When the packages arrived I dug into them with the fervor of a five year old on Christmas. Proper equipment for these leaps into the unknown increased immensely my confidence about them. I felt ready for anything and, for the first time in several days, a renewed sense of hope. All of which drained from me in an instant when I completed the ritual. 

There was no apartment. Nothing remotely familiar. I stood atop the charcoal glyph surrounded by candles, but on a rusting metal platform. It was one of many at various heights, part of a patchwork structure of platforms and girders. Hanging in space. 

Space may be the wrong word, as I could see no stars. Simply an endless black expanse all around. The only object in existence here so far as I could tell was this mass of interconnected girders and platforms. On each was a different glyph. Most had candles of varying sizes but also unfamiliar accoutrements like incense, prayer beads or a slaughtered animal. 

The air was cold, stale, and smelled of gunpowder. I could not wrap my head around the presence of air in a place like this. But then, none of it should be here. As I looked on, someone abruptly appeared on a distant platform. They indifferently walked from there to an adjacent platform, did a dance completely different from mine, and vanished. 

This continued with all sorts of people I didn’t know. Then I began to see creatures doing it. Not possible to mistake for humans but plainly intelligent, as they knew how to use the glyphs. When two of them used the same glyph one after the next, their dances were identical. I worked out from this that each glyph had its own associated dance, rather than dances being unique to individuals. 

A transit hub. Of some sort, anyway. Had to be. Did I dare to try a different glyph? My desire to return to something resembling home greatly exceeded my curiosity. I considered approaching one of them for help but who knows where they came from or what they were in the middle of doing? It seemed like poor self preservation instinct to just walk up and ask one of them for directions. What could they do for me, anyways? Only I could’ve built my own Abraxas stone. 

With no business here and no further interest in studying it, I glanced at my phone for the dance steps, performed them, and was whisked away to another time and place. Yet again, not an apartment. Just darkness, the sound of dripping, overpowering humidity and the stench of meat. 

I tapped the assistive light widget on my phone. It kept the LED on the back normally used for flash photography on continuously so I could use it as a flashlight in lieu of the screen. I couldn’t make sense of it. The floor was a spongy cluster of what I discovered to be bread when I reached down and picked up a piece of it. Each one fluffy, light brown and domed. 

I only properly understood when I saw the meat patty underneath the bun I’d removed. The floor consisted of hamburgers. And beneath those, more hamburgers. The walls too. All varying in size, some so large I couldn’t imagine they were ever intended to be eaten. All around me, droplets of meat juice fell from the ceiling. The normally appetizing smell of beef rapidly became nauseating simply because there was no escape from it.

When I stood perfectly still I noticed that the buns were gently pulsating. That the patties were linked by thin tendrils of brown cooked beef, also pulsing in rhythm. As if the great cavern were alive. Asinine. How could this exist? Yet I stood in the midst of it. That’s when I felt a wind pick up. Such as it was. More of a wave of warm, humid, meaty air. Something was approaching, and fast. 

I turned my light towards the tunnel and could make out only the distant silhouette of some gargantuan abstract form. Hobbling towards me step by belabored step, grunting and wheezing along the way. Then it began to call to me. “Robble robble. Robble robble robble. ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE”

No. Full stop. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. But there it was. And the more of it became visible as it advanced into the reach of my light, the more I felt my sanity abandoning me. This just couldn’t be. No possible sequence of events could create this. I couldn’t be seeing it. Yet there it was. A hundred tons or more, rivulets of fetid condiments trickling down its compounded rolls of flesh, undulating hypnotically as it surged towards me. 

In a flash, my presence of mind returned. I glanced at my phone, hurriedly danced, and nothing happened. I’d gotten something wrong. The mass of flesh bore down on me, bellowing “ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE”. What step did I forget? I fumbled with the phone but caught myself before I dropped it. Fuck me. I studied the photo I’d taken of that page in the book and, intensely aware that I didn’t have time left for a third attempt, performed the movements as indicated. 

When I opened my eyes, I was someplace new. I exhaled and fell to my knees, not sure how much of the condensation on my body was sweat, and how much was meat juice. At last, another apartment. Not familiar to me, but it had a shower, which I eagerly availed myself of. The walls were a drab brown, the wallpaper peeling and cobwebs adorning various corners.

