The Da Vinci Cube (standard:humor, 2860 words)
Author: Ian Hobson	Added: May 22 2006	Views/Reads: 3914/2196	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
If you've read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, then you might make some sense of this. If not, best read something else.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

a Millionaire?' because the first prize is £100 and the second is £200 
and so on up to £1,000,000, hence the long number; and what's more the 
first line of text is an anagram of 'Who Want's to be a Millionaire' 
and the £1,000,000 prize is the Holy Grail of prizes, so the whole 
thing must be about his secret passion: the Holy Grail, as reputedly 
portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, except it's not because 
if you look closely they're all drinking from bottles of Stella.' 

'Brilliant!' Rupert said, kicking himself.  'I don't know how I could
have missed it.' 

'But zat is preposterous,' Cludo said, pulling a pistol from his coat
pocket and pointing it first at Catherine and then at Rupert.  'You are 
obviously both in zis togezer and so you are both under arrest.' 

But Catherine was too quick for him.  She kicked the gun out of Cludo's
hand, grabbed a priceless work of art from the wall and brought it down 
hard over his head and shoulders, trapping his arms against his sides 
with the frame and torn canvas, then speedily ushered Rupert out of the 
building and into her waiting Renault Cleo. 

CHAPTER THREE 

Rupert was at a loss to know what was happening.  An hour ago he was
happily working on his new novel, which was sure to a best seller, due 
to the highly controversial subject matter - namely that Jesus Christ 
was in fact a bisexual, transvestite alien from the planet Danglemea, 
as secretly portrayed in several works of art by Pablo Picasso – but 
now, here he was being driven at high speed through the streets of 
Paris in the middle of the night by a lunatic French policewoman who 
claimed that he was a suspect in her uncle's murder.  The whole thing 
would almost make a good novel were it not for the absolute absurdity 
of it. 

'Where are you taking me?' Rupert asked. 

'To an all-night drive-in bank where my uncle has a safety deposit box,'
Catherine replied as she swerved to take a left turn.  'I know he has 
one there because I overheard him discussing it with his cleaning lady 
when I accidentally discovered them having ritual sex in the basement 
of the house where we used to live.  I think that the sequence of 
numbers on the art gallery wall must be the combination to the box and 
that it must contain a vital clue to the location of the Holy Grail.' 

'However did you work that out?' 

'Easy.  The second line of text: 'P.S. TAKE CARE OF MY CAT', is clearly
a message to me to take care of M Y,' Catherine replied.  'M being a 
code word for money, and Y being a symbol representing the Holy Grail, 
therefore the Grail, or clues to its location, must be in a place where 
money is usually kept, i.e. my uncle's bank.' 

'Brilliant!' Rupert exclaimed, looking at Catherine and finally
admitting to himself that this young Frenchwoman had an intellect 
superior to his own; and nice tits as well.  He clung to his seat as 
she took another left turn at a dangerously high speed before braking 
and pulling up beside an elaborate looking ATM inside the all-night 
drive-in bank. 

Catherine wound down her window and punched in the sequence of numbers
from the art gallery wall and immediately wheels were quite literally 
set in motion, and with a few seconds a large steel box popped out of 
the machine and landed in Catherine's lap.  She carefully opened the 
box only to find another box inside.  But this box was handcrafted in 
balsa-wood and typical of the sort of crap her uncle used to make in 
his workshop, but as she was about to open it there was a wail of 
sirens as the police arrived to surround the bank. 

Catherine threw the steel box out of the window and hit the gas pedal. 
'We can get out through the rear exit,' she said.  'I wasn't expecting 
Inspector Cludo to find us so quickly.' 

But Rupert wasn't listening.  He had taken the balsa-wood box from her,
removed the lid and tipped out its contents.  'Amazing,' he said as he 
held up the brightly coloured object in his left hand.  'I've not seen 
one of these for years.' 

'What is it?' Catherine asked, glancing at the plastic cube held so
reverently in Rupert's hand.  The cube was about three inches square 
and each face was divided into squares of different colours and there 
seemed to be about six colours in all. 

