The Juggernaut

The cube stood inside the factory. Sixty metres by sixty metres by sixty metres, it’s metal walls had been polished to a point that it reflected the forest of umbilical tubes connecting it to the control computers. Scientists and engineers walked around beneath it, checking that all the numbers were correct in order for the first test. A countdown began. The atmosphere was tense, everything had been building up to this moment. The tubes and wires attached to the cube were disengaged and hang limply around it. In front of the cube was a mile-long road, which the cube began travelling along at a steady pace of six miles per hour. The cube travelled on hundreds of miniature wheels about half a foot wide, the only noise it made was the quiet sound of metal rubbing against metal. It trundled along, getting nearer and nearer to the concrete barrier at the end of the run. On the upper echelons of the factory scientists began to get worried, pressing data pads frantically. The cube rolled. Although instead of stopping at the wall it pushed through it. The cube kept on going, punching a square through the side of the factory as it went out into the desert. “Shit.” said Wayne, the head engineer of the project.

Wayne watched the cube drive away then at the surrounding teams of people frantically tapping away at keyboards. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and rang his boss on speed dial.
“There has been a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Well, the engine started. But now it won’t stop.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t there safety features in place, that kind of thing?”
“They aren’t working sir.”
“What are you going to do about it then?”
“I’m not sure sir. We have a few people working on that at the moment.”
“Hold on, I need to make a call.”
The phone went dead. Wayne looked at the holes the cube had made in the two walls. He ran through a few doors and outside the research facility, grabbing one of the bicycles they had specifically made for travelling over sand. It wasn’t as fast as a normal bike, but a lot quicker than walking. Riding across the desert landscape he suddenly became aware of the intense heat even in the late afternoon. It was a lot different out here than in the climate controlled shelter of where he worked. As he pedalled his phone rang again, his boss.
“You need to come and make a presentation about the engine.”
“Really? I mean, sir, I think I’m more useful trying to work out how to stop it.”
“I agree, but there’s a helicopter about to set off to come and pick you up.”
“Okay sir. Tell the pilot I’ll be by the engine though, I need to go and take a closer look whilst I have the chance.”
“I’ll relay the message.”
Wayne frantically pedalled the contraption, getting nearer to the cube moving slowly across the sand. It left a perfectly flat trail as it dragged itself along, Wayne found it easier to follow in it’s wake. The cube shone in the sun, almost dazzling him as he got nearer. He hopped off the bike and started to jog next to it, feeling it’s temperature with his hand. Cold. That was a good sign. Going back to the bike, he could already hear the chopper blades in the distance.

He sat at the front of a table, a laptop on one side and a glass of water on the other. It was half empty. He started up power point, briefly blinded by the projector before standing up to deliver his spiel.
“Gentleman. Thank you for attending this meeting, I hope you can understand it’s urgency. Exactly two hours ago an experimental project in the Nevada Desert began. The experiment was to create a machine that could explore alien planets, survive in the harshest of conditions and sustain it’s own energy. Using four dimensional solar panels built using nanocarbon alloys we have created an engine with the prospect of infinite movement. This cube” Wayne pointed a laser pen at a photograph of the cube. “has managed to escape. Although it travels at six miles an hour it will destroy everything in it’s path. At the cube’s current rate in 24 weeks it will have covered the circumference of the earth. In eleven years it will have destroyed pretty much every building on the planet, not to mention anything else that’s in it’s way.” He paused.
“What?”
“The space cube’s pretty much indestructible. It can fall off cliffs and survive the pressures of the deep ocean. If it can’t go over it, it’ll go through it.”
“How do we stop it?”
“We don’t know. There are a number of ideas at the moment although an issue more urgent is that on the cube’s current course it will hit the town of Littlefield in approximately...two days.”
Wayne showed a map of the world with a line across it.
“Due to the exploration brief of the project, the cube uses various non-euclidean geomathematical formulae to make micro-alterations in it’s course.” Wayne pointed at the line. “Although we can’t say for sure, on it’s current course it will go through several major American cities in the next few weeks, then through Europe, Russia then down through Canada...” he trailed off and they watched the line criss-cross the Earth.

The cube was being tailed by a tractor, monitoring it for the scientists. The driver of the tractor focused the beam of the spotlight on the bottom of the grey hull. So far nobody was aware of the unstoppable, slow juggernaut. Most of the sounds it made were caused by flattening most of the rocks and vegetation in front of it. The driver drank from a Thermos, black coffee. He had another containing spaghetti and meatballs that he occasionally got out and ate after relaying various updates. “Half ten. The box pushed a burned out car for a few minutes before the car was snagged on a boulder and was crushed underneath it.” He took another sip of coffee. The desert was cold. Not sure exactly what the box was made for, he liked to imagine it’s various uses to kill time. Maybe it transported fleets of tanks? Maybe it was a mobile foundation for a building? He heard noises of animals moving around him, occasionally catching a glimpse of an eye or the hind leg of some night beast. The cube hadn’t killed anything, most things seemed smart enough to avoid it. Although no human had seen it yet.
“Simon, could you re-focus the camera? You’ve moved off course.” a voice said over the radio. Simon sighed as he screwed the lid on the coffee so he could tamper with the camera. It was quiet for a while. Simon and the cube travelled through the night, by the time the first beam of sunshine stabbed it’s way over the horizon Simon had finished his coffee and spaghetti.

A child sat on the floor trying to learn how to walk. He looked at a spot on the carpet nearby, a little blurry but he used some of the brown furniture to try and get an idea of perspective to work out how far it was. Tipping forward onto his hands, he bent his fat little knees and slowly stood. A little shaky. Licking his top lip he gingerly moved his calf, straining at the amount of effort it took to move his leg. With concentration he managed to swing the bottom of his leg relatively easy through the air and then brought his foot down quickly. That part wasn’t too bad. The next step was a little more difficult as he had to trust he had the right footing, that his leg could take his weight. But it did. He did it again. And again. He was walking. Only four steps but it was a good effort. His feet were going a bit underneath him though, he sped up as he fell, managing a few more little trots. Nobody had been around. The ground vibrated a little, it made a noise. He could hear it pretty well with his ear to the floor. A woman rushed out of the bathroom, looking out of a window into the morning. It was about half a mile away, but it was heading for her trailer. Looked like some weird kind of tank or big truck. But it must be huge. She rubbed the sleep from her eye a little, might be a mirage out in the desert. Wasn’t that warm though. The ground vibrated a little more as it got closer, about as fast as a man walking. Maybe running. She went back into the house and poured herself some orange juice, looking back out of the window. A minute or so later she began to get worried. Some little tractor next to a huge black box, going towards her. A helicopter was a little speck in the cloudless sky. Way out here, it must be important. She picked up her baby and went to her truck, realizing she had left her keys in the pocket of her jeans. Running back in, she tugged them on underneath a long white t-shirt she had slept in, rooting through her pocket. Two keys and three key rings. One was a dongle from a bar, the other a small picture of herself and her kid and the other a glow-in-the-dark rubber ghoul looking a little worse for wear. Her, the ghoul and the baby got in the truck and drove off, the big box still quite a way away. She parked up a little further along the road, watching the tractor veer off it’s parallel trajectory with the huge cube and head towards her. She had a hammer somewhere around the cab, but looking at this guy it didn’t look like she’d need it. That box though. She had to crane her neck way back to see the top of it, that black, grey metal blocked out the sky like a mountain crawling along.

The guy shouted to her from his tractor.
“Hey there. Sorry about that.” he said “We’ve been sorting some stuff out in Littlefield.” He killed his engine. She looked at him, freckles on his neck, half a beard growing through his face.
“What is that thing?”
“I’m not able to say really. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take you in for a debriefing now.” “What does that mean? You’re going to arrest me? I didn’t do anything.”
“I know that. But you’ll be okay, treat nice and given breakfast, all that. We just can’t have you going out towards town and telling people about this box here.” he said. He sounded local.
“Why not? They’re going to see it sometime.” she said.
“Yeah...they probably will. But we just need a few more hours if that’s okay. Now I’m not threatening you, I don’t mean nothing, but I hope you’ll come nice and quiet.”
The helicopter that had been flying over was now landing nearby. A couple of dressed up jerks got off, shoving there finger in their ear.
“Gross. This is like a conspiracy or some shit.”
“Well, kinda is at the moment. If you’d like to go along with my friends here, that’d be dandy.”
“If it’s all the same to you I’d like to follow in my trailer. And at least let someone know I’ve been arrested for something.”
“Sure, okay. I guess my co-workers here will take care of that. Don’t worry, in a day or two we’ll let you go and you can say you were one of the first to see it.”
“See what exactly?” she called as he started up the diesel engine again.
“I don’t know. This damn space cube.” He shouted back, flashing a ‘peace’ sign and driving back towards the cube that had driven through where her trailer had been. The two suits walked across the desert toward her, but she wasn’t that worried. Even if she ran they’d catch her, there wasn’t much she could do anyway. The guy on the tractor had seemed friendly enough though. She looked at her baby and stroked his head. “Gosh.” she said too him.

Wayne looked at a report he had just printed out on the specifics of the machine he’d built. He felt a little like he was betraying himself, just handing over the last twenty years work to the military. If it went badly though, he’d end up getting the blame. They wasn’t the exact plans of the cube, these blueprints were a few months old but it was good enough. He opened up his top desk drawer, looking down at a bottle of whiskey. He wasn’t much of a drinker, never really saw the point of it. Although maybe it was times like these that a drink would help. Cracking open the seal, he unscrewed the cap and held the bottle out in front of him. His hand was shaking a little, he took a drink so he didn’t have to watch it. He coughed, gagging slightly as the liquid splashed into his empty belly. Pulling a face, he put the lid back onto the whiskey bottle and returned it to the top drawer. He wouldn’t need it but somebody else might soon enough. He went out of his office, hearing a baby crying down a corridor. He frowned at this but kept walking towards the meeting room they had transformed into an impromptu forum for the creation and discussion of ideas on how to stop the machine. As he opened the door he immediately regretted it, stopping and wondering if he had chance to run away before he got noticed. But sure enough some scientist noticed him amongst the arguments and tables filled with papers and laptops. “Wayne’s here!” he said.
“Wayne, we don’t know what to do.”
“Shut up Farslo, we got plenty of ideas. Good ideas.”
“Yeah? Blow it up? You can’t blow it up.”
“Yes you can.”
“No, you can’t.” said Wayne. “I designed it to be able to take a direct him from a cosmic asteroid, I think it’ll be able to handle the biggest bomb we have. And that includes the nuclear option.”
A few scientists and logicians went a little quiet at this, although several other arguments were occurring. One or two were deeply involved with calculations, occasionally shouting at the paper they had been writing on.
“Ladies, Gentlemen. Quiet please. This isn’t any way to conduct a logical, scientific solution to this problem.”
“Science got us here in the first place, god!” somebody said.
“Stop being so dramatic. You think they said that at the start of the cold war? You think they said that when they were stranded on the other side of the moon? You might be right. But only the naysayers would have, and we got through all of those situations fine. Science may be the cause of some problems, but it is a lot better than living in a cave like a common animal, afraid of storms and sacrificing newborns. Get a grip man! Science will be our salvation.”
“I don’t see deer or ostrich using biological weapons to attack one another. Even your average Joe in the street, do you think he’s the one conducting these experiments with no further thought as to the repercussions of science without ethics or responsibility? It is you who should get a grip. You have created a box that is going to crawl across our planet, destroying rain forests, cities, national monuments and innocent bystanders. People will die.” said Farslo. He didn't like Wayne.
“They won’t if we spend less time arguing about our emotions and regrets and rather focus on the task at hand. Now, what kind of ideas do we have so far?” said Wayne, picking up a paper at random.

The first idea was being built a few miles east of Littlefield, a sixty foot wide slope leading into a tunnel. It was hoped that the cube would carry on digging deeper into the earth until it either ran out of solar energy or pierced the Earth’s mantle and then spiralled into the underground ocean of lava. Most people weren’t sure if it would work, although it was relatively quick to do compared to some of the ideas being thrown around. Stick after stick of dynamite was exploded underground to try and dig as quickly as possible. The foreman of the dig lived in Littlefield himself, desperately wanting to be able to contact his wife so that some things could be removed from his house. Although he was on strictest orders to remain quiet. More explosions. He still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that was coming, but it would arrive by tomorrow and hopefully go in the hole he was having to dig. It paid well though.

That evening Simon could just about make out the twinkling street lights of sleepy little Littlefield. The tail-lights of a Jeep were off in the distance as well, a bit more friendlier tonight. Earlier the cube had made it’s first kill. A rabbit, apparently scared out of it’s mind was crushed underneath and came out on the other side as a red smear in the sand. Nothing left. He wondered what it’d be like to go underneath it. He’d been close enough, looked like the bottom of an escalator or something. Seemed quick although he supposed it matters how much of you there was. He’d heard about the tunnel they were digging on the other side of the town. Shame they couldn’t try to steer it clear. He knew a few people there. He was assured that they had a pretty decent way of getting people out of the way though. The tractor and the cube went through the night, quiet for the most part though Simon made the odd comment about some animal they heard or desert crap they passed.

