Gods of the Game #3, Chapter 15

It turned out the Echo Charoen had something unexpected in common with the dead Charoen: pride.

Having been pinned and forced to watch their team lose stirred a deep and primal force within him. A resentment, a refusal, to allow anyone or anything place limits upon him.

That shame and anger burned deep within him even after they returned to the training complex. As everyone integrated the loss in their own way, Charoen found his response to be clean, simple, and imperative: get better.

But getting better was a far more difficult prospect as a nearly Solar-ranked player than it had been in the Bandit or even Scandinavian Minor League. Before, the gains had been low hanging fruit. Now? He was already vibrating at a superlative level. His stats were already beyond the peak of 99% of krieg chess players.

Again and again he tabbed them up, only to stare mutely at the incredible array:

Charoen, jäger: Strength A8, Stamina A4, Speed S1, Reactions S3, Agility S2, Power A9. Gamma 116 hertz (B-ranked, Apex Zone). Average: A9.

Average A9.

So close.

At first he thought it was his Stamina that was holding him back, but no. All his numbers were terrible.

“You’re mad,” said Sindre, tone flat when they met the day after their return to the Faroe Islands. “How can you call such numbers terrible?”

“The Nullpoint schloss that pinned me to the ground. What were his stats?”

Sindre frowned, went to argue, then just sighed, eyes unfocusing as he pulled up the data. “His Average was S8.”

“That’s a whole tier above me. What would you call my stats in comparison?”

Sindre waved one hand in frustration. “Oh, I don’t know, human? Incredible? Near the peak of what’s physically possible?”

“Terrible. Look, Sindre.” Charoen leaned forward. “I’m not here for the fun of it. There’s… there’s nothing beyond these walls for me. No life. No point. Either I perform at the level I desire, or I…”

Sindre raised one craggy brow. “Or you what?”

Charoen sat back. “You know what I mean. So how do I raise my ranks?”

“You want to raise all your stats within the remaining six months?” Sindre shook his head slowly. “Son, that’s impossible.”

Charoen just stared at him.

“Fine.” Sindre scowled. “Theoretically, you would need to unlock the very last elements of your potential. And by that, I mean your mental and emotionally charge. Your stimpack would respond and do the rest. You’re already far beyond what regular people can achieve. It’s not just a question of lifting more weights. When it gets to the peak of krieg chess competition, it’s a mental, emotional, a spiritual game. You want to improve?” Sindre tapped his temple. “You improve in here.”

“In my mind.”

“Exactly. And let me tell you something. At the level you’re talking about? Everyone lives for the game. Everyone has dedicated themselves absolutely to perfecting their performance. Complete and utter dedication is the baseline. You don’t even get through the door into the club without absurd and total self-sacrifice. So that won’t impress anybody.”

Charoen crossed his arms. “Guess it gets me in the door.”

“Sure.” Sindre raised his hand and started ticking off his fingers. “You first need ridiculous levels of athletic talent to even begin talking. Then you need inhuman levels of dedication and discipline. Then you need a support team that can provide you with optimal sleep, stimpack rejuvenation, and everything else a Premiere League team brings to the table. But talent, dedication, and total holistic support will only get you to the very bare minimum of Premiere quality. To go further, you need the right mindset.”

Charoen thought of Silence, and nodded.

“No one size fits all.” Sindre lowered his hand. “But everybody has their own private engine. Their own unique source of motivation. Nobody can sustain that kind of output for long without an endless desire to win. And that’s not normal. Bandit League players want to win. Premiere players? They need to destroy their enemies. The very best? They loath their opponents. They want to see them defeated so badly they never play again. They need malice.”

Charoen thought of the Nullpoint schloss chuckling as he writhed under his boot, and nodded again.

“If you can’t get and hold onto that mindset? If you can find the real motivation? Nothing will ever be enough.” Sindre sat back and shook his head. “You want to jump up a whole tier? Then you need to get your head on straight. You need to figure out the why of it all. Barring that? You’ll just coast on your genetic talent, and never be the very best.”

“The why of it all.” Charoen stood. “All right. I’ll figure it out.”

“Just like that, hey?” Sindre chuckled. “Well God damn. Why not. Next game’s in eight days. Best of luck.”

Charoen returned to his private cabin. Lay down in the dark, hands linked behind his head, and stared up at nothing.

Why?

Why did he need to be the best? Why did he want to win?

Because if he couldn’t win, he didn’t want to live.

