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Wemmbu and Eggchan ran through the entrance to District 13, panting. They had just escaped from a group of Law chungies, luckily managing to get out and run away.
Egg breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew. Glad we got out of that alive."
"I wanted to kill them!" Wemmbu complained. He placed down an ender chest, looking through it. "If only my gear wasn't so chopped, I could have just killed them and this would have been so much easier!"
Egg also opened up the ender chest. Instead of looking through his gear, he pulled something else out, looking at it.
"Oh, huh, I almost forgot about this thing." Eggchan held an unsolved Rubik's cube in his hand, turning it over.
Wemmbu looked over from where he was sorting his gear, immediately getting distracted. "You have a Rubik's cube?" He walked closer to Eggchan, taking a look.
"Yeah, I do." Egg said. "I've had this for 6 years, but I've never been able to figure out how to solve it."
"Lemme try. I'm sure it's easy." Wemmbu said confidently. He motioned for Egg to hand it over.
Egg handed Wemmbu the Rubik's cube. "Good luck."
5 hours later…
"I hate this stupid cube!" Wemmbu threw the cube at a wall in frustration. "Every time I try to solve one part, I just messed up something I already solved!"
Eggchan shrugged. "Oh well. I guess I could just take it apart and put it back together solved."
As he walked over to pick the cube up off the floor, Parrot walked by. Egg spotted him, getting his attention.
"Oh hey Parrot. You're pretty smart. Do you think you could solve this?" he held up the cube.
"Uh, sure." Parrot took the cube, starting to turn it. "This turns really slowly." After about 30 seconds, the cube was solved. "Sorry about how long that took, this isn't a very good cube." he handed it back to Eggchan.
Wemmbu grumbled in annoyance, muttering something to himself.
Egg, meanwhile, had a look of astonishment on his face.
"Woah, that was crazy impressive, you're actually the goat." he said, turning the cube over in his hands and looking at its solved state. "Will you teach me? I've been trying to solve that for 6 years."
"Why even bother?" Wemmbu said, annoyed. "Not everyone can be super smart and know how to solve a Rubiks cube in 30 seconds."
"If it was a faster cube, I probably could have done it in 15 seconds." Parrot replied. "But anyway, you don't have to be super smart to solve a Rubiks cube. Anyone can do it. And I can teach you how."
Wemmbu rolled his eyes in skepticism.
"Basically," Parrot explained, "The cube is solved using algorithms."
"What's an algorithm?" Eggchan asked curiously, handing the cube back to Parrot for him to demonstrate.
Parrot turned the cube in a fast, memorized way. "Basically, an algorithm is a set of moves that changes the cube in a specific way. For example, this one changes the edge permutation of the last layer." He showed Egg the cube, which was now still mostly solved, but each edge on the top layer of the cube was swapped positions.
"Whoa." Egg stared in astonishment.
"And look, if I do it again." Parrot performed the same sequence of moves. "Now it's back to solved."
Wemmbu still acted annoyed at the whole thing. "Whatever."
"So when I'm solving the cube," Parrot explained, "I'm not reversing the scramble. I'm just first setting the cube up by solving a small part of it, then moving the rest of the pieces using algorithms I memorized. Anyone can learn it, and once you know a few algorithms you'll be able to solve any 3x3 cube. I know around 50 algorithms, but if you're just a beginner, you only need to know about 6 of them."
"That's fascinating." Eggchan said. He took out a notebook. "Can you write this down for me?"
Parrot started writing some letters in the notebook. They looked like complete nonsense to Eggchan.
"Huh?"
"This is the notation for writing down an algorithm." Parrot explained. "I'll show you what each letter means on the cube. And I'll draw a picture of what each algorithm is for, so you know when to use it. But only if you have colored markers, because I don't think I can draw it in black and white."
Egg pulled out a pack of colorful highlighters. "I'm ready to learn."
Wemmbu walked away. "This is so boring. I don't understand why you don't just peel the stickers off!" he said as he left the room.