God’s Cube

For a moment, there was nothing, just a cloud of fog building up around him. Then, out of the fog, a three-dimensional cube took shape before him. Thesi’s facial expression shifted, not in confusion, but in mild surprise. He immediately recognized that this was one of those puzzles they experimented with in his Blue Cube basics classes, an exercise in color alignment, something he had done before in high school.

His fingers instinctively reached out and began turning the cube, the steps clearly in his mind. How the colors would need to be in their just positions, and what set of moves would get them there. His fingers began to move in almost a robotic fashion, following the flow of the movement requested by the pieces to find their placement. Every move visible in advance, a cross, the first two layers, followed by the last one. The task, almost, was too easy. Within seconds, the puzzle was solved, the colors all clicking into place with a satisfying magnetic click.

Thesi took a step back, his face showed no change in expression. No feeling of triumph, no pride. It was just the beginning, it had to be. He knew better than to lower his defenses. The Cube's trials were never that simple, much less for a second time challenger. His mind continued to be on alert, awaiting the next phase.

As if on cue, the solved cube dissolved into thin air, the colors fading away in the blue fog that surrounded him. In its place, a barrage of complex arithmetic and algebraic equations flashed before his eyes one after another, sounds echoed from the boards they were written on, almost screaming at him to solve them. 

Numbers and variables swirled before his eyes, yet they were as familiar to him as breathing. His fingers moved almost instinctively, each problem dispatched with clinical efficiency. Arithmetic, algebra, calculus. All second nature to him, not only from his high school education but from the intense, almost brutal training he had undergone before that. The Tamer had made certain that no facet of his intellect was left unkept, no skill untested.

His mind drifted back to those times as he worked. He could almost see that blue hologram again, cold and detached, looking over the children he was raising, as if they were nothing more than guard dogs being worked into obediance. The Tamer, his tamer, had sharpened him into an entity capable of challenging the cube at 13, and these calculations were another tool in his arsenal. With each solution, he came closer to the end, but even as the last equation dissolved in the blue mist, Thesi was aware that this was not it.

He did not move or say a word, just waited. Nothing happened. The room was absolutely silent. Then, a light hum began to be heard, there  in the middle of the room, a new shape began to form.

It was a simple cube to begin with, but it grew-and expanded and warped in ways that defied the laws of the human eyes. Thesi's concentrated on the object, and finally realized what he was seeing. In front of him,  a hypercube, a four-dimensional object projected into a three-dimensional space. Coordinates and data points appeared around it, apparently floating in the air, each one representing a different point of this impossible shape.

What the Cube wanted him to do was intuitive. Move the coordinates, displace the information, reconstruct the hypercube. That was no easy exercise. A fourth dimension was a concept they only slightly touched upon at high school, but Thesi had looked deeper into that subject when researching the few Mixed who had shared their experiences with their challenge of the Blue Cube. They had already been enhanced by another cube, and the Blue Cube knew.

Thesi's mind was like a raging thunderstorm, compile, analyze, conclude, those were the steps in his mind. No more recalling memorised sequences, or rehashing previously discovered formulas. A leap into the abstract, that’s what this puzzle required. He began to adjust the coordinates, first mentally rearranging them before actually making the changes. The hypercube shifted with every adjustment, sometimes collapsing in on its own and other times expanding in manners that almost could have seemed organic.

The task was exhausting, not just mentally but also physically. He felt it in his muscles, the sweat beading upon his forehead. This felt like a real test, one that would require every ounce of intellect he possessed and more, something true to what he’d come to expect from the Blue Cube. His mind reached its deepest pockets, searching for connections, piecing fragments of knowledge and instinct together.

And finally, after what felt like an eternity, the last piece fell into place. The hypercube stabilized, its four-dimensional form solidified in three-dimensional space. Thesi exhaled slowly, a sense of satisfaction augmented by the feeling he had just pushed himself to the edge.

But as the hypercube finally settled into its final form, a sense of unease struck Thesi. This trial had gone exactly in a way that could be expected, there was something wrong. The Cube wasn’t this simple, it couldn’t be. He stepped back and waited for the trial to finish. Nothing happened. The hypercube remained in the air, its blue glow pulsating rhythmically. This was unusual. Every report stated the same, a warm up akin to that of a first challenger’s independent from the person’s character, and a second challenge, meant to push that specific mind to the extreme of its capabilities.  

The hypercube dissolved, leaving him once again in the empty, blue-lit chamber. Thesi's heart pounded in his chest as his instincts screamed that something was wrong. There was no announcement, the silence had returned. He didn't move, scanning the room for some sign of what would happen next. It truly felt as if the Cube itself watched him, waiting to see how he'd react. Yet, Thesi's face betrayed nothing. His expression had been fine tuned to the maximum to keep others guessing. Not a thought, not a shiver were enacted by his body. However, for how calm he was on the outside, his mind started dreading his situation. It didn’t just feel like he was being observed, but that regardless of his outside, the Cube was simply looking right through him. Seconds turned into minutes, which in turn felt like hours. 

It was then that the fog thickened. He hadn’t noticed it since the trial had ended, but by now he could barely observe the extremities of the Cube. It didn’t take long for him to be fully submerged in the dense fog, and it started calling. A small wind resounded in his ear, the ruffling of branches, light raindrops. He started to walk forward.

The further he went, the lighter the fog became. By now he should have already reached the extremities of the Cube, but he knew that such an object defied logic and he couldn’t expect its abrupt end. Thesi could see more and more the place he was now standing in, and then he halted. A stench filled his nose, the stench oh so familiar, and that’s when the fog fully dissipated. The cold walls and their eerie blue luminescence were gone, replaced by something so much more familiar, so much more haunting.

He was back in the forest.