Was it that simple?

He turned the concept over in his mind. It was absurd, distorted, an incredibly toxic reason to compete, but it was true.

Silence. He pinged her over the comms.

What?  Her tone was cold, curt.

Tell me again. Why do you play?

Existential crisis?

Indulge me.

Fine. This one time. I play because it’s only in the heat of the game that I feel alive.

Why?

Why what? Are you asking why violent conflict makes me feel alive?

Yes.

Because everything else is a lie. Claiming a higher purpose is a sedative. Something others seek so as to avoid seeing the raw, structureless world beneath it all. Goals are theater. Morality is a crutch. Identity is a costume. Happiness is the cheapest trick of them all. And if all those constructs are hollow, then the only remaining source of truth lies where the self falls apart: the void. And the only place I can touch the void, the best place to caress it, is in violent conflict with worthy foes.

Charoen stared up into the swarming darkness. So much of what she said felt right. Aligned with his own existence, his own sensibilities.

And yet.

He thought of everything he’d learned from her—both that which she’d told, and that which he’d observed during their fevered, blistering, pain-filled nights together.

Outside the game, you’re dead. Normal life for you is… stale. Your emotions muted. That’s why you use your tattoos to electrocute yourself. Why you need to be hurt while we’re fucking. Why you only look forward to combat. It’s only then that you feel alive.

Her tone had grown cold once more. What of it?

The void… the edge of destruction… for you, that’s like… the only place where life is bearable. Because life itself is unbearable. Real intimacy. Real emotions. Pain. Danger. The threat of death. It’s the only place where you can escape.

Fuck off, she said, and closed the comm line.

Charoen didn’t mind. He kept teasing at the quandary. Silence didn’t crave death. She could easily have ended herself ages ago. She craved… erasure. She was like a moth attracted to black light, a light that suppressed her sense of self. That annihilated her. Winning krieg chess games allowed her to play longer, play more. Becoming the best player she could be allowed her to find that black light more reliably on the field, to crush others even as she desired to be crushed.

Winning was the only way she could keep dying again and again without staying dead.

Which meant, on some deep and twisted level, that she was just a glorious coward.

Charoen sat up, the realization hitting him. All her talk of elegance and beautiful deaths, all her self-mastery and skill, it was all a charade of her own. A grand deception she practiced on herself, a way she could dress up her terror at the prospect of having to actually live.

To have emotions.

To feel something for someone.

“Huh,” said Charoen. And like that, he discarded her philosophy and approach out of hand.

But where did that leave him? He’d been cajoled into rejecting life alongside her, and for a moment the allure had seduced him.

But no longer. He didn’t crave dissolution. He wasn’t afraid of death. When the time came for him to end this existence, he would do so without fear.

No.

What he craved was purpose.

To answer Sindre’s why.

Silence only offered flight, escape, the nullification of self in the crucible of violence and pain.

That was no answer.

Then?

There was the joy of the game. But the game was only enjoyable when he won. Losing to Nullpoint had been excruciating. If joy was contingent on winning, and winning was outside his control, then his joy was an insufficient motivator.

Charoen scowled into the darkness. What remained? He thought of the old Charoen. He’d played for his friends and family. For Jessie and, yes, the joy of the game. But he’d exerted himself out of love.

Possibly. The Echo Charoen didn’t understand enough about love to be sure that was true.

But regardless, he didn’t love Jessie. Maybe he could, one day, but the old Charoen’s motivations were opaque and distant.

He needed a reason of his own, or he might as well kill himself now.

That bleak realization depressed him. How his very existence depended on finding a philosophical reason to continue playing a game. A game that only furthered the goals of others.

Others like Virgil.

The man who’d created him.

With a snort Charoen realized that made Virgil something of a father figure to him.

He rose to his feet. A restless desire to confront the other man seized him. To demand truths of Virgil. An accounting.

Charoen left his cabin and crossed to the medical center where Virgil was still recovering from his head blow. The metal door opened for him, and he stepped into the air conditioned interior. Dr. Bierhals was absent. Virgil lay propped up in a recovery bed in an alcove, tubes running from the inside of his elbow, his face wan and drawn, his golden curls lank, his manner subdued.

At Charoen’s approach, the könig blinked, no doubt dismissing some Neural Net information or entertainment, and smiled at him. “How sweet. Come to visit your old könig and wish him well?”

Charoen drew up a stool and sat.