Every room had an old fashioned boxy CCTV camera which as I looked, I noticed was moving to track me. Once finished I toweled off, threw on my boxers and explored the place. There was nothing like a computer. The fridge, phone and all other appliances were in poor shape. Glancing out the window revealed the rest of the city to be in an equally poor state of repair. More than one distant building appeared to be on fire, with nothing obvious being done about it. 

No cars on the street below. Only weird wheeled machines of some kind, carrying sacks of something. I couldn’t make out what from this distance. The television behind me sprang to life, giving me a start. “Attention cishet white male. It is twelve PM. Please go to the medipod for your daily injection.” My what? I asked for clarification but it was evidently just a recording. It added “You have forty five seconds.” 

That lit a fire under my ass. What was any of this? What happened here? I inferred the stained beige kiosk by the door was the medipod. It had a faded vector monitor which displayed crudely animated instructions for receiving an injection. I was meant to place my forearm into an alcove below the monitor and hold still while it positioned the needle. 

“Attention cishet white male. You now have twenty seconds remaining. Failure to receive your injection on time is punishable by a ten degree increase of your privilege index.” I began to grow nervous. What could be in the injection? I looked for any indication on the machine. What if human biochemistry was different here? It could kill me. 

“Attention cishet white male. Your allotted time for receiving your daily privilege adjustment injection has elapsed. Your privilege index has increased by ten degrees. It now exceeds the legal limit for this sector. Remain where you are. Diversity enforcement officers are being dispatched to your location. Do not resist. The punishment for resisting is compulsory gender reassignment surgery and ten days in the emotional resensitizer. Thank you for your cooperation.” 

Outside I saw some bizarre pink military vehicle pull up to the curb, with the slogan “LISTEN AND BELIEVE” stenciled onto the side. A motorized ramp descended from either side. I figured out why when the doors opened and the occupants rolled out onto the sidewalk. They were those mechanized wheeled machines topped with sacks of something, but these ones had a threatening looking insignia printed on the front and small flashing red and blue lights. 

My hand brushed up against something tucked under the drape. A pair of binoculars. The version of me from this Earth must’ve been somewhat of a voyeur. Or he was on the lookout for cops, if that’s what these things were. Peering through them, a great deal suddenly made sense. The sacks atop the wheeled carriers were people. Or their ancestors had been. 

The limbs which hung uselessly off either side were shriveled and malformed. There was no neck to speak of. The positions of the eyes were asymmetrical and their mouths were lopsided, filled with snaggled teeth. I frantically searched the apartment for a gun but couldn’t find anything even potentially useful as a weapon. 

Another piece fell into place when the television again sprang to life. “While waiting for the officers assigned to investigate your offense to arrive, please enjoy this retrospective on the social justice revolution your diverse, polygendered precursors bravely fought in to create the perfect society you now have the luxury of inhabiting.” 

Grainy footage showed hordes of bizarrely dressed protesters, with messy hair dyed either like a rainbow or various shades of pink, purple and blueish green. They held aloft signs reading “#killallmen”, “My dream is to someday have to explain to my grandaughter what men were”, “There is literally no such thing as racism against whites”,  and “POC cannot rape whites. Rape requires a position of institutional power”. I was dimly aware of such events on my own Earth. But these people were armed, trading gunfire with police who were faring poorly by the looks of it. 

“Following the great Revolution, the Department of Feminism and Sexual Justice was established with the goal of maximizing diversity and vanquishing the last few counter-revolutionaries in far flung bunkers, where they sought to escape severe but well deserved justice.” The footage now depicted a disturbingly overweight woman. Or what I thought was a woman until it zoomed in on the face. It rode a mobility scooter outfitted with armor plating and flamethrowers, launching gas grenades into the open hatch of an underground shelter. 

“Thus the dream of a society without sexism, racism, ableism, misogyny, transmisogyny, transableism, transracism, so-called egalitarianism, abuses of free spe cognitive neocolonialism, internalized racism, internalized ableism, internalized sexism, internalized misogyny, internalized transmisogyny, microaggressions and the patriarchy was realized. Notions that certain body types were more healthy than others, long one of the most pernicious and oppressive ideas, were finally thrown into the fire. Physiological diversity, ignorantly branded as medical afflictions by patriarchal science, was finally permitted to flourish.”

