Kubrick's Game

by Derek Taylor Kent

He got in line behind Sami, and said, “I need to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think Desiree is just using me for information?”

  “If she is, we have nothing solid to give her, right?”

  “I suppose, but... I don’t want to be with her if it might spoil my chances with you.”

  “Shawn, just have fun with Desiree and don’t think about me tonight, okay?”

  He nodded slowly, his head feeling like a ton of cobwebs.

  Before leaving with Desiree, Wilson forced Shawn to drink two more glasses of water and slipped a condom into his front pocket. “Use it wisely.”

  Shawn noticed Desiree getting on the 101 east to the 110 south. “That’s not the fastest way to Westwood.”

  “I’m not driving your drunk ass all the way to Westwood. I’m five minutes away. You can stay at my place tonight.”

  Shawn walked with Desiree to her apartment a couple blocks from the USC campus. The locations of their two schools were a rich irony to many who came from out of state. USC was famed for being a private university for California’s richest students, but was located in one of the poorest parts of Los Angeles. UCLA, the cheaper public option, had a campus located in one of the wealthiest areas, sandwiched between Brentwood and Beverly Hills.

  Desiree’s apartment, a small two-bedroom with rough carpeting that looked like it had seen too many visitors, appeared to have been furnished with a collection of whatever former occupants happened to leave behind: a small black leather loveseat, a supply-chest coffee table, and a 32-inch tube television that looked as though it would break your back if you tried to lift it. The TV sat on an entertainment center flanked by rows of Blu-rays, including all of Kubrick’s films.

  “My roommates are gone for the night,” said Desiree. “So we can do whatever.” She winked and strolled into her bedroom. “I’m gonna change out of these sweaty clothes.”

  Shawn became increasingly nervous. What does she want to do? Kiss? Have sex? How am I supposed to know?

  “Nice place,” he said loudly, so she could hear him in the bedroom. “Not what I was expecting.”

  “You were expecting something nicer?”

  “Yes.”

  “We ain’t all rich kids who go here. A lot of us are on scholarships.”

  “Are you?”

  “I got a couple grants, one for good SAT scores and another for diversity initiatives in the arts.”

  Desiree came out in a tank top and shorts and sat down next to Shawn, and he trembled as she curled up next to him.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  “I’m not nervous.” His voice cracked.

  “Right. So what do you want to do? Watch a movie?”

  Shawn smiled, immediately feeling more at ease. “That sounds great. Which one?

  “Your birthday. You pick.”

  Shawn scanned through the titles, and smiled to himself as he pulled one out. “How about this?”

  “2001? If we’re gonna watch that, then we’re definitely gonna need this.” She opened the trunk top of the coffee table and pulled out a tall, glass bong. “You smoke?”

  “I never have.”

  “Care to try?”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s pharmaceutical... bought legally.”

  “Will it really make the movie better, like they say?”

  “You’ll definitely see things you never saw before. I can promise you that.”

  She showed him the basics of bong operation, lit it up, and Shawn took his first hit.

  She instructed him to hold the smoke in his mouth, then leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his.

  Two hours later, Shawn and Desiree engaged in a heated, pot-fueled debate while 2001 played in the background.

  “Look at the facts,” said Shawn. “USC film school has... what... two hundred people in each class? UCLA has thirty. We get more personal attention.”

  “Okay, but we get ten times the industry connections after graduation.”

  “Fair enough, but at UCLA the filmmakers own their films. USC owns the rights to every film you make there.”

  “Okay, three names: Ron Howard, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis. All USC.”

  “UCLA has Coppola.”

  “Wow. I’m impressed in 1974.”

  “UCLA produces more screenwriters.”

  “Does that include you?”

  “I’ve written a script.”

  “Really? What’s it about?”

  “It’s literally impossible to explain.”

  “What’s it called? Can I read it?”

  “Strange Brain. And no way. You’ll think I’m weird.”

  “I already think that. Please?”

