by Rowan Casey
I opened my eyes.
I hadn’t known they were closed, but, like a person waking abruptly, I popped them open. I wasn’t riding a storm of light, or rocketing through the cosmos. I was standing a few hundred feet above the city, choppy vapors of fog drifting by. In the gaps, I could see the skyline of downtown, the Hollywood hills, the ocean expanding to the west, a rim of mountains standing sentry to the east. And right below me, the museum. I could tell it was directly below me, because I looked straight down to see it, through the transparent platform beneath my armored feet.
The platform looked to be around half the size of a football field, give or take. It had a frosty look, like ice, or milky glass. The fog floated past, revealing more of my surroundings, and I realized it had been a cloud. As I scanned the platform, I saw it was divided into squares, alternating between clear and opaque, the sequence in each row offset from the rows on either side of it. A perimeter of maybe five feet surrounded the squares, beyond which it dropped off into sky.
A game board.
Those scenes, the ones racing by me, they’d been of people playing chess. Men in ancient garb, in opulent settings, Arab men seated on cushions, surrounded by curtains. Asian men with long, dark hair in a palace. Women with high foreheads and puffed dresses in a courtyard. Old peasants in a tavern. Two monks in a dark chamber, playing by candlelight. And dozens, hundreds more. Too many to have registered as more than a subliminal blip, each like a single frame of a movie. But all the people had one common element that came through.
They had been playing chess.
I didn’t move, other than to look around. I was the only person there, the only thing on the entire platform. I was standing on the perimeter near what looked to be the eastern edge, facing west. I counted the spot directly in front of me to be the third from my right, ninth from my left.
Was I supposed to do something? Say something? Go to a different spot? I wasn’t sure, so I waited. After a few minutes passed, the hallucinogenic nature of the trip and the novelty of the dizzying height started to wear off and standing there, fully decked out in armor, just felt silly
“Hello?”
A crackle in my ear, a slightly digitized buzz. “Yes? Hello? Sir Regis? Is that you?”
“Pip?”
“Sir Regis! I can hear you! Where are you? Where did it take you?”
“I’ve moved up in the world.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s just say, I’m here. Standing next to what I’m pretty sure is a giant chess board. I have no idea what to do next.”
“Chess board? The Contest is truly a game? Can you move a piece?”
“There aren’t any. Just me.”
She paused and I could almost hear her thinking. “Perhaps that’s part of it. Maybe you have to go find the pieces.”
I looked down at the neighborhood below, like a scene on a train set. “I don’t see how that would be possible. But I do have a suspicion that I’m supposed to step onto the board myself.”
“I’m sorry, Sir Regis. I don’t know how to advise you. I don’t know how to play chess.”
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I learned how at one of those fancy prep schools I flunked out of as a kid. Haven’t played since. I did set some school records, though.”
“Records? That’s wonderful!”
“Yep. Highest losing percentage, fewest wins, fastest checkmate by an opponent. On the other hand, I only played three or four times. Ever.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Sir Regis.”
“Well, here goes nothing.” I stepped forward. I may not have been a master, but I knew where the bishop was supposed to go.
Nothing happened. I stood there, in the square for the king’s bishop, but the board remained empty. It was just me, the platform, and the sound of the wind whiffling through my ears.
“Sir Regis?”
“I’m missing something here, Pip.” I stared down at the platform, trying to remember if there was a nuance or quirk about chess I wasn’t thinking of. “There’s got to be a trick to it.”
“I’m so sorry I can’t help you, Sir Regis. I don’t know how you even start a game of chess.”
“You just move a piece, usually a…”
“What, Sir Regis? What is it?”
I raised my foot to take a step, but held it. Was it really that simple? I forced myself to think it through carefully. I’d assumed I was a bishop, and maybe that was why I was standing where I was, but you couldn’t move a bishop to start a game. You had to move a pawn.
Veronica’s blood note flashed through my head. PAWN’S DIE.
Then I remembered. There was another piece that could make a first move.
I pulled my foot back and moved it to my left. I wasn’t just a bishop. I was also a knight.
As soon as my weight transferred to the square next to me, the platform erupted. Something burst up and under me, lifting me, bursts of color popped all over. Figures and shapes exploding from beneath the surface of the board like magical plants. With a fraction of a second, the entire board was populated.
I was mounted on a horse. It was alive, breathing, snorting, but it somehow managed to stay reared on its hind legs; it’s front legs up and ready, presenting like a mantis spoiling for a fight. To my right stood a bearded man bulging between every joint, his feet encased in stone blocks that matched the parapet he held above his head. To my left, a fierce man of the cloth, his robe majestic and ornate, a large mitre atop his head and a long, heavy lance in one hand. In front of me, a row of identical foot soldiers, each lightly armored, carrying small swords.
