A Mysterious Cube

By Sudipto Maity

A very long time ago, in a far-off town named Peace, people lead a peaceful life. Peace had all that’s good, in abundance, most importantly it had peace. The citizens, a thousand in number, were known as Peace-keepers. Six out of these thousand were chosen as the wise men, they received the title BUD-HE-GB. The BUD-HE-GB’s were pseudo-intellectuals, who commented on everything, big and small, thin and thick, white and dark, all they did was comment. These comments were highly valued by the Peace-Keepers. The six wise men wanted to study everything, in order to comment on it. Since there was no crime and life was dull they decide to leave the town and embark on a journey to learn more about the universe.

After travelling for a decade and learning and commenting on various things they finally reached a desert. They were amazed by its beauty and expressed their desires to explore more about the precarious place.

One of them wanted to measure its depth and started digging. The others saw meaning in the work and joined him in the quest. Soon enough they removed a ton of sands and a large cube was unearthed. It was so heavy they could barely move it, so they decided to remove the sands enshrouding it to get a clear view of it.

After 3 days of continuous digging the work was finally complete. A cube as one knows has six faces or sides. 5 out of the six sides were visible; the remaining one was facing the earth, providing a base for the cube to stand on.

Each side possessed a different color. While the top was white, the four sides were red, blue, green and purple, respectively. They could not see the sixth color. The BUD-HE-GB’s decided to study each side and while 5 wise men chose a side each one of them was left out due to the lack of accommodation.

They started to comment and agreed on the several aspects. But when it came to the color, each had a different opinion. Their opinion soon translated into a debate, it escalated rather quickly and they started calling each other liars.

The sixth wise man who could not understand a single thing as he failed to obtain a side, slowly walked away. He formed an opinion that the cube started off the blame-game and should be avoided. The others remained there, happy with their respective sides; each harbored a feeling that they had the best side.

The news about their split spread like wildfire and it reached the town of Peace. Thus Peace was unsettled for the very first time, the Peace-Keepers quarreled among themselves day and night, and each formed an opinion. While most of them decided to join the 5 BUD-HE-GB’s, some followed the sixth one.

By Sudipto Maity