Littlefield was a dinky old town nestled in the land bosom of Mount Bangs just by Virgin River, if you followed the road West you’d end up in Vegas after a while. Perverts drove along these roads, cruising for any naive ass thinking that hitch hiking was still groovy out in the desert. A lot of the victims barely had coloured clothes, never mind a colour television. Rapists, hoodlums, cat burglars and violent killers lived in small communities on the outskirts of the mountains mostly hunting and gathering although they would often forage among the open gut wings of some poor kid fresh out of high school for any kind of edible human part that they could consume. Those wild men looked at the black box way below in the desert, some thinking it was the hallucinations brought on by syphilis or the product of too much moonshine and blood. They grew weed in the woods and sometimes sold it to heads heading to Las Vegas or one or two of the people down in Littlefield itself. The two communities got on reasonably well all things considered. The sheriff of the town, Joe Blogs, wasn’t too happy with the band of merry men living in the mountains or the news that a big ol’ sixty foot cube would come ploughing through downtown Littlefield at eight the next morning. “Damn it! Market day.” he said, pounding a ham fist against the once beige fax machine. His deputy often sent and received nude pictures to some of his girlfriends without the sheriff knowing. Though Blogs knew a whole lot, and a bunch of high-faluting Johnny Law PhD government eggheads trying to take over his town wasn’t something he liked the look of. He puffed at the sad cigar stuck in his mouth for a while, waiting for a reply from the fax machine although there wasn’t any. An hour later one of the feds turned up, knocking on the door of his station house.
“Good evening Sheriff Blogs.”
“Evenin’ ese. Can I help you with something?”
“I was sent here. You sent a...fax to us, saying how you weren’t happy. I’m here to relax you. We’re trying to avoid this but, this thing it’s coming. You see? You need my help just as much as I need yours.”
“Pardon my French, but fuck you. This is my damn town. I’ll decide what to do with this damn box.”
“I don’t understand your point of view. Why are you resisting, you refuse to heed the warnings you’ve received? You have to understand that this, box, it will go through your town and crush everything there.” The agent pushed his fist over an open palm. “Flat.”
“Well I want to be in charge. I didn’t work my butt off chasing hippies back onto the highway for thirty years for it all to wrong and the town blame me, the sheriff, for what you fucked up.” he said, lighting another cigar. The agent looked at him, studying him.
“Okay then, you can co-ordinate the evacuation as you wish. My name is George Metzli I’m with the government. I’ll be here if and when you need me.” The agent walked into the Sheriff’s department, looking at the four empty desks.
“I don’t suppose I could have a cup of boiling water with sugar? It’s like black coffee, without the coffee?” The sheriff gave him an odd look and went to making the hot water. These city boys thought they were real slick, but he’d give them what for even if it meant screwing up his town. At least he’d be the one to do it. His face twitched. “How many sugars?”
“Five. Wait. Six. Looks like it’s going to be a long night.”
“You can say that again hot shot.” said the sheriff handing over the plastic cup, it’s sides just a touch thicker than a piece of paper. Metzli sipped.

The cube moved up to Littlefield in the early morning. The cube rolling and crushing the dried sand and stone beneath it’s wheels, it steadily made it’s way up towards the first outermost shacks. Prefab white buildings standing on small stilts where insects and lizards lurked underneath in the shade. The people inside were woken and took into the town on buses. If nobody answered the door the police burst in and checked each room attentively, anybody inside trying to sleep off a hangover or a late night shift didn’t enjoy being woken much but it was better than being crushed. Nobody knew that yet, the one or two who noticed the cube thought it was some kind of strange billboard put up recently. Cars and officials stood around, the first time they had properly gone out into the field in regards to the unstoppable cube. Trees and cactus were sucked underneath, coming out at the back as patches of moist green dust. People would scoop up the destruction from the cube later, it created interesting shapes artistically and a decent fuel practically. Simon overtook the cube as he headed towards the houses on the edge of Littlefield. His boss, Wayne, was there.

Calvin lit a number in the yard, sitting beneath an apricot tree. He looked out west at the last of the stars winking out just above the mountains as the blue sky bled outwards. Swinging a little in the garden hammock he had bought from a friend, he blew grey smoke upwards into leafage. There was a light vibration. Had he dosed himself with salvia? Looking around, he saw the silhouette of a big black shape. It reminded him a little of the obelisk in 2001. He watched it in wonder, it got bigger and bigger. There was a slight shudder at it hit his house, waking him from his weed induced hypnosis and he leapt from the hammock and started to climb his garden fence, shouting and swearing. As he reached it’s apex he looked over his shoulder as his white wooden bungalow was crushed up against the huge metal wall of the cube. The only thing he could see. He fell into a few scrubby bushes, picking himself up and running towards the front of his neighbours house. As he ran down the side, dodging trash cans and a child’s trike, he heard the apricot tree crack and splinter quickly followed by the fence. He yelled, primitively, as he sprinted down the drive and onto the street. In a bit of a haze he was only just processing that his house had been destroyed. He looked up the street and saw a bunch of police and other dudes hanging around big 4x4 vehicles. One noticed him and started shouting. “Help me!” Calvin yelled, running diagonally across the road towards them. The cube was obliterating the house he’d just ran past and parts of the two houses next to it. It was moving too quickly for him to make it to the end of the road so he had to hop a palisade fence and through another garden. This one had an empty deflated child’s pool out back and a bunch of beer cans and lawn chairs. He was getting a little tired by now, the THC was worming it’s way through his synapses. Repeating, he climbed a fence, ran across a lawn and out onto the street. A Jeep had just parked up on the road, engine revving. “Hurry!” Calvin jumped up through the window, trying to climb in. Though he couldn’t just get in, a bit high. The driver looked at him, brow creasing. “Hang on then.” he said, grabbing his shoulder as the Jeep sped down the road as the cube obliterated the houses and gardens Calvin had just ran past.

“That was close.” said Simon looking through a pair of binoculars.
“Everybody should have been evacuated already.” said Wayne.
“Guess we won’t really know for sure until somebodies claimed missing.” The motorized escort followed the cube through Littlefield. Most of it’s citizens had been rounded up in buses and kept in the school whilst it passed. Some protested, others were happy for the hot meal provided.
“It’s going to get out soon, people will know about it.”
“They might.”
“I was thinking, instead of driving a tractor by it I’m just as well to climb on top of it.” said Simon, turning from the binoculars and looking at Wayne. Wayne thought about it.
“I’ll get back to you on that. I need to go, carry on following it.”

Wayne drove his open top Cadillac through the empty streets of the town. Sweat was already dampening the collar of his shirt. “Damn desert.” he said. Mr. Metzli was waiting for him outside the Fire Department holding a briefcase. They drove onto the highway, heading out towards the dig. Metzli looked around at the various diggers and workers milling about around the maw of the man made cave. An air-raid siren went off that nobody seemed to take notice. There was an explosion deep in the shade of the cave that made the land above it vibrate and crack slightly, blowing out a huge cloud of orange dust that covered everything. The blast still echoed in his ears.
“Think it will work Wayne?” said Metzli.
“This? I very much doubt it.”
The two men wiped the dust off their clothes though it stuck to the patches of sweat. The foreman walked towards them, a roll of papers in one hand.
“Morning gentlemen. How can I help?”
“Ah, forget about it. We’re just here to watch the cube go in later this afternoon.” The foreman tilted one side of his head towards them as he listened before nodding and headed off, shoulders hunched. “Don’t you have to give out some briefings or something?” said Metzli.
“You’d be surprised the amount of people doing that for me. I reckon I’m going to be fired this time next week, they want a bunch of college boys to take over from me.”
“Want a cigarette?”
“Nah.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it really.” said Metzli, lighting a Marlboro.
“All depends if we can stop it, right?”
“We will.”
“Maybe. But the chances of that happening here, they’re quite high. Now you’ve said it, they must be even higher as what are the chances of actually guessing something correctly?”
“Don’t know myself. I see it less about numbers and more about, a certain kind of optimism.”
“A certain kind?” said Wayne. He spat out, some dust had got into his mouth.
“Yes. You know, wishing something into this world.” They looked at the massive void in front of them. The box rolled up mid afternoon, the mountains jutting behind it like fake teeth inside an electric mouth. Thunder rumbled. People were stood on either side of the shape they were trying to fit the cube into. A lot of them fidgeted, smoking cigarettes or pacing around whilst birds flew overhead escaping the coming rain. The box flattened trees, rocks, bulldozing mounds of earth over effortlessly, making the cube seem to hover through the ground somehow. It was unnatural, the smoothness of the way it slowly sliced through the air as if some robotic factory cutter would move as it pulsed into plastic sheeting and lengths of timber. Alien. Tension mounted as it moved towards the hole. Moments in time.

The cube glided into the hole silently.

It disappeared into the steep gradient of it’s grave, sliding slightly on the layer of red mud beneath it as it careened deeper and deeper towards the end of the tunnel. A series of lights and the exploitation of a crack a hundred inches wide was waiting. Scientists stood to one side in an area that had been set up for observation. Metzli watched as the cube neared, blocking out the glob of sunlight and becoming illuminated by a series of yellow sodium lamps. Along it’s hull there were the marks where things had dirtied it, adding an asymmetrical quality to the otherwise grey and perfectly smooth surface. Dirt, oil, scorch marks, insects. Matter. It hit the wall ahead. As it’s front hit the ground and crushed the lights laid in front of it it also began pushing the dirt back. It was digging. There was no strain of engines, no strange mechanical noises. The only noise was the ground falling in thick, heavy clods behind it. Some of the scientists cheered each other, speaking on a telephone to people on the surface about how the experiment had been a success. Above ground Wayne stroked his hair forward, pacing back and forth. A cold wind was starting to blow although most of the people were ignoring it by slapping each other on the back and singing Atta Boy and other old show tunes. Simon was resting by one of tyres of his tractor, watching others. Wayne noted that he could be useful. He boarded a Jeep winched to a large truck on the rim of the hole and took control of a spotlight he used to shine into the hole as the Jeep slid down. “Park the Jeep over by those men standing over there sergeant.” The soldier sitting next to him obeyed his order, even though he actually outranked Wayne. He had been sent on a specific light espionage mission by government honchos to keep a tight eye on this, for him to try and be involved with as much of the action that happened and give regular updates. He fingered the blackberry in his pocket, rolling his finger along the moulded plastic exterior letting his bosses know that the attempt to contain the cube was successful. The Jeep parked up, Wayne leaving the spy to fumble in his pocket with one hand as if simulating masturbation like he was in a crude teenage soldier comedy. “Stop, stop. We have to retreat.”
“Wayne, the walls should hold. Celebrate with us.”
“Gentlemen, you know as well as I that this experiment has no end. This is it’s first iteration, we have no real conclusive data that the robot’s guidance computers won’t pull it out of the ground like how Aristotle must be after spinning in his grave so quickly.”
“Wayne you pompous ass. It worked dammit.” Said one scientist, slapping his hand with finality.
Wayne pulled a pen from his pocket that had a laser attached on the end. He had once thought it a tacky gift from his nephew although he was now using it to show that the cube had already began it’s ascent, even the layer of rock couldn’t stop the cube as it gently rolled away back towards the top soil. Wayne got back in the Jeep “I want to stop this machine as much as anybody else. Although there is no quick fix. I need only those dedicated to science, logic, perfection to assist me in stopping it.” One scientist from the group stepped forward indignantly, licking his moustache. “I’ll come with you Wayne.”
“Alphonse, good. Anybody else?”
A few others stepped forward and each climbed onto the Jeep. Metzli stayed behind. He stood on the edge of the rough and ready platform they had built and watched the dark shapes move like a minimalist hallucination. When he turned again Wayne and the cluster of eggheads swung out along the dirt as they were slowly tugged upwards out of the cave. Metzli took to rows of ladders that were used as makeshift steps and made his way along. Blinking in the sunlight, he saw the thundercloud coming towards them. A lot of rain might cause a little structural damage to the tunnel although the whole thing would most likely be destroyed to cover it up anyway. Although if the cube was to carry on on it’s current course it’d end up in Monument Valley soon.

Sheriff Joe Blogs looked at the path through his town. Agents had carried out further destruction around the edges of the path to make it seem a little more ragged with the excuse that a hurricane had been through the city. There were rumours none the less. He had personally swore an oath of secrecy, thinking to himself at the time that he was doing the best for his community. In front of him were homes, small businesses, half the fire department, completely destroyed. Tears wet his eyes for the first time in twenty years. Back then it had been because he’d found his sister strung up in the forest after things went south on some two-bit dimebag dope deal that some Vegas shit heads had set up with the hill folk. Maybe he was getting a little soft in his own age. Though these buildings made up the psychological landscape of the town’s inhabitants. Like the cube had come through and personally destroyed photo albums, comfortable sets of shoes, in some cases a family pet. Blogs lit a cigar, blowing the smoke out into the evening air filled with the sounds of his town trying to sort out their shit. He walked back into the office to check the fax and found a picture of a naked lady. He looked at the black and white blocks marking the contours of her hips, the ink on her pubic hair still wet. It shone in the light. “Boy howdy.” He went to the photocopier, reeled one off then replaced the original in the fax whilst he kept the slightly warm, folded photocopy in his back pocket. Feeling a little better he went back outside to finish his cigar.

Simon looked out at the yellow and blue vista of the night desert surrounding him, a panorama of gently rolling landscape. Lights out on the highway, drivers unaware of the 60 metre cubed beast making it’s way through the desert. He was excited about reaching Monument Valley. He’d never been there himself but he watched a lot of Westerns as a child, balancing on the edge of his dad’s knee as white hats and black hats cracked off pistols at each other and rode gallant steeds around the cinemascoped version of Monument Valley. Riding the big cube beneath him at that moment in time, he could imagine himself as John Wayne. Though if he was being honest with himself he was more like James Stewart. Still, there wasn’t any harm in dreaming these kinds of things. He walked to the front of the cube and shone a flashlight down it, looking at the mound of crap that it had begun to push along as if some kind of ocean liner slicing through the Atlantic. The size of the pushed stuff ebbed and flowed depending on the terrain, but it rarely got any higher than six feet. The cube was beginning to smell a bit more earthier because of it though, which wasn’t a bad thing. Simon imagined the cube in a million years when mankind might have left the planet. Might have stuff growing on it, a whole eco-system shuffling around the world. He looked up at the stars and imagined a little more then got back to work making sure the cube didn’t kill anyone.

She watched Metzli from her car, the horn rimmed glasses an anachronism on her face. She was handsome enough to be pretty, small lips marked red, only real colouring there. She changed lanes, following the car with Mexican plates. Unusual that they’d get somebody from abroad, although she had read Metzli’s file. He had a certain methodology that garnered results. Military tours, educated in Northern Europe, all that jazz. She carefully drove the car far enough away that she wouldn’t be noticed. She hadn’t give him any reason to be paranoid. Metzli was enjoying himself, tapping a hand on the steering wheel to the beat of some psychedelic Van Halen rip-off playing on the radio. He recorded a small sample of it onto a Dictaphone, by the time the song finished he had reached Monument Valley. Checking into a Holiday Inn he placed his shoes by the doorway and curled his toes onto the carpet, feeling satisfied. He drank a cup of hot water and watched some late night football before quickly drifting off to sleep. She watched him with a pair of thermal imaging goggles. They were state of the art, using shape-recognition and pixel replacement to try and give as close to x-ray vision as you could get. She watched him lie in bed for a while before leaving her car and placing a cross on the back of his car in special ink before she got a room herself. She stepped out of her shoes without breaking a step, had a shower and did paperwork into the early morning with the aid of crushed up caffeine pills followed by a medium dose of sleeping pills with a slow releasing vitamin suppository in order to wake up easier in about three hours. In those three hours she had complex dreams, Metzli was the subject of most.

