Checkmate, Death

by Cobyboy

  I put my bishops, one rook, and a knight into the task of hunting down his king. I forced the poor bastard toward Alfred's left side, and eventually pushed him into checkmate.

  By the end of the game my heart was racing and I was filled with adrenaline. I always get like that during close games when I know I have played exceptionally well. In my exhilaration, I had to make a conscious effort not to shout for a second round. Because we were playing for the fate of a man's soul, and that's a one-round kind of game.

  Alfred looked downtrodden. He looked like a man who has forced his face into a configuration, a mask of strength, for all his painful years of life. Now that he knew he was lost, he was finally able to pull that mask away and show the world how much it had exhausted him.

  "It was a good life," he said, though I could tell he struggled to get the fourth word out. "I accomplished all I set out to accomplish. I did my part as king and I did it well."

  "That you did," I agreed. "History will remember you."

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes. "Do you know that for sure?"

  "Yes." I nodded. "I know that for sure. Rest now."

  He shut his eyes. His breathing turned shallower with every passing moment. I pulled my book out and wrote his name down. And when he died, I could feel a presence leaving the room. It felt similar to when you're lying in bed with someone and they get off the mattress.

  Alfred was gone. His soul was on its way to face judgment. I didn't think he had much to worry about. He had done as much good in his life as a king can do in times of war. Whatever wickedness he had been forced to take part in was not his choice; he could have done nothing about it.

  No, he did not earn any special points by being Christian. Celestials don't care about religion. Every religion gets something right, like I've said before. But none of them are perfect. Besides, do you really think it matters what you believe in? All that really matters is the question of whether you have been mostly good or mostly bad. It isn't all that hard to get into Heaven. Believe me, I know. Just don't be a total scumbag and you have a good shot at getting in.

  Remember that. If you're one of those super freaky religious people who think anyone who doesn't believe what you believe is destined to go to Hell, knock it off. You're just wasting your anger. But I guess those people only read one book and one book only, so it's not like they're going to see this. I wonder what they would think if they knew the truth behind Creation? They would probably tell God himself to go to Hell.

  6

  To understand where my mind was at during the reaping of Alfred the Great, and subsequent challengers, you have to understand the full scope of my voyage through time.

  After Mahendra, I started playing more chess than ever before. Not only was I mellowing out a bit, and enjoying some casual games with my fellow Celestials, but I was also playing the occasional game with humans.

  The history of chess is a long and confusing one. Historians have actually gotten a good deal of it right.

  Not long after Mahendra, I found myself in Persia, in what is now called Iran. This was long after the height of the empire, when it had reached all the way to the Indus River, not far from where my immortal Indian friend resided.

  Soon enough, Persia would be conquered by Arab Muslims and its history would be altered forever. But when I arrived, the empire was in its twilight years. Ever since its most powerful dynasty had fallen to Alexander the Great, Persia had never quite regained its former majesty and was destined to be a troubled land forever after.

  But I didn't have much of that in mind as I walked through the blowing sands toward a beacon of green in the distance. Heat mirages distorted my vision, smearing my view of the oasis like a rising cloud of propane from a tank. The feathered tops of the palm trees swam like phantoms, their trunks invisible in the blue pool of mirage below.

  I kept walking, sucking in dry air. Though heat and cold and thirst and hunger cannot really effect me, I still feel them. I can still become uncomfortable and irritated by them. Being in such a barren desert is not the funnest experience a person can have, but there is an undeniable sense of beauty in these desolate places. You see the brutal poetry of nature all around you, the inexorable flow of time which will eventually swallow even the vastest empires and the most lavish cities.

  But the city amidst the oasis had not yet been swallowed. The sandstone buildings still held their ornate roofs. The pillars were not pocked and chipped and crumbling. The fountains and pools were yet full of crystalline water. The streets were yet full of milling folk, replete in their brilliant colors and towering headdresses, beautifully brown in the scorching sun.

  I walked among them, stepping out of the desert and onto a pathway dusted with sand. The path grew cleaner as I went until it was utterly spotless. I walked past shadowed colonnades where old men rested, watching the progression of the day. Watching as time ticked away and as their moment of reaping drew nearer.

  But I wasn't here for any of these wizened but otherwise healthy folk.

  I do not know what city it was. Perhaps if I visited all the blasted ruins in Iran I might be able to pick it out. Was it Persepolis or Ecbatana? Or some other place whose name had been lost? Whatever the case may be, it was a wondrous place full of spice smells and laughing voices. It was a peaceful, quiet city where I wouldn't have minded spending more time. At one point, the Persian Empire - ruled over by the Achaemenid dynasty - was a place of learning. Much like Alfred the Great had done for England, Persia's rulers had done their best not only to expand their domain but to advance all schools of thought in a positive direction. The Middle East has more than its share of troubles nowadays, but don't let it be forgotten that many of your modern technologies, techniques, and ideas originated there in some early form.

  Well, they actually originated with the Celestials, but you don't have to worry your thoughts with minor technicalities.

