The World's Game

by Jacobo Izquierdo

  “Oh!” Josef gasped in a grimace of pain. “I told you to serve me cold milk and you served it boiling!” He shouted, angry.

  Although he did not socialize very much, some of the people present there already knew his bad manners. Several of the people at the nearby tables started to chuckle because of such nasty incident. Human feeling sometimes acts with mercy before controvert situation, but some others it unconsciously produces wellbeing and mock sensation when a complicated situation takes place. It is as when a person sees another one bumping into something or having an accident, despite knowing the pain it is felt, he or she can’t help laughing.

  As fast as she could, she approached her to apologize.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said putting her hand palms together as if she were praying. “Maybe my workmate made a mistake. I’ve checked the order and it was written correctly. The mistake hasn’t been mine,” she added showing him the order.

  “Yours or his, the thing is that I’ve burnt myself,” he replied without even looking at her.

  “If there’s anything I can do for you.”

  “Yes,” he answered smiling at first just to let an expression of rage take control of his face a moment later. “Get out of here! If we’re lucky, the usual waitress will be here tomorrow and this won’t happen again.”

  “The usual waitress, as you say, has gone for good.”

  “Has she retired?” He asked, surprised. He knew quite well the lady’s money problems, so he doubted that she had quitted her job.

  “No,” she answered a bit troubled.

  “So? Has she found a better job?”

  “She died yesterday in her house due to the cancer against which she had been fighting for several years.”

  «I’ve screwed it up.»

  “May I bring you something else?”

  “No,” he muttered.

  The scene he had just starred had left him touched. He knew his behavior had been disproportionate for such a funny incident. Now it was he who perceived the mocks from all the people gathered there. He had breakfast in a rush so as to get out of there as quickly as possible and shelter in the library.

  Chapter 5

  The game of wetroc was the only one allowed in Mida. The battles took place in the valley of Tiyotan, a great esplanade situated in the Atzabral range mountain axis. The size of the pitch was similar to a football pitch’s one. In the middle, two granite pillars went up fifty meters waiting for the belligerent ones leant on them. The spectators watched the combats sitting on the different levels that the uneven mountains provided. In some occasions, that small valley had been surrounded by half a million midarians seeking to quench the eternal boredom.

  The game dynamic was quite simple: individual combats —one-on-one—, between two fighters. Before started, they agreed on the weight they had to lift. Next, a platform took them to the top of the pillars, where they stayed until the end of the combat. A referee was in charge of giving the order for the combat to start. With the help of their minds, they had to lift the stipulated weight at least five meters over their heads.

  After decades, even centuries, of training, the most experienced fighters managed to lift stone blocks of dozens of tons. The winner was the one who could hold the block over the stipulated mark for more time. Although the majority of the losers were strong enough to take the load away before it was too late, in some occasions ambition made them pay with their lives. The wrong decision in matters of weight and they could die crushed. Other inexperienced fighters died when falling down from the pillar top after not having managed to take the load away and, therefore, being hit.

  Competitiveness was the highest possible. Being a good wetroc player provided them with a very high status. Players who were able to beat a thousand consecutive opponents without being beaten themselves, were rewarded with engraved badges on their helmets The badge was made of gold and had the shape of a shield, the circumpunct. The city of Nalactia was built following that symbol to be seen from anywhere from the outer space.

  Every day, uninterruptedly, combats with different experience levels were fought. More than a thousand combats formed a league divided by ten steps. The level was determined according to the weight lifted in the last combat. The first one was only for fighters who could manage loads heavier than twelve tons. The tenth was only for the most inexperienced ones and the minimum load was of a ton. Curiously, this was the level with more losses due to the player’s clumsiness.

  If a fighter lost a combat, no matter his name or category, he automatically descended a step. Only the most perseverant and powerful players managed to keep themselves in the summit.

  That day, expectation was at its highest peak. After remaining undefeated for three hundred and twelve combats, a novice called Pix had managed to ascend to the first step. He was now fighting against one of the most laureate players of the planet: Mitro the great. With three engraved badges on his helmet, and after nine hundred and nine games unbeaten, he was about to get his fourth trophy. Atzabral mountain range was packed with spectators. Palac, as wetroc’s big admirer, remained sitting, waiting for the combat to start. He dreamt of going up one of those tall pillars someday, though his father strongly opposed.

  “Next duel will be disputed by Mitro the Great against Pix!” A midarian shouted as strong as she could from the middle of the game rectangle.

  “Come on, Mitro!” Palac shouted raising his arms.

  “Are you having fun?” Cabolun asked as he sat by his side.

  Palac nodded. He had been waiting for that combat for a long time and he did not want to spoil it with an unimportant chat. He had never missed one of Mitro’s finals and he wouldn’t do it that night either.

  “I perfectly know your interest in this sport,” Cabolun said without paying the slightest attention to what was happening in the valley. The two fighters had just appeared and the crowd had started to get exalted. “But I’ll never let you practice it.”

