Time Cube was a personal web page, founded in 1997 by the self-proclaimed "wisest man on earth", Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray. It was a self-published outlet for Ray's theory of everything, called "Time Cube," which polemically claims that all modern sciences are participating in a worldwide conspiracy to teach lies, by omitting his theory's alleged truth that each day actually consists of four days occurring simultaneously. Alongside these statements, Ray described himself as a "godlike being with superior intelligence who has absolute evidence and proof" for his views. Ray asserted repeatedly and variously that "academia" had not taken Time Cube seriously. Otis Eugene Ray died on March 18, 2015 at age 87. Ray's website domain names expired in August 2015, and Time Cube was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016.
Content
Style
The Time Cube website had no home page. It consisted of a number of web pages that contained a single vertical centre-aligned column of body text in various sizes and colors, resulting in the main pages being extremely long. Finding any particular passage was almost impossible without manually searching. Within the text of Time Cube, Ray used cryptic language that included insults and non-sequiturs; one example is the often quoted line "Belly-Button Logic Works. When Does Teenager Die? Adults Eat Teenagers Alive, No Record Of Their Death." The text also contains a vague cynical narrative with numerous unique digressions that appears to reflect on his childhood. A large amount of self-invented jargon is used throughout, similar to verbal logorrhea: some words and phrases are used frequently but never defined, likely terms materially referring to the weakness of widely propagated ideas that he detests throughout the text, that are usually capitalised even when used as adjectives. In one paragraph, he claimed that because his own wisdom "so antiquates known knowledge," a psychiatrist examining his behavior diagnosed him with schizophrenia. Articles have proclaimed that it is futile to analyze the text rationally, interpret meaningful proofs from the text, or test any claims.
Time Cube concept
Ray's personal model of reality, called "Time Cube," states that all of modern physics and education is wrong, and argues that, among many other things, Greenwich Time is a global conspiracy. He uses various graphs that purport to show how each day is really four separate days—SUN-UP, MID-DAY, SUN-DOWN, and MID-NIGHT —occurring simultaneously. The following quotation from the website illustrates the recurring theme: Although most of the concepts presented remain somewhat consistent throughout the various texts it is unclear what line of reasoning could have led to any of the conclusions that are presented, the underlying theory from which the ideas were sprung remaining arcane and indecipherable to any rational analysis. Ray offered $1,000 or $10,000 to anyone who could prove his views wrong. Mike Hartwell of The Maine Campus wrote that any attempt to claim the prize would require convincing Ray that his theory was invalid. The proof would need to be framed in terms of his own model, thus deviating from any form of modern science. "Even if you could pull that off," Hartwell said, "Ray is probably broke."
Reception
Ray spoke about Time Cube at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 2002 as part of a student-organized extra-curricular event during the independent activities period. He repeated his $10,000 offer for professors to disprove his notions at the event; none attempted it. John C. Dvorak wrote in PC Magazine that "Metasites that track crackpot sites often say this is the number one nutty site." He also characterized the site's content as "endless blather." Asked by Martin Sargent in 2003 how it felt to be an Internet celebrity, Ray stated that it was not a position he wanted, but something he felt he had to do as "no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube." Ray also spoke about Time Cube at the Georgia Institute of Technology in April 2005, in a speech in which he attacked the instruction offered by academics. In May 2018, a video recording of the GT lecture was made available on the video sharing site YouTube. It is still available as of November 26, 2019. A 2004 editorial in The Maine Campusstudent newspaper remarked upon what it called the site's "subtle little racist ideologies" which culminate in Ray describing racial integration as "destroying all of the races." In 2005, Brett Hanover made Above God, a short documentary film about Ray and Time Cube, which won awards for Best Documentary at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and the Atlanta Underground Film Festival.
Suicide of Richard Janczarski
Richard Janczarski, also known online as "Cubehead", was a self-professed disciple of Ray who styled himself the "second-wisest human." From 2004, Janczarski created the Time Cube fansite Cubic Awareness Online, and an accompanying forum. In 2007, he traveled from his native Australia to Florida to meet Ray. The pair had several disagreements after going their separate ways. Ray denounced Janczarski on his website after the latter's visit. Seemingly as a reaction to this criticism, Janczarski committed suicide on February 12, 2008 at age 21.
Cultural impact
Christopher Bowes has stated he was inspired to write the song "To the End of the World" with the piratemetal bandAlestorm after learning of the Timecube. The song makes multiple references to the cube, and a supposed coverup of "the true nature of time", and was included their 2017 album No Grave But the Sea.