  As I walked slowly and thoughtfully through that unnamed city, I suddenly heard a crash and a cry of alarm on the next street. Someone ran past me, heading in the direction of the noise. And then a lot of people were running, coming out of buildings and the shadows of shop awnings, their sandals flipping and flopping as they went, their blue and violet and orange garments streaming behind them.

  I followed at my own leisurely pace. Death can never be early or late. He can only arrive exactly when he means to. And not because of any mysterious universal force. It's just that people cannot actually die until I arrive, look at them, and write them into my infinite book.

  A crowd had gathered around a specific spot in the pavement. Here the road was made of individual clay or sandstone bricks, the lines between them deeply grooved. Blood ran in those lines, thick and opaque, dark and staining like wine.

  I looked up. The building to my left was tall and had many balconies. But a tall building in the ancient world is no taller than a modern apartment building in some dingy industrial town. But I suppose a fall from one of its higher points could easily have resulted in death.

  So the mode of death was obvious. A fall from a high place. But had it been suicide? An accident? Maybe it was murder. I couldn't help but wonder as I slid through the crowd like a breath of wind through the crack beneath your door. I'm a curious fellow; I can't help it. But the reason for this fall was outside my jurisdiction. It was up to the people of the city and whatever justice system they had. And, if it was murder, it would be up to the Celestial Court to do the right thing and send the perpetrator to Hell. Unless, of course, the murder had a noble cause. Then the whole thing would be more complicated.

  At the center of the crowd, I found a woman of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty. She was plump. Well fed. Dying. She had probably been beautiful up until about a minute ago. Both her arms were shattered, twisted and bent in weird, unnatural ways. They had taken the brunt of her fall. She had gone down face first, which to me suggested suicide. But I suppose at the last second her self-preservation kicked in and she had put out her h
ands to catch herself.

  It had been marginally successful. Her face still took a hell of a hit. Her forehead was split in two and her nose was just... gone. I saw bone and a strip of loose, hanging cartilage. And two bloody holes straight into her sinus cavity. It wasn't the worst I had ever seen, but something about the vivid sun and the dusty sand that clung to the wet blood made it all stick in my mind.

  Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could die peacefully in bed during their old age, with a long and illustrious life behind them? Wouldn't it be lovely if everyone stayed healthy in mind and body until the moment of their death, and enjoyed every second they spent in their mortal bodies? It would be quite lovely. If I could make it so with a snap of my fingers, you had better believe I would be snapping my fingers to the break of dawn.

  Some people get really lucky, and live into triple digits while leaving behind a rich legacy. Other people achieve half of that, like Alfred; a life cut short just past its prime.

  Life isn't fair. It was never designed to be fair. It was designed to perfect itself over time. Believe it or not, you are not the height of evolution. I could tell you the full plan, the end goal of God's creation, but that would be a bit paradoxical. But I will say this: one of God's main objectives is to eventually create something more powerful than Himself. Humanity is just one stone on the leapfrog path across the river of time, with the zenith of creation waiting on the far bank. Get it?

  But all this foreknowledge of God's plan and the fact that humankind and all current Celestials will eventually become obsolete doesn't preclude empathy. I can't help but feel pity and sadness at a lot of my reapings. And this one was no different. The poor Persian woman was still breathing, still trying suck air through her shattered face. I saw that her mouth was still mostly intact. Many of her front teeth were missing but she hadn't bitten through her tongue or anything.

  She was delirious with pain and terror. She needed an act of mercy as soon as possible. Her suffering couldn't be allowed to continue. What I should have done was keep myself invisible as I took my book out, wrote her name, and allowed her soul to pass on. But instead I showed myself to her and knelt by her side. I thought I could offer her a bit of comfort in her final moment. Assuage her fears that this was the end, that her existence was about to terminate forever. If she saw me, Death himself, she would at least know that she might be going to a better place.

  I was not prepared for what came next. It's still in my mind, stuck fast. Like a pebble in the tread of your shoe. Sometimes I dream about it. Sometimes, when I'm having a perfectly relaxing and enjoyable day, it will suddenly pop to the front of my mind and darken my mood.

  She looked up at me with her moist eyes. I saw hope in them. With a wheezing breath, pulled through the remnants of her face, she spoke softly to me. So softly that no one else could hear.

  "You have come for me," she said. "Is this the end?"

  Usually I don't touch the people I'm going to reap, because it makes a connection between us that I do not want. In a way, it makes me beholden to them; I feel obligated to provide them a sense of peace and comfort that I cannot often provide.

  But I touched her. I took her trembling, weak hand and held it tight.

  "It's time to go to the next stage," I said to her.

  She was in such agony. This was a terrible way to die. It is possible for a human to suffer so greatly that the eternal instinct of self-preservation is canceled out and the person actually wants to die. And will put up no objection against having themselves sped along.

  Despite her grievous injuries, and the certainty that her life would be forever ruined even if she did somehow survive, she was apparently not ready to go. She spoke again, in such a fragile and slurred voice that it took all my concentration to understand her.

  "I challenge you, Death," she said. "I challenge you to a fight for my soul."

