Vadim Simbarskiy – Cubes (страница 1)

Cubes

Vadim Simbarskiy

© Vadim Simbarskiy, 2025

ISBN 978-5-0065-5811-3

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

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

to be a primary characteristic, losing its

significance entirely. So let’s simply say: our

hero hails from somewhere in the north.

His parents once told him that his grandmother was

Swedish, while his grandfather had come to England

from somewhere in Eastern Europe. But now, such

details are mere whispers of a forgotten past.

After the immigration reform in the first quarter

of the 21st century, borders dissolved like morning

mist, and the great mingling of peoples began.

In the blink of a cosmic eye, humanity transformed

into a single, unified nation – the people of

planet Earth.

But enough of that. We’ve momentarily lost sight

of our hero. Ben had just finished college, majoring

in 20th-century history, and was preparing for his