Deeper Into the Cubes

The cube has reproduced. There are more of them now. They are changing, evolving.

Center For Cube Studies: Pearl River Flow HQ

Time and date unknown

Following the incident evidenced after our original research, we have delved deeper into the question of THE CUBE. The existence of these artifacts, or, perhaps, artifact, has been dealt with by the paranormal research team at PRF. 

[END TRANSMISSION]

Date Unknown

HEAD RESEARCHER: Garry Blatherskite.

It's possible that I was brought back from the dead just for this.  But that doesn't seem right. I was only ten years old. I AM only ten years old, but the cubes change time. I have been doing this for decades. I am yet to begin.

Everyone thought the cube was just one entity, eternal, forever, unchanging, a Platonic form left to weather in the swamp of the Real. We did not think it could be broken. We did not know how many there were, how many there are, how many there will be.

Wrong, wrong wrong! We knew we were wrong, but we - I - just now discovered we were wrong. They don't even know yet. I haven't read the words I am about to type, I have not written them yet, but I have read them on an ancient terminal after the end of the world. They are written in the language of the cubes long after we are all gone.

They change. They multiply. Or divide. It depends on how you view the cubes, or how time views them while you view time.

Back to their mundane substance. Mineralogy escapes us, laser beams and chromatographs spout nonsense, give lines for nonexistent compounds. Hardness seems off the charts, but yet when the time comes for them to... reproduce...

There cannot be another word for it, for what these hexahedrons accomplish with the split shards, cracking along lines only visible in ancient photographs. They reproduce, like bacteria or yeast, each one a multitude dividing, and like these invisible architects, the sole actors on the stage of life for three of the four billion year history of the world, they have a way to... exchange information, a crystalline genetics unhinged by time, alien to the teeming forms of life on earth.

None of life is like them. All of life is like them. Was like them. We changed, became algae and mushrooms and ants and trees and plankton. They did not change. They waited.

Reports have come in. We can see inside the cubes, if we wish to go mad. Many members of the research team did just that, willingly peered into the stone stomata. In an instant born before they were, something was transferred into them, plasmid bridges bringing unfolding sheets and shapes. They saw inside, and they told me of vestigial things, symbiotic organs, impossible matter.

Their words turned into a song of screams, each one desired to have inorganic bones, they argued, not knowing if they always had crystalline fibers for hairs, if the iridescent colors of their skin were becoming more or less pronounced as the cubes rebuilt them, each geometric parasitic egg as flawed and alive as the human beings they had replaced.

I know the cubes will hatch. I know they have hatched. I am not old enough to have seen them in every backyard, appearing next to barbeque grills and water tanks, I know I have never watched curious children point to them at the zoo next to the stained glass panda, eating twitching leaves from the trough formed on top.

I am just a child. I lived and died and came back and I have died again, I see the statues of my coworkers frozen in delight, the joy overwhelming, and yet I see them wish for their crystalline fate. They want to be glass.

They are so beautiful, and I am transfixed by what they will become.

I will look inside. The statues that were my friends, the eggs that were my family, they tell me that I already have looked, I have heard the song of the cubes and it is beautiful. I have always heard it, in my mind, in those quiet moments at 3 AM when the noises of the world are all that is left. My mind is wind over broken time, carving canyons formed by our obsolescence. The cubes have always been here. The cubes will always be here. The only way forward is in stone.

The first cube was in the swamp. We are the last cube.

I am coming home. We all become.

[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]

- This strange transmission was found on a disused IBM 5100 in the PRF facility basement. It should be noted that Pearl River Flow has no "Paranormal Research Team," nor a "Center for Cube Studies." The owner of the computer, one "John Titor," was unavailable for comment, though one of the interns swears he was a reporter here. Whatever the case, we are on the lookout for any further developments of THE CUBE.

-FPJEROME


Rejected Band Practice Absence Excuses

Excuse: My equipment has been rotting in the wilderness for years.

Many of our few fans are local musicians here at Pearl River Flow. So, we've compiled some good excuses for you to use when explaining to your bandmates that you cannot come to practice today. 

"Someone stole all of my gear." Be sure to, tomorrow, have the imaginary thief return your stuff with an inspirational post it note that could be included on the first page of Upworthy.

"I am a character in a television show and therefore lack all known problem solving skills." Anyone who has ever seen a TV show will feel empathy for your absolute inability to solve even the most basic of problems.

"The economy." The economy is terrible, so there's that.

"Ronald Reagan." - He may not still be alive, but as a mid-level lich, he is always an excellent excuse for hungover guitarists. If you have to inform your bass player or drummer about Ronald Regan, feel free to watch the instructive documentary "The Boondocks." Just the first season, though.

"I was abducted by aliens." More Americans believe in UFOs than evolution, so this shouldn't be too hard. Since common signals for alien abduction include "having your clothes on inside-out," "blacking out," and "lost memory," 95% of band members and about 90% of the population should have good "evidence" for being abducted by aliens.

"Time is just an illusion." While there may be a pile of physics and philosophy behind this statement, it's all rather dubious, so it's best used on bandmates who have only a small amount of physics or philosophy training, because it's an illusion we all agreed on, Greg!

"I was playing video games!" Wait, the point is to make up an excuse that makes you less culpable, but if you want to just go ahead and tell them the truth, that's fine too.

"I am a vampire and cannot go out during the day." May be useful for forcing your bandmates to relocate practice till evening, or be run through with a wooden stake when you do show up.

Excuse: "I was locked into a small cage in the woods." Only works if you can fit in said cage.

"I was mowing the lawn." Stop it. Just stop it. You were not mowing the lawn. Also, if you were, don't do that. BURNINATE it.

"I'm not in a band." May I suggest a different article?

"I'm allergic to orange juice." This is going to require some long-term dedication.

"I spent all day reading Pearl River Flow." No, you didn't. Average page view time is 20 seconds, so if you're here all day, you either actually read everything, which is highly unlikely, or you read 4320 articles, and there's not that many.