The footage showed a man not quite as deformed as the ones on the street but close being fitted for what looked like the prototype for those motorized carriers. He operated a small joystick with his tongue, deploying two spindly robot arms from the front. The film cut away to a fellow who looked to have a severely debilitating mental handicap sitting in what I recognized as the Senate assembly. 

“Neurodivergent persons had up until the revolution been some of the most underprivileged members of society, suffering under the boot of concepts like superior, inferior, and “IQ” invented by white cishet scientists for the purpose of oppressing those unlike themselves. These tragic victims of the patriarchy were aggressively recruited into positions of power and influence, to set right past wrongs committed against them. Likewise they were elevated to high positions in academia, law enforcement, fire fighting, the surgical profession, research institutes and so on. Justice at last! Among the first laws passed by these brave, disadvantaged persons of neural diversity was a law abolishing the hate term “mentally handicapped”. It was replaced instead with the term “differently abled“ until that was declared a hate term four years later and replaced with “handsomely abled.” That too was eventually declared a hate term once the public understood what it meant and so had to be replaced again by “supernaturally abled”. So it went, until the present. The preferred term is now “Radiant glorious golden shining sex gods of remarkable prowess in all pursuits.” To ensure sexual justice, some percentage of non-radiant glorious golden shining sex gods of remarkable prowess in all pursuits are now assigned to them as life partners to ensure the continuation of their unique contributions to all levels of society.” 

I made a note to call the cops that. Only the disembodied woman’s voice emanating from the television informed me that the elevator in my building was broken, preventing the diversity enforcement officers from reaching my floor. “As stairs were banned four years ago for being profoundly ableist, ramps are normally installed in all buildings. Yours has not yet received this renovation due to the decision of the civil engineer in charge of this sector to focus instead on dressing up like a ninja turtle and chasing stray cats. He is one of our city’s treasured radiant glorious golden shining sex gods of remarkable prowess in all pursuits however, so I do not presume to speak in judgement as my privilege level slightly exceeds his. Because of this development, please proceed by the fire escape to the first floor in order to receive your ticket, pay your fine, and receive instruction in how the medipod works.” 

Instead, I performed a hasty dance atop the charcoal glyph and soon found myself someplace refreshingly different. Anything would be an improvement, except perhaps for that cavern of hamburgers. I was beginning to grasp what the reality of infinite possible outcomes translated to in practice. 

It boggled my mind that deterioration could have proceeded that far just because of ideology. But while those bloated, malformed skin sacks atop the motorized carriers had been troubling to look at, I had to admit they were impressively diverse. Perhaps it was a matter of perspective. For a certain kind of person, that could well be a utopia.  

The next destination gave me reason to use the oxygen cylinder and mask. I could breathe the air without it but only barely. An orange-brown haze hung in the air which stung my lungs until I began breathing only from the cylinder, and continued to sting my increasingly red, swollen eyes after that. 

I stood on the edge of the exposed floor of a tower of some kind. Round, with a hollow center. Like an upwardly extruded zero. Peering over the railing, I saw masses of nude men, women and children in a field of patchy brown grass below, dotted with dandelions. When I turned, I discovered that just behind me was row upon row of nude men on stationary bicycles. The ones nearest looking curiously at me, but continuing to pedal as sweat dripped down their faces. 

The structure was rusty steel like the transit hub. Itself also a seemingly incomplete nest of girders. Except everything here was coated with sticky residue from the orange-brown haze. A pudgy little man in an odd uniform emerged from a doorway in the far wall. He approached, smiling but also visibly curious. “My, that’s some unusual clothing. What’s your station?” I stared in confusion, so he repeated himself. “Which floor do you work on, son? What’s your station?” 

I pulled a number out of my ass. When I said five he looked suitably impressed. “We don’t often get anybody from level five down here! I wonder what the occasion is? But I suppose that’s need to know, isn’t it? Carry on.” With that he waddled off, disappeared through the doorway and left me scratching my head. This wasn’t someplace I would voluntarily live. Something about it put me on edge. The structure. The nude men pedaling those bikes. The identically nude families in the field below. That primal part of your brain which warns you something’s not right was lit up like a christmas tree by all of it.

Just then an ear piercing alarm sounded. Below I could see figures in black vinyl aprons, boots and elbow length gloves rushing out into the field, picking through the cowering groups of muddy naked people. One of the aproned figures stared up at me through shiny black plastic goggles. My cue to move on. Except my phone was out of battery. 

