The RCTD

Readers, I have taken a tincture of senna to calm my nerves and fortify my constitution. I now feel suitably equipped to continue my tale of woe. Bossert fired the Proton Pack directly at my face and at once I was overcome with an unutterable agony that filled every nook and cranny of my world. Revelling in my misery, he produced a strange device from some hitherto unseen crevice, and pressed a button upon it. The wibbly luminous beams eminating from the Proton Pack immediately froze, as did I. I noted that a bead of sweat fleeing from one of my forehead pores became suspended in mid air. Bossert let go of his Proton Pack, which remained stuck fast in air, and turned to address the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, but somehow contrived to make the words rhyme, "The device I have just used will be familiar to many of you. It is a humble Rubik's Clock, which I have doctored using a science of my own devising so that it can pause time."

At this point, the French contingent spoke up, and Bossert quickly replied, "Yes, it is just like in the CITV series Bernard's Watch."

The Canadian team promptly appended an additional comparison, and Bossert confirmed, "Indeed, it is also similar to the remote control used in the new Adam Sandler film, Click".

The Croatians also tried to get in on the act but Bossert had to correct them by saying, "No, it is nothing like the eponymous green distillation invented by Professor Gibberne in H. G. Wells's short story 'The New Accelerator', for that made subjects move at a vastly increased speed, and it only seemed to them as though time had paused."

He continued, "I have frozen Mr Carew in time, at the precise moment that his soul has been extracted from his body, and also, happily, the moment at which his pain is the most heightened and exquisite. For you see, my Rubik's Clock Time Device (RCTD) does not freeze Mr Carew's mind, so while his body is fixed fast in time, his mind is free to witness the horror he is experiencing and free to endure the terrible pain he is suffering. I could retain him in unbearable agony until the end of time itself if I chose to."

At hearing this, I tried to panic but could not, as the act of panicking requires the passage of time.

Bossert went on, rhyming all the way, mind: "His soul is now available to permanently power my ultimate puzzle. The puzzle is of such devious and morally repugnant difficulty that a human soul would quickly burn down - this way, I can use the same soul, frozen in time, without resorting to mass genocide." A puzzler from Jersey protested that this made no sort of sense, but Bossert had Perkeo shoot him.

The Schoolboy Cubemaster attached one end of a pair of jump leads to my frozen chest and the other end to something concealed beneath a black cloth. At once whirring could be heard and a bright blue glow issued from 'neath (beneath) the cloth.

"It works, it works," said Bossert. "Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the unveiling of the most fiendish, the most outrageous, the most unbelievable puzzle ever devised..." Here he whipped off the cloth and revealed...

I will come back to this tomorrow, as I wish for you to be kept in suspense.