Click! The red side smoothly clicked itself into place. The sound of the red side aligning against its opposite orange counterpart was the first step towards the zenith of my masterpiece.

The clock was ticking; it had already been four minutes since I started and yet my eyes were still adjusting themselves to the various hues of color. White, red, blue, orange, green, yellow–the colors seemed to mix together into a hodgepodge of confusion in my eyes’ perception.

It was impossible. It was unthinkable. No one could accomplish such a feat within such a time limit. Trial and error, algorithms, and matrices–nothing seemed to work; all that had worked was the red against the orange.

That’s it! Red against orange meant yellow against white and blue against green. The once devious colors seemed to fall smoothly into place as my hands twisted and turned, keeping in conjunction with the rhythm of the timer.

Tick-tock, tick-tock–the ominous device played its devious tune like an approaching storm, forcing me to consider its inevitability. As I continued operating my hands as nimbly as a brain surgeon, deciphering the inner-workings of the malevolent object, my eyes caught an appalling mistake. I left out an entire side!

Knowing that this meant I would have to possibly start over from square one, I refused to allow myself to be bested by such an enigma. Repeating my steps, now considering the neglected side, I soon found myself closer than ever before to completing my objective.

I clicked the final red side into place, contrasting suitably with the orange while the final seconds of the timer were approaching its celebratory end.

I did one last check as the timer rang its most anticipated sounds.

I solved my first Rubik’s Cube.