"However," the chief went on, "technique of dimensional impaction is not unknown. Scale here is much larger, but in theory can be done."
"Can be done in practice?" I asked.
"Would be honored to try. May suggest to begin by postulating isotropic homogeneity throughout entire metrical frame?"
"Sure, let's do that thing. What's an isotrope?"
Two hours later, I had a terrific headache, but the design chief seemed confident that the major theoretical obstacles had been overcome. Problems concerning the actual production of an artifact loomed large, though. The production manager was called in for consultation.
"Retooling necessary," the PM stated.
"How extensive?" the chief asked.
"Possibly entire facility."
"Can be done?"
"Affirmative."
Later, my head seemed about to burst. They brought me a bed-it was a big round cushy thing, very comfortable-and I racked out after trying to rouse Darla, who preferred the floor. Her back, she said.
I slept for an hour, got up and went to the board, where I was served a cup of hot beverage and a sweet roll. "Anything?" I asked.
"Design almost complete," the chief told me. "Must tell you that entire plant staff is much enthused and excited by this particular project. Retooling is progressing on schedule."
"Jeez, you guys must make a bundle in overtime."
"Say again, please?"
I took a slurp of ersatz coffee. "Sorry, just thinking aloud."
We went on an inspection tour of the retooling effort, visiting buildings that I didn't think we'd been in before. They were tearing the place apart. What we witnessed surpassed anything we had seen of the plant's "conventional" production operations. We watched an army of robots storm an assembly facility and reduce it to junk, then cart in new material and build a titanic contraption that looked like a particle accelerator married to an exciter cannon. We stood by, spellbound, as whole new wings were added onto existing buildings-slap, dash, bang-to accommodate new oversized equipment. One of the larger facilities now housed a monstrous affair that had been thrown together in under an hour, a towering edifice of black glass tubing, shining metal, copper spheres, and multicolored domes. At its top, dozens of shafts converged, bringing unknown forces together to clash inside a central chamber. They were apparently testing the thing when we drove through. Violet discharges snaked through the dark glass, and the machine screeched like a beast chained in the depths of hell. We got out of there.
When we returned to PL&D., Carl and Lori were there, looking worried.
"What's going on?" Carl asked. "The whole place is going crazy."
"Quotas to meet for the Five Year Plan."
"Huh?"
"I got a little project cooking," I said.
"Jesus, we thought something happened. Little project?"
A big problem came up: a power shortage. The energy requirements for final assembly of the object were beyond the plant's capacity. Calls went out to other automated industrial facilities around the planet, and most replies were favorable. They'd be willing to help. Word had gotten out about the project. We were a sensation.
The retooling went on for another twelve hours before the initial stages of final assembly commenced. It was then that a horrendous explosion rocked the plant. We tried frantically to contact the foreman. Half an hour later, our call was returned.
"Extensive damage sustained in facility housing Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Ring," the foreman reported.
I felt guilty. "Gee, that's terrible. What happened?"
"Failure in primary power tetrode, leading to fracture and subsequent leakage in coupling loop."
"Oh. Anybody hurt? Uh, I mean…"
"Several worker units lost. Have been replaced."
"I see. Maybe we'd better cancel the project before worse mishaps occur." I was thinking more of our own safety.
"Anomalous event, recurrence statistically negligible. We urge that effort be pursued through to completion."
"Well, I don't know."
"Abandoning task at this point would take on tragic aspect."
"It would?" These guys really were gung-ho. "Okay, let's go ahead then."
"Splendid! Your courage is to be commended."
"My courage?"
Repairs were effected, and work was resumed.
Arthur told me he was ready to leave any time. I told him we wanted to go back with him to Emerald City.
"Fine with me," he said, "though you could wait here. I won't be more than an hour."
"I think I have to get out of this place before I go nuts. Can you wait till the project's done?"
"Sure. By the way, what in the world are you people trying to do?"
"Produce your hand-tooled, genuine leather, monogrammed wallet," I said.
"Just what I've always wanted."
The final assembly was almost an anticlimax. Everything went smoothly. We were summoned to the showroom.
I held it in the palm of my hand and stared at it. The robot who had delivered it whooshed away.
It was a very simple object, yet a very strange thing to look at: a small, totally black featureless cube.
"A most sublime artifact," the foreman said with almost religious solemnity.
"The cube!" Darla gasped. "My God, Jake, why?"
"I don't really know why, not intellectually," I told her. "Not yet. But everything seems to revolve around this little object. A whole legend has grown up around it, around us. The legend says that when we go back, we'll arrive before we left, and I will give the cube to Assemblywoman Marcia Miller, who will in turn hand it over to the dissident movement, who will in turn give it to you. And you will give it back to me. Except that the `me' you will give it to is the me of three months ago." I took Darla's hand and placed the cube in her palm. She stared at it in astonishment. "My duty seemed very clear. Since somebody stole the one you gave me, I thought I'd better come up with another one to give back to you. And there it is."
"But…" Darla was baffled.
"According to the legend," I went on, "the cube doesn't have an origin. It just keeps cycling from future to past and back again. Now, here I am at the end of the Skyway. It doesn't look as if I'm ever going to find an object like this. In fact, everyone here seems bent on taking the original one away from me. So, I thought I'd kill two paradoxes with one volitional act-I created the damn thing on my own. Now I have the cube again, and the cube has an origin. Well, these guys did the originating, actually. I just gave them the idea."
"But how, Jake?" Darla asked, shaking her head in wonder. "How did you know what to create? Nobody ever really cracked the cube's mystery. Ragna's people made some good guesses, but how did you know what the cube really was?"
"I didn't, of course. I took Ragna's people's speculations and asked the design chief to come up with a design for an artifact that would more or less answer to the description. He did. And the factory crew made it a reality."
"But what is it, Jake?" Carl asked. "What is the cube? What's it for?"
"Don't know what it's for, yet," I answered. "But what it is, near as I can figure from what the design chief told me, is a continuum in which the normal properties of space and time are nonexistent. Within the confines of these six sides, neither space nor time exist at all. What's inside the cube is literally and absolutely nothing. A nonspace. A singularity. The Ahgirr scientists' speculation about it being a huge space folded up was wrong, but I can see how they arrived at the hypothesis. Nonspace is a slippery concept to grasp. Another thing: space and time are not the only thing that doesn't exist inside. Nothing else in the universe does either. Fundamental things, like the Planck Constant, or G, the gravitational constant, or any of those foundation stones of the physical universe as we know it. Inside the cube, anything goes. You could make a whole new universe in there, using physical laws different from the standard ones."