The cube reached Monument Valley at around nine in the morning. Simon had fallen asleep on top of it, lying in a sleeping bag with a parasol above him. It was blown away as helicopter gunships flew overhead. “Hey!” he shouted at them, then realized where he was. The valley of rocks, red and familiar were dotted with a small army. “Simon Buckley!” He looked up to see another helicopter hovering above him shouting at him through some speaker. A soldier descended on a rope. “Simon, please leave the top of the cube.” Simon looked at the few things he had brought with him, a sleeping bag, a radio, some scientific equipment and an ice cooler with some beer. He picked up the radio and the cooler and waited for the man to grab him and whisk him away.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re going to blow that cube sky high. It’s time the United States Army took it’s turn rather than some boffin’s having a circle jerk about who’s got the bigger brain. We have bullets.”
“I was told that this cube’s indestructible.”
“Well, we’ll see about that. We have shells as big as trucks we use to bust towel head cave systems. We have artillery relics from the cold war we were going to use to shell Moscow. Not to mention some real heavy shit, magnetic bombs, rocket propelled molten steel. Sit back and watch the show, it’s going to be like fourth of July in this dust bowl.”
Simon shrugged, looking out of a helicopter door as the chopper circled the cube advancing towards the platoon.

Wayne and Alphonse watched a series of monitors showing Monument Valley. Some observation equipment had been installed before it’s escape.
“Are they trying to destroy it?”
“Looks like it. Let them have there childish fun.” said Wayne, turning towards the preliminary plans for the method they had chosen. Wayne rubbed at his comb-over, unsure about their idea. Metre after metre of interactive touch screen technology was glowing blue and green, lighting the scientists eerily as they tapped away at the tabletop. “How is the project going?”
“Pretty well sir. I’ve run some simulations. The only problem is the logistics of the thing.”
“Well, that is one of the inherent flaws in this plan. The waiting aspect.” Wayne continued to stroke his hair. The sergeant noted all of this down on his blackberry, volunteering to stay with the scientists. He made coffee and tried to look busy, hanging around in the shadows mostly and hoping nobody would speak to him. He was quite pleased with himself. The room glowed orange, making people look up at the monitors. The military had started their assault.

Tanks fired armour piercing shells, they screamed through the air and crumpled against the outside of the metal frame like wet tissue paper. Artillery and mortar flew down from the sky, raining explosions on top of and around the box. But it kept moving. This went on for a few minutes until they were ordered to stop whilst a laser scanned the surface of the box. “Nothing. All that did was clean all the crap off the sides.” Next was the minefield, small explosions popped underneath. And so on. Flame-throwers, Tesla cannons, electromagnetic pulse bombs, an acoustic sonic blaster, plasma cutters, even an experimental laser was fired from a high altitude satellite. At best the various projectiles hit the target then did nothing, at worst they would ricochet off at unpredictable angles and erupt into explosions that bloomed across Monument Valley like strange flowers. A general was arguing with Metzli at the side. “I want to use a nuclear bomb on this thing.”
“I’m sorry sir. Besides the low probability of success the cube would then become radioactive.”
“I know that man, but nothing can withstand the blast from one of these things. They’re hotter than the sun and twice as bright.” barked the general. Metzli looked the general in the eye, imagined looking into the inside of his head through his corneas. Into his grey brain, pulsing with electricity. He tried to send out some kind of telepathic energy in the hope that this would calm the general but he went on about the nuke. Metzli pulled out his phone, dialled a number and handed it to the general.
“Who is this? Oh, Mr. President-” said the general, feeling pretty important. It wasn’t even the president but an impersonator Metzli had hired for these kinds of emergencies. She was watched through binoculars halfway up one of the iconic rocks. She licked her top lip, lowering the binoculars to watch the cube slowly roll out of a dust cloud fizzing with sparks.

Metzli thought it was time to go public about the cube, advising his bosses. Although he was technically an agent working for America, he had got the role by being particularly useful to insurance brokers in making sure certain things remained safe whilst in South America. He was pretty well known in the insurance world as being able to protect any investment. Starting the conference call as he headed towards Kansas, he knew that they wouldn’t be pleased. Although the cube had already been through two towns since Littlefield and about to head for another, the largest yet, his bosses still yearned to keep it a secret.
“Mr. Metzli. We heard that the Monument Valley attempt was unsuccessful.”
“Correct. Although even I wasn’t optimistic about that.”
“We are wondering why you are phoning us instead of co-coordinating things on the ground in Cortez.” said somebody. Metzli wasn’t sure who was on the other end of the line.
“I’m on my way. I wanted to advise you beforehand that I consider it wise to go public on this. People have already seen it and it’s only a matter of time before it reaches Wichita.”
“We understand your concern. But witnesses are being held. Press releases are being prepared. This takes time.”
“I understand. Although I really would like to stress the importance of my opinion. I think the sooner the better. We’ve been lucky so far in that nobody has leaked this. There’s already rumours on the internet about something going through Utah.”
“Okay Mr. Metzli. We’ll get back to you on that. Until then follow standard procedure.” “Goodbye.” said Metzli. He wasn’t that happy. Times like this that he wished he had cigarettes but he’d left them in the motel room.. He checked his mirrors and drove onto the interstate, noticing a matt brown Ford estate following him.

The cube was getting dirty again after the series of explosions had blasted most of the filth off it. Rolling out of a river, it pushed the mud bank up and around the sides of it’s bottom that made more dust kick up and stick to it. It was majestic, making it’s way halfway up mountains before the gradient became too steep or the top couldn’t support it’s weight so that it just went through them. Dropping off cliffs wasn’t much trouble either, it left large craters and had to do a bit of digging back up to the surface but it didn’t slow it down, which was good as Colorado was home to several large mountain ranges that dotted the state like inverse craters on the moon. Simon followed alongside when he could although it had become too dangerous most of the time. He was glad that the cube hadn’t been stopped in Monument Valley, it had been a pretty good day so far. He was on his way to Cortez when Wayne rang.
“Simon? This is Wayne.”
“Hello boss. Can I help you?”
“I’m glad you asked. I’ve been watching you from on-board cameras, listened to you talking to the cube.”
“Oh...sorry.” Simon was glad that nobody was around to see him turn red.
“Don’t worry Simon. I find it refreshing, that you understand the cube. You like it even, am I speaking the truth?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, I have a specific proposition for you. You saw what they tried to do back in the desert. They have some more schemes lined up for our box. Now, I don’t want you to commit any acts of sabotage or anything. But I want you to be a leak, blow the whistle on this.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t worry. There are channels to go through, I’ll talk you through it. Although before we go any further I need to know, are you on my side?”
Simon let the tractor idle and watched the cube push it’s way into a forest, the trees being knocked over and bouncing back and forth like blades of grass.
“You can count on me.” he said, smiling.

The town of Cortez was similar to Littlefield. By the mountains, insular. Years ago people swept Westwards throughout America, laying claim to any place thought to have some kind of resource. Whether that have been water, wood, land, minerals or just a good place for travellers to meet and swill moonshine with other long dead famous drunks like Calamity Jane or Jesse James. Bar fights could be finished quickly simply by hitting the side of a man and bursting his diseased liver like a steak and kidney pudding. Cortez had been founded in the winter of 1832 by a small group of families on there way to California to pan for gold. When the snow had set in the people settled and by spring the families had all married each other and began the great ritual of civilization. Nearly two centuries later the town of Cortez had grown, it had it’s own airport even. The cube made it’s way towards the town, all the regular evacuation gang stood around waiting for it’s arrival. Metzli ate a sandwich in the town’s best diner, a salami omelette between two slices of thick brown bread, the whole thing drizzled in olive oil. “Delicious.” he said to the waitress, leaving a two dollar tip before heading out. His ears were still ringing a little from the action back in Monument Valley, though it didn’t matter much as the streets had been cleared. There was an odd hum though, not the cube. He scanned the surroundings and looked up, spotting a small private plane coming in towards the runway of Cortez airport. Traffic control was ordering them to find another runway but the pilot insisted that he should land due to one of his passengers having a heart attack. The cube rolled towards the tarmac runway, emerging from the trees like some kind of 8-bit Grendel. The pilot was already coming in to land though, wheels down, wing flaps flapping away. He yelped, trying to steer the plane away from the cube. Just twenty or so feet away it managed to clear it, although the speed at which he pulled off this manoeuvre caused the plane to stall and barrel roll through the air. The small white aircraft crashed into the main high street of Cortez and exploded into a magnificent fireball, instantly killing everybody inside whilst it’s burning fuselage skidded along the road and came to a stop partway inside a second-hand bicycle shop. The owner lived just above the shop and went running down the stairs to see what had happened although the stairs had been destroyed in the air crash, causing him to fall and break his neck. Metzli had been able to watch part of this awful ballet from his position outside the diner. He couldn’t finish his sandwich, throwing it in the trash with the rest of the small town crap like t-shirts with ‘blow me’ printed on the front or empty boxes of Nike sneakers containing over saturated amateur sex photos and other teenage trinkets of days gone by. The plane burned brightly, melting it’s surroundings as the cube pushed it’s way through the front of city hall and emerging out of the front in a cloud of cement dust and broken bricks. It scraped it’s way along the high street, leaving the town of Cortez as quickly as it had arrived and was on it’s towards the foot a mountain.

The first news reports about the cube appeared in the small hours of the morning after Cortez. First one or two speculative articles on independent news sites before appearing on all of the bigger networks. The news spread as fast as E. Coli, on the television and in print by the time most people were up for work. The main story before that had been about a torture investigation involving soldiers overseas although the cube was deemed more newsworthy. After signing documents the witnesses held by the government were also released and able to give reports about what they had seen, the woman driving the trailer in the desert, people from Littlefield, Cortez all had brief interviews, their aesthetic or intellectual appeal then boosting them onto further interviews with big media people like Marvin Ham or Jessica Albright. They sweated under make-up and thousand watt lights, recanting stories about the cube whilst video footage was played in the background. The most iconic image so far was the cube riding through the desert and crushing part of a traffic jam. Simon hated the live coverage, already regretting leaking the news of the cube. He had become a person of interest, although he generally kept himself to himself which garnered more intense probing. The networks had deemed the cube a sign of government funding into science projects going haywire, Marvin Ham especially would rant, brain bubbling with amphetamines, furiously proclaiming that science funding should be reduced whilst at the same time demanding that the cube should be stopped. Nobody had died yet although there was some footage of the cube rolling through a field of cattle and catching several under it’s wheels. News helicopters circled the mountain continuously, filming the cubes gentle ascent up the black and white shell.

The air felt dry, microwaved. She sat in a news conference about the cube, giving the regular details about what the cube was made of and the way it moved. More of a way to introduce Metzli to the public, the person the government had deemed to have enough character to be the face associated with this disaster. He spoke well, made people feel assured. She had read his file and was aware of several instances where he would often talk to dying soldiers on the battlefield, speaking to them in a way that they would be more accepting in their death. Autohomicide bombs, soldiers infected with battle cancers, Metzli had a way of first empathizing with them and then reversing it so that they would feel his calmness. It made her shift in her seat. It was the first time he had seen him deliver his pre-eulogy to those about to die. She decided she needed to talk to him personally. She walked out into the parking lot, pushing the horn-rimmed glasses up her nose to get a better view of the platoon of news reporters standing around with hangovers and weak coffee served from a van that popped up at these sorts of places. Wriggling her way through camera crews and new anchors she made her way to her brown station wagon where she sat in the driver’s seat. She took a small box of pills out of her breast pocket and popped two baby blue pills into her mouth before relaxing. Pupils dilated slightly, sweat drops forming on her temples which pulsed slowly and strongly. With a monocular she watched Metzli exit the conference building to be set upon by reporters like hounds seizing a fox. Metzli managed it though, smiling his way through a forest of hi-definition SLR cameras and boom mics until he made his way to his own car. After driving away he loosened his tie, worried. His bosses had thought he was responsible for the leak due to the timing of the thing although the investigation had been put on hold whilst he helped with the cube. He wished he had a cigarette. Metzli and his follower drove around the mountain to the next town awaiting destruction.

Wayne watched the media orchestra play out in front of him. He wasn’t much of a manipulator, although when he considered the importance that the cube had to him over his own wants and needs he found he had a hidden cunning for organizing and co-ordinating chains of events. He was proud of himself. He looked at the plans the other scientists he had under his command, working on the project he now found unimportant. To him it wasn’t that important to stop the cube but instead accept it for what it was. An end of history. Monuments, libraries, galleries, landmarks. All of these would be eroded away over the years. Of course, things could be moved in order to avoid the cube. But a millennia of architectural theory would have to be cast aside. And when you change the surroundings of a person, you changed a person. He became further interested in watching the monitors than those around him, watching hours upon hours of rolling landscape. The cube was ascending, rather quickly, up the side of some distant mountain. The night that the reporters rushed upon the cube he had built a box of monitors to stand inside so he could see and hear what the cube recorded and broadcast back to him over the airwaves.

His fellow scientists on the other hand were growing increasingly worried of Wayne’s behaviour. The sergeant spy went outside, claiming he needed to refuel his Jeep. Instead he sat inside it, phoning his boss on the other line. She picked up the phone, talking quietly herself. The only room available at the motel she was staying at was directly next door to Metzli.
“Wayne’s behaviour is growing quite erratic. His staff aren’t too far away from booting him out in my opinion.”
“Understood. Continue monitoring. How is their project going?”
“It seems pretty reasonable, it might even work.”
“Are you qualified to make that statement?”
“Well, no sir.”
“You have your orders as I have mine. There will come a time in the next few days that you will need to take action but until then continue observing.”
“Yes sir.”
She put the phone down then scrunched up the stiff cover blanket of her bed between her tidy fists. Her knuckles were white, not with effort but due to the paleness of her skin. She pressed a pill out of a plastic dome and placed it into her mouth, swallowing it with a cup of lukewarm water from a disposable paper cup. The room wasn’t too big, the air-conditioning and the double bed taking up most of the floorspace above the navy blue carpet. It had patches where it was cleaner than the other areas as if strange stains had been lifted. Stains in bedrooms were usually from bodily fluids. This thought crossed her mind briefly as she carefully listened through the wall with a cluster of surface microphones, listening to Metzli moving in his sleep.

