Organic Tesseract

2023-10-15

I turned the metallic cube over in my hands, running my fingers across the smooth, seamless surface. I shared an impossible existence with it. The knowledge that you weren't supposed to exist did wonders for the psyche. It's sure done me over for the past few years. The cube and me, bastards 'til the end. It's been an odd kind of kinship, but a welcome one, nonetheless. I cracked a dry laugh, savoring the feeling of my desecrated fingertips gliding across the precisely cut steel.

This might've been the last time that "I" handled the cube in such a manner.

I never thought the cube was anything special, until I started hearing the voices coming from it. They were quiet, so quiet a normal person wouldn't have been able to hear them. I wasn't normal, though. I was chosen, maybe because the cube knew we shared the same sort of origin.

Most people would've thought they were crazy, but not me.

I knew I was sane. I was sound of mind. I held a respectable job. I had work relations. I kept myself in shape. I went out occasionally. I had drinks with friends and coworkers. I fit in. I was going to get a raise. I went out to dinners. I had a spouse. I had a child. I had a home. I was the perfect example of a functional, normal person.

But I still was never meant to exist, so I didn't get the privilege of standing equally amongst those who were.

I could converse with the cube. We really hit it off, let me tell you. We shared the same philosophies in life. It had a base of knowledge that it was excited to share with me. It told me about many things, about the nature of man, and the nature of humanity's will and purpose on this world.

We were meant to be connected to each other, but it could never work out once people started developing terrible individuality. Once people started to intend to exist. The closest we've ever gotten to approaching that kind of singularity was with the creation of the internet. At times, I wished for that future to happen desperately.

I was told that I, and I alone, could link myself to that collective consciousness. People who weren't wanted were already halfway there, it said. I listened, wary at first. Initially, the news felt too good to be true. It was a siren's song, I told myself. I never voiced my doubts, but it seemed the cube knew everything.

It told me, six months, one week, and six days ago, that I could confirm everything. All it took at first was a single fingernail. I was scared at first. I remember carefully slotting a flathead screwdriver underneath my right thumb, clutching a hammer in my left hand with a clammy, sweaty grip. I felt sick to my stomach and almost didn't commit to it, but I persevered.

I hit the handle of the screwdriver with my hammer, hoping that it would come off in one clean movement, but it didn't. It uprooted half of my fingernail, and the pain had felt as if I were exorcising myself from my body. A piece of myself had started to tear away from me, but my body refused to let it go completely. In that moment, my body and mind were to completely separate entities. It clung desperately to the piece that hung, while I tried desperately to sever the string which tied it to me. I tried to use the hammer again, over and over, failing to even make contact with the screwdriver. My hands were too shaky, my body was rebelling against me. I wondered if this is what the cube meant, the disconnect between mind and body.

But as it turned out, that was child's play.

I struggled against my flailing body, dropping the hammer on my foot. Pain shot up through my toes, but I didn't care. I was too focused on my fingernail. That fingernail. All I needed to get was that fingernail, and then I could be free. I jerked my head and bit down on the still-hanging nail, my entire body convulsing until the infernal anchor presenting itself as a fingernail shook loose. Eventually, it ripped free, I was allowed to slot the bloody piece into the cube, and I was given a piece of the consciousness I desired.

For a moment, everything was beautiful. All my senses fizzled out and died, then I could feel nothing. That allowed me to take in everything, all stimuli uncompromised by the human lens. I did not think during this time, all of these revelations came in retrospect. Concepts flowed into and through the vessel which tied me down still to the world. Existence turned to plasma and poked holes into everything. I was wheel, spinning on the axle which turned the cosmos. This feeling lasted for an eternity, compressed into a single, fleeting second. At the time I returned to human existence, I realized that I needed to feel this forever.

The cube told me how I could achieve this. I followed every order from it unquestionably.

It ended up taking almost everything during these past six months. The skin on my body. My teeth. My job. My eyes. My wife. My ears. The cube whispered to me. There was just one piece left before I could finally be happy. It asked me if I wanted to finish what I started.

I wanted to be connected.

I wanted to be loved.

I wanted to be something.

So, yes, I'd give myself over, little by little. This time, I'd finally be free. I set the cube down and picked up the orbitoclast I'd had prepared for thoday. I had enough practice using one of these to know what I was doing without needing to see.

Connected.

Loved.

Something.