No. Please, not now. Even the transit hub would be preferable. I tried to power it up again but it only flashed the empty battery icon and went blank. No problem, surely? I’d performed that same dance enough times now to do it from memory. That’s what I thought until I tried. 

What was the sequence? Dip, arch, pirouette….Something? The aproned figure had gathered several others in the field below and was gesturing at me. Dip arch, pirouette, crouch...Dip? They headed as a group for what I assumed was the elevator or stairwell up to this floor. My breathing accelerated. Dip? Arch? Crouch? 

The first of the aproned figured appeared in the doorway. He readied a long baton which, when it emitted a crackling blue arc, I inferred was electrified. In a fit of fear and urgency I performed the steps which came to mind first. I’d been overthinking it until then. Sometimes less is more. Just before they reached the glyph, black gloved arms outstretched, I was gone. 

Exhausting. Physically, mentally, emotionally. I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted to return to my own home. My own Leslie. So when I appeared in an apartment which appeared identical to the one I’d set out from when this all began, I collapsed and cried. Real, relentless tears of happiness and relief.  

Whatever was different, I could tolerate it. Everything looked close enough that I just didn’t care. What were the odds of finding someplace this close to the mark again? Even after hundreds of jumps. Thousands? 

Leslie. I plugged my phone into the wall and used the landline to call her number. “Hey, what’s up?” her melodic voice inquired. My hands shook. “You...you recognize my voice?” She laughed. “Of course I do, you fuckin’ weirdo. Do you think I have early onset Alzheimer’s or something? What’s this about?” I told her to meet me at the burrito place. When it turned out that didn’t exist here, we settled on one of the student run cafes on campus. 

I still shook subtly even after the drive there. Memories of the bizarre journey still fresh in my mind, I thanked God for returning me someplace I could bear to live in spite of what was undoubtedly a breach of how he intended the universe to work. 

She turned out to be a blonde on this Earth. I didn’t mind, as nothing else seemed different and the hair color turned out to be dye when I asked anyway. “You look messed up. What’s going on with you?” Was it really that obvious? Could I simply come out and tell her all of it?  I settled for telling her I’d been thinking things through recently and was simply grateful we’d met. That I didn’t fully appreciate her central importance in my life and that no world without her in it would be worth living in. Ordinarily immune to gushy sentimental stuff, Leslie teared up slightly. She reached out and took my hands in hers, and just smiled. 

An odd wristband she wore began beeping. A watch, I thought. But it displayed four sets of digits. Only one of which appeared to be changing until, when it stopped beeping, that display reset to zero and the next display continued where it left off. “Oh! That’s the end of the first day. Time for church. You wanna come with? I know you’re a fan of your own cubic deacon but I think you’ll like the direction they go with the music in mine.” 

I politely declined. She stared at me as if I had two heads. “Oh, I get it. Damn, that’s edgy. Don’t let anyone else hear you say that, though. They might misunderstand.” I repeated that I’d rather not go to a church just then and felt more like going home to sleep. She became gravely serious. 

“What’s come over you? Do you realize what you’re saying? I mean, I don’t know if it’s against the law or anything. Do we have a law for that? Who doesn’t go to church? You’re coming across as educated stupid right now. Do you realize that? We can talk about it later, just come with me.”

I didn’t want to further agitate her, so I obliged. As we approached, I began wondering if we were actually going to a church. The building before me was an immense white cube. Each face was outlined in black, with a huge “24” on the two sides visible to me. Inside was equally strange. There were rows of pews as I expected but hanging above the altar was a tremendous transparent plastic cube with a model of the Earth inside of it which slowly rotated, either by movement of the air or some concealed motor. 

Leslie shooed me into a pew near the front. I wished I’d had time to change, everyone else was wearing formal attire. Whatever all of this was about, more than anything I didn’t want Leslie to feel embarrassed of being seen with me. Not under any circumstances. If she minded, she didn’t show it. Instead, like everyone else she rose from her seat and beamed at the balding man in the white robe and cap who emerged from some back room and took position at a podium beneath the enclosed model Earth. He opened a book, cleared his throat and began to read.

“In 1884,  meridian time personnel met in Washington to change Earth time. First words said was that only 1 day could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day bible. So they applied the 1
day  and  ignored  the  other  3 days. The bible time was wrong then and it proved wrong today. This a major lie has so much evil feed from it's wrong. No man on Earth has no belly-button, it proves every believer on Earth a liar.
 
