Checkmate, Death

by Cobyboy

  Or, if you're me, take a seat at your apartment and read. Usually a book about chess, but that's increasingly rare nowadays. I would love to find another book on chess that is worth reading. But that would mean I would have to write one first!

  Where were we? Ah, yes. I had just sent Stefan to Hell where he belonged, capping off a good day's work.

  In a way, every day in my line of work is like a vacation. Because vacations, if you think about it, are nothing but work. You replace the stress of the daily commute and sucking up to superiors with the stress of booking hotels, traveling, and trying to make sure your family (and in the end, also you) have a good enough time to warrant the huge expense.

  So it is with me and my life. The pressures of avoiding angels I have angered, and trying to find someone who will actually play chess with me, are replaced by the thrill of adventure and sightseeing and the inevitable horrors of human death and suffering in all its infinite permutations. Life, the game of chess we can never escape from. The game we all must play. Even me. I am a Celestial, I am immortal... and so are you, once you leave your body behind and travel to your appropriate afterlife. It is a fallacy to say I am any different than you are.

  Well... there are some minor differences. For instance, let's consider for a moment the human need for stories and endings and the linear progression of events leading to an inevitable and emotionally satisfying conclusion. No, that's not the name of my next seminar. Just bear with me.

  This volume, no matter what I originally set out to achieve with it, has evolved into a story of my existence. And, despite the fantastical elements, it has been a very simple story. A typical tale. You may not have found anything truly surprising in it at all. But I have. I have been surprised by a lot of it. Which is funny, since everything I've written about has already happened to me for real. You would think I would already understand and know it all... but you'd be wrong.

  I have learned that I, too, am a fickle being of limited promise. I cannot achieve everything. The phrase that people like to say sometimes - nothing is impossible - is utter tripe. There are plenty of things which are impossible. For me, there are almost as many as there are for you. I cannot ever be anyone or anything but who I am. I am Death, inventor and player of chess, reaper of souls and sealer of fates. I am, at times, an insufferable brat and an oppressive tyrant over mortal beings. I hold far too much power for my juvenile sentiments, and yet not enough power to aspire to anything greater. I am a child of God, as you are, and I have a set place in this universe from which I cannot escape, except at great cost.

  So, you have heard my story. As much of it as I am willing or able to tell, anyway. And now, what is the next move we will make together? Well, you want to know how the story ends, don't you? Of course you do. So I will tell you. I will give you something that can be called an ending. But before I do, know this; nothing ever truly ends. Not my story, and not yours.

  In this way, we again see a parallel between life and chess. Does a game of chess ever end? Think about it. Think about it a little while, and you will realize that it doesn't. Because the king is never actually captured. The game "ends" as soon as the king cannot avoid being captured on the next move. But that next move never comes to pass. The universe is full of chess games, hanging in the balance, frozen in time at the moment of checkmate. And I am out there among them, staring at my endless constellation of games, and wondering at the beautiful stories I have created through the simple invention of a game called chess.

  15

  Stefan was my last reaping for that day. I knew it for sure. No matter whose name came into my book, I wasn't doing any more work. They would have to wait until my next shift, not that any actual waiting would be done. I could spend as much time in Heaven as I wanted, and arrive back on Earth exactly when I was supposed to.

  But I didn't go back to Heaven. Not right away. I went back across the city, flying over the quiet streets. There was a fresh snowfall blanketing the city, streams of flakes coming down in perfectly straight columns. No wind, not a breath of it. Total silence. I could see the red of taillights, the yellowish-white of headlights guiding their drivers through the soundless blizzard. But I heard nothing.

  When I arrived at the hospital, I found that Lydia's bed was empty. So I walked around, searching her usual haunts. Now that she was well into her recovery, it wasn't uncommon for her to wander around the hospital when she was feeling restless. Her doctor allowed it. With a quizzical tone in his voice, he had decreed her well enough to do just about anything she wanted.

  I found her on the roof, of all places. She sat on the edge of the helipad, staring out across the city as it was smothered in a muffling blanket of white. The tip of her nose was red; a huge knit hat was pulled down over her ears. She clutched a cup of coffee in both hands, but no steam rose from it. It had long since gone cold.

  I took a seat beside her. I didn't quite know what to say yet, so I just looked at the city with her. Four million people lived here, which was down from its peak of five and a half million twenty years ago. There was a trend, almost all over the world, of declining populations. Other than a few places that hadn't gotten the memo, it seemed that all humankind had, overnight and independently, made a mass decision to curtail their breeding. The world population had peaked eleven years earlier at ten billion. But now experts were saying that, in a hundred years, it would be at its lowest in over three centuries.

  Which was still a lot of people. They weren't in any danger of going extinct.

  Other things were declining, too. Murder. Crime of all kinds. The rates of various diseases. Lydia's case, which would have been appallingly common a few decades ago, was now an astounding rarity. The human population was, all in all, getting healthier with every passing year.

  Seventeen years ago, the first permanent colony on Mars had been established. It was now home to eleven-hundred people, and expected to grow at a steady rate for the foreseeable future.

