General Off Topic
Topic: John Thomas's Cube

by John Leimert (1945)

John Thomas Thompson, aged eight years and nine months, lived in a house with an old, warped, but extremely large and fruitful apple tree in the back yard. Beneath this tree, leaning with his back against the trunk, or in it, wedged between forking limbs, John Thomas often took refuge. Here he came to escape the turmoil of his expanding world and to dream the dreams and think the thoughts important to a boy aged eight years and nine months.

John Thomas went out to visit this tree at seven-thirty o'clock of the morning of September 30. He didn't even wait for his breakfast. He just tumbled out of bed, threw his clothes on, and dashed out. He wasn't much more than past the door when he set up a clamor for his mother to come and see what he had found. His mother, however, was busy making toast, and frying bacon, and pouring John's father's coffee. She called to him to hurry back into the house and eat his breakfast, and to be sure his hands and face were clean, or else he would be late for school.

John Thomas ordinarily was an obedient boy, but on this morning he ignored his mother's summons. "But, Mother," he said, "it's teh queerest thing I've found. A little block of metal so heavy I can't lift it. Come and see. Please, Mother."

"You might just as well," John Thomas's father said.

When his mother came to where John Thomas was standing under the aple tree, she at first could see nothing. But the boy pointed to a bare spot and there on the ground was a perfect cube about one inche each way.

...

"It appears to be made of highly polished steel," Mrs Thompson said, and stooped to pick it up. To her surprise, she could not lift it. "That's the strangest thing I ever saw," she said as her fingers slipped on the gleaming surfaces.

By this time Mr. Thompson had come out to see what was going on, and he, too, tried to lift the cube, without success. "John Thomas," he said, "did you bury a steel rod in the ground just to see what would happen?"

"No, Father," the boy said, "I didn't. Honest. I found it that way."

"Why don't you get a shovel and see whether it's buried?" Mrs. Thompson asked reasonably.

"I believe I will," Mr. Thompson said. He got a garden spade from the garage and shoved it into the ground at an angle under the metal cube. The spade cut easily into the soft earth without striking an obstruction.

"You see," Mrs. Thompson said, "it isn't buried."

Mr. Thompson grasped the spade firmly and tried to lift the dirt with the cube resting on top. He couldn't do it. He then shifted both hands to the end of the spade handle and tried to pry with it. The handle bent slightly with his effort, but the metal cube remained immovable.

Mr. Thompson now pulled the spade out of the ground, bringing a quantity of loose dirt from beneath the cube as he did so. John Thomas squatted to inspect the cube more narrowly. "Look, Father," he said. "The block isn't even touching the ground."

"That," Mr. Thompson said, "is impossible." Nevertheless, he stooped to look, and after looking returned to his spade. He began to dig a hole around the cube, and before long he was able to take a spadeful from directly beneath it. The weight of the small cube had been astonishing enough, but what now occurred dumfounded them.

When the supporting column of earth was removed, the cube, contrary to all the laws with which the Thompsons were familiar, remained suspended a good two inches in the air. As they stared at the perverse, shiny object, a few grains of dirt fell from its under surface, as though to demonstrate that for dirt, at least, the law of gravitational attraction still held firm.

"Perhaps the hole isn't deep enough to make it fall," Mrs. Thompson said, and her husband, anxious for an explanation, excavated another six inches of dirt from beneath the cube. Nothing happened.

Mr. Thompson now thought of another force. "Stand back," he said to his wife and son. "I'll fix this thing's clock for it." He raised the spade above his head, took careful aim, and then swung down at the cube with all his strength. He was rewarded with a terrific clang. The spade bounced into the air again, almost wrenching itself out of his hands, but the cube continued serenely to occupy the precise sections of time and space as before.

Five minutes later, when the city editor of th elargest daily heard an excited account of these events from Mr. Thompson, he was understandably skeptical. Nevertheless, he sent a reporter out to have a look. The reporter, who was cynical and degraded person, cynical without conviction andd egraded without villainy, because his station in life required it of him, also was skeptical. He stopped along the way for two or three quick ones and when he finally arrived, looking bored and smelling of strong liquor, he found not only the Thompsons but most of their near neighbors impatiently awaiting him.

The hole had been enlarged by succeeding workers,w ho had the same idea as John Thomas's father, to a diameter of four feet and a depth of two. The reporter surveyed the hole, the block of metal suspended above it, and a branch of the apple tree directly above the cube. Then he said knowingly, "Which is the kid who found it?"

"I am," John Thomas said.

"Quite a magician, ain't you?" the reporter said, and taking off his hat, he swung it vigorously above the cube. The hat met nothing more resistant than air, and therewith the reporter became the first of a series of professional gentlemen who came to scoff and stayed to wonder.