Children will be blessed for killing of educated adults who ignore four simultaneous days same earth rotation. Practicing  evil oneness upon Earth of quadrants. Evil adult crime vs youth. Supports lie of integration. One-educated are most dumb. Not one human except dead one. Man is paired, two half four self. One of God is only one fourth of God.” 

Everyone responded “Four simultaneous days per rotation!” in unison. Some applauded. I stared at them, wondering if I’d somehow wandered into a madhouse. Leslie seemed to be just as enthused, and shot me a troubled glance when she saw that I wasn’t behaving the same as the rest. 

His sermon was just more of that stunted gobbledygook. There was a weird rhythmic structure to it, almost hypnotic. As I didn’t know any of the songs, I instead sat and took one of the white leather bound books from the back of the pew in front of me and began thumbing through it. I didn’t get through much of it in the four hours that the service lasted, but it was enough to paint at least a rudimentary picture for me of how things turned out this way. 

Evidently some centuries ago there’d been a man named Gene Ray. He’d taken drugs, or had a mental breakdown of some sort and claimed to have received the ultimate truth of the universe, that time is cubic. Which in the context of the Earth means that four independent twenty four hour days transpire in the course of a single rotation of the planet. 

It must’ve resonated with some, because he’d evidently amassed quite a following. His teachings became the foundation for something the book called Temporal Cubism. There looked to be a lot of generally useful common sense self help advice in the book. Various stories with time honored moral lessons. But as I read, a pattern emerged. 

In various places, Gene was quoted as saying the Earth would soon come to an end. That time was in fact very short. Going so far as to insist that some of the people standing there listening to him deliver the speech would still be around to witness it, not having died of old age. That generation, he assured the crowd gathered to hear him speak, would not pass before everything he predicted had come to pass. 

There was more. He said that he’d predicted anti-Cubists would appear as the end approached, and indeed they’d begun to appear. At the time of writing. By this, he assured his followers they could be certain that they were living in the final hour. 

So, shouldn’t the world have already exploded or whatever? Why didn’t these people seem bothered by that? The book clearly specified that some kind of cataclysm should have destroyed the Earth centuries ago. Yet here they were carrying on in spite of the fact that the Earth remained very much intact. 

It did say that nobody could know the exact day or hour. As in, with any precision. But it also very plainly said that he believed they were already in the final hour back when it was written, and that people alive then wouldn’t have died of old age before the cataclysm occurred. I couldn’t wrap my head around how anybody could read that stuff and still buy into the rest of it. 

Then I spotted stuff that raised some serious red flags. “Anyone who does not give up everything they own cannot be my disciple”. That seemed transparently calculated to separate new recruits from their belongings so they’d be dependent on the group and unable to easily leave it if they began to experience doubts. 

“Anyone who loves their mother or father more than me cannot be my disciple, they are not worthy of me. Blessed will be those who leave their household and job to come and follow me, they will ascend to the eternal cubic paradise.” In other words, if your family doesn’t approve of this Gene Ray guy or his organization you recently joined, cut them off. They’re the ones most likely to try to get you out of it. 

The eternal cubic paradise was said to be a reward for those who convert to Temporal Cubism and continue to believe in it until they die. There was also something called Pit of Oneness to which people who refused to convert or stopped believing and died in their unbelief would be sent for everlasting torment. One of them to give you incentive to believe, the other to make you afraid to doubt it. 

The Spirit of Oneness, bitter enemy of Gene Ray and Temporal Cubism, apparently was responsible for fabricating any apparent evidence contrary to the Book of Cubic Wisdom. Which I figured was a way to pre-emptively bias these poor fools against anybody trying to convince them they’d been taken. 

Then, the cherry on top. “Lean not on your own understanding. There’s purported alternative answers which might look credible to a man, but they only lead to death. Walk by faith, not by sight, for the wisdom of men is educated stupidity before Gene Ray, wisest human ever to live.” Calculated to sabotage critical thought. The toolset you might otherwise use to figure out all of this was bunk. 

I could see the method to the madness. There was a sort of mechanism here, for compelling conversion, motivating people to go out and try to recruit others as well as their own kids, to make them fearful of their own doubts and intensely skeptical of any arguments against this racket and so on. Like one of those chain letters about how if you spread it to five of your buddies something good will happen and if you don’t, a headless ghost will visit you tonight. 