'It's a Rubik's Cube.'  Rupert began to rotate the faces of the cube,
trying to rearrange the squares on each face so that each of the six 
faces contained only squares of the same colour.  But he soon gave up.  
'It's no good,' he said.  'When I was twelve I could do this puzzle in 
fifteen seconds flat, but not now.  We need to find an expert, plus it 
might be a good idea to get off the streets before the your colleagues 
catch up with us.  So we'll go and visit my friend Sir Tea Leafpot, the 
renowned English, very-rich-and-famous, expert on the Rubik's Cube and 
its connection to Leonardo da Vinci and the Holy Grail, who, very 
conveniently, just happens to live in a villa on the outskirts of 
Paris.' 

CHAPTER FOUR 

Rupert glanced at his watch as he hammered on Sir Tea Leafpot's front
door.  It was almost three in the morning.  'Who the fuck's that!' said 
a voice from a first floor window.  'Don't you know what bleedin' time 
it is?' 

'It's Rupert Tuckbot,' Rupert answered.  'And I've got a Rubik's Cube
with me.' 

'Oh well, in that case, give me five minutes to tie on my wooden leg and
I'll be down to let you in.' 

'Well Rupert,' Sir Tea said, a few minutes later as he opened the door
wide to his unexpected guests.  'You didn't tell me you had a nice bit 
of French crumpet with you.  Bonsoir Mademoiselle.  Now what's this 
about a Rubik's Cube?  Don't tell me; you're obviously in search of the 
Holy Grail.  And, by the way, did you know your faces are plastered all 
over the television and that you're wanted for murder?' 

Just then a seven foot tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes
and dressed in a purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood leapt 
out of the bushes and tried to grab the Rubik's Cube, but Sir Tea was 
too quick for him.  With one seamless movement he unstrapped his wooden 
leg and bashed their assailant over the head before toppling over on 
top of him.  But just then the police arrived to surround the villa, so 
Sir Tea suggested they retire to the roof where he had a helicopter and 
pilot standing by in case he should want to nip over to England for 
Mars Bars or other delicacies not easily obtained in France.  And with 
the seven foot tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes and 
dressed in a purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood bound and 
gagged and stowed in the cargo hold, they flew off to England. 

CHAPTER FIVE 

During the flight Rupert and Catherine recounted the night's events to
Sir Tea, starting with the death of Catherine's uncle and finishing 
with their arrival at Sir Tea's villa and the attack by the seven foot 
tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes and dressed in a 
purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood.  'Who the hell is that 
man in the monk's outfit?' Catherine asked Sir Tea, gesturing towards 
the cargo hold. 

'My guess is he's a member of Octopus Dye, an ancient group of
fanatical, purple-robed monks, dedicated to the destruction of the Holy 
Grail.  Speaking of which; let me have a look at that Rubik's Cube, 
please.'  Sir Tea took the cube from Rupert and began to rearrange the 
squares.  'Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci designed the first one?  
It was part of an art form he was working on called Cubism; though he 
soon scrubbed the idea as he figured it would never catch on.  Bugger! 
I never could unravel these confounded things.' 

'But I thought you were an expert,' Rupert said. 

'No, not really.  I always used to find twelve-year-old boys and
persuade them to come back to my place to do them.  At least, that's my 
story and I'm sticking to it.  By the way, have you noticed that some 
of the squares have letters engraved on them?  If we can just get them 
all back into their original positions, I'm sure they will spell out a 
coded message.' 

'Let me try,' Catherine said, taking the cube form Sir Tea and giving it
a few twists until, miraculously, each face of the cube contained only 
squares of the same colour. 

'My dear,' Sir Tea said, 'you really are a treasure.'   But just then
the pilot announced that the police were waiting for them at the 
airport and that they were being tailed by two RAF Harrier jets, so 
they diverted to London and crash-landed in Hyde Park, where 
unfortunately the pilot, who by an amazing coincidence was in cahoots 
with the purple-robed monk, assisted him in his escape and the theft of 
the Rubik's cube as well the kidnap of Sir Tea Leafpot. 