As the cube traversed Colorado by dawn’s early light cube chasers had began following in a variety of trucks, off-road vehicles and the odd motorbike which joined the regiment of journalists and soldiers. All had to follow quite strict guidelines on how near they could approach the cube, although occasionally somebody would break rank to get closer to the cube. Security had been beefed up quite a lot since the news broke, but once in a while somebody managed to set up an ambush. None of this affected the cube, although it was beginning to get at Simon. He’d already had to fight off a small team of mercenaries intent on blowing up the cube with some home-made grenades. This was the first human kill the cube had, some bumpkin trying to light a fuse fastened to a jar filled with shotgun shells when the cube knocked him down. It went over him as quick and easily as it would if it went through a boulder or a tree, the short scream he made stuck with Simon though. The man ended up as another wet patch in the wake of the moving box. Colorado itself wasn’t doing him any good. Since the army had stepped in he didn’t have that many people to talk to or animals to look at. Just him and the cube, travelling inside a formation of military machines surrounded by an outer crust of the curious public. He couldn’t even drink whilst he was driving as he supposed it was illegal. One of the good things was that he was able to ride on top of the cube soon enough due to Kansas being so flat.

Just after the border was the next scheme to stop the cube. A huge treadmill had been built, big enough to hold the cube. It had cost millions of dollars in tax payers money to construct the titanium runway built in a field of wheat with the parts flown in from across the country. Farslo had taken the lead on this project and felt pretty pleased with himself, conducting interviews and showing cgi of the cube running on the conveyor belt. The convoy of people surrounding the cube turned up first, an advance party to watch the block meet it’s end. The cube approached as the sun blazed down, filmed from dozens of different angles as it approached Farslo’s trap. The conveyor moved backwards at six miles an hour, though it had to be turned on at precisely the right moment for the cube to remain on the titanium runway. Lasers measured the cube’s movement, they were blocked out as it’s dirty metal body drove onto the belt. There was apprehension in the air, some people who were unsure about how the treadmill worked were already shouting about how it hadn’t worked. Then it came on.

There was a groaning of metal but sure enough the cube quickly slowed to a stop as the ground beneath it matched the wheels above it. A great cheer rose from the crowd, Farslo himself was brimming with pride. He’d actually done it. Stepping onto a podium besides the two huge machines he began to make a speech to international news networks about the gallant efforts of Americans having managed to stop the advancement of technology gone haywire. Meanwhile in his ear he was being told that the cube was already making advancement. Barely millimetres but still, it hadn’t worked. Only slowed the machine down. After finishing his speech he rushed away.
“Why the fuck isn’t it working? Take me to Wayne. No, wait. Bring him to me for fuck’s sake, where is he? Where is he!” he shouted to the passengers in the car. Nobody really had any response. Farslo threw himself back into his chair so that he slumped. “Fuck’s sake.”

Back in Nevada the group of scientist’s were putting the finishing touches to a presentation about their method of stopping the cube to be shown in a 3D cinema so that it really got the attention of those in charge. The film was being processed on a supercomputer alongside various algorithms and calculations deciding on the most efficient way to deploy the huge horseshoe they had designed. It was made of the same material the cube was, could match it in pushing strength. An immovable object for the unstoppable force. The only problem was what would happen when they would collide. Although not that violent, the physics of where the cube met the horseshoe were mind boggling. The group was primarily working on the theory that they may fuse together whilst igniting the atmosphere or perhaps stripping away the Earth’s magnetosphere although Wayne had totally given up on the project. He watched the cube’s cameras. At first he was worried that the cube had been stopped, although he had looked at the treadmill and decided it was built cheaply, quickly and wouldn’t stand the wheels of the cube. He had spent most of his life working on his invention, a cosmic eye that could travel in the most hostile alien environments long after he was dead. Gas giants with molten swamps of metal as it’s core, superhot asteroids caught in the orbit of black holes, distant ice worlds that may contain alien species made of diamonds and ink. Perhaps one day even the surface of a star. An interstellar fleet of cubes being pushed outward from Earth using special rockets that would transform into satellite transmitters so that mankind could explore the cosmos without needing to physically be there. But there had been a mistake somewhere, it wouldn’t have taken much. Some loose connection, some code that hadn't been finished. And now the cube was loose and he was held responsible. That is why Wayne was packing a bag to take with him as he made his escape. The horseshoe would take months to build and he didn’t want to face the courts, the public and the media with some ridiculous backlash. He remembered back when he was a child that they had two sheep dogs and one day one had gone into his sister’s room whilst she was asleep and bit her face. She’d been alright but would have a strange scar on her cheek for the rest of her life. His dad had been furious at the dogs but knew only one was responsible. These were his prize sheep dogs as well, part of his welfare. Wayne had just turning eleven when this happened and went out to the porch that evening to talk to his dad, who spent time on their porch when he wanted to think whilst looking out at the farm he owned. They talked for a while and the first time Wayne can remember understanding his father’s point of view, the logic he had and the decision he was struggling with. That night his dad went to the kennel and shot both dogs, unable to take the chance it would happen again. Nearly forty five years later Wayne understood the dog’s point of view. The only difference was he had a chance to get out. He zipped the bag up, took a last look at the monitors and made his way out of the building. By the back door the sergeant was waiting, leaning against the wall. “Can I help you Wayne?”
“No, I’m just on my way out. Need to go the treadmill and talk to the media, you know.”
“That’s quite a way out isn’t it?”
“I think so. I’ll be alright, the cube pretty much carved a highway from here to there.”
“Why don’t you stay here, I’m sure they’ll send a helicopter for you.”
“No thanks, there’s been enough helicopter’s flying around.” The sergeant took off from his position like a swimmer, quickly within reach of Wayne.
“You’re staying here Wayne.”
“No. I can’t, they rang me. You can come with me but we have to go now.” The two men looked at each other for a moment in the concrete stairwell being cooled by noisy air conditioning. Wayne looked at the sergeant, six feet tall, sleeves pulled up over muscled arms, buzz cut. The sergeant looked back at Wayne then grabbed him by the shirt.
“We aren’t going anywhere.”
“Stop it. Stop, I command you! Stop.”
“I don’t want to hurt you but I can.” said the sergeant.
Wayne was being dragged along back up the stairs when he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pen with the laser on the end. He shone it in the sergeants eye, enough to distract him so that Wayne could push him towards the railing on the staircase. His first push barely moved him, though Wayne swung his feet up against the wall and pushed away again. The two men went over the rail and fell a few feet. It was still enough to break the sergeant’s neck. Wayne stood up, holding his wrist. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck.” he said over and over, looking at the strange bump below the sergeant’s skull. The soldier was still concious, barely. His brown eyes looked up at Wayne from the floor and followed him as he burst through the door and into the desert. The sergeant began to dribble.

Simon sat in a bar just off the highway, looking at a beer that was getting warm. A lot of the little towns around the cube had become busy, the most that South West Kansas had seen in a long time. He had parked his tractor just outside of Dodge City and hoped not many of the locals would bother him. He caught a few glances but nothing much, the bar had pretty dingy lighting from the few bulbs that worked. Simon wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating. The adventure was pretty much over for him. He lacked the charm to wrangle a celebrity career from the experience, not that he cared for that. After this he would probably end up going back to his job, maybe he’d quit and be a long distance truck driver or something. He wasn’t sure. He took a drink. The bar didn’t have a television but if it did he’d be sure they’d be showing the cube stuck on the treadmill. He heard a few snatches of conversation, though most of the old timers at the bar weren’t there to make small talk. Pool cues cracked against balls, locals laughed at blue jokes. Dodge City didn’t seem that bad. Wasn’t like being by the cube though, like swimming alongside some giant in the Atlantic. Simon sighed and ordered himself another beer.

The cube had moved almost a centimetre as midnight fell. The tracks were deteriorating slowly, the machine was making progress. Farslo looked at it through the window as the corn fields surrounding it waved in the wind lazily. His attention was brought back to the room upon hearing his name.
“So what do you think?”
“I...I think our first priority is to stop the cube. Although manpower should be put into finding Wayne, we should move ahead with the next step.”
“Are you sure sir?”
“Yes.” said Farslo. He wasn’t. But sat in a room with the half dozen men he felt the need to appear definite. The green gloss walls of the room made it seem a lot dimmer than it should, bouncing light around and making odd shadows on faces. Perhaps the oddest shadows of all belonged to the computer expert they had found in Silicon Valley. His skin was marked with ulcers, raw and fierce. There was a mark on his sleeve where one on his arm had began to bleed.
“I’ll begin the process then. I’ll need time to go over the files.” he said, holding up a memory stick. “But I imagine I’ll have some sort of system in place soon enough.”
“You will have all the resources you need.” said Farslo.
“To be honest I have my own computers, I know a few guys who could help out.”
“Are they trustworthy?”
“I used to be a hacker myself. I trust them more than...some people.” said the ulcerated man.
Farslo would usually have goaded some kind of argument out of him although he agreed. The few government men he had met had been a lot different than the boffins back in Nevada.
“Well, good luck then Poulsen. Keep me updated.” said Farslo.
“Yes sir.” Farslo nodded to nobody in particular then went out into the corn fields to look at the cube. The wind carried the hum of it’s looping motion into the night.

Metzli was preparing to debrief his bosses, making a few re-writes from time to time on his laptop. After that he wasn’t sure. Maybe another job? Maybe he’d go and visit his family in Mexico. He sipped some warm water and played around with the word processor for a while until he got bored enough that he held his finger down on the letter o, watching page after page of o’s appear and disappear. Shaking himself a little, he decided he’d finish it up in Washington and went out to his car. As he put his key into the door he felt a nip in his neck. He woke up a little groggy, then quickly worked out he’d been drugged. He was bound, to a chair. It was dark. His eyes began to focus and he could make out some shapes. Where was he? How long had he been out for? A beam of light sliced through the curtain, illuminating a bed. It had been the one he had slept in last night. He tried pulling at the rope around his arms though he heard the familiar click of a pistol being cocked behind his head so he stopped. He felt somebody move close behind his head then the wet sound of lips parting.
“I've been watching you.” said the voice.
“Okay. What do you want.”
“To talk to you.”
“This is the best way for us to talk? Let me out of this chair.”
“I don't want to let you know who I am just yet. I shouldn't be talking to you. But I need to tell you that the cube hasn't been stopped.’
“Yes it has.” said Metzli.
“It is moving and will carry on soon enough. I usually don't intervene on cases but there is more to this than meets the eye. Haven't you wondered why the cube got loose in the first place? Stopping it isn't as important as knowing why it started.”
“I don’t understand.” he whispered.
“Keep following the cube for now and think about our meeting. Until next time Metzli.” she said, her breathy cadence at almost a whisper before she walked past him and swung open the door, blinding him again as the late morning sun flooded the room. He could see the blurry silhouette of her. Hard to tell any details. And she was gone. He began to struggle with the rope around his wrist.

On top of the cube were a small group of men not used to being outside. They sat cross-legged, tapping away at computers connected to large electrodes hooked up to the cube. The head hacker, the man with the ulcerated skin was struggling in the Kansas sun, the sweat not doing his ulcers any good. "I need a sit rep!"
"This subnets like nothing I've ever seen. Trinary code, firewalls circling firewalls..."
"C'mon guys, we've all hacked military computers before. The programming is only as good as the programmer." said a balding twenty year old with dreadlocks.
"Guys, I'm running 512-bit encryption data waveware, seems to be cracking the code..."
"I'm pinging the fuck out of this bitch." said another, sweating beneath his cowboy hat.
"Synchronizing hack in 3, 2, 1!"
They all hit keys at the same time. The ulcerated man pumped his fist in the air. "Epic hack! I'm in." His monitor showed a 3D wireframe model of the cube that rotated with various green numbers changing rapidly in a side panel.
"Now it's just a case of shutting this thing down and we'll have beat this thing." he said just as the cube lurched forward on the treadmill, knocking over a few empty energy drink cans.
"Wait, wait!" he shouted at his laptop. The treadmill beneath them groaned, rising in pitch to a scream. The people below started to back away, shouting things up at the cluster of nerds until the cube suddenly lurched forward as the conveyor belt snapped. It whipped backwards, thrown from the bottom of the cube as it bounded into the grain fields. The hackers started to scream and shout in fear. "What have you done!" shouted one.
"I don't know, hold on, hold on. Something's wrong." said the ulcerated man, still typing furiously at his laptop. The cube wasn't going at six miles per hour any more.

Simon had heard the news and was racing along the streets of Dodge City, trying to get to the freeway. He'd just bought an off-road pick-up from the late 90s for a months salary but he didn't care. He was giddy. Most people were trying to head East, head out of the city. But he guided the truck faster and faster, listening to the news and squinting through a light hangover. Apparently they'd tried to hack the cube and some piece of software had been activated. Driving along the interstate his radio lost the news signal and began playing pounding electronic rock and roll noise, the first military vehicles sped towards him, flashing him down. He pulled up, showed his identification and they let him pass. The truck passed Jeeps and personnel carriers whilst helicopters flew overhead. The road was getting pretty busy for this time of day, a mix of scientists, soldiers and journalists going towards or away from the cube. After nearly half an hour he saw the cube in the distance, kicking up dust.

The hackers stood around a table opposite Farslo. On the table was the body of the hacker with the cowboy hat, he'd fallen from the cube and died of internal injuries. "Are you looking at him? This man was your friend. And it's your fault he's dead."
"Sir." one protested.
"Shut your fucking spotty face. You dicks. Do you know what 'decelerate' means? It doesn't mean speed the fucker up!" said Farslo, throwing a stack of papers around the room. They wafted around, some landing on the body.
"It was an accident."
"Yeah? As far as we can tell this isn't just, oo, a sudden burst of energy. It is continuing to accelerate." He waited for a response. When their leader was about to speak Farslo punched the corpse in the face.
"Shut up! You're all under arrest. You better hope we can stop this soon else...I don't know. You're fucked!" he shouted. Some soldiers walked in and took the hackers away, leaving Farslo shaking in anger. Twelve miles an hour and counting, an extra number after every ten minutes. At this rate the cube will have reached the East coast soon enough. "Get me Wayne!"