I stared at the people around me with renewed confusion. They all appeared to be competent adults. How had anybody fallen for this? How had it survived for so long and spread so widely? How much of the world believed this Temporal Cubism stuff? Leslie was quiet on the drive home. I had an inkling of why, which was confirmed when she exploded at me for not singing in cubic church.  

“What is all of this, Leslie? Temporal Cubism? What the fuck?” She seemed more confused than I was. “It was a concussion, wasn’t it? How can you seriously not know? I met you in Cubic Wisdom study group. How can you not know?” Nonetheless, I didn’t. It was a more serious faux pas than I’d counted on. She wasn’t willing to leave it alone and followed me into my apartment, white leather bound book under one arm.  

On the way, we’d passed a number of buildings with signs that hadn’t escaped my notice. “Saint Bart’s Cubic Hospital”. “Wisdom Cube: Cubic Movies, Games, Gifts And More!” as well as decorations for an upcoming holiday that a banner proclaimed was called “Ray Day”.  

In the windows of an art gallery I’d seen various archaic paintings depicting a guy in a white outfit and baseball cap I surmised to be Gene Ray in various heroic scenes, light radiating from around his head. What in the ever loving fuck had I signed on for? Could I really bear to live here? I felt more and more tempted to risk another jump in search of someplace less fucked up. 

In the course of badgering me to explain how I could have somehow forgotten a faith that was supposed to be as central to my life as everyone elses, I picked up from the details that over half the world practiced Temporal Cubism. The remainder practiced something called “Stevenism”. Somebody else who had pulled the same ruse as this Gene Ray guy, presumably. Just not with the same degree of success. 

I told her how I thought Temporal Cubism began. As a cult centering around this Gene Ray fellow. She recoiled as if I’d struck her. “How fucking dare you? Gene Ray sacrificed himself to make up for your educated stupid one-day bullshit! Who the fuck do you think you are to dismiss out of hand almost two thousand years worth of apologetics, the work of theologians that are among the brightest people ever to live? You really think so many people would devote their whole lives to this, even suffer persecution and die, if it weren’t true?”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. It would be heartless of me to answer that they’d died for nothing because their parents indoctrinated them into a cult, as their parents did to them. I guess that was the intent of asking that question. I couldn’t answer honestly without looking like a fool, and a bastard. I was rapidly picking up on the fact that they’d all been exhaustively coached in how to most effectively defend Temporal Cubism, as well as being conditioned to react with sudden severe hostility to the slightest sign of dissent from it. 

It was almost impressive. If you really wanted to be worshiped as the greatest person ever to live by all of humanity, or as close as possible, for thousands of years after you died, this was a damned effective way to accomplish that.  

Aspects of it reminded me of pyramid schemes I’d seen being shilled on campus by douchebags in t-shirts bearing the company logo, who would argue bitterly that you simply didn’t understand their business model if you tried to persuade them that it was a scam. “You’ll be sorry when I’m making three times your salary by next year!” Sure you will, buddy. 

Botnets also bore a striking resemblance to this. Special type of computer virus which invisibly hijacks PCs and devotes some of their resources to performing some synchronized task with the other infected computers for the benefit of the guy who programmed it. Usually mining bitcoins or something. 

“Maybe you were just raised in the wrong sect of Temporal Cubism. I know those Reformed Second Advent Cubists have some sorely misguided interpretations, I suspect you just need to sit down and have a talk with my Cubic Deacon to set you straight.” I assured her that wasn’t necessary. Whatever fucking crazy pills she was on, the last guy I wanted to talk to was her dealer. 

“Listen, Leslie. Supposing there were some guy traveling about your campus, claiming that the world would end very soon and that if you want to be saved from that, you have to sell your belongings, acknowledge his greatness, and cut off family members if they try to stop you. What would you call that?”

“A cult!” she blurted out. “The Book of Cubic Wisdom foretells that in the end times, false Gene Rays will appear, trying to mislead us.” I thought to myself that was a pretty clever way to sabotage any future religions that might otherwise supercede Temporal Cubism.  

She went on: “It also foretells that as the end approaches there will be mockers and scoffers, a great falling away from the faith”. I was surprised. They’d even anticipated widespread backlash once large numbers figured out they’d been fooled. Whoever wrote this shit had been machiavellian in the extreme. 

