Bossert Tries to Solve the Puzzle

Dear readers, I hope I have not misjudged the duration of the gap between diary entries. It was my intention to leave you on a cliffhanger, so that you would remain interested and be eager to come back to read more. I fear I may have left you waiting too long and many of you will have lost interest and sought out some other electronic diary to read. Most likely, one written by a plump woman in Michigan and her useless struggle to lose weight. Good riddance to you. Either that, or you have become so agitated and excited that you are now whipped up into some sort of a frenzy and will not be able to concentrate on what I have to tell you. I am sorry for this, but you must do your very best to calm down, because I will now continue from where I left off.

I must tell you that as soon as he began trying to solve the marvelous and outrageous 4 by 4 by 4 Cube, Bossert became utterly absorbed. The crowd at once protested against Bossert's crime against puzzles: some brayed, some booed, some threw jigsaws at his chin. Bossert remained oblivious. His fingers blurred as they slipped and slid across the Cube. Faster and faster they flew as the Cube's sections swivelled and clicked so rapidly that smoke began to billow from it.

In my position as human battery for this evil puzzle, my pain grew more and more acute. But Bossert had greatly underestimated the power demands of his creation - each of the puzzlers in the room, honest men and women all, were drawn nearer, sucked towards Bossert's terrible Cube. Beyond their control, they flicked through the air, many evaporating as they made contact with the dreadful puzzle, their souls torn asunder and wasted as fuel for the horrible Cube. The rest managed to grab hold of spare pillars and so on.

All seemed lost. I, frozen in time, was unable to act as Patrick Bossert's ultimate puzzle became a hellish vortex that would suck up all souls in the world until the puzzle was solved, something that would surely take years. Bossert's miserable dwarf held tightly to a door handle to prevent himself flying into oblivion. I wished fervently that he would soon perish as no soul deserved it more, but then I saw him looking at me with something approaching pity. He pitied my poor tortured state, dear readers, even though his life was in imminent danger.

Before I could be too surprised by this, Perkeo did something else to make me more surprised and so the latter surprise trumped the earlier surprise. You see, he grinned at me, winked, then let go of the door handle. As he flew through the air, spinning wildly towards certain death, he raised the leash he had previously used to enleash me, and thrashed it like a whip at Bossert's bespectacled face. Bossert dropped the puzzle in his shock, and was at once sucked into the Cube. The Cube promptly exploded, and I was at once released from my time bubble. The puzzlers were likewise released from their descent towards death.

In the aftermath, a few uncertain cheers went up from the shaken puzzlers, but most sensed that the mood was not yet celebratory. For you see, I fear that poor Perkeo received the brunt of the terrible explosion and lay wheezing, near death, upon the floor.

I ran to his aid.