Wayne was out in the desert, riding around in a stolen Jeep. He wasn't sure where he was going. Maybe Vegas. Maybe Reno. Some place he could lay low for a while. The sun was reaching it's peak in the sky, high noon. Hot as hell. He drove for a while, a little lost. Bits of scrub, the occasional withered tree. Trying to steer the Jeep as much as he could in the shadow of the mountainous ridges around him, he eventually reached a road just by Death Valley and stuck to that. "Viva Las Vegas." he said to himself. With no air-conditioning in the Jeep he was struggling to keep cool and had stripped down to just his underwear. In his bag of supplies he took out a water can and gulped it's warm contents, happy enough. He'd never been to a casino but thought now would be as good a time as any to go to one.

The cube wasn't going that fast, but picking up speed. The huge electrodes were still attached to it and trailed behind it like strands of hair as it chewed up rows of farmland. Large rotating sprinklers were twisted up and crushed under it's wheels as it moved through Kansas. As it approached Dodge City some farm boys who had been waiting amongst the corn rows in a truck drove alongside it, one of them standing in the bay of the truck with a can of spray paint whilst his friend had hold of his belt. "Get nearer Clive!" he yelled to the driver as he leaned towards the metal wall. Soldiers had noticed the truck and were already moving towards it, but the graffiti artist still had enough time to begin tagging the machine. In large purple letters he began writing 'FUCK IRAQ' as his brother had been killed whilst fighting over there. He got as far as 'c' before the truck hit a bump and he was thrown from the truck. He toppled forward, instinctively trying to break his fall with his arms though when he landed and his sleeve got caught beneath the wheels of the cube. He was quickly pulled towards the cube as if sucked up by a hoover, screaming along the way. His arm was gone, bone pulled out of it's socket as easily as popping off the leg from a roast chicken. With his other arm he had managed to push away before the rest of him had been pulled underneath, though his arm was gone. He lay in the corn, shocked. Blood pumped out of his shoulder rhythmically, it nearly made him laugh. He didn't though. Instead he watched the cube move out of his vision and the faces of his friends pop into it. "Fuck Iraq." he said, then fainted. The cube moved on and as it entered the next county it was joined by Simon in his bright baby blue pick-up truck. He frowned at the 'FUC' painted on the side, but it didn't matter much to the cube he supposed. Just after two in the afternoon they had both reached Dodge City. He checked his speedo, they were both going at twenty one miles an hour. It was a little funny to Simon. Last night he had been almost in mourning, drinking flat beer in some scummy bar. Now he was riding just behind the cube and was grinning as pieces of Dodge City crumbled on either side of him.

Before, when the cube would amble into a building, it either destroyed it's whole structure or push it along for a while before it was obliterated. Now that the cube was beginning to pick up speed it tended to make buildings explode against it's front, sending debris flying everywhere. The shrapnel from post-offices, hospitals and schools would fly from the corners of the metal box and usually damage things that the cube would have missed before. Telephone lines were cut, glass would be broken, cars would be crushed beneath masonry and wood. A panic had also began as rumours spread of the path of the cube, people unsure exactly where was safe. The government would try to clear the path they thought the cube would take as good as they good, but they thought they'd have weeks to sort it out. Now they had to do entire stretches of city in just a few hours, it was complicated. People were beginning to get injured by the cube. Photographers trying to get dramatic shots could be crushed by a falling tower, people who lived alone and paid little attention to the news that week suddenly had the cube crash into their living room and kill them. Thrill-seekers, heroes, the brave, the stupid, the old, the young, the suicidal. A jail was ignored and it's eleven prisoners were crushed by the cube, approaching forty miles per hour as it reached Wichita by early evening. Simon needed to refuel occasionally, either fill his truck or his stomach, but would carry on following as close as he dared. It emerged from a lake, pushing wet mud up that uprooted trees. The speeding block wasn't going through downtown Wichita at least, instead it's course took it through the highly populated suburban area a little north of the city centre.

Debbie Montague was lying on top of her bed with her boyfriend, watching the sunset through a window. Their hands moved across each other, caressing.
“I've never done it before.”
“It's okay. I'll be gentle.” he said, pulling out his penis from his boxers and rubbing it against her thigh. She reached over onto the bedside table for a condom when she felt the bed vibrating. She laughed, wondering if he had set something up but when she turned towards him she saw the big cube looming in the distance, approaching quickly. “Fuck!” she said, bouncing off the bed and running downstairs. Covering herself with a long wool coat she went onto the street. A motorbike sped past, siren blaring. She looked back inside the house, wondering where her boyfriend was before running after the motorbike. “Stop, wait for me!” she yelled down the street. It peeled off, though a stripped down car was heading towards her. The doors and top had been ripped off it and men leaned out, she waited for them. Strong arms grabbed her and the car quickly sped away. “My boyfriend, he's back there.” she said. She turned around to see him pulling on his shirt as he ran out of the front door, the cube nearly upon him. The house she grew up in was eviscerated, the white wooden boards splaying against the wall of the box like an exploding cigar then there was nothing. Sweet Terry sprinted after the car which had slowed down, the men all shouting amongst themselves on whether or not to wait for him. Debbie watched the lanky teenager run beneath the streetlights like he was making a touchdown back at Wichita High. He was so dreamy. He was just twenty feet away when the driver decided to drive away down Denver Drive as there were more people waiting further along. “I'm sorry.” said one of her rescuers as she watched her boyfriend disappear beneath the box. She screamed in despair. Metzli watched this little drama play out a hundred or so feet above in a helicopter, still thinking about his meeting with the woman that morning. He'd just got news that Wayne had been captured in Las Vegas at a craps table. He wouldn't mind interviewing Wayne, though he wondered if he'd get the chance. The media was getting pretty rabid, creating more and more hype about the cube. The blame had been shifted from Farslo to Wayne who had been portrayed in the news like Saddam Hussein with a PhD. Metzli guessed he was getting a similar treatment.

Thousand watt bulbs shone in his eyes, disorientating him as he sat in a chair. He'd lost track of time a bit but guessed he'd been sitting like that for about an hour. Even if he closed his eyes the lights were so bright that the interior of his eyelids were glowing red and purple. The sensory overload caused him to hallucinate fizzing images that faded from view when he tried to focus on them. Monochrome landscapes, faces that rippled and merged with each other like a liquid crowd, impossible machines. The lights went out and some people walked in.
“We need answers from you Wayne. We want you to tell us how to stop the cube.” said one of them. Wayne laughed to himself, unsure of reality. A piece of paper was pushed across a table with a pen next to it, though the table was a few feet away from where Wayne was sitting. He sat up, slouched slightly as his hands and feet were restrained. He blinked a few times. The sheet of paper came into view followed by the three shadowy figures. A woman's voice. “We know the blueprints you've given us weren't the most recent.”
“You...you want me to what? Draw the damn thing?”
“As much as you can. Any weakness.” said one of them.
“From memory? I can't, my mind isn't like that.”
“It doesn't need to be exact. Just a rough outline.”
Wayne picked up the pen and poised it over the paper before relaxing slightly. “What if I don't co-operate?”
“The clichés are there for a reason Wayne, we have ways of making you talk.”
“Lights? Maybe some noises, you'll break my kneecaps? Maybe threaten my family?”
“If we had time, perhaps.” said the woman.
“You are a researcher of planetary exploration, engineering. We have our own researchers in interrogation.” said one of the men. “We suggest you tell us now, save everyone the trouble.”
“People will know I'm missing though.”
“The last you were seen was in a casino in Las Vegas. Won't be much of a stretch to plant a corpse, maybe yours, out in the desert. Suicide perhaps.”
Wayne blinked a few times, heart racing. He was a bit over his head. He drew a square onto the paper with a circle inside it and set the pen down. “You know, the square used to be thought of as representing man. The circle as angelic. That's why the Vitruvian man contains those shapes, it's an attempt to combine ourselves with some kind of god. The universe and all it's symmetry.”
“Is that all you're willing to say?”
“Whilst I can, yes. And god damn you sons of bitches.”
They walked out and the lights came back on. Wayne sat back in his chair and looked beneath his eyelids.

Night had fallen on St. Louis although there was much activity. They were attempting to move the statue of St. Louis outside the cities art museum. Although it was thought of as less important than it once was due to a magnificent archway being built in the sixties as a symbol for the city. The archway was quite impressive, big enough in fact that the cube could pass underneath it quite easily. Which it in fact would in a few hours. But the people of St. Louis wanted to rescue their cities namesake, cast in bronze sitting in the saddle of a great horse. His inverted sword cast the shadow of a cross in the fluorescent lighting as dozens of workers with power tools smashed away the base of the statue and it was gently lifted up with a crane. St. Louis flew through the air and found a new home in the park. The Apotheosis of St. Louis was safe, although many of it's citizens weren't.

She boarded the train that Wayne was being held on. The prison trains were useful for keeping prisoner's constantly moving, unable to ever tell where they were exactly and unable to escape. It had been one of the first inventions of her boss, back in the seventies. The other agents tried to ignore her, they didn't usually like outsiders trying to break a prisoner but she was quite revered in the field of espionage. Adjusting her glasses, she tapped the keypad and entered Wayne's cell.
“Oh.” he said, surprised.
“Sensory overload can be pleasant.” she said, walking over to him.
“Are you going to torture me? You want my plans?”
“No. I'll get the information I need, relax. I wanted to ask you one or two things whilst we're alone though.” she said, opening a bag and taking out a box. The little chrome box was attached to a belt she strapped around her waist.
“Like what?”
“People, people high up, have been impressed with you so far Wayne. We don't wish you any harm for the time being. But we need to know a few things. Do you suffer from migraines?”
“Not until today.”
“How important is the cube to you?”
“It's my life's work. I'd die for it.” he said.
“And lastly, do you have any more ideas?” she said, taking a pair of gloves with wires hanging off them out of the bag and stretching them over her hands.
“Well, of course I do. I'm an inventor at heart. But up there.” He pointed with his head upwards. “Space. I can't understand how people aren't as passionate as I am about it” he said.
“Okay Wayne. I'll report to my supervisors. Just keep yourself to yourself.” she stretched her fingers inside the gloves and pulled another thing out of the bag.
“What's that?” She ignored him and pulled the white cap over her head and plugged that into the box along with the gloves. Pressing a few buttons on the box she first dimmed the lights then walked behind him and rested her fingertips onto his head.
“Where are the plans Wayne?”
“I won't tell you. I don't care what you say, it's all bullshit.”
“I want you to imagine building the cube. The years it took, the plans you needed to make. Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Think about it Wayne. Your final plans.” she said calmly.
He tried to think of something else but couldn't help but think of the cube. He had watched it being built from the ground up, tested the materials over and over again. He thought about the cube on other planets. He thought about himself on other planets. He was woke from his day dream by the little belt beeping behind his head. “Thanks Wayne.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“I know. You were thinking though. I'm not wearing these gloves for hygiene purpose, I'm wearing a modified EEG. It receives as well as broadcasts, just takes time for us to synch up.”
“I don't understand.”
“You've built an invincible machine. If you can think it, why isn't it possible?” she said, taking off the cap and gloves.
“Wait, that's not fair. I wasn't going to say anything.” he said, voice rising.
“Don't worry Wayne. Don't struggle. I may see you again, you might have a future yet. Try and stay alive.” she said. And then she left. Wayne shouted after her, struggling for the first time in his restraints. The light went from dim to ridiculously bright again and he screamed to be let free.

The cube was in Missouri, the enormous metal box travelling at sixty miles an hour sliced through the ground like a cannonball fired into a swamp. Back in the deserts it barely made a noise although there was now some kind of rumbling roar emanating from it's undercarriage. This along with the sound of the earth being shredded, flora and fauna being smashed and splattered, made the cube sound like hell. Someone had also had the bright idea of attaching an air-raid siren to the top of the cube with a set of grappling hooks meant to warn people of it's arrival. This mixture of noises combined with the stress of the situation was beginning to get to the loose guard around the juggernaut, men had been replaced pretty regularly since Kansas. Everyone except Simon. The chaos the cube caused balanced it's purity of form and function for him. It made sense somehow. He would often drive the closest, anchoring his truck onto one of the grappling hooks so that he almost surfed behind the cube, sometimes having to dodge falling detritus but for the most part he was in awe. People were beginning to worry about him, making jokes across walkie-talkies about how they should drill a hole in the cube so he could fuck it or how the cube reminded him of his mother. For the most part nobody dared go near to him. A van full of journalists had tried to get close to him and he had shot at them. As the cube crushed a church Simon clambered out of the truck cab and onto the bed at the back. He looked up at the night sky whilst eating some beef jerky he'd bought back at Dodge City, not that sure what rations he should bring. He looked at the last few pieces of meat, half a bottle of orange juice, a litre of water and some twinkies. It wasn't much but he doubt he'd need it at the rate the cube was going. Already he could feel it picking up speed. He took out a twinkie and bit into it absent mindedly as he watched the groups of cars and helicopters around him bouncing over the rough terrain and into the crop fields, their headlamps reminded him of the strings of lanterns explorers used when charting new terrain. The cube was the blackest thing in the twilight, filthy and noisy. The siren wailed on.

Metzli was trying to focus. He had given up trying to follow the cube, finding the way it so easily destroyed things at such a rapid pace disturbing. Thirty seven people dead, tens of millions of dollars of property damage. Areas of natural beauty were spoiled as if somebody had gone through the pages of a national geographic with a paint roller, leaving a flat, featureless line across the Mid-West. He stubbed out a cigarette and drank some bitter tea, he needed stronger stuff than his usual hot water. Graphs of shares rising and falling, investors, page after page of notes detailing the initial escape of the cube, witness statements. Propped against a wall was a white board with a few theories on, though he had abandoned that in favour of recording his thoughts into his Dictaphone. It was deep into the night although when playing back the recordings he caught the sounds of a fight taking place outside his room than he hadn't noticed at the time. As it played he looked from behind the window curtain and saw an empty parking lot made of grey dirt, dry blood in dust. “A conspiracy to destroy architecture. What does this mean?” he heard himself say about an hour ago. It continued for a while before running silent again. He wondered if she was nearby.

