"Will you put that bloody thing down and talk to me?"
       Shawna was pissed off. I kind of understood it, but this was important. I was half a second off the world record, and they were coming to watch me do it in less than two weeks. I got three tries. If I hadn't beaten the current holder's time of just over 4.7 seconds with one of those attempts, they left. If I did, I got immortalised in the next Guinness Book of Records.
       "I just wish you'd play with me occasionally, instead of just with that sodding cube!"
       I made a couple of final twists, and set down the Rubik's cube on the table, each side showing a single colour.
       "I'm sorry. It's just. . . this means something to me, you know? A chance to get my name written down somewhere. I know it probably seems stupid to you, but it's only another couple of weeks. I promise. After that, I'll put it away."
       Her face softened a little. "Okay, babe. I do understand. Just remember you have a girlfriend too, hey? Though sometimes I wonder how you managed to get me. I'm far too good for you."
       She laughed. I laughed. She was joking. I knew it was the truth.
       "Go on," she said, "let me see you do it. I'll time you."
       I smiled. "Mess it up for me then. I won't look."
       I stared out of the window and listened to the soothing sounds of the cube being rotated.
       "Okay, here you go."
       I took it and studied it a moment.
       "Ready?" she asked.
       "Yep."
       I put the cube onto the table. According to the rules I got a few moments to study the cube in its mixed-up state after they revealed it, then I had to place it on the table. The stopwatch started the moment I picked it up and stopped when I put it back onto the table.
       I took a deep breath. I could see in my minds-eye how this solution would go. It wasn't too many moves, so I should come pretty close to the world record.
       I picked it up.
       My hands flew, so fast I wasn't even aware of what they were doing. I was operating purely on instinct and experience.
       The cube dropped back onto the table. Shawna stared at me.
       "Four point two seven," she said.
       I stared at her. "Are you sure?" That wasn't simply beating the world record, that was smashing it by almost a full half-second. If I could do that on the day I'd probably still be in the record book in a couple of years.
       "I'm sure. That was amazing. I couldn't even see your fingers move they were going so fast. In the middle there it even looked like your fingertips were on the opposite face from the rest of your fingers."
       I'd done it! Now I knew I could beat the world record. All that remained was to do it on the day, under more pressure and less relaxed circumstances. I got up and headed out to the kitchen to grab a celebratory beer.
       "Wait a minute, babe," Shawna's voice came from the living room. "It's not complete."
       My heart sank, and I rushed back in to look at it. I was sure I'd finished it. Was she messing with me for kicks?
       "What do you mean?"
       "Look. This corner here."
       She pointed out one solitary corner of the cube, sitting between the red, blue and white sides. The white was on the blue corner, the blue on the red, and the red on the white.
       "But. . . that's impossible."
       "Obviously not," Shawna said. "You must have made a mistake."
       "No, you don't understand. I don't mean that I couldn't have made a mistake. I mean that it's impossible for the cube to look like that. At least not without peeling off the labels and sticking them on in the wrong place, and you know I didn't do that."
       Shawna studied the cube. "Maybe it was defective already?"
       "Hardly. I've been practising with the same cube for days. I'd have noticed. That cube was fine right before I made that last attempt. Hell, you even saw me complete it just before you messed it up for me."
       "Yeah, but I might not have noticed one corner being wrong then." Shawna sounded dubious, but I knew. Something impossible had happened.

       I should know better than to walk along the street while trying to solve it, but it's good practice. Once past a certain point I should be able to pretty much complete it without looking at it, barring a final twist maybe to get the final layer to match up. I did walk into that lamppost last week though.
       This time it wasn't a lamppost, it was a man with a knife.
       I'd taken a short-cut home down a side alley. I'd done it dozens, hundreds, of times before. On this occasion there was somebody waiting there. Somebody I didn't see until it was too late.
       The first I knew was the arm around my throat, and the knife point sticking into my neck.
       "Easy now, boyo," the man said in a deep Welsh accent. "Do as I say and you'll be fine."
       "What. . . ," I gulped, "what do you want."
       "Your phone number," he laughed. What do you think? Hand over your cash, phone, watch, anything else that's worth anything." He must have seen what was in my hands then because he laughed. "You can keep the cube though. Never could get the hang of those things, even as a little'un."
       I don't know what came over me then. I'm not the hero or the fight-back type. I'm the meekly-hand-over-my-valuables-and-then-bitch-about-it-in-the-pub-later type.
       This time though, something got into me. I dropped the cube and reached up with my right hand to grab the elbow belonging to the arm around my throat. The next second or so is a blur, but at the end of it I was standing over my assailant, who was lying on the ground screaming.
       At first, I thought I'd broken his arm, or dislocated his shoulder or something. Then I saw why he was screaming.
       His left arm was twisted around his back, where it disappeared through his spine and reappeared out of his abdomen. I took a step back, horrified, then forward again to look more closely, strangely fascinated.
       There was no blood. More specifically, there was no hole in his back or his stomach. His arm simply passed through his body somehow, and seemed to be stuck there. He was a sort of human Klein bottle.
       "Please," he wheezed. "Ambulance."
       I took out my phone, then thought better of it and rifled through his jacket pockets until I found his. I planned on disappearing after this.
       "Code?"
       "Forty-three twenty-seven. Hurry!"
       I dialled 999 and patiently explained to the operator where the person in distress was, but was a little vague on the nature of the injury. I declined to tell them who I was or where I lived, and as soon as they said there was an ambulance on the way, I dropped the phone and took off.

