… still I don’t get it…”

“Okay, then, I’ll give you the same example as with positive numbers. If you are without a buck, it’s too bad, you are at zero level. On the other side, this is much better than beside not having anything you also owe one dollar that you borrowed from the bank the previous day to buy bread.”

“Well, that is correct…”

“But if you have two dollars and you owe two more is much worse than if you have 2 billion and you owe the bank another 2 billion, don’t you agree?” He smiled at her.

“Yes, Hans, I give up, you are right.”

“Sure, there were many mathematicians who squarely refuted Professor McDowell, because with the methods of pure mathematics the distance between 1 and 2 is exactly the same as between 2 and 3. Both are infinity.”

“Well here you lost me as a listener. Hans, you are crazy!”

“Let me write it to you.” He took again the pencil in his hand. “How many numbers can you write between 0 and +∞?”

“An infinite number.” This time she was sure.

“Correct. And how many between 0 and 1?”

“I suppose, a lot less” she mumbled not so sure any more.

“Wrong! You can also write an infinite quantity of numbers, although you wouldn’t know where to begin… Because if you start from 0.0001, you can insert between it and the zero 0.00001, and after it 0.000001 and so on till infinite number of values between whichever two numbers on the axis, no matter how close they are to each other…”

“Err… if you put it like that… when I think of it… I guess, you are right.”

“That is so, because between any two numbers there is always an infinite quantity of other numbers. And if the distance between 0 and 1 is infinite, it is equal to the distance between 1 and 2, which is also infinite, because infinities cannot be compared… they are equal. Exactly in the same way as zeroes are nothing and also cannot be compared. But the difference between being alive or dead is unimaginably more significant than the difference between being a millionaire or a billionaire… i.e. the infinity between 1 and 2 is still bigger than the infinity between 2 and 3 and so on. As you can see infinity is everywhere – in the small and in the big both.”

She sighed.

“Hans, you are right as always but I got a bit exhausted of all those figures…” Marcela was declaring retreat.

“As I said this “Theory of subjective numbers” is a lovely untruth, which, however, is a fine description of the beauty of mathematics…” The triumph of Hans was obvious.

“Right now, I personally would prefer a hot bath and a glass of Merlot… Actually, Hans, why is this theory so important and why are you telling me about it?”

“I remembered about it a short time ago, while I was working on the matter of music and the ship. It helped me understand the truth about the music. ”Hans sipped his coffee and glanced knowingly at her above the rim of the cup. “It also makes you realize that nothing here is what it seems to be.”

Ivanov pressed the red receiver on his phone.

The instructions were clear.

Nothing had to be left in the hands of the enemy. The Americans should not in any circumstances get hold of the Cube as a weapon, nor the submarine itself. It kept too many and too vital secrets or him to take a risk with hesitation and indulgence. He was obliged to take the secret weapon, only for his country to avail of, or to destroy everything.

Everything.

Even if it cost them the loss of the ship. Even if it cost him his own life. The Cube was a priority but if he could not take it only for the Russian side to keep it, destruction would follow.

He completely agreed. Not that his opinion mattered, because even if he did not approve of the orders from above, he would never question their execution.

He looked at the bag, full of explosives.

“Be careful with that!”

The Lieutenant was giving instructions to the four soldiers who carried an enormous wooden crate.

At last they reached the spot and placed it carefully on the sand at a distance of a yard from the corpse of the submarine. It was really heavy, made of thick wooden beams, reinforced with steel lining. It was designed for special loads.

“Where do we cut, Sir?”, the Sergeant asked and opened the tool box. He took out of it the helmet and the safety goggles.

He also took out the angle grinder and switched it on. He then pressed it to the metal jacket of the ship. The molten metal started throwing out an avalanche of glittering shavings.

The shining in the sky was becoming with every passing hour less greenish and more intensely dark red.

The Lieutenant was going to the bathroom.

He had a lot of cold tea and six cups of coffee during the night. He was alone on duty and there was nobody left to take over his shift. He had to be at his post, but nobody would know that he was absent from the control room for just two minutes in order to relieve himself. He had read in a magazine once that if you do not pee regularly and restrain yourself, it would be detrimental for your prostate and you might not be able to have children. Or you would not put it up any more… something of the sort. Whatever, he stood up from his chair and went out.

He was walking along the corridor back to the control room, whistling merrily, when he noticed Alan to sneak out of the control room and close the door quietly.

What the fuck?! , he thought.

“Alan! Hey, Alan, what are you doing here? What’s going on?”, the Lieutenant shouted at him while approaching.

The man just turned back, looked at him sharply with bloodred pupils, then started running along the passage to the front door.

“Hey, Alan, what’s got into you, man?” He started going after him, but Alan disappeared around the corner as a shadow. The Lieutenant did not usually pay much attention to people’s eyes but was pretty sure that Alan’s eyes were brown.

She was checking the samples from the ship for the hundredth time maybe.

The results were always the same.

At the beginning she thought that she had made a mistake or that the samples were not fresh enough, but now she knew for sure: this here was presence of an unknown life form!