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Prologue - 1: Lab-16
- 2: Recon - 3:
PBJ-Magic - 4: Noah's Arc
5: Math Wheels
- 6: Gapwar - 7: Rack'Em
- 8: FitTris
The Big Help - Chapter 05 -
Math Wheels
Eric the Seagull looked Johnathan in the eye and said, "It means never having to say you're..." as Mr. Livingston entered the
room remarking...."that's another Love Sorry". Turning to leave, he said...."I'm heading over to the King Richard theater to a rehearsal
of Terminator III, The Musical. In this version, three morphing robots replace three musical geniuses. Sly plays Beethoven, Bruce will
be playing Brahms, but Arnie dropped out at the last minute so I got lucky and they asked me to replace him". As he reached for the
door knob, "I don't know how long I'll be gone; but I'll be Bach".
Hi, I'm Nick Bytes and this is my story. I had just wrapped up "the case of the Burning Steak and the Big Dripper" when I got a
call from my mentor Joe Ockham. I hadn't seen him in person since well before Lab-16 but I already knew what he was going to say. You
see, once a year he would call me up and tell me about this case that he was working on. He referred to it as "the case of the rolling
digits" but I knew it was the old stupid Math Wheels problem.
He would get all excited and tell me how great it was. There was this box that had a different kind of combination lock on it. Instead of
just a circular dial, it had five equations that rotated around a rolling cylinder. Joe would go on and on about how great it would be
if we could create a hand-held puzzle just like it. He said it would become as popular as the Rubik's Cube. I told him, that the Rubik's
Cube was a fad and that only geeks played with the Rubik's Cube for more than five minutes. I told him, "Joe, no one will like it except
for you".
We talked for a while longer and then I told Joe goodbye. That night
I had the same dream I always have after talking with Joe about those stupid Math Wheels; but that night the dream ended differently. Joe
was walking alone playing with a device that I can only assume was a working Math Wheels puzzle. Overhead flew an evil Gryphon with
the head of an Eagle and the body of a Lion. Usually the Gryphon would drop an egg on poor Joe and the
stickiness of it would prevent the puzzle from working and Joe would sit down and cry not realizing
that the Yoke was on him. But this time....just as the egg dropped, Joe whipped out from his lab-coat a Bunsen
Burner and scrambled the
egg in mid-air. His aim was true, He hit his mark and the egg fell harmlessly to the ground. And then a truly startling thing
happened. Joe looked up at me as if he could see me watching him in the dream and
said...."You're right Nick, no one will like it except for me but that's good enough for me". I woke up sadly realizing that it's
not always a good thing to be right.
(Go to
Chapter-06 to read more)
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