  Recent advancements in transportation technology now allowed people to travel almost anywhere in the world within six hours. The moon could be reached in ten.

  Remember the internet? I do. No one uses that term anymore. It has been replaced by all-net, a global infrastructure that allows every human on the planet unlimited and instantaneous access to a wealth of information a thousand times larger than the internet of sixty years ago.

  World hunger had just about been solved, thanks to the extra farmland on the moon and the advent of affordable, quick space transport.

  The word "atheism" also no longer really existed. It had been replaced by "humanism", which could have been called the fastest growing religion on the planet, except that it wasn't a religion. It was a very simple philosophy; humans are alone, our problems are our problems, every bad thing that happens to us as a species is our own fault, the only way to make good things happen is to work together.

  This was a big city, the one Lydia and I looked out over. I'd been here many, many times over the past few centuries. I had seen it grow from a tiny frontier town to what it is now.

  And I had been with humankind since the beginning. I have always been there, an unseen companion. I have seen, more directly than any being but God, the way you have grown and evolved. There have been dark times, times which greatly tested my faith in you. But here we are now, in the year 2079, and it's very obvious that humans are here to stay. In a hundred years, maybe sooner, I'll be reaping people in other star systems. No one has yet died in the Mars colony, but I'm looking forward to paying the Red Planet a visit. Maybe that sounds bad... but I don't care.

  What I'm trying to say is, humanity was doing well. By now, they knew very well how to navigate any speed bumps they came across. There was no more cause for us Celestials to worry over them. Humankind had taken its destiny from the hands of God and into its own. The transformation was well underway. But there was still much time. The story wasn't at its end.

  "I beat him," I finally said. The words came out of the
ir own volition.

  "Stefan?" Lydia asked.

  I nodded. "He cheated. I caught him. I won."

  "Good. I have to congratulate you, Death. You've gotten your confidence back."

  "Not yet." I looked over at her.

  "Not yet," she agreed, shrugging her scrawny shoulders. "Let's see what we can do. I challenge you, Death. Let's play."

  ***

  We went back to her room. I shut the door and pulled the curtain while she set the board up. She had a little heart rate monitor, which she now hooked onto her finger.

  "Doctor makes me use it," she said. "Just in case. Maybe we'll actually need it tonight..."

  Now I heard the beep... beep... beep that is familiar from all hospitals. The sound of the human heart, translated to a shrill, digital form. The hills and valleys of her pulse filled a screen with sharp, green lines.

  The game began.

  Of course, I was worried that she would play badly on purpose. That she would lower herself to my level so that I stood a chance of beating her. But it was evident from her first move that this wasn't the case. She had too much respect for herself, and for me, to do that.

  But a strange and miraculous thing happened. I held my own against her. I countered her moves. I even saw them ahead of time, placing pieces in position to defend against attacks she wouldn't make for several moves yet. One time, she only realized I had set up a defense after making the long effort of slowly moving her piece into a checking position. I was able to mount a swift interposition and even capture one of her bishops in the process.

  What I experienced during that game could be called a eureka moment. A blast of inspiration, a sudden falling-into-place of all the puzzle pieces of knowledge I had gathered during our weeks of play. I understood her style, quite suddenly. I was able to play against it effectively. And not just effectively, but excellently. I felt my own pulse rising, I could almost hear the beep... beep in my own head. It was almost heart-stoppingly exciting.

  For Lydia's sake, I will spare the gorier details of that game. I'll just say that it was an easy victory. In twenty-two moves I reached checkmate. It wasn't even a contest. I had come through the challenges, and arrived at the other side as a new and improved Death. Once again, I was the eternal champion of chess. The greatest player who ever existed.

  She clapped for me. She was almost as happy as I was.

  "Will I go to Heaven?" she asked.

  I touched her cheek. "If you don't, God will have me to answer to. But I have to ask; you didn't let me defeat you on purpose, did you?"

  She lay back, resting her head on her pillows. Already she looked sicker, more fragile, almost as pale as before. I noticed that the peaks and valleys on the heart monitor screen were closer together, shallower, shorter...

  "I didn't have to," Lydia said. "You're too good a player for that. I've had to try my very best in every game against you. And if you ever thought I wasn't putting in the effort, it just means I'm good at acting. But ultimately, it's just a lot of fun."

  I took her hand, holding it there in her lap.

  "You don't mind dying?" I asked. "You don't mind that this is the end?"

  "There's no such thing as endings," she told me then, and I've never forgotten that. "Besides, isn't it better this way? Isn't this how things should be? How could I interfere with the balance of God's wonderful creation?"

  With her other hand, she pushed my hood back off of my head. A position it is very rarely in. She looked at me for a moment.

  "If this is Death," she said, "I'm a lucky woman. We'll play again, won't we? When I leave this path and start on the next one."

  Reaching into my cloak, she pulled out my book and gave me a nod. I opened it up, found the spot where her name had been erased, and once against saw its ghost ready to be traced.

  "Go ahead," she said. "But do me a favor."

  "Anything," I told her.

  "Stay. Stay with me until after I'm gone. Then it will just be my body. It won't be me. You can leave after that."