The ground rushed beneath. Grasses that gave way to concrete, cars, trees. They all flicked past at quite a pace as the cube was now punching through small towns in the blink of an eye. At midnight it crept into the outskirts of St. Louis. Houses and factories were obliterated, roof panels and clods of earth were thrown high in the air. It was like a tornado. Most people managed to escape, watching the spectacle of the cube as it rumbled through the places they lived. It was lit with mixtures of yellow and white as it overtook streetlights and cars. Crashing into the city centre, buildings collapsed on top of it causing masonry to rain across downtown. Simon followed, cracked windscreen on truck, dents all over the body. His face contorted in concentration as through blood filled eyes he scanned the horizons of the cube for flying objects. Out of the radio blasted static.

The president sweated beneath lights, his cold hands by his sides like anchors of awkwardness. His mouth clicked when it opened. Dry. He went to drink a glass of water and managed to get it down the front of his shirt. Why blue today. Somebody signalled him and he began his speech. “America. It has been a long day. An important day. A day that tried the very nature of our spirit.” His heart skipped a beat. He was still focusing on the obvious patch on his front where he had spilled. Something that babies did. “You may have seen the footage of this, invention. Destroying our businesses, our homes, our lives. But we need to remain strong in the face of this adversary. We have been strong before and we can be strong again.” The glowing blue of the Teleprompter reflected in his eyes on the high-definition cameras. On the television psychologists were analysing his body language in order to gauge his emotion. The dilation of pupils. The beads of sweat collecting on his shaven lip. His face contorted as he told lie after lie. He wasn't particularly thinking about the cube but more the reason why he had become president. The choices he had made over the years. Often, in secret, he consulted the I-ching to help him with his decisions. Through a bluetooth earpiece he would speak through an intermediary collecting dozens of predictions until deciding on how this would affect him. He had consulted them earlier, the fourth and thirty ninth. Hexagrams of change. Using the divinations so much he had reached a point where he relied on it. Although in that reliance came confidence in it's insights. He continued.

The speech was broadcast across America as well as the internet. This lead to quite a rapid response to the president's mis-drink of water, allowing various news networks to first question his ability as a leader and then repeating how this was important due to several similar events of everyday nothingness. Farslo watched in the waiting room just off stage. He was due to give a speech himself next. His mind was blank. He hated public speaking, especially in the case that he was seen as failing. In an hour the cube would reach a different time zone. At it's current rate of acceleration, which showed no signs of slowing, the cube would be travelling at the speed of sound in a week. It was hard to say what it would be doing in a years time. His mind tossed and turned between running away and staying. Surprisingly for him, he had managed to convince himself to get up and leave the waiting room. A secret service agent was guarding the door but Farslo ignored him, hoping that if he kept walking nobody would question him. He walked down nearly a mile of corridors before pushing a fire door open into the night air. He wasn't running away. That's what Wayne had done and look where he was. Farslo didn't know exactly, but he knew he didn't want that. He just needed a breather. He paced around beneath a security light before deciding he was going to go for a sandwich. Subway, the home of the original subway sandwich. It was a little difficult to order for him, he forgot the fastest way to order all the different ingredients. What happened to a bag of fries and salsa for a dollar. What happened to the good ol' burgers with the middle cut out and replaced with a fried egg. What happened to the mom and pop stores where you could get a fifth of whiskey and some skin rag with a few numbers in the back. He'd never rang any but liked to fantasize about what they could be. Before he knew what he doing he had managed to get half way through ordering some sandwich. “Everything.” he said in response to some question, gesturing at the bunch of black trays in front of him lit beneath a glass sneeze shield. A couple of government higher ups were sitting around at the plastic tables, looking a little out of place amongst the brutally inoffensive furniture. He nodded to a few of them. Nobody looked healthy. The lights seemed to strobe slightly, adding a dream-like quality to the situation. His thoughts carried him back towards the conference centre, sandwich in one hand. Farslo looked at the white building with trepidation, the food in his mouth seemed foreign, strange. He dropped it on the floor. Instead of going back in he rested for a while. He looked in the direction he thought the cube was and wondered what it was doing. His phone began to ring so he went inside though paused at the door, turning over his shoulder to look at his sandwich. It's fake paper wrapper flapping at it's side in the night breeze. He rolled his tongue across his gums and decided it had been a mistake going to Subway.

The team entered the factory in Nevada, she directed them to Wayne's office. It was pretty large, a scale model of the cube took up most of the room. The leader listened to the woman speaking in his ear, guiding him towards a keypad on one wall. He attached a circuit board to it and began hacking at the code whilst she watched through a camera one of the soldiers was carrying. The keypad beeped and opened up a shelf on the bookcase. A soldier walked across the blue carpet, scanning the area with a Geiger counter before walking towards the bookcase. With a gloved hand he reached into the secret compartment and pulled out a usb stick. The soldiers stood around, waiting for a computer to load. “I think these are the most up to date blueprints.” said the team-leader, looking through designs of the cube with annotations. He stopped, listening to the voice in his ear. Running through the empty factory they found the experimental laboratory. This was where a lot of the prototypes for the cube had been invented a few years ago, now it was home to several smaller robots to demonstrate possible features. Even with no control a few of these robots were carrying out tasks. A few robots the size of golf balls bounced around a maze. A mechanical arm shuffled a deck of cards again and again, the cards themselves were beginning to wear away. One of the soldiers shut it off. They rummaged around the room until eventually they found what they were looking for encased in a block of liquid nitrogen. She was a few hundred miles away, a metallic sensation just behind the roof of her mouth from the drugs she had taken earlier. She picked up a phone. “I need an F-15 ready to transport, co-ordinates after this message.” She tapped some numbers into her phone then put it down. A glass of water. The television was on. Low lighting. A tube of pills, nootropics. She took one and went back to watching the soldiers through her laptop. Inside the frozen block was the shadow in the shape of a man. Packing a few things into a bag she left. The glossy metal skeleton of her car glinted in the moonlight whilst yellow sodium street lighting set a constant tempo as she drove through the night, heading toward the cube.

The horizon was aglow with the dull orange of a sun rise. It would take a while yet, but it was on it's way. The roads were quiet, crickets chirping in the undergrowth outside the car window. Quiet factories were off in the distance, massive compared to the few lights of houses nearby. Families slept. As she passed an eighteen wheeler she split a pill in two with her thumbnail and flicked half of it into her mouth. She hadn't slept for a while. She could sleep when it was over. There wasn't long now. Eastward, the six seven five interstate. As the scenery barely changed she was aware of the sun beginning to shine off in the distance. That summer sun. The days were hot and the nights warm. Sunburn ached on the back of the neck, sweat drew itself together where skin met. She stopped at a gas station for a drink, mesmerized by the lines upon lines of products. She got some water wrapped in plastic, cooled by a fridge advertising anti-smoking drugs. When she pulled herself across the driver's seat she sat for a moment, trying to consider her actions. Her brain was moving a little too fast for her to consider them with a concious. She had gone too far now. The key turned, the engine began exploding petrol and she was off again into the dawn.

Indianapolis. People were protesting in the streets, others holding a candlelit vigil for the sleeping hundreds that would have been caught in the path and now rested in various tents. The cube went through. The air-raid siren had broken away a long time ago, there was now just the dull noisyscreamwave emanating from the box as it ploughed a sixty metre cut across the American city. The morning smelled wet, acidic. The dewy soil stung the back of the nostrils, it was almost like electricity. O-zone. The cube blasted dirt high into the air, adding to the cloud it had been throwing up for the last few hours. Simon was no longer aware of the names of his surroundings, how one space connected to the next. Instead his world had taken quite a two dimensional aspect. There was the black square in front of him, constantly now. Around it there was a halo of debris, black patterns against the blossoming horizon as the sun was slowly starting to begin it's ascent into the sky. It made sense to him. There was the cube and everything else. The cube was a fixed point in time and space with landscapes and people and language and meaning piled around it awkwardly. The box in front of him had a certain kind of purity amongst the chaos.

The train came to a stop. Wayne walked forward gently lead by a chain around the handcuffs he was wearing. He was lead to a public toilet at the train station, aware that there were a few people around him. His eyes ached from the light he had been subjected to for the last few hours. “Wayne.” said a voice. He turned, hoping he was facing the speaker.
“Yes?”
“Wayne, your invention has caused millions of dollars in property damage. It's killed people.”
“What?” said Wayne, shocked. His heart leapt in his chest. Weak at the knees.
“You know this Wayne. Your invention is approaching speeds of one hundred and sixty kilometres an hour.”
“No, that's impossible. You have to understand-” said Wayne, needing to support himself against the cold porcelain of a sink.
“You have been charged with treason, murder, terrorism, vandalism of federal buildings...” said somebody next to him. The charges continued whilst he tried to focus on the room around him. Four people, dressed in black. One had taken out a pistol.
“Stop, I'm the only one who can stop the cube! Listen to me for fuck's sake, don't kill me. Just don't kill me, this is my life we're talking about!” he started shouting. Somebody came at him from the side and pushed down on his shoulder.
“Don't resist.”
“No. I'm going to resist. You can't kill me! Don't fucking kill me. Give me a chance, please.”
There was another hand on his shoulder and he was pushed down to the floor, too weak to fight his way out. “Is this worth taking my life?” he shouted. A phone rang. The voice continued in monotone about his rights and his punishment. The person holding the gun stepped forward and cocked the pistol. Thoughts raced through his head. Was he meant to think about how to escape or be remembering the best moments in his life? They say your life was meant to flash in front of your eyes when you died. Did he believe in God? “Please.” he said, crying. He flinched. Somebody was talking. He waited, he nearly couldn't comprehend what was happening. Such fear. His executioner took a step back as the conversation continued. He caught snatches of it through his delirium though couldn't make sense of the words until he realized they weren't speaking English. After what must have only been a few seconds he was helped back on his feet. Bile rose in his throat though he stopped himself from vomiting.
“Well done Wayne, we still need you.”
Wayne couldn't think of anything to respond with. He was trembling violently. The hands took hold of him again and he was carried back onto the train.

The prairies flew past. Metzli was driving through the country, hoping he'd get some kind of answers by being near the cube. Maybe she'd be there at least. He also had a job to do after all and had heard that one of Wayne's employers was acting increasingly erratic as the hours went on. The military didn't want to take any action before Metzli had attempted to talk to him. Simon. He remembered him, he'd seemed to be behaving a little oddly the last time Metzli had seen him. Should have known then perhaps. A lot of the roads here weren't leading exactly where he wanted to go, as the crow flies. He checked behind him from time to time and sometimes drove across a field of wheat or along a dirt footpath. His optimism had been knocked, he felt his grasp of the situation sliding as more and more news reports played over the radio. Earlier that day he would check the internet regularly although there had been a point where the media saturation of the cube had just become depressing. There was a story behind every house that had been crashed into, every person killed had a family to speak for them. A parade of melancholy, hours of footage of wailing families and towns becoming little more than rubble fringed by the few remaining buildings. And still, the meaning of why it had happened. He wondered if he could believe what she had said earlier although the more he considered the facts the more it seemed like there may be some motivation behind it. The idea that this had happened randomly, by accident was a little tough for him to understand so he considered the alternatives. What would be the motivation behind letting an invention do so much damage? “Money? Political gain?” he said out loud. “Had Wayne been set up? If so, who by?” he paused for a while, letting the Dictaphone run. He rooted around in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes but couldn't find one. Metzli crossed the time zone into the East. A jet flew somewhere above him, a robotic arm beneath it carrying it's cargo. This jet was running out of fuel and so had to pass the pod to another robotic arm in mid-air. It was a delicate job. When the load was passed the new pilot accelerated greatly, punching through the sound barrier. He didn't know what was in the pod. It didn't matter really. The configuration of machines flew through the air for a while until the pilot began to descend. His orders were to disengage the pod in mid-air so as to avoid needing to land on any airfield. Top secret mission apparently. With a slight hesitation he released the grip on the robotic arm on the jet, sending the pod down to earth like some kind of bomb. He wondered if it was a bomb for a moment. Maybe it was nuclear. Though nothing happened. The jet flew around for a while longer until the pilot decided it was time for breakfast.

Simon's truck broke down, the fuel tank empty. He had been driving flat out for a while now, ignoring his surroundings slightly. As the truck rolled to a gentle stop, police cars advanced on him. Simon got out, blinking. His eyes were bloodshot, sweat slicked his head. “Get down.” shouted some policeman. With his legs shaking slightly he began to kneel when he was advanced upon by police. They threw a blanket over his head and picked him up, carrying him towards a car. The cube continued, the noise of it's technological destruction fading into the distance. Simon was quickly becoming aware of what had happened to him and reached for the woollen blanket covering his head. He felt the ground rushing towards him and realized he'd been pushed over, cold metal around his wrist and ankle. Again with his other half. They picked him up again using the handcuffs as a handle. He heard a door open in front of him and was thrown in.“I haven't done anything wrong.” he moaned. The door shut behind him. He wondered where he was going. Although for now he couldn't do much. Sleep came. Meanwhile, miles away now, the cube created waves of earth and trees, clods of mud thrown high in the air. It was being circled by fire trucks and police cars, the sirens of the motorcade illuminating the cube in a flickering mess of red and blue. Around this nucleus were a few government vehicles, the press, the public chasing alongside. This group was quite far away, winnebagos and off-road vehicles filled with people eager to see what the cube would do next. If the cube was going to pass a road people would park half a mile or so away behind barricades and watch the box go past like observers at a marathon. In the air hovered various helicopters shining high powered spotlights towards the ground that criss-crossed amongst each other. It was quite a spectacle. Morning came. The cube ploughed through the empty suburbs of Brookville. A golf course was ruined, the grounds keeper sat on a hill in a deckchair drinking a mug of coffee. He rose it in the air as the cube passed. The cube continued on it's voyage.