  Just when you think you've seen everything there is to see, something new appears. The apparently simple system of planet and people can give rise to an infinite number of unique events and situations. In that way, and in many others, life is quite like a game of chess.

  Her request stunned me. I could not speak for a time. I drew back, nearly stood up, but the woman's strength suddenly grew and she pulled me back down. Or maybe I had just gone weak, all the tension melting out of my muscles.

  The poor thing. The tragic, bleeding creature flattened against that sandy road in ancient Persia. Her blood stench was thick in the air as the plasma separated and the fluid evaporated in the heat of the sun, leaving behind a clotted and drying paste that clung to every crack and crevice.

  I looked up again at the balcony she must have fallen from. I saw no one and nothing to tell me how she might have fallen. It was an accident then, I was sure. Right then, my mind would not have coped with the idea that someone had deliberately shoved her over. The thought of that was too large, too surreal; I felt like man must have felt when he took his first steps on the moon and looked out at the distant marble of his home planet.

  "Please," she said, gargling and coughing up blood. Using my arm for leverage, she pulled the top half of her torso off the ground. To onlookers, she must have looked like a marionette being puppeteered from afar. "Please, I want to live..."

  People have souls. But words have ghosts. They can haunt you forever.

  One of the bystanders knelt down, putting his ear close to try and hear what she was saying. I don't think anyone there expected her to live, but it was still important to hear her last words. They might be important. A final message for a loved one, perhaps.

  I used this distraction to slip away. I pulled away from her weakening grasp and retreated into the crowd. I walked slowly, numbly, as I pulled out my book, wrote her name, and gave her permission to move on. Her pain was gone. Her suffering was over.

  So why did I feel so terrible about it? To me it is a mystery, though it might seem very simple to you. Humans are wiser than Celestials in a few small areas. Their mortality and their capacity for suffering gives them a sharper idea about certain things. It is a difference I sometimes envy... but not very often.

  Looking back, I suppose that moment was the progenitor of a slowly growing, creeping disillusionment with the thrill of chess and the fun of the game of Life and Death.

  ***

  Luckily, I took part in a game not long after that roused me from my gloomy mood and made the guilt disappear for a little while.

  It was in China. Predecessors to chess, cousins of the Indian chaturanga, had existed in China for a little while by then.

  But even older than chess was the game now called Go. It is actually a full millennium older than chess; it is by far the oldest board game that is still being played. Its popularity in China has scarcely waned. Like chess, it is a game of strategy. But it's a little more abstract, and in my opinion (forgive me if you are an avid Go player) quite a bit more boring. I've tried it a few times, and though I was quickly able to gain skill in it I just didn't find it to be as thrilling as chess where you are constantly hunting and murdering pieces with faces and identities. But it's still a pretty cool game. If you play it, and love it, well... more power to you. But don't expect to challenge me in a game of Go when we finally meet.

  In China, chess has really never taken off in popularity. In its gradual spread through the world, it evidently decided that a conquest of China was not worthwhile. That being said, there are enough intellectuals and strategists in China that, no matter what era you go to, you can probably find a chess set somewhere.

  And such was the case during a memorable reaping in the misty mountains of that ancient, everlasting country. I remember fondly the clattering of a wheelbarrow pushed past me by a scrawny peasant on his way down from the high reaches. I remember passing into the outskirts of a valley-bound city, where beautiful women in strange, baggy sleeves were walking around and somehow accomplishing complex and graceful tasks despite their clumsy-looking outfits.

  I remember the s
mell of green tea, so earthen and heady, grassy and sweet, which seemed to waft out of every window, door, nook and cranny. I love China, because of the way its sense of the ancient has somehow persisted through so many different eras and dynasties. There is something magic in those timeless realms, a spirit that cannot be killed.

  The person I was here to reap resided in a humble abode at the edge of the village. Humble, but so elegant and clean that it was clear the occupant was a man of means. An important figure in the village.

  He was not in bed. He was not in a heap on the floor, bleeding out or choking on his own vomit. On the contrary, he was squatting in a tall, cylindrical tub and bathing himself with the slow but somehow efficient movements of someone doing a task they've done a million times before.

  The ancient man saw me immediately, and stared at me from beneath bushy eyebrows. He made a guttural sound, like my presence was a great offense, and reached up to give his wispy beard a twist.

  "You," he said with derision. His voice sounded like someone trying to smooth out a very old and very crinkled piece of paper.

  "Me," I said, nodding.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked with suspicion, and continued bathing himself.

  "Do you know who I am?" I asked in return.

  "Yes. You're Death, aren't you?"

  "Correct. And you are very old. And now I am appearing before you. Perhaps you can use that information and make an educated guess as to why."

  "I'm going to die, I guess," the old man said. But he didn't sound very concerned. It actually seemed like I was boring him.

  Well, he was boring me too. And to show this, I gave him a very sarcastic round of applause. I don't know if people in China at that time knew what applause meant. But maybe they invented it. Either way, he caught my meaning and gave me a stare that would have withered any lesser Celestial.