  “Why?” He asked with resignation. “I’m supposed to be the leader of this planet one day. Prohibitions shouldn’t exist for me.”

  “Because of that precise reason you’ve mentioned. We’re leaders! Our intelligence is superior to all the others’. Don’t you understand?” He asked rhetorically. “This is a sport for ignorant people!” He shouted making some of the attendants look at him.

  “Have you come only to tell me that this sport is for silly people?” Palac asked, angry.

  “No,” the leader answered looking defiantly at the spectators who were around them. All of them, with no exception at all, took his eyes from him fearing some kind of retaliation. “I’ve come to continue telling you the story I began to tell you the other day.”

  “And can’t it be at any other moment?” He begged.

  “Which moment can be better than this one?”

  Palac nodded.

  On the game field, the platforms were finishing elevating the two players to their respective positions. Mitro looked self-confident. He even waved to the attendants, pointing the three engraved badges on his helmet with one of his hands. Pix looked nervous, but he did not lower his head and he was looking at his opponent defiantly.

  “As I was telling you the other day,” Cabolun started, “once his experiment had been created, your grandfather started to travel to Racot to supervise and help in its evolution.”

  “Why did he travel there if he could see everything from the zac?” Palac asked, surprised.

  “During the first thousands years of existence of those animals, he decided not to intervene in their lives. However, seeing the slowness with which they were evolving, he thought that he had to go there to help them. Along with some of his assistants, he went to different regions of the planet and showed them how to make more sophisticated tools that provided them with a better quality of life.”

  “Tools as the ones of our ancestors?”

  “No. These were much more primitive. Mainly they were tools that helped them hunt and, later
, tear big animals in order to eat. Those first racots appreciated the technology your grandfather offered them. In some of the caves of the planet, the paintings on which he appears along with his assistants are still preserved.”

  The combat was about to start. Several midarians had moved two fifteen-ton stones up to the base of each of the pillars. Mitro had asked to fight his opponent with a load of twelve tons, but Pix had surprised everybody increasing the load to fifteen tons. The experienced fighter accepted without hesitating.

  “Which other functions can be obtained through the zac?” Palac asked without missing a single detail of what was going on in the esplanade.

  “The game is totally controlled by Grias technology and believe me it can make unbelievable things.”

  “Such as?” Cabolun had managed to catch his son’s attention, partially thanks to the mysterious and paused tone he was using. But it was no other thing than a strategy to finish the conversation as soon as possible so as to fully concentrate on the combat. This kind of encounters fascinated him: a stranger against all live legend, faced in an unpredictable duel. Before the battle started, everybody took it for granted that Mitro would be the winner, but Pix’s weight increase changed it everything.

  “Altering the planet geography, creating a rock formation, originating a new island, separating territories or increasing the planet temperature are only some of the very many options this technology enables to do. A satellite near Racot is in charge of executing the orders sent from the zac, without it, this technology wouldn’t be able to be used.”

  “Are these alterations produced instantaneously?”

  “Well...” he vacillated for some seconds, “…some of them are, but others delay a bit more. An earthquake, a tsunami or a volcano are produced a few seconds after giving the order. The formation of a mount or of a mountain range is a process that can take hundreds or thousands of years. Increasing the planet temperature is one of those that take more time since it is conditioned by many factors.”

  “Fighters!” The midarian in charge of controlling the game rules, who was in the middle of the esplanade with his arms in the air, shouted. “Let the combat begin!”

  Half a million attendants started to shout excitedly. Palac could not pull himself together and he stood up to see the moment of the load lifting. Pix lowered his look and concentrated all the power of his mind on the colossal block. Very slowly and with slight tremors, he could hold the load above the minimum mark. Mitro’s block instead, was going up at an incredible speed.

  “Come on, Mitro!” Palac shouted raising his arms in the air.

  “SIT DOWN!” Ordered the midarian leader.

  “What do you get by increasing the temperature?” Palac asked pretending to be interested.

  “Melting a region of the planet that is covered with ice. For thousands of years we’ve protected that area so as the temperature was so low that no one could live there. Thousands of ice tones hide the most valuable treasure of Racot. Millions of tons of gold,” answered the leader raising the tone of his words. “Gold reserves in Mida are becoming scarce…” he stopped for several seconds, interrupted by the screams of the fans, who couldn’t believe the speed with which Mitro had lifted the load “…we’ve got to recover it before they discover it. That’s why it’s vital for us to keep an eye on their moves.”

  “Wouldn’t be easier to search gold on an inhabited planet?”

  “No!” Cabolun answered hitting the ground. “We’ve already have miners on other places mining gold, but it belongs to us. Your grandfather, by mistake, sent millions of tons to that place through the zac.”

  Another of the functions that Grias technology enables is transporting materials from some regions to others, even from some planets to others. This is possible thanks to the planetary interconnection. Any resource is sent to the planet core and the high pressures make them emerge to the surface.

  “What did he want to build?” Palac asked as he tried to imagine the surface it would occupy.

