Cube Rube

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jack stared at the cube, mesmerized by its iridescent color. One part of his mind calculated how long it would keep him in smoke while another part mocked him for thinking iridescence a color.

Two inches to a side, the cube glowed from the middle shelf of a contraption known as an oven. The cube stared back at him.

He swore it stared, seeing deep into his soul, tracing his past through his three failed marriages, his four bankruptcies, his multiple encounters with the Imperial Patrol, and his constantly smoking himself into oblivion.

Ivory swirls sloshed across its surface, like laughter. The cube knew him.

Twenty minutes earlier, he'd dropped from orbit in his Salvager to sniff through the ruins of Canis Dogma Five, the old Circian homeworld, for something he might hawk to the junk lords for a few hundred galacti. He'd found someplace to park the Scavenger out of sight from the constant patrols, his ship almost as derelict as the ruins he explored. Then he'd worked himself between the decrepit doors of an apartment building, one of the few still standing amidst the ruins of a city that had once housed a million people, minimum. Two floors up, he'd cracked a flat whose stale air bespoke its millennial inoccupancy. The oven was a perfect find, as valuable in its current state as it would be after being dropped out a window. I'm not carryin' it down two flights of stairs, he'd thought indignantly, bending to look inside. The dusty glass pane obscured the interior, so he'd opened the door.

And stared at the cube inside.

Before he could think, he snatched it from the oven.

#

A scene filled his sight and a voice rang in his ears.

He was in a cavern, and a man stood before him, dressed in sequined silks of multiple colors, upon his head a slim, simple circlet, in one hand a two-inch silvery cube.

"I am Lochium Circi the Ninth, Emperor of Circi, a civilization that once reached to the outer arms of the galaxy." Behind the figure was a small table, on it a vial filled with orange fluid, and a large stone slab atop one-foot pillars. "Welcome to my final resting place, Traveler. You have now been selected for a sacred duty. You see me because you have been chosen to wield the Ghost cube." Lochium Circi the Ninth ceremoniously held up the silvery, two-inch cube. "With this modest device, the Circians spread their influence throughout the galaxy."

A remote rumble shook the chamber, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. "And now our influence is dying. Barbarians bombard Canis Dogma Five into oblivion as I speak.

"You, Traveler, have been chosen to become the next Emperor of the Circian Empire, with all the privileges, responsibilities, and obligations thereto implied, and to bring together again all the remnants of our once-great Empire under the auspices of one government, to live peacefully until the end of time under you and your successors.

"The cube has chosen you, Traveler, because you are worthy and noble and pure. May the billion suns of the galactic core light your path with brilliance."

#

His head spun and his face stung.

"Hold it by its edges," the girl told him.

Jack did as she bade him, the cube threatening to suck him elsewhere again.

He stared at her, she who had slapped him. She who knew what he held.

Because it was hers.

He wondered where she'd come from. The apartment had had the feel of having been vacant for a very long time. He also wondered why she hadn't just taken it from him. One part of him already knew, and another part ridiculed him from not considering for a moment handing it back to her. He'd be stupid to give up something that might keep him in smoke for the rest of his life.