The entire board was this way. The ones on my side wearing white tunics over their torsos, the ones opposite wearing black. I looked past the bishop to see the king, his crown massive and ostentatious, ringed with rubies and sapphires, puffed purple velvet protruding beneath overlapping arches of gold, a large, glittering cross positioned where they intersected. Beyond him stood the queen, tall and regal, a jeweled tiara set atop her sculpted blond hair and rising to a triangular point above her face. She turned her head and looked at me as she would a subject whom she hoped would not disappoint.
I was curious about my counterpart on the other side, but that was anticlimactic. It was a knight, on a horse, just like me. But his face was covered by his helmet and he didn’t seem particularly interested in looking my way.
“Sir Regis, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. The horse beneath me snorted and shuddered, apparently not pleased that I was having a conversation. “It seems I’m about to play chess in a live action, role-playing way. Yay for me.”
“Be careful.” A moment later she added, “Please.”
“I’ll try.” I scanned the board, thinking. I was pretty sure I could remember how to play chess, but I really had no idea how to play this version of it. Was I supposed to play the entire game as a knight? Did I get to move the other pieces? I assumed so, but how?
“I wish I knew what happened to Golgameth,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
A point of light above the board popped into existence and expanded in a blinding flash before contracting into a beam. The beam spread into a cone and broke into a prism of colors that flickered in the middle of the board until it seemed to create a ball, like something projected into the air. In the ball, a scene began to emerge, figures growing in clarity.
It was the board, the same one I was standing on, or one just like it. And Golgameth was on it.
Picking him out wasn’t hard, since he towered over the other figures. It was obvious in the scene the game was underway, as a few pieces were not in their starting positions. It was also obvious Golgameth had no idea what he was doing.
I couldn’t tell what position he was supposed to be playing, but he aggressively engaged a pawn diagonal to him. He stepped onto the square the pawn occupied and swung his battle axe down at it. The pawn, however, moved to the side, remaining within its square, then sliced at Golgameth’s midsection.
This got the giant really mad, and he swung the axe again. The pawn blocked it with its much smaller sword, looping the axe down and past his body so he could reverse directions and take another strike at the giant. But Golgameth, moving quickly for such a big guy, shot an enormous hand out and grabbed the pawn by the head. The pawn’s sword could barely reach the giant’s body as he flailed, slashing Golgameth a few times until that gigantic hand picked the pawn up and slammed him down so hard, his body crumbled. The pawn lay there, motionless, and Golgameth watched. Then it flickered in and out of sight until it vanished.
No sooner had it disappeared than the queen, clothed in a sleeveless black blouse with a white crest, something with claws, accelerated in a straight line directly toward Golgameth. He barely had time to turn when the queen slammed into him, skewering him with a long staff, tipped like a spear. The staff penetrated all the way through, protruding a full foot out his back. The giant appeared stunned. He tried to raise his ax, managed to get it above his head, but the queen twisted the staff and yanked it back, leaving a gaping hole that I could almost see through. A hole that looked to be right where a heart ought to be.
Golgameth dropped the ax, then dropped to his knees in front of the queen. He toppled to the side, arms limp, one of them ending up at an awkward angle behind him.
I sucked in a deep breath. Sorry, Big Man.
The image in the ball dissolved and all I could see was a murky puddle of colors. But the ball itself remained. I watched it, waiting.
“Sir Regis?”
The pawn had fought back. It had even inflicted injuries. Clearly, this wasn’t the same game I remembered. The game, or the referee, or proctor, or whatever, seemed to know that and had wanted to show me.
I recalled what I had said to Pip right before that display appeared.
“I wish I knew the rules of this Contest,” I said.
The colors in the ball began to spin and mix, spiral, and divide. Another image emerged, another look at the board. It started empty, then began to populate with pieces, each a silhouette easily identifiable. The white king’s knight was the exception. That was the position I just happened to be occupying. It had the figure of a man superimposed over it, one that I assumed was meant to be me.
The knight moved in its L-shape, jumping past the row of pawns. A black pawn stepped forward one space. Then the figure left the knight and moved to a white pawn, which then moved forward two spaces. Another black pawn moved, then the figure moved to the bishop, who slid along a diagonal line toward the edge of the board.
I understood. I could become any piece on the board, and control that piece when it was my turn.
“Sir Regis? Are you there?”
“I’m fine. Gimme a sec.” I stared at the image, but it disintegrated back into a runny, floating splash of colors.
I cleared my throat and spoke up. “I wish I knew how to take an opposing piece.”
An image of the board formed again. This time, the pieces were not silhouettes, but fully-depicted figures. A white piece, a knight, moved to a square where a bishop was. The knight arrived swinging its sword, and the bishop fought back with its lance. The bishop got the better of the exchange until the knight managed to have its horse kick the bishop in the face, after which the knight jumped off and thrust its sword through the bishop’s neck. The bishop gurgled and choked for several seconds, blood pooling beneath him, before his hands slipped off his neck and he stopped moving.
The image started to change again, but instead of dissolving it rearranged itself back into the beginning of the same scene. The knight moved the same way, jumping pieces, three up, one over, and attacked the bishop. This time, though, the bishop dodged the horse’s kick, knocked the knight off the horse, and stabbed the end of the lance through the knight’s helmet into its eye.