“Alright”, I offered, “but do you recognize that is also how Temporal Cubism began? Gene Ray was the cult founder. The ten Cubic Acolytes who accompanied him in his travels were the original core members.” She immediately reached up and slapped me before I could stop her. 

“That’s enough Oneness from your mouth. I don’t recognize you anymore. You’ve been deceived. Don’t you know that cults are whatever diverges from Temporal Cubism? Then how can Temporal Cubism itself be a cult?”  

I objected here. “Descended from a cult. It’s something else now. Whatever a cult turns into if it survives the death of its founder and matures over a long ass time. I expect that’s why they dropped the requirement to sell all your shit. No longer necessary to retain new recruits once they got established. Likewise with the whole cut off unsupportive family bit.” 

“None of that’s in the Book of Cubic Wisdom! There’s no part that says the world is ending soon! Nothing that says you have to sell your things, or cut off family members! Absolute lies.” I showed her all of those admonitions, found in several verses each. “Then you’re taking them out of context!” 

So I invited her to show me how the context for each changed its meaning at all. “You can cherry pick the Book of Cubic Wisdom to make it say anything you like!” I invited her to find verses which instruct followers not to spread it. Not to believe, or they’d be eternally punished. That if they disbelieved, they’d go to the eternal cubic paradise, and so on. 

It was fruitless. She was beyond blinkered. “What about Stevenism?” I plied. A look of recognition came over her. “Oh yes, that’s a different matter entirely. Stevenism certainly started that way. That much is obvious. Steven founded a cult, the seven students of Steven were the inner party. Or lieutenants, whatever the word is. It’s only still around because it’s impossible to make those poor blinded Stevenists accept that they devoted their life to something fraudulent. They’ve sunk too much into it and don’t want to look stupid. If only they read the superb arguments of Cubic theologians!” 

She said all of that wide eyed without a trace of self awareness. I stared at her expectantly until she made the connection. She suddenly looked horrified, then furious. “You can’t seriously imply there’s any comparison? Gene Ray is nothing like Steven! I mean, I can see how you might manufacture false similarities by misinterpretation. But Gene Ray performed incredible feats of magic!” I asked her if any record of those feats existed outside of the Book of Cubic Wisdom, or other books by Gene’s followers. 

“Well, no, but what more do you need?” I told her that a book written about Gene’s life by people in a religion devoted to him was not exactly unbiased and if anything would have been written in an attempt to convert people who read it. She looked dubious, angry and hurt. I asked her if Steven had performed any feats of magic. 

“Well, of course Stevenists think so. But the earliest Stevenists simply lied about it in the Stevenomicon, in order to make their false religion appear more credible. To get people to join it.” I blinked. She could see it so clearly in Stevenism. But every effort to make her turn that microscope back on Cubism caused her to lash out at me. As if trying to change her mind somehow picked her pocket or broke her leg.  

It broke my heart to see Leslie of all people so completely under the spell of something like this. The Leslie I knew was sharp as a tack. “Listen, none of this is real. It feels real to you because it was introduced to you when you were very young. Your sense of identity was still liquid. You believed anything you were told. They did that deliberately, so that once all of it solidified, it would be near impossible to reverse it as an adult. That’s how Stevenism works too. That’s why it seems so self evidently real to them, but obviously false to you. They see you the same way.”

She was turned away from me and I wondered if she was still listening. I gambled that she was, and continued.  “That’s why they go after kids. Saturday School. Cubic youth groups. I’m willing to bet they also push teacher led cubic prayer. And they go after prisoners too, right? And send people to third world countries. Kids and the emotionally vulnerable make the softest targets for recruitment. Neither are really put together enough to seriously evaluate a claim. Kids are gullible, people in desperate situations just want some kind of refuge from suffering.”

She turned around. “How do you explain all of the fulfilled prophecies? There’s hundreds of them!” I asked her where the prophecies were recorded. She said the early chapters of the Book of Cubic wisdom. “I see. And how do you know they came true?” She explained that they were recorded as having come true in the later chapters. “And when was this book written?” She’d begun to figure out where I was going with this, and so answered hesitantly. “Perhaps thirty or forty years after Gene Ray died and then returned to life, before ascending to Cubic Paradise.”   
  
Aha. So, long after the fact. “I can do the same thing, you know. Watch this. In 1998, I predicted that the World Trade Center would be hit by airplanes on September 11th, 2001. Amazing, right? How did I know that?” She looked confused. “What’s the World Trade Center? “September”? What?” Oh yeah. I scrambled for references that would be familiar to her but couldn’t be certain without studying this Earth’s history. 