  Shawn turned back to the movie without answering. Bowman had just disconnected HAL and was listening to the message from Earth about the true nature of the mission.

  “Found the dual chess game yet?” he asked.

  “There is no other chess game,” said Desiree. “I’m looking for something that represents chess. A symbol.” She turned her attention to the screen. “It’s starting. Just soak it all in.”

  The famous “stargate” sequence had commenced. The astronaut Dave Bowman had entered another dimension and the psychedelic display of color and sound filled the screen. Pulsing blue diamonds and gleaming red photons guided down a cosmic highway to a higher consciousness.

  Shawn had viewed the sequence hundreds of times, but under the influence of the pot, it was unmistakably... groovier. He began to suspect that Desiree was showing him a different version of the film in which the aliens tried to kill Bowman just as HAL had.

  “Desiree, this doesn’t feel right.” His heart raced, and he covered his eyes and looked away from the screen.

  Desiree pulled him back toward her and lifted his hands away. “Look at me, Shawn. You’re freaking out. Try to focus.”

  Transfixed by the veins in her eyes, Shawn remained frozen as Desiree slowly moved toward him and kissed his upper lip.

  “Feeling better?” she asked.

  “A little.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  He did as instructed, and Desiree kissed him harder and longer. He opened his mouth and kissed her back, but his face felt numb from the weed.

  “How about now?”

  He was conflicted and content at the same time. He secretly hoped when he opened his eyes it would be Sami kissing him, but Desiree made him feel more comfortable than he had ever felt with Sami. There was no self-consciousness, no fear of saying something odd or creepy. Then he noticed something on the screen from behind Desiree’s dreads.

  His eyes widened. He blinked furiously and counted the squares. “There it is! The second chess board!”

  Desiree turned to the screen. “Oh my God! How did we miss it?”

  “Okay, guys, are you listening? I need your full attention.”

  “Shawn, it’s seven in the morning,” Wilson moaned, rubbing his eyes. “Can’t this wait for twelve more hours?”

  “Hey, I’m still drunk and fairly stoned, but I took a bus all the way over here so I could share the news.”

  Sami, who had been awake for only a moment, was already dozing again on the couch, wrapped in one of Wilson’s spare blankets.

  “Shawn, if the news isn’t that you lost your virginity in glorious fashion, then I don’t want to hear it,” said Wilson.

  “It’s about the chess puzzle.”

  “Goodnight,” said Wilson, shuffling Shawn toward the door.

  “No! Don’t fall back asleep. I’ll tell you what happened with Desiree.”

  “Fine.” Wilson nudged Sami, who groaned in aggravation. “Girl, just open your ears for a minute. I have a feeling we’re about to hear the nerdiest sex story of all time.”

  Sami cocked one eye open.

  “Start at the beginning, right after you left the club,” said Wilson.

  “She drove me to her place. We smoked marijuana. Th
en she suggested we watch a movie.”

  “Fantastic. Code for making out. Continue,” Wilson said.

  “I chose 2001.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake. No! 2001 is the least sexy movie ever made! Have I taught you nothing?”

  “Hey,” said Sami, playfully slapping Wilson on the chest. “This is his magical moment. Don’t ruin it.”

  “The first two hours are a blur, but then we started kissing during the stargate sequence.”

  “It’s a goddamn miracle,” said Wilson.

  “As we were kissing, I finally found the answer to the puzzle. The dual chess board was right there in front of us the entire time.”

  “Where?” asked Sami, perking up.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Shawn popped a Blu-ray of 2001 into Wilson’s laptop and scanned to the film’s final shot in the “Infinity Room.”

  As Shawn scanned, Sami explained the importance of the scene to Wilson. “The Infinity Room scene is crucial to understanding the meaning of 2001. It’s one of the most unique, inscrutable, and hotly debated scenes in film history. After defeating HAL, Bowman is taken through a ‘stargate’ and into a new dimension, where he ends up in a holding room of sorts, perhaps a human zoo. It is a strange room, windowless, bland, yet ornate—as if the aliens searched his mind and constructed an environment that he would perceive as comfortable and luxurious, yet is as cold and sterile as a hospital waiting room. Decades pass by in seconds. Bowman sees versions of himself growing older, only to become his older self at the moment of recognition.”

