The Cube: Ch. 1, A Meeting

I was in a green forest meadow. All of a sudden, a clear glass cube descended from the sky and landed in the middle of the meadow. There were no rocket engines or propellers or any other human means of aircraft mobility. It had just hovered there, as if a giant had it in the palm of his hand and slowly set it down on the ground.

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As I stood there watching, a doe came out of the woods and walked up to the cube. It sniffed at it, then licked it a bit, as if it was a large ice cube. Then a squirrel chased another squirrel across a tree limb and then the one in front leapt into the air and over to the top of the cube. When it landed, it slid across the top of the cube and fell down over the other side, onto the grass.

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There was a humming noise, then the sound of gears shifting and wheels turning, and a man in denim overalls and a red shirt on a tractor came into the clearing, crunching over the fallen limbs and leaves on the meadow floor. The man had a straw hat on his head, and a smoking pipe in his mouth. “Hello, friends!” he said. I looked around and didn’t see any other people, so I guess he was including the wild animals.

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