The Edritch Hypercube by Simon Kewin

August 2024 | Utopia Science Fiction Magazine

“The cube you found on Spica IV; we’ve found another one. Although this one is … different.”

The voice from the exploratory vessel Sense of Wonder came through to Tami Edritch in her lab on Earth. She had the jet-black cube in front of her. She’d studied it for years, probing it with every tool at her disposal. It remained inscrutable — apart from those few gravitational fluctuations when its mass unaccountably altered. Became, if the readings were to be trusted, briefly infinite. Which was obviously impossible. Normally, it was a couple of kilogrammes of stone, no apparent internal structure but with swirling etchings on its surfaces. It was ancient, that much she knew. It had been recovered from Founder ruins on Spica IV, the stratification dating it to a million years old.

“Different how?” she asked.

There was something like amusement in the voice over the metaspace comms tunnel. “This one … it’s a little bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“Let’s just say I think we’re going to have trouble bringing it to Earth. You might need to come out here.”

Six years later, the scientific vessel Nexus dropped out of metaspace at the coordinates the Sense of Wonder had identified. Tami peered through the forward transparent bulkheads. A black body against the blackness of space wasn’t easy to see. She called up navigational overlays — and there it was. She heard herself gasp as she picked out the background stars being eclipsed by the dark object, more and more of them as the Nexus approached.

The new cube was vast.

She’d put her life on hold to make this journey. Of course. She was the closest they had to a Founder expert. If anyone could find answers, she could.

“Put us on a vector to traverse the facets,” she said. “I want detailed scans.”

“How close should we approach?” the Nexus asked.

Good question. Was there a risk? She’d never experienced destructive effects from the first cube, but no one knew who the Founders had been. Many doubted their very existence, insisting she’d connected random astro-archaeological scraps and invented an ancient galaxy-spanning civilisation.

But now there was the second cube. The fact it was 15,000 light years from Spica supported her theories. That it was over 5000 kilometres to each side suggested something truly remarkable. What wonders might the Founders have constructed if they could build this? The thought sent delight thrilling through her.

“Keep us 100 kilometres away,” she replied. “Scan with every sensor we have.”

The Nexus was dwarfed by the vast artefact as it skimmed across the surfaces. The second cube was identical to the first — apart from its titanic scale. The same patterns swirled across its surfaces. Its interior structure — if it had one — remained as impenetrable.

“What are you?” Tami asked out loud as she studied the telemetry. “What are you for?”

The cube didn’t respond.

There was the fact of its location. It lay far from any star, but her analysis had shown that, a million years ago, it would have been at the galactic core. In a moment of inspiration — perhaps madness — she’d drawn an imaginary cube around the entire galaxy, using the outer edges of the spiral arms as they would have existed as her boundaries. The object lay precisely at the centre point.

The gravitometer output flickered, catching her attention. Very, very briefly, the measured mass of the cube shot off the scale. Alarms rang through the Nexus as its trajectory was distorted. They weren’t too far from the galactic core’s supermassive black hole — an object they did not want to venture near.

The ship’s alerts cut off as normal readings returned.

“What the hell was that?” she asked the Nexus.

“Unknown.”

“It was real?”

“It was.”

She thought about moving farther away, then decided against it. Another reading had caught her attention. She’d left monitors on the small cube, the one she’d brought with her in case there were … interactions. She’d been right to do so. The small cube was buzzing, humming at high frequency.

She picked it up. To her touch, the vibrations were a slight warmth. Lights sparkled along its etched swirls. It had never done that before. One point on the lines, a tiny dot, remained lit as the others dimmed.

The lines … an idea struck her. She instructed the Nexus to fly round the space cube, orientating towards the corresponding point upon it. The small object — was it possible it was a key?

Only one way to find out. The ship flung itself towards the alien artefact. Mass proximity alarms blared. Tami deactivated them; she had to know. The cube filled her universe. Its swirling lines glowed, one dot blazing brightly.

The Nexus dived into it, smashing into the surface.

And passing through.

She’d called the object a hypercube on an intuition. Now, she saw she’d been right. The cube contained … the galaxy. The galaxy in miniature. Not the stars as they’d been a million years ago, the stars as they were now. And, spanning it, a three-dimensional cobweb of shining lines and nodes. She picked out Spica, but there were so many others. Founder worlds? Systems no one had ever explored.

She instructed the Nexus to fly into that inner galaxy. The sensors resolved the nearest node. It was another vast cube. Cubes within cubes, a fractal recursive nest of them. Was this a map, or art, or — the idea struck her — a means of traversing space? If she flew in, would she emerge in the real galaxy at that incredibly distant point? Make a journey that would normally take a hundred years?

Again, she had to know. There was a node near enough Earth if she were right. If she were wrong, well, it didn’t matter. No one would ever be able to tell her.

There was a disorientating moment of transition, a flash of light, and the galaxy she inhabited vanished.

Then the light of new stars, impossibly distant stars, filled her eyes.

THE END

Originally published in the August 2024 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.

Simon Kewin (he/him) is an award-winning writer of
fantasy and sci/fi, with over 500 publications to his name.
He’s the author of the Cloven Land fantasy trilogy,
cyberpunk thriller The Genehunter, steampunk
Gormenghast saga Engn, the Triple Stars sci/fi trilogy and
the Office of the Witchfinder General books, published by
Elsewhen Press. He’s the author of several short story
collections, with his shorter fiction appearing in Analog,
Nature and many other magazines. His novel Dead Star was
recently an SPSFC award semi-finalist and his short story
#buttonsinweirdplaces was shortlisted for a Utopia award.
His novella The Clockwork King won the Tales by
Moonlight Editor’s Prize. He has an honours degree in
English Literature (1st class) and an MA in Creative Writing
(Distinction).