Alex Gore - The Cube

“Where is Hans?” Norman dropped in the arm-chair, then touched the bandage with his good hand.

“He said he needed ‘to communicate with the Cube’. You know how he is, when he is obsessed with an idea.” Marcela put the last sticking plaster on Michael’s bandage and straightened up. “I’m leaving you, I need to see what this mucous nastiness is. Try to have some good rest.”

The Major did not hear her last words, having gone into a slumber from exhaustion.

Hans had long ago given up the efforts to repair the satellite connection and had spent the last couple of hours sitting with crossed legs on the floor by the Cube with a sheet of paper and a pencil in his hand. His head was filled with formulas, he was somewhere far away as if not noticing what was going on around him. He was so much engrossed in what he was doing, that he did not even wipe the sweat, streaming down his forehead. For several hours he had not touched his pipe and Marcela started to really worry about him.

“Hans, my friend, do you want a drop of water, aren’t you thirsty?”

He turned his head to her with a wandering glance and replied:

“No, March, I’m not thirsty. Have you heard of ‘Mandela’s effect’?”

“No, what is it?”

He seemed not to have heard her at all, raised his eyes at the ceiling and focused on a dot.

“Hans!”

The plump Professor dropped his bottomless glance at her and it soaked through her.

“Come on, say something!” Marcela was starting to panic.

Hans just sniffed a couple of times, deep in thought. He sat again on the floor and started scrawling indecipherable formulas on the paper.

“Hans, please, don’t be like that… You’re scaring me…” She was already calling Norman on the walkie-talkie. “Major, please, all of you come here. Hans has totally lost it.”

The plump scientist, who always found the correct answers to all of their questions was their most solid support in this place and now she was terrified of the thought that they may lose him. He was the only one who always kept presence of mind and calmly and soberly solved the most complex problems. What would they do if he was not himself?

Marcela left Hans to his difficult formulas and started testing the samples, taken from Michael’s and the Major’s wounds. She mixed the material from the retorts with the citrate and poured the liquid over a lot of test slides. Then she prepared the color indicators and switched on the microscope.

Once under the spell of the light in the lens and engulfed in the miniature world of cells and organelles, time as if stopped for her. If someone saw them with Hans at that moment, he would take them for mute sculptures, each one absorbed with a stony glance in his and hers parallel worlds. He was transfixed by the music of figures and logics, while she was married to the variety of the mini-world. An hour had passed without noticing.

The opening of the door took them out of their stupor. The

Major and Babyface came in the room, supporting Michael on both sides. The young man was very pale and could barely move his feet. Norman went to Hans, who still sat on the floor with crossed legs. The Lieutenant, almost dragging the wounded, helped him to a bunk in the corner.

Meanwhile Ivanov had raised up, seeming surprisingly well and was sitting in his bed, ignoring her requests to lie down and rest. The tube of the IV was dangling helplessly from his giant arm.

Babyface had put Michael on the bunk next to his and Marcela had injected to him a sedative. She bandaged again his arm, which looked healed and left him rest.

Alan was drugged and snoring.

“Hans, how are you?”, Norman leaned above the German. “I’m okay, why?”

“Well, March said you haven’t drunk water or eaten since yesterday. Are you sure everything is all right?”

“Yes. I know how we can destroy the Cube.” His voice sounded calm and confident.

“And how can this happen, dear?”

“Have you heard of ‘Mandela’s effect’?”

“No, we haven’t, Hans, what effect is that?” Norman’s tone was gentle and delicate. He thought he did not find the smallest reason for concern about the Professor’s mental health. He looked and sounded perfectly normal.

“There are events about which millions of people have different memories, compared to the other inhabitants of the world. Some call it mass psychosis or just technical small discrepancies in memorizing, but there is another hypothesis. You all know who Nelson Mandela is, right?”

“But of course.”

“Can you tell me what you remember about his death?”

“He died while in prison, didn’t he… back in the 80-ies. I’m not exactly sure, but it was in 1985 or 1986…” Marcela said.

“No, you are wrong March, he was released from prison and died in 2013, his funeral was on TV, I remember very clearly the huge posters with his name, hanging on the walls”, Norman said.

“That’s it”, Hans said standing up from the floor, returning instantly to his typical gait. “You are both right.”

“But how can it be?! Impossible!”

“The truth is that Nelson Mandela died in 2013, but there is a large group of people all over the world who state that Nelson Mandela definitely died in prison in the 80-ies. They accept it as a real fact. They even have a memory about a court trial after his death with the participation of his widow about the rights for a book. Also, thousands of people are ready to swear that after his death they watched benefit concerts on TV after his death and many celebrities wore t-shirts with his prison number 46664, honoring him in this way. Some go even further, mentioning the reason for the death of the South American leader – from tuberculosis in prison in 1986. The official historic reference proves that Nelson Mandela really suffered from tuberculosis in prison because of the hard conditions there, moreover, precisely in the 80-ies of the previous century. There is a theory, according to which at that moment a splitting of reality happened in two new parallel universes, in one of which Mandela died in 1986, and in the other he continued to live till 2013. You remember the message from the ship, don’t you? 1986.”

“The prison number is quite interesting too, with many sixes in it”, Babyface added.

“There are many other similar contradictions in group memory about famous public events. For instance, the wide spread photo from Tiananmen Square, in which a student puts his body in the way of the tanks. Most people remember how they saw on TV the rest of the protestants pushing him off the street and saving his life. Many others are convinced, though, that they saw the tanks smash him. He just dies.”

“I don’t believe this crap”, Michael interjected surprisingly. He had recovered from the anaesthetic and had obviously listened quietly the whole time.

“And what are those contradictions due to?” Norman asked in a serious tone.

“There is a theory, according to which after the CERN accelerator of particles started working in Switzerland, some strange events happened, capable of influencing the time-space continuum. One way or another, if there is splitting of realities in a singularity point, caused by the collider, why would not the Core have a similar effect? Michael opposes this theory, but I will ask him: Michael, you have seen ‘Star Wars’, haven’t you?”

“Sure, who hasn’t?”

“Do you remember how Darth Vader cut Luke Skywalker’s hand above the wrist and confessed he was his father?”

“Yes, this is the second film, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.”

“Do you remember the exact words?”

“Of course, Luke is hanging on the wall and Lord Vader tells him: ‘Luke, I’m your father’.”