The news spread rapidly and th emayor was among the earliest of the dignitaries to arrive. He was followed by a committee of inquiry from the university, consisting of its president, the head of the physics department, the head of the chemistry department, an associate professor who was an expert metallurgist, the professor of astronomy, and their respective assistants bearing scientific instruments of all kinds.

"Here, gentlemen," the mayor greeted them, "is an incredible situation. There it remains, suspended in mid-air. Where did it come from? Why doesn't it fall? Will there be more like it? When will it go?"

"One question at a time, if you please, Mr. Mayor," the president of the university said. "Let us first have the facts so far known, and then proceed with an orderly inquiry. Mr Thompson, would you mind telling us whatever you konw about this cube?"

John Thomas's father obliged with a recital of the events of the morning, suppressing, however, the episode of hitting the cube with the spade. He did not want these people to know that he could lose his temper at an inanimate object.

When Mr. THompson had finished, the president of the university went on. "I have formed a hypothesis that I am confident will explain all the puzzling questions that here confront us. There was a shower of meteors last night, a fact that my astronomical colleague will confirm, and this object arrived in the place it now is, in the form it now has, from the limitless distances of outer space.

"Why does it neither fall nor fly away again? We all know that there are two opposite but unequal forces that act upon every body at the earth's surface. One of these is the centrifugal force that results from the spinning of the earth upon its axis, a force that tends to hurl objects away. The other and stronger force is that of gravity, tending to pull objects towards the earth's center.

"This particular object, moving freely at tremendous velocity through space, entered into the gravitational field of the earth and was pulled from its course. As it hurtled through the atmosphere that envelops us, it became increasingly hot from friction, with the result that its molecular activity was distorted in such a way as to set up within the structure of the cube itself a force that neutralizes the force of gravity.

"The result we all see. The cube is at rest in a perfect state of equilibrium. Centrifugal force plus the gravity-resistant force within the material itself exactly equals the force of gravity. In a moment I shall prove my contention by lifting upward against the cube, thus giving it an impetus that will destroy its perfect balance and send it flying back into the void

from whence it came. Before I do so, does anyone question the accuracy of my hypothesis?"

The various scientists present remained silent, but John Thomas said, "I don't think it will fly away."

"Well, well," the president of the university said. "And why not, my little man?"

"Because my father hit it with a spade and it didn't budge."

The president reversed his field with a mental agility that no doubt had contributed to his reputation as an administrator. "Exactly," he said. "What this boy has said exactly proves the point I was trying to make. When confronted with the unknown, it is idle to speculate, however rationally, without having first erected a sound foundation of fact. I shall now retire in favor of my colleagues of the physics and chemistry departments. When they have examined this object from every scientific aspect, we shall consult together and, in the light of known mathematical formulae, arrive at the correct description."

The chemists and physicists now came forward with acids and bases, with agents and reagents, with spectroscopes and microscopes, with cyclotrons and atom smashers, with electric furnaces and vaccuum machines -- in fact with every known instrument by means of which man projects his senses into the infinite. The results were disappointing.

Viewed under the most powerful microscope, the surface of the cube looked no different than when viewed with the naket eye. No slightest fissure was revealed, no clue obtained as to the structure of the block. After finishing this part of the examination, the metalurgist said, "All I can say is that the surface is absolutely smooth, so that no part of it reflects more or less light than any other part. It is amazing."

The use of various chemicals proved equally ineffective. The block was impervious to every test and shed the most vitriolic concoctions like water off a duck's back. When it was exposed to intense heat, it not only remained cool, but it refused to expand or contract. No matter what they did to it, its dimensions remained constant.

It proved to be a nonconductor of electricity and had neither a positive nor a negative pole; yet when someone touched the base of an electric light bulb to it, the bulb lit. When this phenomenon occurred, the scientists retired to a corner of the yard for consultation.

Their places were taken by a delegation from the principal churches of the town headed by the president of the local theological seminary. "Mr. Mayor," this gentleman said, "we believe that further scientific inquiry into the nature of this object will prove fruitless. It belongs not to man but to God. What we witness is a veritable and unquestioned Miracle.

"No material description of this block is possible, since it is not material, but spiritual. Science, in its search for a purely mechanistic explanation of reality, sooner or later comes up against an irreducible minimum which remains as unfathomable and mysterious as the larger conglomerate it was intended to explain.

"What we now have before us is a corporeal representation of this irreducible minimum. God in his wisdom has chosen to send us a reminder made manifest that, though men can tinker with the building blocks of nature, they can not explain them."