Alex Gore - The Cube

“I definitely discovered what went on with the submarine and how it appeared amidst nothingness.”

“We are listening to you”. Norman was just entering the room, then he released the top button of his jacket and sat comfortably on a chair.

Hans stood in front of them, as if giving a lecture, took a marker and started drawing on the board.

“Look, the ship was constructed in 2020, wasn’t it?”

“Hopefully, in 2019”, Sergey corrected timidly.

“Let’s assume it was made in 2020. The ship was not designed for missile attacks against the USA, since it is not your ordinary submarine, but has a different mission. The core is a hypertemporal engine that bends the space-time continuum, creating an artificial small black hole, through which the submarine sneaked like through a needle’s eye in another universe. That’s it, yes?” Hans winked at Sergey.

Everybody was listening to him intently, even Alan did not argue.

“What have you got to say about this, Ivanov?” Norman turned to both Russians, who were sitting aside from the group. He had talked to them privately and had received their secret revealing information. Of course, he had sent an email to Washington on the safe line right away. His report was most probably already in the Oval office.

Sergey sighed, looked at Ivanov, then said:

“Colleagues, I must inform you about the real mission of that ship. Or rather the task we suppose it would be assigned when it is built after two years.”

“I knew there was something fishy and that they hide it from us.” – Alan slumped deeper in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest and prepared to hear the whole story and the truth. At last , he told himself.

“There is a top-secret team, that has worked at the Russian Centre for Nuclear Physics for ten years, dealing mostly with temporal chains and achieving singularity in the conditions of the earth surface. The other vein of research is directed towards studying the behavior of biological systems in the conditions of extreme pressures and parameters, close to singularity.”

“Whoa, Seriozha, please, pal, let’s talk in plain good English.” Michael was absolutely lost about the babbling of the Russian.

“Simply put, our team is on the verge of crucial discovery, that will very soon alter the ideas of mankind about space travel. I mean, even to the most distant stars in galaxies at the end of the visible Universe. And we will be able to conquer not only space, but time as well. The team, led by Professor Andrey Michailovich, in which I myself am honored to take part, found a way to pass living organisms through time and space, artificially creating miniature black holes. The passage of matter and, correspondingly, information, was successfully executed on multiple occasions.”

“Can I ask, how does this happen?” Alan just could not believe it.

“I cannot tell you all the details about the project itself, but I’ll just explain that upon generating a great quantity of energy, focused on minimum space like a cone in one point, a tunnel is created, through which we managed to pass multicellular organisms three years ago. Then, a year ago, we successfully used vertebrates, and I suppose, a chimpanzee next month would have given us the final assurance that we move in the right direction.”

“Wait, you mean you haven’t yet created this method of travelling through time?” Michael interrupted him.

“Yes, actually the Eye of the ship, or as we used to call it, the Core, is not completed yet, but as you could see yourselves on board of the submarine, we have obviously managed…”

“And you have not only completed it, but it worked.”

“Successfully, that’s right!” Sergey was obviously very proud of their discovery which formally had not happened yet.

“I would not choose exactly the word ‘successfully’. It was hardly that for the seamen on board.” Marcela did not particularly share the enthusiasm of the young scientist.

“One way or another, the ship had been… or rather will be completed successfully and has realized the trans-temporal dislocation.”

“Who knows where you might have sent it and what it has brought back with itself.” Alan also found it hard to regard a dead ship in the middle of the desert as ‘success’.

“I have no idea where they sent it in two years’ time and where it was, but I can tell you for sure, that this is the engine that we work on at the moment. Otherwise we don’t have a clue what happened to the crew or even who was in that crew.”

“Let’s hear what Hans has to say, he said he knew…” Norman waved to the German to continue.

“A very interesting theory, no doubt”, Alan teased again.

“Thank you for your keenness, Alan”, the Professor nodded ironically. “The last message from the submarine was ‘1986’, right? This is really a year, but if a ship has passed through space and time, must it confine to some standard dimensions? If we write this year in a two-dimensional plain” – Hans took from the table a blank sheet of paper and wrote with big figures ‘1986’ – “What can you see, my dear fellows?”

“I can see the year in which Lady Gaga was born”, Michael laughed.

“Wrong answer, dear.” Hans was talking slowly, methodically and confidently, the way he conducted lectures before his students. “You can see the year the submarine was sent to and from which it took this square, ideally smooth thing…” Hans was as if giving a theatrical performance and was dying to increase the tension in his audience.

“Come on, Professor, this can’t be”, Marcela couldn’t help interfering. “Do you tell us it was built in 2020 and travelled back to 1986?”

“2019, hopefully” Sergey murmured barely distinctively under his nose.

“Not at all.” Hans turned the sheet of paper upside down and all of them goggled their eyes. “I tell you it went much further back in the past. To 9861.”

Turned upside down the sheet really showed the year 9861.

“Amazing! How did you guess it, dude?” Michael was sincerely fascinated with the plump scientist.

“How is it ‘back’?”, Alan wondered. “It says 9861, doesn’t it?”

“I remembered that when you travel in time, ‘up’ and ‘down’ do not make much sense, don’t you think? And to you, Alan, I will just remind that there was a dash before the year on the screen.” This time the Professor turned directly at Alan. “At least I thought it was a dash. Now I know it stood for ‘minus’. This is a year before Christ, according to the Gregorian Calendar. The ship traveled to 9861 B. C.”

“Okay, but that does not change things too much, and besides, the question remains: what the fuck did they do so far back in time and what did they find?” Alan was not ready to step back yet.

“The ship was sent 11 881 years back in time with an experimental mission”, Hans continued. “The purpose was to check the effectiveness of the Core, the exactness of calculations and the influence of singularity on biological units…”

“That is, to find out if people from the crew will survive” Marcela said, remembering the black notebook.

“The time is not randomly picked, is it?” Michael asked.

“That’s right, Mike, can you please stand for me in my attempts for collective encephalization?”

“About ten thousand years before Christ we date the great flood, the Bible one as some call it. As you can guess, it is a damn good period for any kind of water and sub-water vessels.”

“Can I ask you how exactly you ‘date’ this flood of yours?”, asked Alan, never ready to surrender.

“In many ways, one of which is the carbon analysis of different fossils of sea animals on the earth surface. Or, let’s say, according to the erosion of the stones of the Egyptian Sphynx. Research points out that the erosion on the pyramids and on the Sphynx itself cannot be caused by the wind and the climatic conditions in the desert, but it is the result of sea corrosion. Because the entire desert, in which we are at the moment, was under water about 12-15 thousand years ago.” While he was talking, Michael was looking at Alan, who only averted his head and did not continue picking up on everyone.