  Shawn added, “The scene breaks every rule of filmmaking one after another—the 180-degree line, POV consistency, non-linear camera movement, unknown light sources, major changes without explanation or musical cues to signal them.”

  “Whatever,” said Wilson. “I broke those rules in half my films. Nobody called me a genius for it.”

  “But Kubrick did it intentionally,” said Shawn.

  “Eventually,” Sami continued, “the elderly Bowman is eating a meal at a table, then knocks over a wine glass, causing it to shatter on the floor. As he bends over to clean it up, there is a realization that fallibility is part of human nature. The computer HAL tried desperately to mask and deny his fallibility, bragging that a HAL computer had ‘never made an error.’ What I take away is that HAL was never worthy of meeting the alien intelligence because of his arrogance. But by humbling himself before the greater intelligence, Bowman passes the final test. He becomes a dying man in a bed. The monolith appears before him, and he reaches out toward it, just as his ape ancestors had, proving he possesses the most important of human traits—curiosity. At that moment, he is transformed into the ‘Star Child,’ the next leap forward in human evolution.”

  Shawn paused the screen on the Infinity Room. “Do you see the chessboard?”

  Sami and Wilson looked closely around the room.

  “I don’t see one,” said Wilson. “Where should I be looking?”

  “That was the problem!” said Shawn. “We weren’t thinking like Kubrick. Kubrick uses doubling imagery and symbols to connect themes and ideas. We were looking for a literal chessboard, but we need to expand our minds.”

  “I see it!” Sami pointed at the screen. “The squares on the floor are eight by eight, just like a chessboard.”

  “Right,” said Shawn. “Now look at this still.” Shawn paused the movie on a frame where the space pod sat in the corner of the room.

  “The position of the space pod and the furniture correlates almost exactly with the chess pieces from Spartacus Square. Do you see the space where the space-pod is resting? If it were a chessboard, that spot would be H3. Ring a bell?”

  “Yes,” said Sami. “That’s the mating space in the game that HAL plays with Poole. It’s a crucial moment in the film because it’s the first time that HAL shows his sinister nature by lying to Poole about the checkmate. HAL says ‘Queen to Bishop Three,’ but he should have said ‘Queen to Bishop Six.’ It’s a small hint that only an advanced chess player would understand.”

  “This is all very interesting,” said Wilson, rolling his eyes, “but how does that lead us to the next clue?”

  “This is where it gets really awesome,” said Shawn, bursting with excitement. “Let’s look back at the crucial word in Kubrick’s clue. Solve the dual chess puzzle of 8. Kubrick left behind the chessboard under the Spartacus steps, which was a dual chessboard of the one from 2001. It had a double in the real world. Using that as a marker, that means the Infinity Room itself must have a double in the real world. That’s where we have to go next.”

  “You think there’s an Infinity Room somewhere in the real world?” said Wilson.

  “Yes,” said Shawn. “In fact, I know there is.”

  He opened a photo on his phone and showed it to them. It was a model-sized version of the Infinity Room, suspended high in the air.

  “I remember that!” said Sami.

  “That’s right,” said Shawn. “We have to go back to the Kubrick exhibit at LACMA as soon as possible. I didn’t mention a word to Desiree so we’re probably a step ahead of her team.”

  “Speaking of,” said Sami, “last we left off you were kissing Desiree when you noticed the chessboard on the screen. What happened after that?”

  “Nothing, okay? We just talked until she fell asleep, and then I took a bus over here.”

  “So you’re still a virgin?” said Wilson.

  “Yes.”

  “Aw,” Sami cooed, giving him a consoling hug.

