It was just one of those days when you really needed a few cubes of ice in your glass of water. Echo strode over to her refrigerator in the kitchen and took out the ice-tray, bringing it over to the circular table in the living room where a whisky-glass full of boring old water awaited on a coaster. Fidgeting with the plastic and bending it in just the right way, one of the cubes plopped out and onto the wood. After picking it up she was on the verge of dropping it into the glass when it grew just a little bit bigger. “Hmm, it’s segmenting into smaller ice-cubes”
Echo thought, observing the geometric replication. Then a broad smile swept across her face as she realized the simple, unassuming thing had become a puzzle cube. “Woah … this thing looks interesting” the player thought, twisting the faces to match the particular shades of opaqueness inscribed within the squares. Biting her tongue, she eventually cracked the code, and the mechanisms within unlocked, and the individual ice-cubes glided into the whisky glass. Then the other ice cubes skipped out from the tray, changed different colors and slid across the table, over the top and underside and over the chairs. Managing to catch the red one as it bolted across the smooth oak, she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Hey, what was that!” she exclaimed, looking over and seeing no one. Turning back around the same thing occurred again, until she realized upon examining the ice-tray that one of the cubes remained, and that whenever she turned her head the cube had grown into a rectangular solid of a few feet in height, then branched off in ninety degrees, tapping her on the shoulder, and retreating quickly to evade discovery. “Give me a break, buster, do you think I’m that easy?” Echo grinned, removing the last cube. Taking its place, the refrigerator came from the kitchen and turned into a block of ice and slid into the depression. Then a white cube turned into white vapor when she touched it, billowing out until congealing into another on the seat of a nearby chair. She ignored it, instead turning to the pink cube that had inside of its interior another plastic ice-cube tray which she retrieved, flipping it over onto the table, letting the different varieties of cubes slip out, but it was really difficult to concentrate with the blue cube running up and down and tickling her left arm. “Oh, wise guy eh”
she censured, flicking it off. As all of this was happening … halfway across the city ... Sam sat by himself in a rather put-together dining hall of the Dalmatian Dynasty Café. Having been bored for the last hour he leaned with a palm flat against his cheek, the other hand gripping a thick water-glass. Sauntering over to him from across the room a rather lovely waitress dipped over, her shadow the only respite in the dreary opulence. “Sir, would you like some ice cubes in your water?” she asked. Nodding he assented, and with a blissful smile she poured the pitcher
into the glass, letting the dumb geometries clunk into that empty vessel. It was the third date she had missed that week.