       The day of the record attempt I woke up with a blinding headache. Typical. Shawna headed downstairs to fix me coffee with a side of generic ibuprofen and a fry-up. I rolled over in bed and swiped my phone open to check the news.
       Staring out at me from the screen was a picture of my Klein-bottle mugger.
       I raced through the article. It seems he had been attacked (hah!) on his way from a friend's place and badly wounded. After being rushed to hospital, he'd passed out and lived his last few weeks on the coma ward before his body gave out. The piece mentioned that somebody had called the emergency services at the time of the attack, and police would like to talk to that person, but other than that there were no leads.
       I'd killed him.
       Or rather, he'd died after I'd done. . . what, exactly? I'd kind of twisted him around. The aim had just been to get him off me, like pretty much everybody seems to be able to do so easily in movies. I had no idea what had happened during that short period of time, other than the fact that whatever it was had led to him no longer being alive.
       I had to shake this off. There was nothing I could do now. He was dead. I'd been defending myself. I hadn't done anything excessively violent. I'd called an ambulance. I couldn't see what else I could have done, other than not getting attacked by him in the first place, and it didn't really seem fair on me to take the blame for that.
       The record attempt was in a couple of hours. I needed to focus. I picked up the cube from the bedside table and gave it some random spins. Then I closed my eyes for a moment, visualising the position of the colours on the various sides. A series of moves formed itself in my mind. This would be a quick solve.
       And then. . .
       Another sequence suggested itself. This one was harder to grasp. Every time I tried to visualise exactly how to twist the sides, the motion slipped away from me, but I knew it was there. This would work. I just couldn't quite see it in my mind the way I usually could. Not only that, but it was only four moves.
       I opened my eyes, studied the cube, and span the sides.
       Without really understanding what moves I was making, I gave four twists, all at right-angles to each other. The cube was complete.
       I hadn't timed myself, but I reckon it took about two seconds, max. Nobody would ever beat that!

       I sat in front of the table. There was a special mat in front of me, with a cylindrical container on it. Underneath that container was a cube that needed solving. When they lifted the box, I'd have a few seconds to turn it around and study it, then I'd put it back on the mat. A handful of spectators stood off to the side, watching. Shawna gave me an encouraging smile and mouthed "you can do it". Two of the onlookers were also there for the record attempt, and we would take it in turns until we'd all had three tries.
       When I picked up the cube, the clock would start. When I dropped it back on the mat, complete, the clock would stop.
       I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and nodded. The adjudicator revealed the cube.
       It took only a couple of seconds to see an obvious solution, though I wasn't sure it would give me a record-breaking time. Still, better than nothing. I put the cube down on the mat and shut my eyes again, willing the rest of the room away and trying to calm my mind before the attempt.
       When the cube hit the mat, the clock showed 5.92 seconds. Not a bad time, but not a world record either. I needed to get my act together.
       The other two contestants put in a better showing, with 5.36 and 4.98 seconds. Still, neither was enough to put them in the record book either, and I had two attempts left.
       My second try I thought I had a good chance. Again, I could see the solution in my mind's eye, and this time I figured I could manage it in roughly record time. If I could make my fingers move fast enough, perhaps I could shave off a few hundredths of a second and actually set a new record. Even if it only held for a couple of minutes until one of the other two beat it, that would be something.
       I ran through my usual eyes-closed, deep-breath, picture-the-solution ritual, then picked up the cube. As usual, my fingers followed the plan my brain had prescribed, and I was just a few moves off completion, when a flash of intuition hit and my muscles made a completely different move from the one I had planned.
       I dropped the cube back onto the mat and there was a moment of stunned silence, before the spectators erupted shouts and cheers. The timer read 4.11 seconds.
       I'd beaten the world record by over half a second! Shawna ran over and flung her arms around my neck.
       "You did it, babe! You're a world champion!"
       I was, and it felt great, but I didn't want to let that feeling overtake me just yet. The other two still had two attempts each, and even if my new time was tough to beat, it probably wasn't impossible.
       "Hold off with the celebrating. Let's see how these two do first," I said.
       "Ah, they ain't gonna beat that. You're safe."
       I hoped so.
       The next guy put in a good showing, beating the previous record by about a tenth of a second. Cause for celebration for him, but not good enough. When the cube was revealed for the third guy and he picked it up, I saw the look of triumph in his eyes. He barely glanced at the cube before putting it down on the mat, ready for his attempt.
       I knew right then he was about to beat my time, and when the cube hit the mat the clock showed 4.03 seconds. The crowd—such as it was for an event like this—went wild. This was turning into a real competition. Everything was being captured on phones, and I was pretty sure at least one person was livestreaming, but I didn't want to look. Not until it was all over.
       I sat down for my third and final attempt.
       When the cover was lifted, my heart sank. By now I'd seen enough configurations for my instincts to tell me what would lead me to a good time and what wouldn't.
       This one wouldn't.
       I picked it up and turned it over and around. In the end, the adjudicator had to tell me my preparation time was up and I had to put it back on the mat.
       I sighed and placed it in front of me, still studying the sides, hoping for a revelation.
       Perhaps I could salvage something. I closed my eyes, desperately looking for a way that didn't involve as many moves.
       It hit me.
       I could do this. I could beat everybody's time. Not only that I could beat them in a way they'd never be able to do better.
       The adjudicator was looking at me expectantly when I opened my eyes. I nodded and picked up the cube.
       I twisted twice. The room blurred. Spacetime rearranged itself around me.
       I placed the cube on the mat with exaggerated casualness. Each side was a uniform colour, though what had previously been red was now more purple. The clock read 1.73 seconds.
       If I'd thought the applause earlier had been enthusiastic, it was nothing compared to this. Tentacles rubbed against each other emitting their low rumbling of approval, and Shawna threw herself at me, her neck tendrils entwining with mine in ecstasy.
       I was a world champion!