Metzli was getting close to Columbus. His car sped along the interstate, passing the stream of traffic leaving the city on one side. He hadn't been to Columbus before. It's skyline was changing slightly as the lights began going out whilst the sun emerged in the East. Metzli ate a ham salad sandwich he'd got from a gas station, following it with a bottle of coke and a cigarette. The way the cube was going, it'd be out of America by lunch time thought Metzli. He pulled the car to a stop in a parking lot in Columbus. In about half an hour this lot would be even more barren and flat than it already was. The mayor of Columbus waited with the Chief of Police. The mayor looked a little tired, kept clicking a pen. The Chief just leant against his squad car with his arms folded in front of him, staring at the floor. “Mayor, Chief. Glad to see you both.”
“Hello Mr. Metzli.” said the Mayor, extending his hand. The Chief nodded.
“So, I hope all the houses have been evacuated, checked? Put the warning out?”
“Yeah, sure we did.”
“I'm just checking. This cube's already killed enough people.”
Metzli inhaled deeply as he looked around, nodding.
“Nice part of town.”
“It was, sure.” said the Chief of Police again.
“Don't be a sourpuss.” said the Mayor.
“Sure, sorry pal. Ain't it just rotten though?”
“Si, a real pain in the balls right guys?” said Metzli. The Chief snickered. Metzli looked at the trees lining the streets, a Wal-Mart in the distance already blurry behind a heat haze.
“Reckon it's going to get pretty warm.”
“Yup.”

The air was still. Windless. The summer sun blazed, making the atmosphere oily. Hundreds of miles in the air the earth's magnetosphere buckled under blazing solar flares that whipped it's ethereal form with radiation. It was hot. The cube bumbled along towards the East Coast like some kind of terrible insect, a city crumbling behind it. Cars, trees, houses, offices, churches, museums, libraries, schools and political buildings were smashed against each other at the front of it, rattling and grinding around the cube violently although this was now lost in an avalanche of dust. Vague shadows sometimes emerged until the cube burst from the cloud of buildings and back into the open country. By now police had stopped attempting to escort the cube and had instead arranged themselves on both sides of the cube's path. Mile after mile of black and white police cars waited, a gauntlet of stern observation as the cube sped past.

She waited in a Denny's car park, drinking shit coffee. The cube was due to go past soon enough. She cleaned her glasses on the bottom of her shirt, holding up the golden frame in the air in front of her. Zoned out for a while. When she snapped out of it she got back into her car and drove off. Showing a pass to a guard at a roadblock she made her way towards the interstate. Her intel had been good, Metzli was just a few miles ahead of her. She accelerated across the cracked, empty road and flashed her lights twice. Metzli looked in his rear view mirror, squinted. He slowed his car down to a stop and she did likewise a few metres behind him. They both got out of their cars. The morning smelled good. Birds chirped away in the trees.
“Can I help you?” he said, pacing towards her.
“Yes. I think you can Metzli.” she said. She spoke slowly.
He recognized her voice, back in the motel room. Those glasses. “Who are you?”
“I work for a great man, the best scientist alive. He wants you to stop the cube.”
“Well, what do you want me to do? I don't know how to stop the cube.”
“We think you can Metzli. There is one last chance, a final weapon we have against the cube. The cube's purpose is to be able to go to these alien planets. Why wouldn't man go with it?”
“I don't understand.”
“Metzli was working on a suit made from the same specifications as the cube. An indestructible armour and life support system for astronauts. The armour was in it's early stages of development when this incident occurred but we believe that this is our best chance.”
“You want me to wear this thing? Then what do you want me to do, get fired from a cannon?”
“No. The cube was also in a relatively early stage of development. There is a way inside the cube, through a doorway.”
“What? You're not making any sense.”
“Metzli, listen. Accept what I am saying is true, we don't have enough time to discuss aspects of truth. There is a door at the bottom of the cube, beneath it's wheels. Once inside it's just a case of shutting down the engine from inside. There are still manual controls in place.”
“Why me though.”
“You have a unique position in this, the media knows you. We need to have a good ending to this.”
“So you want me to be a hero? Stand on top of the cube holding a little flag?”
“If that's what you had in mind. But you are getting the chance Metzli. You have been picked to wear this suit. Reasons why will become clear later. But I need you to trust me.”
Metzli took a cigarette out of his pocket, offering one to her. They smoked quietly.
“If I agree to do this, what happens next?”
“You get in the car with me and we go.” she said. The whole conversation for her had been a little hazy. She was stoned, deprived of sleep and food for while. Her body was operating differently. Smoke felt like air. Metzli nodded at her. “Okay.”

Simon left the police station, rubbing his wrists. His bail had been posted on the grounds he didn't go anywhere near the cube, though he had ignored that. He walked along the empty street, sweat running down his neck. He glanced at the sky. Cloudless. Walking for a few minutes he got to a cafe and entered, the air conditioning hitting him like the blast from a shit hair-drier. The waitress behind the counter was wiping the chrome surface with a bit of wet rag, it smelled like bleach. She looked up at him. “Hey. Want anything?”
“I could do with a...sandwich? You do toasted sandwiches?”
“Sure. We got bacon, cheese, ham, pastrami, salami, roast beef, salmon, turkey-”
“Ah, a ham sandwich please. With a coke.”
“Is that with or without salad?”
“Without. Some ketchup on it.”
“Sure, take a seat.” she said nodding, heading into the kitchen.
He sat at a window, facing out but not really looking at much. He wondered if he should just go home. Go and see his mom and pop, shoot some baseball, the everyday stuff. Maybe he could even go back to Littlefield, help them rebuild some of the stuff that the cube had knocked down. But then, why would he bother. His sandwich came, he smiled at the waitress and began eating it slowly. There was more ketchup than ham but that was okay. Why would he bother anyway, if the cube didn't stop. It'd go through Europe, China, America again. Over and over, faster and faster. It was going to change things. He sipped the coke and focused back on the window. A car pulled up outside. Simon put a few dollars on the table and walked out.

The car carrying Metzli and the woman pulled up to a parking lot by a forest. A few men stood around with guns. Hard faces and cold eyes. There was a black helicopter in the middle of the lot, it looked out of place. Her and Metzli got out of the car, walking towards a flatbed truck. “This was taken from Wayne's lab. Got here a lot quicker than the cube did.” she said. He looked at the suit. It was the same shade of grey the cube was. A little bulky, lying on the floor of the truck it looked like some strange metallic ape hunter's had captured. The front of the helmet had three small holes, two for the eyes and one for the mouth. “I hope I'll be able to see through that well enough.”
“Not really.” she said.
“Are you joking?”
“Afraid not.”
“How am I meant to find this door if I don't know where I am? That cube's travelling at a hundred miles an hour and gaining speed right now, if I don't get in it the first time it's going to just drive away.”
“We wouldn't ask you to do this if it was impossible Metzli. I've looked over the plans personally and can assure you that whilst it won't be a cake walk, it's doable. I thought you were an optimist.”
“Oh, I am. This just seems like a bit of a long shot even by my standards.”
“You'll never know if you don't try. Isn't that a good thing to think about?” she said.
“I suppose.” he said. “How am I meant to put it on?”
A few minutes later he was in the suit. He moved around a little to see how it moved. He felt as though he were in a bed. The suit was pretty tight against his body. He felt no heat from the sun or breeze against his back. He tried to take a step forward and felt it easy, walking ahead a few steps.
“How do you like it?”
“Seems okay.” He said, walking over to a tree. He punched it lightly, testing how it felt. He felt nothing. He did a big haymaker and punched into the tree, up to his elbow in bark and wood.
“You'll have to be careful of your face but otherwise the suit pretty much turns you into a humanoid version of the cube.” She said. He pulled his arm out of the tree.
“Now what?”
She pointed at the helicopter.
“You're going to fly Metzli.”

The cube sliced through the ground as it headed into Pittsburg, kicking up a huge storm of dust behind it that stretched for miles. It was viewable from space. An astronaut looked down at it, marvelling as the small dot and the dust cloud headed towards the glittering Atlantic. “Fascinating.” she said, focusing the long range telephoto lens on the hull of the space station.
“How fast is it going?” asked her colleague.
“Not sure exactly. Hard to tell up here. Can't you ask more from down there?” she said.
“Haven't been able to get any signal for a few hours now.” he said.
“Really? Why didn't you tell me?”
“We weren't sure what was happening, all we can guess now is it's something on their end. We can't do anything about it. In the mean time all we can do is watch.” he said, joining her at the window. They watched as the cube tore up downtown Pittsburg.

Farslo rode in a limousine on his way to another meeting, this one in Washington D.C. He looked through tinted windows towards the white house, muttering to himself. People were protesting, for some reason he couldn't quite fathom, about the cube. Even so early in the morning. Even though he was pretty conservative he could see the point in protesting something that could be changed. But protesting about this was like protesting about a tsunami. It couldn't be stopped by people power. They were angry though. The long black car drove to an empty building that housed a secret entrance to the White House. “Thank you driver.” Farslo said as he got out of the car. He moved quickly, people knew what he looked like and weren't happy with the role he now played. A guard stood at the door and ushered him into the empty hotel.
“Come with me sir.”
“I still haven't been briefed on this meeting.”
“All will be explained soon sir, just step this way.”
Farslo and the agent walked through the dusty lobby. It must have once been a pretty grand place, Farslo imagined ninety years ago or so that politicians would come here for illegal whiskey and maybe chase some tail. Things were probably a whole lot easier back then. The two men walked through a doorway and into what would have been a great ballroom that had since been gutted by roving gangs of metal vultures, stripping the carcasses of dying cities like Detroit, Washington and Chicago for valuable old metal. You could make a little bit of money by selling to the junkyards, kingdoms of reclaimed copper piping and roofing panels dusted in asbestos and insects. “So where's this secret entrance?”
“Sir?” said the agent. Farslo turned around and was greeted by a bullet just beneath his eye. The shot echoed in the empty hall as Farslo collapsed to the floor, his dying brains leaking out through the jagged hole in the back of his skull. The agent shot him again in the chest, checked his pulse and left Farslo alone in the building. Although he was losing blood and his network of neurons had been spread across the dusty floor of the old ballroom, somewhere in his subconsciousness Farslo had a memory of a Christmas day. It had been a long time ago. It had been a good day.

A stolen car was being driven through some of the back roads in Pennsylvania. Most of the main highways and byways were jammed with early morning drivers trying to get out the city, gridlocks overseen by police mounted on horses or bikes in order to travel up and down the jams quickly. Simon needed to get to the cube quickly. He was nervous, worried he wouldn't see it in time. He gunned the car as fast as it could go, tyres screeching as he flew around corners and along the dry concrete road. The sun was already making the car warm, the windows needed to be rolled down. Simon licked his lips. News reports over the radio were telling him how the cube had just completely obliterated a small town called Benson. Anything in the cube's path was destroyed of course although at the speed it was going there was now a huge cloud of dust and dirt from which various debris would rain from, crushing buildings and trees with ease. Even the military escort had needed to move back. Simon had nearly forgotten about the group of army and police vehicles circling the cube. It would be no good to get close to the cube only for him to be captured again. He slowed the car down to thirty miles an hour and checked a map, running his finger from Pittsburg. There was Harrisburg, Lancaster, Philadelphia then the cube would reach the sea about halfway between New York and Atlantic City. Philadelphia. He'd had an uncle who'd gone their once for some business convention. The city would be big enough to hide in. He threw the map into the passenger seat and took the next turning.

She waited for him at a train platform, shaded from the morning sun by a dead tree. He wouldn't be long now. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been asleep. Although that was mostly through choice. Her bloodshot eyes looked up at the sky and she wondered how Metzli was doing. The train came, she wasn't sure how long she had been waiting. It didn't matter to her. Looking down the length of the train she saw a door open and Wayne get shoved out onto the platform with her. Like her, he wasn't totally well either. “Over here Wayne.”
“Hmm? Oh, hello.” he said. He coughed.
“I hope they weren't too rough on you.” she said walking towards him.
“Ah.” he said, straining to think of what to say. “Not too bad. What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?” she said
“Are you going to kill me?” he said.
She smiled a little, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “No Wayne. You did a good job.”
They walked out of the train station and towards her car.
“So what are we doing?” he said, looking at his surroundings.
“We're going to take a drive out to the sea. Would you like that?”
“I think so. I...I'd like some water please.”
“Of course.” she said, opening her car door and taking out a bottle. He unscrewed the lid and drank from it heavily.
“Be careful now, don't want to give yourself a stitch.” she said. She gestured to the open car door and, with a little hesitation, he got in. She walked around and got in herself.

The cube had just reached speeds of a hundred and twenty miles per hour as it reached the peak of a mountain. A few days ago it would have gently slid down the side but at this speed it flew through the air and caused the whole mountain to shake when it landed. As it sped along rocks and boulders began to tumble around behind it, an avalanche meeting the detritus the cube was throwing behind it. People watched it from afar, excited and horrified at the same time as the machine smashed into the ground and carried on going as if nothing had happened. The open fields and occasional rural house was the path the cube took on it's way towards the sea. The sun was creeping up higher into the sky.

Another thing in the sky at the time was Metzli, hanging on a wire beneath the helicopter. It was an odd sensation, dangling from the helicopter with relatively little protection. He used to be part of a special army platoon that would often need to jump from helicopters back in Mexico although this was a little different. No parachute, no other soldiers. Just him and his mission. It was a cloudless day, which was good as he could see quite far and bad as he was getting pretty warm. In the distance he could make out the sprawling grey and brown of Washington D.C, the nations capital. From his perspective it all seemed a little bland, boring. It wasn't often, but he missed his home at the moment. He wished he could see Mexico this way. If he looked left and squinted a little he could just about make out the cloud of dust the cube was throwing into the air. It wouldn't be long now.

Simon went through Baltimore, the nozzle of a gas pump sticking out of the side of his car. Sweat dripped into his eye. It wasn't even eight in the morning yet but people were awake, watching live footage of the cube in bars. Philadelphia was a big city. The main path had been evacuated but people were still struggling to get at a safe distance. Then there was the looting. Simon didn't care much for this. Seventy miles to Philadelphia. He guessed he could make it. A cop had been trying to keep up with him for a bit but had given up as Simon careened through red lights and sharp bends in the road. A lot of police had been taken out of the cities around the cube's path in order to help assist with things like evacuation and guarding the cube from anybody who wanted to get near it. There still were some who wanted to take the opportunity to be near the cube as it meant being on international television. Celebrities with waning careers often clamoured to be where the cube was heading to in order to get an interview on what they saw, what they think should be done. Simon turned the radio off. “Bullshit.” he said to nobody.

