Chapter-1

Pilot
Hello, I am Prithvi, a 14-year-old speedcuber trying to be in the
WCA (World Cubing Association) World championship. Let me
introduce to you, my family. My parents are well placed people.
My father works in an IT company and earns well for the family.
I have an older brother who is studying in MIT engineering and is
doing quite good there. Being the second child and also when you
have a brother like that, I say, there are big expectations. But I
knew I was not made for engineering. Then, I told my parents
that my passion is cubing and I want to be in the WCA World
Championship. And surprisingly, they were cool with it. They
were like, it’s your life. So then, I started preparing. The
registration fee for the competition is 160 Canadian dollars which
is 9,800 Indian rupees. Actually, I was born in India at 2009, and I
moved out and went to Chicago, USA because my father had been
transferred, when I was eight. Then my brother moved out, and I
am left. Coming back, what the system is it’s like I pay the fee for
the tournament, and there will be some selections and if I am not
selected, I will get a 50% refund of the fee. So, my parents paid
the fee and I was supposed to go on my qualifying test in
California on Tuesday. Then I took a break from my school for
three days and I went to California for the qualifying test. Then, I
reached California and then comes the selection day. I went there
to the selection place with my father. There, what I saw was a
great sight. There was such a big room filled with thousands of
cubers. Then I imagined how big would the actual tournament be!
The events I registered was for the 3x3x3, Pyraminx and the
Megaminx. Coming back, after quite a time, a person with a mic
had silenced the loud chatter with his booming voice that had
been going on since the beginning. “Silence! Silence! I welcome
you all to the selections for the WCA World Championship. Let’s
begin.” he said with a charming smile.
 Chapter-2
The Selections
The selections had started. Oh, I forgot to tell you the systems,
right? So, what happens is that we choose three events and it’s
like Best of 3, if you get selected in more than two events we get
selected in the Championship. But the solving time for the 3x3x3
and the Pyraminx should be within 10 seconds. So, coming back,
they were conducting events parallelly in different rooms. The
first event I went was for the Pyraminx selections as there was the
least crowd there. They were calling contestants alphabetically.
Since my name is starting from P, I had lots of time.
So, after about an hour my name was called: “Prithvi Sharma!”. I
went inside the room alone since my father had decided to stay
outside. There was a man who was the person to inspect me in the
selections.
“Come, have a seat” he said.
Then I went and sat on the chair. There was the cube timer
supposed to record the timings of our solving. It seemed that he
had scrambled the cube before. He also covered the cube in a box.
“Should we start? Are you ready?” he asked.
“Umm… yes, let’s start” I replied.
Then I put my hands on the cube timer and the inspector had
uncovered the box. There laid was a beautifully scrambled
Pyraminx. I swiftly moved my hands to the cube and started
solving.