boil

I thought my job was to understand the Cube. To Pangent, my job is to mechanize, manipulate and exploit it.

But that's only part of it.

Half the time, I'm trying to control the Cube. The rest of the time, I'm trying to contain it.

It flickers, sometimes.

The thing about the Cube is, it wasn't always a cube. But somebody found it and put it in a box. And I don't think it likes that much.

Whether it's alive or not, 555 is always healing itself, like a body does. Always regenerating, and generating a lot of energy that's got to go somewhere, but can't, because it's stuck in a box.

It's like a pot of water that's always boiling. An explosion that's always exploding. It should set you on fire if you're even in the same zip code. But it burns cool. I've been trying to figure out why that is.

But I'm guessing it's not supposed to burn all the time. I'm guessing it's supposed to be able to calm itself down, to let some kind of steam out into some kind of atmosphere. Maybe not our kind of atmosphere.

Yeah. I'm not saying but I'm saying.

It's trapped in a box and it's burning and burning and it needs to blow off steam somehow.

So it flickers sometimes.

And when it flickers, people get hurt.

It looks like a flash of light but it hits you like a truck. It flashes through glass and lead and sixteen inches of steel.

You might have noticed that it hasn't done that much lately. And usually to nobody but me.

I don't believe that I can stop the Cube from hurting people. But that's what my goal is right now. That's what I've been trying to understand.

If the Cube is alive I believe it's happier now. The work I'm doing with it has allowed it to release its boxed-up energy in ways that don't hurt anybody.

Except me. Sometimes.