It is quite a large file. The system takes a while to load, but it's worth it. It is the most beautiful human machine interface I have ever seen ”.

The Windows '95 desk top suddenly disappeared, replaced by a background that faded from the black edges to a metallic blue. In the center, a small cube with a dark gray metal surface, illuminated by an invisible light placed at the top right of the screen, rotated freely in space.

Jack stood for a few seconds admiring the perfect simplicity of that dynamic image, while wondering how he could interact with that little cube.

"Nice, huh?" Swatch said, who in the meantime had sat down next to him.

"Beautiful, but how do you use it?"

"Hover the mouse pointer over the cube".

As Jack touched it, the cube stopped spinning and, with a quick but progressive effect, tripled in size. On each of the faces had appeared nine three-dimensional buttons each characterized by a different icon.

Jack's eyes were wide and you could tell a mile away that he was gloating with pleasure.

Each face of the cube had a title indicating the category to which the applications of the specific face belonged. The buttons were only nine but, if the applications of a specific section were in greater number, just click on the triangles placed near the title to bring up other icons and browse the entire section. There were three ways to move to another section: freely rotate the cube with the mouse, click on the small arrows placed on the edges of the face, or click on the purple rhombus at the bottom center, to bring up a drop-down menu on which to choose the category you wanted to go to. MoonRay, next to each arrow had planned to show the title of the relevant section, but had not had time to report this intention in the demo. Of course, the possible sections were not only six as many as the faces of the cube, but they could be many more. The mottled orange button instead allowed access to the Cube setup menu. MoonRay had also planned to be able to browse, within a single button, all the icons that referred to the same application, such as unistall, help, etc. Finally, by pressing the very small book-shaped icon at the top right, a document management system was accessed. It was not a replacement for File Manager or Explorer. The prerequisite for its operation was that the directories in which the documents were stored were a mirror copy of the structure displayed by The Cube and that the user saved their files in those directories. The Cube functioned simply as a filter, in the sense that it displayed only the directories in which the documents were stored and not all the other possible directories in which, for example, applications were contained. In that way, the end user was "forced" to archive their documents following a precise logic. The application naturally allowed the elementary operations of a File Systems: copy, delete, move, create directory, rename.

"So what do you think?" Swatch asked when his exposition was over.

"I have no words," Jack replied, after a while, as he continued to twist and turn the cube. “MoonRay left us a really nice gift. You were right it's the coolest human machine interface I've ever seen. We have to find a way to reciprocate this last effort ... In the meantime, call the others and show them too ... "

Meanwhile, Jack stood up and started walking around the perimeter of the room.

He didn't even deign to glance at the other two when they entered, and not even their screams of admiration managed to distract him from his concentration.

"I found!" he said after a good five minutes, dropping by at least five decibels over the din that had now been created in the room because in the meantime a discussion had broken out about which was the best tool to develop the cube. "I found. From now on B2 no longer exists, not even as a code name. At the press conference we will announce the project with a name inspired by that of our friend: RayCube. There is part of his name and there is a reference to his great idea of a graphical interface. Sounds good. Yes, I think MoonRay would agree too.