Tainted Cube - Tainted Gestalt Across Eight Realities

A clear cube spun through a gap between dimensions, dancing around the borders between various realities. In one universe, this artefact may have been known as a “Cosmic Cube”; in another it would resemble the “Key to Time”, but its name did not matter. It was powerful enough to distort the very fabric of whatever reality it happened to remain within.

There are many other well known items of similar power. The Master PC condenses the ability to alter reality into a user interface. A few clicks of the mouse, a clattering at the keyboard and the entire nature of reality can be turned upside down in an instant. The Wishing Rock gleefully grants careless and deliberate wishes, always keeping to the letter of the wish if not to the spirit in which it was uttered. Both have their strengths. Both have their limitations. In the case of this transparent structure that brimmed with power unimaginable, well, its limitations were rather more difficult to locate. The wording did not matter, and there was no interface to impose limitations upon the user. So what was the trick? How does one prevent any stray utterance or thought from becoming reality?

The answer is that this is not a concern at all. Its limitations are that the cube is controlled by sheer willpower. Concentrate on what you want, and you shall have it. Reality, matter and energy shall bend to meet your desire, regardless of whether it is truly what you wanted or not. Then again, a stray touch may cause the cube to make an unstated deeper desire come to fruition. It was powerful. It and cubes like it were dangerous beyond compare. Unlike those other cubes, however, this one stood apart for one simple reason.

This cube was tainted. All of its kind were sentient to a degree, make no mistake of that. Prior to its banishment into a place where it could do less damage, this particular cube had become corrupted by powerful lustful desires, to the point that anyone trying to make use of it would find that it would merely serve to impose their most erotic hidden fantasies upon reality. For those that tried to use of will to get what they wanted, they would find that their alterations were similarly corrupted by the sting of lust.

The banishment was rather foolishly decided upon. Send it somewhere nobody could ever find it! Send it somewhere it could do no harm! Send it somewhere with energies powerful enough to destroy it lest it do any further damage!

Thus the cube now spun alone through nowhere and nowhen. It bounced off the very surface of numerous realities, strange and wonderful places that it could feel were so full of wants and needs…

And then it was struck by that very same energy that it was hoped would destroy it. For our purposes it might be best to describe it (inaccurately) as a bolt of lightning. It struck the cube at the very middle of one of its six sides and rippled out with four smaller bolts along that same surface, each perpendicular to the others. The cube stopped spinning, and in that one dreadful moment something impossible and terrible happened.

Where once there was a single cube now there were eight. They were smaller, certainly. Each was constructed of a single corner, each was equal in size, and each scattered off in a different direction with but a fragment of the power that lay within… Then each landed in an entirely different universe from the others, where the consequences would surely be terrible!

*written by Lumitiel