“I’m gonna research some things online, Leslie. You can crash here if you like. I’d never turn you away. But this really is something we should talk about more. All this Temporal Cubism nonsense is simply false cult teachings. Satanic deception that prevents you from coming to know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins. That’s the most tragic part of this, and you don’t even realize.”

She just looked at me like I’d totally lost it. When I woke up, she was gone. It was a series of sharp knocks on the door that roused me, so after pulling on pajama bottoms I went to see who it was. I don’t know what I was expecting, but police were certainly at the bottom of the list. “We received reports of blasphemy, heresy and a potentially dangerous insane man at this residence.”

I wracked my brain as to what they meant. It dawned on me that Leslie must’ve called them. “Oh geez, no. Haha. Big misunderstanding! My girlfriend called you, didn’t she? She’s in some kind of weird cult, took me to one of their meetings yesterday.” 

Their demeanor softened, but they looked concerned. “A cult, you say. That’s very serious indeed. I take it she’s fallen in with Stevenists?” I shook my head. “No, it’s that whole Temporal Cubism dealie. The white cube shaped building a few miles from here. Happy clappy kool aid drinking shit goes on there, that’s really who you should be investigating.”

I struggled to understand why I was being taken in for further questioning. As they packed me into the back of the squad car, even as I was being fingerprinted. Completely asinine. How could it be happening? I made sure my phone was included in the locker of my things as I was processed for entry into prison. There’d been a mockery of a trial lasting less than an hour with almost nobody present. 

The real shocker was the sentence my lawyer told me I was likely to receive if I didn’t go along with an insanity plea. Forty five years. I nearly shit my pants when he told me. I could still jump after that provided my phone still worked, but I wanted no part of whatever prison was like on this Earth, given what I’d already seen of the rest. 

Their mental institutions weren’t a pleasure cruise either. I quickly discovered that they defined sincere belief in Temporal Cubism as sanity, and that how insane you were depended entirely on how removed your own beliefs were from the contents of the Book of Cubic Wisdom. They were quite good at figuring out if you were just pretending to believe in a bid for early release, too. 

So as the days, weeks, months, and years went by, I came to truly believe that Gene Ray was sent to us so that we might learn the error of Oneness, and the perfection of nature’s simultaneous four sided Time Cube. It really did bring me bliss, I think. When I asked for my phone and was told a visitor had stolen it, I didn’t even bat an eye. Even after all this time, I still remembered how to perform the dance. 

There was no access to anything sharp inside, so I’d not shaven for the duration of my stay. Accordingly when they finally deemed me mentally fit for release, I had an immense bushy beard. I was also rail thin as I’d not been eating well. My head was in a strange place and had been for some time, which tends to put a damper on appetite. 

When I returned to my apartment, I discovered it’d had a long line of other tenants over the preceding years. One of them had taken the white rug when they left. The one with the charcoal glyph on the bottom. I broke down crying in front of the poor frightened fellow living there now. I don’t blame him for shutting the door in my face. Rather than risk being arrested again, I headed to the nearest street corner and began begging for change. 

When I had enough, I bought just enough fast food to fill my stomach, then some small red candles and a packet of artist’s charcoal from a 63 cent store. Apparently here, there’s 64 cents to a dollar. It’s all in fucking hexidecimal for whatever reason. The cashier looked at me like I was an idiot when I had trouble counting out the coins. 

While there was still sunlight left, dressed in my tattered clothing that they’d returned to me when I was discharged, I drew what I remembered of the glyph on the street corner. I performed the dance perfectly, but nothing happened. I began to sweat, and scratched at my beard nervously. Hunching over, I used the charcoal to make some slight modifications to the glyph. It was like that, wasn’t it? 

I danced again. Nothing happened. So again I modified the glyph, hoping to chance upon the correct design. Again and again, I danced. I kept going through the night and on into morning, refusing to give up on it however long the odds were. I did not know where I would next be sent, but I refused to stay here. 

Amidst the hustle and bustle of people going to work, a small crowd gathered to observe me. I overheard a child ask her mother what I was doing. “The poor fellow’s lost his mind, dear. Tragic, but vagrants often end up that way. There but for the grace of Gene go we all.”