  Wilson joined in, squeezing his shoulder. “It’s okay, bro. You had a lot of firsts last night. You should be proud.”

  “Well,” said Shawn, “she did text me that she wants to meet up tonight and continue where we left off.”

  Wilson jumped with excitement. “Boo-ya! It’s on!”

  LACMA opened at 10:00 a.m., which gave them two hours to recover from their hangovers before searching for the next clue.

  They sped east on Wilshire in Wilson’s BMW.

  Shawn researched the Kubrick exhibit on his phone and discovered that the Infinity Room model had been specifically commissioned by the Kubrick Estate for the museum exhibit. He was all the more convinced that it harbored a clue.

  Sami was on her phone buying tickets online. The exhibit was sold out through June so she was forced to navigate second-hand channels.

  “You’re sure the USC team hasn’t made the connection to the LACMA model?” she asked.

  “Not while I was there,” said Shawn, “but it’s possible she’s connected the dots by now.”

  Wilson said, “Why don’t you text her and get some intel?”

  “Careful,” said Sami. “If she finds out he’s using her, she’ll drop him like a bad habit.”

  “Not true,” said Wilson. “She’ll respect him for playing the game.”

  “Wow,” said Sami. “I’m not sure which one of you knows less about women.”

  As Sami and Wilson argued back and forth, Shawn felt caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He didn’t want to be dishonest, but he also wasn’t sure if he could trust Desiree. If only she would ditch her team and join theirs.

  Eventually, he decided to split the difference.

  Moonwatcher: I had an idea about the dual Infinity Room. Checking it out. Might be nothing. Will keep you posted.

  Djacks: You better.

  She added a kissing emoji.

  Wilson couldn’t hide his frustration. “Well, we’ll be lucky if USC isn’t right behind us when we get there.”

  Sami’s ticket source emailed her the tickets at an absurdly inflated rate just as the doors opened. The team ran past the crowd straight to the 2001 room. The Star Child model lay motionless in a glass box, and a black monolith leaned unobtrusively against the wall like a weary visitor. A movie-sized screen looped HAL’s death scene.

  The model of the Infinity Room was hardly noticeable hanging at the back of the room ten feet in the air. The team
circled beneath it, looking for a marker.

  Sami turned to Shawn. “I don’t think it’s the same as in the movie. Can you bring up a still from the actual scene?”

  She was right. There were stark differences between the two rooms. Most noticeably, the walls in the film had frescoes that were painted green. The same spaces in the exhibit, however, were painted a brownish red.

  “How could they make such an obvious mistake?” said Wilson.

  “It’s not a mistake,” said Shawn. “Kubrick has been leaving clues that seem like errors in order to mark that attention must be paid—the crossfade in Lolita, the moving painting, and now this.”

  “Okay,” said Wilson. “So, what are we supposed to look for?”

  “I don’t know,” said Shawn.

  Since the model hung suspended ten feet atop the back wall, they couldn’t get up high enough to get a close look at it.

  “Excuse me, what are you three doing?” inquired a docent in a gray suit.

  “Just looking at this replica,” said Wilson.

  “Did you have a question about it?”

  “Yes,” said Sami. “We were curious about the inconsistencies. If they took the time to build such a detailed small-scale replica, why is it so different from the room in the film?”

  “Different?”

  Sami showed him the picture on her phone. “The fresco color. The ceiling.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that. Did you have another question perhaps?”

  Shawn recognized the docent’s leading tone. They needed to ask the right question. With computer-like speed, Shawn searched his memory and retraced each step that had led him to this point. What did he miss? What clues did they have?

  Solve the dual chess puzzle of 8 to find the next Q.

  Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The inventor of chess.

  The mating space. Knight to H3.

  It all came together.

  “Would you like to play chess?” asked Shawn.

  “Very well,” replied the docent. “What’s your move?”

  Sami and Wilson’s jaws dropped.

  “Knight to H3.”

  “What do you expect to find at H3?”