  I nodded in agreement. I almost never stayed with someone after letting them go... I always walked away, never sitting around to watch their final breath. But I was willing to change that rule for her.

  I traced her name. It came clear in black letters, spelling the end of her days on Earth. Lydia began to laugh, loudly with a final burst of energy.

  "Checkmate, Death," she said, letting her eyes shut.

  I felt the life leave her even before the beep became a steady blare as she flat lined. Lydia was gone. Off to face her fate in the Court of God. She wanted to be in Heaven, and I don't think she had anything to worry about.

  ***

  Lydia was the second human friend I ever made.

  The first was Mahendra. And the day after Lydia died, I decided to pay the old boy a visit. I hadn't seen in him at least a hundred years, maybe more. Not since the days of big sunglasses, ugly mustaches and huge, poofy hairdos.

  When you have no shortage of time, you can always find ways to fill that time. And unless you possess some moral hatred of wealth, you can eventually find a way to become rich.

  Mahendra had never wanted to be rich for the sake of being rich. He only wanted enough money so that he could pursue his passions without stopping to worry about things like bills, food expenses, car payments, and so on. So he had always maintained a steady income.

  He was frugal. He rarely bought things unless he really wanted or needed them. He was not one to make impulse purchases.

  And, when you are carrying money over as many centuries as Mahendra has been carrying it, small and worthless coins have a way of gathering greater value. He still had some bits of currency from a thousand or more years ago that would have only bought him a few meals back in the day, but which could now probably be used to buy an entire island with a mansion already on it.

  So, Mahendra was filthy rich whether he wanted to be or not.

  But you wouldn't know it to meet him. He doesn't live like the stereotypical rich person. There are no limos, fancy bottles of champagne, private jets. He wears the same clothes, even underwear and socks, until they're full of holes and whatever girl he's romancing at the time forces him to throw them out.

  Yes, he does have romances. Over the centuries he has perfected the art of loving women, and then alienating them in subtle ways so that they break up with him without actually hating him. This way, he can avoid the heartbreak of falling deeply and madly in love with a woman, only to see her grow old and die.

  So, it's all casual dating with Mahendra. He never marries, for obvious reasons; his wealth and the relaxing, effortless existence that springs from it wouldn't last very long if he did.

  If you know Mahendra even half as well as I do, you can find him without too much effort. He's a creature of comfort. Though he did end up finally migrating westward right around the time of the British colonization of India, he has not moved at all since. He has remained in the same city all this time. His confusing ethnic name allows him to keep existing forever without arousing the suspicion of census takers. If anyone asks, he just tells them every man in his family has been named Mahendra since the dawn of time.

  It was a cold and rainy day in Mahendra's city. A perfect sort of day to pay a visit to his shop. I walked along the street, cozy under my waterproof hood, and watched the dashing, laughing people as they came bolting out of the restaurants and stores and jumping into personal vehicles.

  And there it was. In big letters on the shop window; TIMELESS BOOKS.

  The name of the business. And a subtle nod to the immortality of its owner. It was a used book store, where people could bring things they had read and trade them in for credit toward new books. He gave people such incredible discounts, sometimes even giving books away for nothing, because his only wish was for them to read more. He was able to keep this business afloat, despite bad financial practices, with his limitless wealth.

  I stepped inside. A little bell tinkled overhead. I looked a
round, at all the tall old bookcases and the ratty wing-backed chairs. There was an echo of strange music from somewhere, and a fragrance of cinnamon and ginger in the air; one of the dozen cups of masala chai which Mahendra sucks down on a daily basis.

  "Welcome, my friend!" came the jovial voice of Mahendra. I could just see the peak of his turban over the top of a small shelf on the second level of the store. He was in the middle of organizing some books. He had no idea it was I who had entered; this was the greeting he gave every single time he heard his bell ring and a pair of feet striding across the ancient, creaking hardwood floors.

  He stood up after a moment, carrying a stack of books taller than he was. He was already grinning, but his grin grew ever wider when he realized that he could see no one at all below him. I made myself visible after a moment, smiling up at him. There were tears in his eyes as he set down his books and rushed downstairs to meet me.

  We embraced each other for a long moment. Then he ushered me deeper into the store, shoved a cup of tea into my hands, and demanded to know how things were going.

  I gave him a condensed version. While I spoke, I looked around his office. There were stacks and stacks of manuscripts everywhere. They were Mahendra's own books. He had written hundreds of them, maybe thousands, but none had ever been published. Only because he didn't send them off anywhere; he just kept them for himself. But he's a great writer, and I'm sure any of his novels would be snapped up quickly by any publisher you can think of.

  "You need to write a book," he told me immediately, after I had finished the truncated version of my tale.

  "That's your answer to everything," I replied, giving him a nudge.

  His eyelids fluttered. "True. Very true. But this time, I mean it. You should write all this down. Leave a record. You've never opened yourself up to anyone, Death. To me, a little bit maybe. But not like you did to Lydia, based off what you have told me. I think what you should do now is open up to everyone. Let all of Heaven know who you are. Prove that you are something better than what they think you are."