The Enigma Cube (Alien Artifact, #1)

by Douglas E. Richards

“Not really. The universe is flying outward, and we’ve discovered that this expansion is accelerating. Science can’t account for it. Given the mass of the universe, it should be decelerating, or even starting to slowly collapse inward. Some mysterious force has to be responsible, one previously unaccounted for. Since no one has seen it, measured it directly, or has any idea what it is, it’s been dubbed dark energy.” She rolled her eyes. “Might as well call it ‘we have no fricking clue.’”

It terrified me to realize just how easy it was for mass delusion to overtake large swaths of humanity. That just below the surface of human kindness was a seething pool of unfathomable ruthlessness and cruelty, unequaled in the animal kingdom.

Totenkopfverbande, or Death’s Head Unit, ran the Nazi’s extermination camps.

the military branch of the SS, the Waffen, or Armed SS—basically Hitler’s private army—was comprised of hundreds of thousands of combat troops.

“Good. So let me start by giving you a quick overview of gravity. First, it’s extraordinarily weak. The weakest of the known forces, by far. For example, the electromagnetic force is thirty-six orders of magnitude stronger. That’s a trillion, trillion, trillion times stronger.”

The stronger the gravity, the bigger the dent in spacetime, and the slower time will run. GPS satellites in orbit experience less gravity than we do on Earth, so their time moves faster than ours. Their onboard atomic clocks have to be corrected for this, using Einstein’s equations. If not for these corrections, they’d be off by more than six miles after a single day.”

The faster an object goes when it hits something, the more power it unleashes. A bullet hitting you at one mile per hour doesn’t hurt a bit. One traveling five hundred miles per hour blows through you like you’re made of cotton candy.

“Wow. Men facing imminent nuclear attacks say the sweetest things.”

Hitler believed that the bigger the lie, the more audacious, the more likely it was to be believed. Because who’d imagine someone would have the nerve to spread such a colossal lie? And the more such a lie was repeated, the more likely it would be accepted as truth.”

the infamous Berghof, Hitler’s beloved mountain palace on the Bavarian-Austrian border, from which he had governed Germany and planned the invasions of multiple countries. The Nazis had evicted farmers and homeowners from the area and constructed what amounted to a Nazi village, a fortress town on the side of a mountain, with barracks for Hitler’s guards, houses for key Nazi officials, parade grounds, shooting ranges, and even a cinema. In many ways it was Hitler’s White House, war room, and Camp David retreat all rolled into one.

“So don’t think of this as a prison,” he added. “Think of it as Adolf Hitler’s waiting room.”

“Cough if you understand.” “Cough,” she said out loud. Boyd couldn’t help but smile. Kelly Connolly was nothing if not an original.

“So in our age,” she continued after her quick tutorial, “we have access to more information, and more entertainment, than the most farsighted visionary of this time would ever dare predict. We have instant access to tens of millions of books, hundreds of thousands of movies, weather from around the globe, directions to anywhere, and a dizzying array of goods and services that can be delivered to our doors within days. We have access to billions of pages of information that can be searched in an instant. Countless goods and services that used to be scarce are now abundant. We have better clothing, better housing, and better living conditions. Every decade the cost of computing power, electricity, long-distance communication, and countless other goods and services has plummeted.”

“Socially,” continued Kelly, “the world has become ever more tolerant, with all races, religions, and sexual preferences not only accepted by most, but even celebrated. Yes, there is still bigotry and persecution in the world, but compared to the level seen in the time period we’re in now, it’s microscopic.” Boyd chimed in, describing such advances as supersonic jets, microwave ovens, and Moon and Mars missions, completed by rocket ships capable of returning from space and setting back down gently on a landing pad, like something out of an early science fiction novel.

never underestimate the ability of human beings to take things for granted, and find ways to be miserable. The truth is, even though we live in the best of times, most of us believe the opposite. That poverty, and literacy, and so on have gotten worse, even though they’ve gotten considerably better. This is actually a fairly recent phenomenon. Just in the last thirty years or so.”

“Turns out that in our day we’re drowning in news,” he explained. “Every second, every day, a weight of news that is almost inconceivable. And those providing this news know that only the most dramatic will stand out. So we’re told the sky is falling a hundred times a day. And rather than discuss how far we’ve come, the dire problems we thought our way out of, we amplify every problem, every behavior that is less than perfect, into crisis proportions. Pessimism sells far better than optimism.”