The car heading towards the shore was going at a lot more steadier pace.
“So nobodies stopped the cube yet then?” said Wayne, eating a breakfast burrito.
“No. You did a good job at building something indestructible Wayne.” she said.
“Good. Glad I'm good at something.” he said.
“Oh yes.” she said. They were quiet for a while, trees and signs flicking past every once in a while.
“The last time I went to the ocean, it was a while ago. Maybe the mid-nineties. Anyway, I went with my wife and we sat on the pier. I'd been working on the cube pretty solidly at that point, we barely saw each other. And there we were, sitting on the pier like when we first went out. And I looked at her, my wife. And I saw in her eyes that she missed that, you know. Seeing me like that.”
She didn't say anything.
“Anyway. I decided then and there, it wasn't fair to her, for me not to be there. I asked on that bench on the pier for a divorce and she gave it to me. Didn't need much convincing. I haven't thought much about it since but it makes me wonder why I chose making the cube over her.”
“And why did you?”
“Eh...I don't know. We never had kids you know. I wanted a legacy. Something to exist after I died. But now I'm going to be remembered for the cube getting loose, causing all that havoc. I should have just stayed on the pier.”
“It's not your fault Wayne.” she said, pushing her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose with her index finger.
“Ah, don't give me that.” he said, throwing the last of the burrito out of the window.
“No, I'm serious. It wasn't your fault the cube got loose.”
“Well, whose was it then?” he said, frowning. “Farslo?”
“I can't say yet.”
“Why?”
“You haven't been hired yet. Consider this a job interview.” she said, turning to him for a second.
“Job? I don't want a fucking job. What is this anyway?” he said.
“You'll want this job Wayne. You'd be working for the same person I work for. He's a scientist, a little like you. You'd have access to equipment and personnel that'd make your factory look like a high school lab.”
“I don't care. Weren't you listening to me? I've done what I needed to do. My lifelong ambition is about to drive through Philly then end up on the coast of Europe in a few days. I don't care.”
She smiled. “You will.”

Philadelphia.

Metzli was carried by helicopter over the city. Unable to feel properly, the wind still stung at his eyes. The helicopter swooped down the trail of destruction, following the flat path of demolition towards the cube. Metzli watched the ground below him and began to get a little nervous. The cube was now below him, relatively going just a little slower than he was. He was flying just over a hundred miles an hour when the helicopter disconnected him from the wires he hung from. Tumbling towards the ground he managed to overshoot the cube by a good couple of miles. He clipped the edge of a building, torpedoing straight through and a foot or two into the street before coming to a stop. It felt odd for him although he managed to stand back up with relative ease. He looked towards the city, knew the cube would be here in a matter of minutes. Unsure of what to do besides to somehow prepare for the cube he loosened up his muscles a little. Even if the suit would protect him, being hit with a wall of metal and concrete wouldn't be a walk in the park. Though muffled he heard an engine behind him. Though when he turned round a truck hit him. They both went through the air and skidded along the ground. Metzli was a little shook up, disoriented. Just as he managed to work out that the front end of the truck had crumpled around his waist like some ridiculous belt Simon pushed open the driver's door and began shooting him with a shotgun. It was odd, unable to even feel the bullets that pinged off his chest. Out of ammunition, Simon stumbled towards him.
“You can't stop the cube.” he said, grabbing Metzli by the head. He had a broken nose and a gash on his forehead where the steering wheel had hit him. Blood was running down his face.
“Simon. You can't be here, it's dangerous.”
“Please. You don't understand. You haven't seen it like I have.”
Metzli turned back up the street, the cube was now in sight.
“Run.” he said.
“I won't let you, I'm sorry.” said Simon, letting go of Metzli's head as he struggled to climb onto the wreck. He pulled a knife out of his pocket. Metzli turned his head away as Simon scratched at where his eye was. With his arms pinned to his sides by the engine he tried to wriggle free whilst simultaneously bucking his head from side to side as Simon tried to slide the blade through one of the holes in the metal mask. The cube was only a few blocks away. Metzli tilted his head back to look at it. One arm almost free. His vision was darkened as the tip of the knife slid in through one of the holes. Pain rocked his entire body. He could feel the cold metal push inside his eye, further into his head. It was almost incomprehensible although had given him enough to pull his arm out from the engine. He grabbed at the arm that was stabbing him and squeezed. Simon started shouting, punching at the metal glove that was crushing his arm. The cube hit them.

They tumbled above a wave of broken glass and concrete, one or two cars jutting from the churning swell that were quickly swallowed up. The two men began to sink amongst the huge blocks of wreckage. The truck was pulled off Metzli with ease and he was quickly pulled beneath the cube. The knife had also been plucked out of his face by a passing stop sign. Simon was having a bit of a rougher time. His broken arm waved about uselessly as he attempted to pull himself onto the surface though the ground was burying him quickly. His head was crushed against part of a building and Simon died. Metzli flicked beneath the cube, seeing the wheels quite close. They span above his head like chrome farm equipment, he managed to get a grip on one of the axles. Unsure exactly where he was on the underside of the cube, he pulled himself along for a while, blindly. By looking at some of the materials of the stuff that passed he was roughly able to guess where the road was and using that he tried to centre himself on the axle. He began easing himself along. Blood sometimes got in his good eye but he was too full of adrenaline and diazepam to mind at the moment. Then he felt it with a toe. The entrance. Slipping amongst the wheels, he pulled himself up and into the cube itself.


Metzli grabbed a wall covered in wires by the entrance. It was a tunnel going quite high up, deeper into the cube. Around him the walls and floor were covered in all sort of dirt, debris from beneath the cube that had been shuddered into the opening. Metzli began scaling a set of ladders set into one wall, hands still shaking from the adrenaline. Around him was lit in a strange green glow from various LED lamps. Another door. He strained against the mechanical door mechanism until wrenching the door open. The cube left the borders of Philadelphia, bursting from the outer industrial parks in a parade of concrete. Metzli noted how smooth the journey was, he felt as if he was inside some building rather than a vehicle. The core of the cube stretched about him, a jungle of tubes and wires connecting various supercomputers. All of this was bathed in a green light, casting strange shadows around Metzli. There was the skeleton of a stairway to his right though it hadn't yet been built. The cube wasn't ready for people when it was released. Metzli knelt down for a minute to catch his breath, prepare himself. Blood ran down into his mouth, making him spit. With his good eye he looked up at the fractal structure of the metal connections above him and reached upward, clasping a hold on a thick corrugated pipe with one hand and pulling himself up with the other quickly. He began making his way up, making his way around computers the size of cars suspended with the web of wires and metal supports. As he clambered further he became more entangled into the cube's interior.

The cube bounded through the flat land of New Jersey, crashing into a small, abandoned town. A few remaining policemen and robbers were covered in a thick layer of dust that clouded their senses as the cube continued on it's journey. It's metal wheels pulled the cube onwards, spurring it through a forest hundreds of years old. A bar, a gym, a school, several small businesses, barns, churches, houses. Places. All were crushed against it's invincible body as easily as a hammer through lego. As Metzli was about halfway towards the inner brain of the cube it submersed itself in a small lake. Water and mud frothed below him, reaching a point where it suddenly fountained up from the way he had made his way in and flooded the computers below him. This didn't affect the cube at all, although it's insides were filled with water than glugged out of it's bottom as the cube zoomed it's way out of the lake at a hundred and twenty five miles an hour and straight through the back of a bar, causing it to explode into a puff of smoke. Metzli tugged at a cable and slipped downwards, nearly getting caught in a net of wires. He coughed, relaxing. Stay calm. The more he struggled the further he descended. Entwining his fingers around a large black plug he managed to find a grip again, making his way through the wires. The green light got more intense.

A few miles away a car parked up. Out stepped a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a middle-aged man with thinning hair. They sat on the front of the car that faced the shores of New Jersey.
“He isn't going to make it.”
“Who?” said Wayne.
“Metzli. That Mexican agent they sent up.”
“You sent him in there?”
“Of course. Think of it as his job interview.”
“He has time yet.”
“Maybe.” she said. It wasn't often, though she felt a pang of guilt for giving Metzli the job.
“If he gets in the middle it's pretty simple.”
“If.”
He popped open a can of lemonade she had in the car, taking a gulp. He looked at the distant square of the cube as it zoomed through Eastern New Jersey. “Don't you think it's amazing? Not to blow my own horn, but that machine. Look at it.” he said.
“I don't think much about that kind of thing. Somebody does though.”
“Oh yes. This interview we're having.” he said.
“I mentioned earlier how this wasn't your fault. What did you think I meant by that?”

Metzli hacked his way through a nest of wires and cables, getting closer to the source of the light. He'd looked over the blueprints pretty closely though he struggled to picture what the inside of the cube looked like.

“I thought you meant someone else did it. I'm still wondering who.”

A green light. Looking at it felt as wrong as looking at the sun. Possible but not something you'd choose to do. And not just it's brightness. It felt wrong.

“I need you to keep an open mind.”
The cube rushed onwards and onwards, continuing it's acceleration.

Metzli pulled himself upward.

“Of course.” he said.

Metzli turned away from the green light at a bunch of computer consoles.

“Who would stand to lose the most from space exploration? The government? Big business?” she said.

The cube approached the small town of Forked Rivers, pulverizing a block of suburbs.

Wayne frowned. “Maybe.”

Metzli began punching at the consoles, ripping out wires that arced electricity and oil in the air around him,

“Maybe. I can tell you

it hissed and turned to steam against the green

although if I do

light. An incredible

there is no going

scream filled the air as loud

back.” she said. “I

as an aircraft engine. Metzli

have gone this

covered his ears and

far”

fell to the

“Wayne. Your

floor. The cube

cube was sabotaged

began to slow

by aliens.”

down.

“Aliens?” said Wayne. They were both watching the cube as it hit the sand dunes in the distance. The Atlantic tide washed up against it and it quickly dipped into the ocean, throwing sea water hundreds of feet into the air.
“Aliens, yes. They are in orbit high above Earth. They broadcasted a code down at your cube when your initial experiment took place, causing a fault in the guidance computer. We need people like you to help.”
“Help with what?”
“To protect us Wayne. That's what I do, what my boss does.” she said, watching the cube dip into the ocean. “It's what Metzli should have done.”

Metzli had stopped the cube. As the cube lost it's acceleration the sea water easily rushed in through the hole, rising and rising. The green light began to dim, slowly moving between brightness and darkness. The sound of the cube suddenly stopped, the only thing Metzli could hear was the sound of water beneath. He realized what had happened and began breathing in and out quickly, hyperventilating. He'd had training for this before. Thirty metres down, at least sixty up. It was going to be tough. The water began to rise above his legs. He took a final deep breath as the ocean covered him.

“I don't understand. These aliens mean us harm?”
“It's not as black and white as that, harming and helping. Biologically they are totally different but more importantly, culturally. We have no real way of understanding their intentions in human terms.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“Wayne, you built something indestructible. For exploring distant worlds, maybe even theirs. And they didn't want that. At the moment we can only guess that whatever they don't want is something that we do.”
Wayne walked back and forth a few times, looking out to the sea with helicopters hovering above where the cube had been.
“Wait a minute. Look at the surface.” he said, pointing out. “Looks regular.”
She stepped off the car and squinted. “You're right. Hold on.” she took her phone out of her pocket and dialled a number.

Metzli swam down through the tangled mass of wires and cables, feeling his way through the black. The salt water stung at his eye, flooded his suit. His adrenaline was pumping through his blood too quickly to realize what he had done or his current situation. Even though his suit was invincible to bullets there were still three holes in the top. Metzli needed to breath still. He swam deeper, pulling himself along through the cables. He suddenly felt nothing and realized he was near the inner door.

She put the phone down. “Looks like Metzli has done it.”
“Why isn't there somebody to help him?”
“They're on their way.” she said. “You know, I'm not heartless. I hope he gets out.” she said
“Well act like it!” he shouted at her.
“I thought you didn't care. Your legacy. Your machine.” she said.
“It's stopped though, hasn't it. It's caused enough damage.”
“I don't mean to offend you but relatively that was nothing. All of this that has happened was nothing compared to what would happen if the aliens were to win.”
“But we won.” he said, swinging his arm towards the sea.
“This instance. There are a few astronauts on the space station at the moment that will come into contact with the aliens soon, they will most likely be killed. They've already directly killed several other astronauts, pilots and abducted approximately half a thousand people.”
“This is a lot to take in.”
“It needs to be said. Your interview is over, congratulations. Do you want the job?” she said.

Metzli tugged himself from the hull of the dead cube and swam through mud. His lungs ached, his throat burned. He felt as if his tongue had shrank and turned into some strange limb he had no control over. Most of all his brain ached. Part of it begged him to breath, the other pleaded him to continue. He was so close. Feeling his way along the still wheels on the underside of the cube he grasped finally reached the edge.

Wayne looked at the sea and shifted his gaze Westward as the sun slowly shrank the shadows of the night. A stretch of destruction from here all the way to the Nevada desert. So much destruction. He turned to the woman who had drove him to this summit, looking at her. For a brief instant he remembered his wife on that pier. This wasn't so different. A choice.
“I accept.” he said.
She smiled and went up to him, extending a hand.
“I'm glad you said yes Wayne. I will call my boss in a moment.” she said. Wayne took one last look back to the ocean then back towards the car. She looked for a moment at the sea. Metzli. The cube. Aliens. She needed to sleep. She took her phone out of her pocket.
“Dr. Peppard? Wayne said yes.” she said. She put the phone down and walked towards the car.

Metzli swam up. The pain from the lack of oxygen was almost unbearable. If he didn't breathe in soon he'd pass out. He thought about stopping the cube. All the good he'd done. If he lived would he want to, not being able to surpass this achievement? He swam. What would happen once he reached the surface. Fame and fortune? He didn't want either of those. The last few bubbles emerged from his mask. He wanted to go home. Could he go home. He coughed. As he inhaled, sea water went into his mouth and down his throat. He didn't want to die like this, he realized. All the things he hadn't done. Just as he the water hit his lungs it caused him to cough again, bringing in more water. Metzli felt light headed, stopped swimming. He was so close. All the people he would leave behind. With his good eye he could see the sun above him, getting closer and closer towards the surface, although this sank away as the suit weighed him down. The edges of his vision fizzed black and white. The last thing he saw was the shape of a boat above him. Next to him he felt the cube. He sank further down towards the ocean's floor. He wanted to live.