CUBES
We can know enough of the past
And be sure of present at last,
But the future stays unknown,
We can only guess what will be shown.
V.M. Simbarsky
The bone-chilling January wind and, more importantly,
the rain — the incessant rain that had been falling
for five days straight — finally knocked them off
balance. They had been stuck in this godforsaken
hole, a place long forgotten by civilization, for
a month now.
Looking around, it seemed impossible that everything
here was once entirely different. Wooden houses
once stood in perfect linear order, connected by
a single road that doubled as the only street.
Windows with beautifully painted frames, livestock
and poultry roaming freely near the houses, adorned
it. Not far from the village, beyond the rye fields,
stretched the endless expanse of forests with all
their treasures.
In those January days, a thick blanket of fluffy
white snow covered the earth, crunching underfoot
with each step. The frost, which painted cheeks
rosy, held these lands in its grip all winter.
From the sky, snowflakes fell evenly and slowly,
as if someone were scattering cotton from above
or beating an old, tattered feather bed. They
twirled and settled, and the snow grew deeper
and deeper, forming drifts where carefree children
frolicked.
Good Lord, was all of this real? Ben gazed at
the black, soggy steppe, drenched and muddy,
scorched by an unseen fire. He tried to understand
who needed this war and why. Closing the book
about World War I, he stared out the window for
a long time, contemplating the senseless, useless,
and foolish cruelty, that animal instinct with
which people so easily destroy one another.
“Yes, it’s good we don’t live in those times,”
Ben said to himself.
Our hero is a young man. As you’ve already gathered,
his name is Ben. At 24, he’s an athletic blonde
of average height with strikingly blue eyes. In
the mid-21st century, nationality had long ceased
