"They were destroyed, sir," he answered. "According to plan. That is the truth. But is isn't ALL of the truth. You see, the cubic equation that connects this universe of ours with the other two has only ONE real root. The other two are imaginary. That is what I didn't tell Hitle. The number one is a cube root of itself, and represents our own universe. The field set up by the machine was literally another cube root of one acting on our universe as a factor, transposing its forms into an imaginary universe. There Hitle succeeded in his conquest of all Amba. It was not the conquest he figured on however, because events are merely single values that fit the cubic equation,--never the equation itself. What Hitle did not know was that no one can ever succeed at conquest, but only at what might more accurately be termed the cube root of conquest. "And in his case that cube root of conquest was imaginary, represented by the number, (a minus one half, plus the square root of a minus three fourths.) Cube that quantity yourself! You will get one for the answer. Square that quantity and you will get the third cube root of unity. Blend or multiply the two together and you get unity, which is reality in our plane of the omniverse. Multiply unity by one of the two imaginary cube roots of one, and you transform the one, or our reality, into an imaginary plane. Try it. Get a piece of paper and work it for yourself! And study the metaphysical applications of the relationships of the three cube roots of unity,--the relationship of mind, imagination, and reality, the relationships of the positive, the negative, and the neutral units of matter;--and wonder!" End of Project Gutenberg's Cube Root of Conquest, by Roger Phillips Graham