CHAPTER SIX 

'Do you ever get the feeling we're in the middle of a Hitchcock movie?'
Rupert asked Catherine. 

'I hope we're nearer the end than the middle,' Catherine replied.  'I
can't take anymore plot twists.  Speaking of twists, I gave the Rubik's 
cube a few before the mad monk snatched it from me, so that means we're 
ahead of the game.  Come on, let's find an Internet café; it's time we 
Googled it.' 

'You mean you read the coded message?'  Rupert said, as he raced across
the park after Catherine. 

'Yes, it said: 

A RELIC OF THE END OF DAYS A GRAIL UPTURNED WILL SHOW THE WAY 

After an hour in an Internet café, Catherine and Rupert felt sure they
had the first two lines sussed.  The 'end of days' was the Millennium, 
and its 'relic', 'a grail upturned', was the Millennium Dome.  That 
just left three questions: How would it show the way? Where would it 
show the way to?  And how the fuck were they going to get past the 
security guards and into the Millennium Dome to find out? 

CHAPTER SEVEN 

Fortunately the guards were having a tea break so they were able to get
into the Millennium Dome unseen.  'What are we looking for?' Rupert's 
voice echoed as he stepped in through a side entrance and looked around 
the cavernous structure. 

'Good question,' said Sir Tea Leafpot as he came up behind them and they
turned to face him.  He had the Rubik's cube in one hand and a gun in 
the other.  He offered the cube to Catherine.  'Perhaps you would be so 
kind as to do that little trick again.  I've been twisting this bloody 
thing for the past hour and I still can't get all the colours back into 
place.' 

'I don't understand,' Catherine said as she took the cube.  'We thought
you'd been kidnapped.' 

'No, that was just a little ruse of mine to hide the fact that I am the
really bad guy in this idiotic plot.  Now come on, get twisting or I'll 
blow Rupert's brains out.'  Catherine quickly twisted the cube faces 
until the colours were once more correctly positioned and the coded 
message clear. 

But at that moment the purple-robed monk entered the dome and grabbed
the gun from Sir Tea and held it to his head.  'You thought I was 
working for you,' he said in a voice that made him sound like 
Frankenstein's monster, 'but you were wrong.  Now the secret of the 
cube is mine.' 

'No it's not,' said the helicopter pilot, who had followed the monk in. 
He grabbed the gun and pushed the monk and Sir Tea over towards Rupert 
and Catherine.  'These fools thought that they were the real bad guys, 
bit it was me all along.' 

'No, Monsieur, it was not!' Inspector Cludo announced as he arrived on
the scene and grabbed the gun from the helicopter pilot.  'I am the, 
how you say? The real villain of the piece.  And now the cube is mine 
and you are all going to die.' 

'That's what you think,' Catherine screamed as she threw the cube high
into the air, distracting Inspector Cludo.  And as he looked aloft she 
leapt forward, grabbed the gun, then caught the cube, and then pulled 
off her wig, revealing that she was in fact a twelve-year-old boy. 

'So that's how you were able to unravel that confounded cube puzzle,'
Sir Tea said. 

'Stop!' Rupert screamed as he dropped to his knees and began to tear his
hair out.  'I can't take any more of this.' 

'But what about Holy Grail?' Sir Tea replied.  'We're still no nearer to
finding it.' 

'Fuck the grail!' Rupert shouted.  'Let's just get the epilogue,
please!' 

'Good idea,' Michael Palin agreed, as he entered the dome with the
entire cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  'This story's getting 
far too silly.' 

EPILOGUE 

Rupert's book was a great success and thought likely to become an
all-time best-seller.  He'd edited it to include a twelve-year-old 
transvestite who was a direct descendent of Jesus Christ, and also 
included a key to the finding of the Holy Grail in the form of Rubik's 
famous cube puzzle, though he decided to credit its invention to 
Leonard da Vinci to avoid any claims for royalties from Rubik. 

Of course, some religious groups were severely pissed at the Jesus
Christ stuff, but that just helped to sell more copies.  It's 
understood that The Monty Python team are negotiating for the film 
rights. 

THE END 


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