Whoa, I thought. That’s sure as hell one big friggin’ difference. Jeez.
“I wish I knew if the game ends if I… if the piece I’m controlling is taken.”
The image dissipated, but this time, so did the colors. The ball began to shrink until it became a tiny pinprick of light. Then that light rose high above the board, flashed brightly, and vanished without leaving any indication it had ever been there.
“I guess you only get three,” I said, mumbling.
“Three what, Sir Regis?”
“Never mind. I think I understand the rules. Maybe. I sure wish this was a game I was good at.”
Above the board, another light appeared, another flash. An image of an hourglass hovered several feet off the surface. Red sand poured through the center, forming a dull pyramid on the bottom.
“It looks like they put me on a timer,” I said.
“Oh, Sir Regis, I’m so sorry I can’t be much help. A good squire should always advise and assist her knight! But I don’t know how to play the game. Should I try to contact Mr. Grimm again? Maybe he knows and can help you strategize.”
“Something tells me playing chess isn’t something he sits around doing in his spare—” I stopped myself, then let the last word slip out, “time. Pip, remember the emergency number for the office I gave you? Claudia? From the shop downstairs?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Call her. Right now, please. Tell her I need to speak with her step-dad.” I stared at the enormous hourglass suspended above the board, squirting arterial sand. “And I mean, like, an hour ago. Because I have maybe five minutes, from the look of things.”
15
“Sir Regis, are you there?”
“Yes!” I sucked in a breath so hard it hurt my chest. It felt like I could have listened to an audiobook of a Russian novel in the time it took for her to get back to me. The top half of the hourglass was at least three-quarters empty. Maybe four-fifths.
“I have…” The signal broke up and I lost her voice. Panic started to settle in, but after a few seconds her voice crackled through. “…merge calls. I sure hope it doesn’t disconnect!”
I hoped the same thing. I heard a tone, a rustling noise, then a tinny background hum, accented by distorting puffs of wind.
“Pops? Is that you?”
“Bishop? What the hell are you calling me for, in the middle of a game? If that little filly of yours didn’t sound like a porn star playing a schoolgirl, you’d be in a world of shit. I got money on the table, here. What do you want?”
“Pops, it’s important. Really. Any of the guys at your park there really good chess players?”
The sand kept draining. I couldn’t imagine there being more than a minute left.
“Ha! That’s a good one! These clowns? This gang of simpletons? They have to keep a rulebook on hand for checkers! Really good chess players… ha!”
The nerves in my legs seemed to go numb. More numb. I felt a sweat breakout around my neck.
“None of them? This is life or death. I’m serious.”
“Do you think if any damn one of them was any good at chess, I’d be playing checkers? I haven’t had a game of chess out here in four of five years. I beat them all so badly, so quickly, so often, I couldn’t even get any of these losers to play anymore.”
“Wait, you play?”
“Do I play? Not with these morons. But with real players? Hell, yes, I play. Base champion three years. Runner-up at the inter-service championships back in…shit, what year was that?”
“It doesn’t matter! Pops! I need an opening! I mean like now! I’m white. Assume I suck and I’m playing a grand master!”
There was a thin layer of sand left above the hole, starting to fold in on itself.
“Grandmaster? Shit. You need a gambit of some kind, then.”
“I don’t know what that is! There’s no time! What’s the safest first move?”
“You don’t know what a gambit is and you’re playing a grandmaster?”
“Please, Pops! No time!”
“Hell, I’d say a Spanish Exchange of some sort…”
“Pops! Now!”
“Move the pawn in
front of your king two spaces. Jesus!”
The last grains of sand began to drain into the hole as I jumped off the horse and lumbered clumsily over to the pawn in front of the king. As soon as I reached it, the pawn seemed to become…noncorporeal. Like a ghost. Or a hologram.
I didn’t have time to marvel at it. I surged forward two spaces, hitting the second space just as the final grain of sand or two plopped down on the tip of the pile below. The ghost pawn accompanied me, like a puppet.
Across the board, the black knight, queen’s side, leaped over the line of pawns and galloped up another space, then over one, before resuming it front-legs-up posture.
I let out an audible sigh that whistled through my lips. “I did it.”
“Good. Is that all? I got a bunch of assholes here wanting to lose their social security checks to me.”
“No! Pops, I need your help. I’m locked in a game of chess with, uh, high stakes. And I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Out over the center of the board, the hourglass flipped and the sand was migrating again.
“High stakes, huh? You get hustled?”
“Something like that. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’d say I’m a novice, but I’m more like the guy a novice would beat up and steal lunch money from.”
“What a sorry sack of shinola. You want me to play the damn game for you? Over the phone?”
“Any help you can give me. Please! I’ll owe you.”
I could hear him grunting on the other end, a scraping sound like sandpaper made me think he was scratching his stubble.
“Did black move?”
“Yes. Queen’s knight. Turned to stop in front of the queen. I don’t know how to say it.”