  “He never told me which his real objective was. The use of this technology to transport materials fascinated your grandfather in such a way that he asked the silotaco to use it to take him to Racot instantaneously. But he wasn’t allowed to used it since according to what it was said, the high temperatures of the core would have killed him.”

  “Why did he want to travel to Racot instantaneously?”

  “Because it’s at a hundred light-years, which means that it takes us a hundred years to arrive with our crafts. That was an insignificant distance for any midarian, except for your grandfather. His determination to see firsthand the evolution of those beings increased to such point that he ordered Grias to find the fastest way to arrive. The space and time control that had been developed on the planet Silotac for so many years, allowed Grias to modify one of the transport cabins, making it possible to travel to any planet at any distance inferior to six-hundred light-years.” Cabolun stood up and pointed one of the very many which were installed on the planet. “Cabins like that one were placed on the main planets of the galaxy, among which it is Racot.”

  “Who install them?” Palac asked.

  “Well...” Cabolun hesitated for an instant because of the question, “…your grandfather’s assistants.”

  “And didn’t you help them?”

  “No! It was your grandfather who supervised the installation. I miss my father so much…”

  “His death must have been very hard for you,” Palac said with mercy, without taking his eyes off the combat. “I’d like you to tell me what happened. I’ve never asked you…” he added regretting how indifferent he had been.

  “He died because of his stubbornness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His obsession for seeing those animals growing intellectually and technologically, made him go mad. He lived with them for long periods of time, trying to establish certain stability on the planet. But he didn’t make it. The fast expansion of those beings made it impossible to consolidate a solid and with members close to each other…”

  The conversation was interrupted once again by the excited shouts of the thousands of spectators gathered there. Mitro’s load was still firm and undisturbed, while Pix’s started to give symptoms of weakness. During the last few seconds, it had fallen several centimeters and everything indicated that the end of the combat was near.

  “Resist, Mitro!” Palac shouted with enthusiasm. “You’ve almost made it!”

  A threatening look was enough to show his father was angry.

  “What happened then?”

  “The brotherhood they had lasted for thousands of years started to disappear, giving way to negative attitudes full of envy and hate. Multiple confrontations caused thousands of people to die. The experiment your grandfather had developed was self-destroying at great strides.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense at all. If all of them had been born thanks to the evolution of the same particles, they were all supposed to be brothers. Who could kill a brother?”

  “I used to think like that, as well. I couldn’t bear how a planet with enough resources for everyone was confronted.”

  “And what caused his death?” Palac asked insistently.

  “It was just after finishing building the transportation cabins and a little before you were born. One day he showed up and told me he had taken the decision of repairing all the damage caused by the game. His aim was to travel there and using a racot’s body to reconvert the mind of the rest of them,” Cabolun’s words were full of drama. “I strongly begged him not to do it. My insistence wasn’t rewarded and he organized a farewell ceremony. He didn’t want to leave lose ends before leaving, so he named me midarian leader. He told Beiler that under no circumstances should he take action. «I don’t want to cause more casualties,» were his words. It was very difficult for all of us to obey him. Except from him, we all knew that settle inside the fragile body of a racot was a high risk. A suicide!”

  P
ix’s load was only at a two meters from the minimum line and at seven above his head. Mental fatigue was slowly catching up with him and the speed at which the heavy fifteen-ton block was descending put his life at risk.

  “Quit, Pix!” One of his supporters shouted, alarmed by the risk he was running.

  “Toss it away or you’ll die crushed, rookie!” Another midarian shouted.

  “What happened next?” Palac asked.

  “A few years after having been born in a racot’s body, he was murdered by them. They were incapable of understanding the peace and happiness message he wanted to transmit them.”

  “It must have been very frustrating seeing how they killed them without being able to do anything.”

  The novice warrior’s block was at less than a meter from the minimum mark. He had been practically beaten, but he still didn’t surrender.

  “It was. The day on which he died, Beiler asked all the inhabitants of Mida not to talk about that incident again. I advise you not to ask him anything… his reaction can be unpredictable.”

  “Where’s his body?”

  “It was buried according to the funeral traditions of the planet. Days later; I ordered Beiler to recover it to take it to our planet and place it in the Golden Pyramid.”

  “I’d like to visit it.”

  “No. I forbid you to visit it. Will you obey me?” He asked his son staring at him with his huge eyes.

  On the playing field, an unaltered Mitro watched his opponent with indifference. «Never before a combat for a badge had been so easy,» he though. Only ten centimeters separated him from victory and from getting his fourth trophy. Pix was starting to tremble violently, running the risk of falling down from the top of the pillar. «I’ve got to win,» he thought moved by prestige eagerness.

  Palac nodded.

  “What happened with the game?”

  Mitro’s load had just passed the victory line. The attendants started to shout and celebrate his new badge. The fighter wanted to thank the support received by raising the load a hundred meters above his head. Quite a few fighters did so to show their minds’ potential and ridicule their rivals. After that celebration, the load fell to the floor.