Alex Gore - The Cube

They took off their gloves and looked it over.

“Let Ivanov and Hans try to switch on the Core, Lieutenant, and you help them”, Norman ordered. “Michael will go finish repairing the truck and I’ll return to Marcela in the lab. Be quick, gentlemen, I don’t fancy another night in this place!”

“Fuck you, damned nastiness!” Michael spat noisily over the Cube and followed the Major back to the Base.

“Turn the key clockwise at half a revolution.” Hans turned the red button simultaneously with Ivanov, whose hand was on the blue one. “Now wait and again forward, clockwise, half a revolution… And… now…”

Even Hans’s brilliant mind would not be able to repeat the complex sequence of pressing buttons, pulling levers, handles and inserting starting codes for the submarine.

The lamps on the ceiling blinked a few times, then began shining with a brighter white light. Everything seemed to move around them.

The four generators in the room boomed hollowly and the screens on the wall were lit like a spectacular video-wall at a stadium before the gathered crowd. The feeling was like standing under a buzzing power transmission line. Hans’s head was pulsing with the tension in the air and his ears were ringing from invisible oscillations. The space around him was stuffing him heavily and his flesh was as if convulsing under a press.

“Colonel, where are the temporal chains shown?” Hans asked, breathless and all sweaty.

Ivanov showed a red screen in the left side.

The inscription 15.11.9861 stood on it.

The big lens of the Eye started contracting, the mirrors, directed at the Eye, shone with dim light blue light.

At this moment the Lieutenants tender white face appeared in the opening of the corps and his small energetic eyes started looking around the room.

“How is it going?” he asked, glancing at the Russian with suspicion.

“Can’t you see, Lieutenant, we’ve started the Core, didn’t you feel the tension in the air?” Hans said.

“No, what tension?”

“What about the noise? Are you sure you didn’t hear anything from outside?”

“Nothing at all, but here it is quite warm, actually… Obviously they have good insulation.”

“Or rather the submarine swims in its own climatic bubble”, the plump Professor mumbled under his nose.

“I’ll leave you to the Russian military magic, I need to see what’s going on with the rest of the group. I have a bad foreboding and those things have not been seen for quite a long time.”

“Go, Lieutenant, we’ll be all right here.”

“Be careful, I saw steps in the sand by the prow.”

Babyface slipped through the narrow opening, lithe as a panther, and disappeared.

“I’m telling you, Norman, I’ve never seen such values.”

“Could it be because of the heat, the Sahara climate or any other reason?”

“No, I don’t think so, Norman.”

“And how exactly did you know it?”

“Look, I might be just a pretty image for you, but I dare say I know my job.”

“Please, March, I never implied you didn’t…”

“After I took samples of secretions from your and Michael’s wounds, I inserted a culture in nutritious mediums. I was in doubt, because the infectious changes in your wounds carried out too quickly and it was impossible that the bacteria had melted the tissues in such a short time, fermented and formed a pus secretion. And what do you know? The results were amazing! For two hours all the bacteria in the petri dishes had multiplied hundredfold.”

“How so?” Norman raised his hands inquiringly.

“The development of every colony of bacteria passes through three basic phases:

- an exponential phase, in which the number grows in geometrical progression;

- a stationary one, in which the growth stops because of exhaustion of the nutritious environment and the exotoxins, released from the bacteria. Here the number of dead and new cells is equal;

- dead phase in which the number of perished cells is bigger than that of the newly appeared.”

“Great. so, what?”

“So, there is no dead phase with the aliens that I took from your wound.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they grow and multiply regardless of the lack of food and without interfering with each other. They don’t need oxygen or carbon dioxide at all, light or any matter to exist! Usually infectious microorganisms need several days to pass through several scores of generations. And these here had divided super quickly, producing a hundred generations for no time at all!”

“Okay, March, what does it mean according to you? And why, the hell, Ivanov was not ill, when your double bit his throat?”

“I really don’t know, Norman, I’m not quite sure, I need more time for tests. He might have had some biochemical peculiarity or has been vaccinated in a different way in Russia. I have no idea. But your wounds too were not only infected instantly, they healed instantly. Their saliva resembles that of the Varan de Komodo, which, beside having exocrine venomous glands, collects huge remains of its meat food between the teeth. The meat gets spoilt and the mouth of the huge lizard is full of lethal microorganisms. The victim dies of sepsis only hours after having been bitten. I just remembered that while I was analyzing the results. Obviously, those cells here have some kind of mechanism for enhancing metabolism as a whole, some special enzyme or other… I really don’t know yet.”

“Calm down, March, you’ve done a great job till now. When we get home, these data of yours will serve as a basis for future research, I am sure.”

“If we go back home, Norman… I’m scared.”

“Don’t worry, clever girl” he said composedly and put his hand on her slender shoulder. “I want you to collect yourself and tell me if there is anything to which their bodies are vulnerable.”

“Yes, I think I have something in mind. I thought of it, while I was watching the dishes.”

“How, March?”

“Well, I thought that in nature the velocities are not by chance and all processes are in balance. Something that develops and kills so fast, can correspondingly be destroyed as quickly and easily.”

She leaned over the table and lifted before his eyes a glass retort. filled with translucent liquid.

The noise had become unbearable.

What was just a vexing buzzing and squeezing in the temples, was now hitting them on the heads like a sledgehammer, while their ears stopped being able to absorb any kind of sounds at all.

Meanwhile the lights from the walls and ceiling were almost dimmed by the bluish heavy haze, smoldering over the metal floor. Only their eyes had not deserted them yet, glued to the lit screens of the control board.

Hans felt his body as if it were leaden. He could not turn his head to Ivanov and look at him, although just inches separated them. His brain felt soft as dough, he felt as if thousands of heated hooks were stuck in his head.

The Cube stood in its previous place over the corals and shone with the active bright blue light that they saw around it, when it was first discovered.

The diaphragm had contracted to a small dot, surrounded by a flaming circle of twinkling light.

The portal in time was opening.

Ivanov could barely separate his hand from his body and pulled the big handle of the control board. The figures on the blue screen started a countdown:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6…

The Cube started vibrating vigorously, and the loop was losing its outlines. Then it lifted from the floor, seeming lighter than air.