New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!
“This time,” Cenz said, “We shall play according to Alchiban IV rules.”
“An interesting decision,” Y replied, accessing all of his files on the obscure ruleset.
Cenz did not pick it to attempt to throw him off; the game of Epochs was already incredibly intricate, and each possible formulation added only minor twists. And they both knew the game by heart.
But it was a variant they had rarely played. Something unexpected, bringing a spice to life, Y thought.
The game was already far too complex for any but highly-augmented human minds to grasp. Executive Commander Urle was known to play with them, though he was still a novice in comparison.
And the pace of their play was swift. A half-dozen rounds of folds, stalemates, card-drawing and sacrificing flew by in less than a minute.
It was, as was often the case, a very close game.
Y calculated that he had the edge. Cenz surely knew this, but he also knew how to exploit Y’s seeming advantage in myriad ways. Would he go immensely bold and stick to honesty with his hand? Or would he attempt to bluff?
While many beings had tells that would be instantly obvious to Y, reading only a handful of polyps out of the current ninety-eight Cenz was composed of simply gave too few data points to judge from. Thus, that avenue was neatly closed to him.
He ran the numbers of past games, but Cenz was too clever for this, as well; relying not on a single mind but a union of many, there were unpredictable variances and spikes in the data as he allowed one or another polyp to make final decisions.
How enjoyable this was!
“Have you ever been to planet Earth?” Y asked, sacrificing a card to bring the temperature of the game a little cooler. It was not in his interests, but he always made some moves against his own interests when playing Cenz, to keep the being from understanding his goals. It sometimes worked.
“I have not. I understand they had some lovely waters, but some of the common and natural elements in them are noxious to my kind. And I hear that the seagulls are vicious! Sad, isn’t it?” He played a card and bumped the temperature back up.
Which was what Y wanted; to win in this game, the ambient temperature of the universe (not a literal temperature in a literal universe, merely a number based on the current turn and cards previously sacrificed to raise or lower it – put into a pile referred to as the universe), when combined with the temperature of your hand would have to match one of several significant numbers, such as absolute zero or Planck’s constant. The winning numbers only need be constant and important, not truly temperatures.
Each round, the universe cooled according to a formula that could be tweaked in different versions of the games, bringing different strategies to the fore.
Though invented by the Belerre, an SU member species who had shed their physical bodies in place of digital consciousness, some digits had been later added to the game by others.
The Polyps had put in a number related to their number of data-carrier sets in their genetic system, and Humans had put in 42, though most serious versions of the game did not include that one.
His kind had not seen fit to mar the otherwise perfectly observational beauty of the system by adding or subtracting any significant numbers.
“Quite,” Y replied to Cenz’s thoughts about the viciousness of seagulls and the melancholy of never being able to see something you wished, while sacrificing another card to drive the temperature even lower. He decided to commit more to his deception. “If you could go safely, would you?”
“Of course,” Cenz replied. “Life is precious in our universe. Intelligent life even more so. I would love to see the world that spawned humanity. Just as I would like to visit Enope and Ngoash and every other homeworld if possible. Ah, Qet would be the most enjoyable – an ocean world! Alas, it is far too cold for me.” He hesitated a moment. “And while I would never admit this to anyone but you, the lack of visible seafloor does bother me.”
He played a card that brought the numbers back towards the neutrality of before. Y wondered if the topic was distracting him. Though they usually talked while playing, it happened occasionally that the minds of enough of Cenz’s polyps began to wander that it affected his gameplay.
“But why do you ask?” Cenz now queried him.
“I have never been to a planetary surface,” Y replied.
Cenz had been analyzing his hand, but his full attention moved to Y now. “Never?”
Y was silent for a moment, studying his own cards with intensity, or at least assuming that pose. “It is taboo.”
Cenz put down his hand. “I have never heard of the Enhi having such cultural affectations before.”
“Because we rarely speak of them. There is history there.”
“Still – forgive my curiosity, you know I do not judge, Y, but – where does this come from?”
“I do not wish to speak of it, my friend,” Y replied. “I hope you understand.”
“Of course,” Cenz replied. “It is your turn, by the way.”
“Ah, yes.” Dr. Y played a card, picking one at random.
Cenz stared at it in silence, picking up his hand again, but then looking back to Y in silence.
“Until now I believed you had been aiming for a higher temperature. But if so, you would have made your move now. You are distracted.”
The word was almost an accusation to Y’s mind. Cenz was not insulted, nor angry. But it was a shocking thing.
Y considered trying to play on it, making a joke about it being another trick. But he could not quite make himself say the words. His own secondary consciousnesses were in confusion. Arguments broke out that consisted less of fact and more of emotion.
Cenz played his next card, but it was uncertain. He could not guess which way Y wanted the numbers to go, so he attempted to simply maintain the status quo.
Y realized that his friend was courting greater danger in his attempts to maintain homeostasis. He was surely not blind to it, but lacking information, he could not make a valid decision.
If he’d bet either hot or cold, taken a wild guess, he could play into Y’s hands; indeed, if he had chosen cold, based on the cards Y guessed he held, there was little Y could do to bring the temperature up to where he wanted it.
Y played his last card, bringing the heat to where he wished it. “137 – Fine Structure Constant.”
It was a very good play. In the tiers of winning numbers, it was among the top, the most rewarding and one that was difficult to achieve late in the game, when the universe had cooled to nearly zero.
“An excellent game,” Cenz said. “Do you perhaps feel better?”
Y considered. “I believe I do,” he replied.
“Then you’ll be going to Earth?”
Y nodded. “I will. I will leave after we finish our game.”
Other Terrestrial 