“You know, you are singularly menacing.” Virgil studied him. “As comforting as a rabid dog, you are. The way you’re glaring. You’d think I was responsible for all your woes merely for having broken the dead Charoen’s contracted and brought you back to life against your will.”

“You can’t help yourself, can you?” Charoen studied the other man’s waxen face. “You have to poke and provoke.” But then he caught himself. Peered back into the dead Charoen’s memories like a mystic into a crystal ball. “But… that’s not true. You were more dignified at the start of this all. More encouraging. More… charismatic. Now? You’re more akin to a court jester. Always trying to get a rise out of me.”

Virgil listened intently but said nothing, a slight smile teasing the corner of his lips.

“You’re too damn smart to do this by accident.” Charoen considered the other man. “So it’s a deliberate ploy. To—what? Keep me roused? Angry? Alive?”

“Something like that.” Virgil settled a little more comfortably into his pillows. “But you’re sharp. Sharper even than the old Charoen. Who was plenty smart, don’t get me wrong, but he had a tendency to see everything in context, couldn’t separate himself from his emotions. It made him easy to manipulate.”

“You’re doing it now,” said Charoen, tone lifeless. “But now you’re buttering me up. Why?”

“Maybe I can’t help myself. What’s the old adage? To a hammer, every complex psychological problem born of trauma and a hideous world we’re forced to navigate is a nail.”

Charoen said nothing.

Virgil sighed. “Oh, very well. Let’s cease playing games. You’ve come to me for—what? A raison d’etre? A counter to your inherent death wish? Please don’t tell me you’ve just come to complain.”

“No, I’ve not come to complain. I’m not sure why I’ve come. In the hopes of some clarity, maybe. Sindre says I need a reason to compete if I’m to maximize my potential. Silence’s reasons have failed to motivate me. The desire to win isn’t reliable enough.” Charoen stared at the other man. “Your desire to uplift humanity doesn’t move me. Without a good reason, I’ll just end things.”

“Huh. So it’s blackmail.” Virgil grinned. “How delightful. You need me to conjure a reason for you, or you’ll step off the train for good. I see. Well then. Money? No. Fame? No. Easy access to other people’s reproductive organs? No. Well, that’s all I’ve got. So sorry. I’ll see if I do better with your next Echo.”

Charoen rose to his feet, hands clenched into fists of growing rage and shock.

Virgil laughed. “I jest! I would never raise a third Charoen as an Echo. Are you kidding me? That would be abhorrent. Well, not abhorrent, just impractical. By the time I had him ready to go, the season would be over. No, I need to make you work. Don’t you feel special? So, let’s see. Sit down, sit down, I promise you, there’s very little gratification to be had from punching a man with a neurodegenerative disease.”

“The Nullpoint könig didn’t seem to think so.”

“Touche, I suppose. The bastard. But that’s just the mark of a weak man—resorting to fisticuffs when his political acumen is insufficient to the task. No. For you, we need a better reason to compete. Something to really get your fire going.”

Virgil’s gaze grew heavy lidded, his expression darkly amused in a manner that put Charoen on edge.

“Well, I do have some news to share. The timing is sublime. Fortuitous, even. Nullpoint has decided to really up the ante and make our next game a true spectacle.”

“Defeating us soundly wasn’t enough?”

“Oh, I think they’re hoping we’ll rally and have a better showing in our second match-up. They recognize our track record of pulling off the impossible and are counting on sterner opposition. But there’s more to it—I won’t bore you overmuch, but suffice to say that truly crushing us in spectacular and emotional style will transfer, symbolically, to crushing my political aspirations. Martin Haalberg is really quite upset at my temerity, and the few wins we’ve already eked out has him even more flustered.”

Charoen nodded. “Fine. So what does that mean? They’re going to train even harder?”

“No.” Virgil wiggled more upright. “As I said, they want to make a spectacle out of this. So, you have one guess as to whom they’re pulling out of cryogenic prison to field against us in our next game.”

For a moment Charoen had no idea, but then old memories clicked into place. “My father. Charn Chai.”

“Charn Chai!” Virgil beamed. “The old war dog himself, though I guess he’s still in his late twenties, so not that old. The legend and Emperor-killer himself. It’s to be a match-up between the two of you: jäger versus jäger, father against son, legend versus legend-in-the-making. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Emotions roiled through Charoen’s breast and his breath caught.

“The crowds will be incredible.” Virgil was staring off at the imagined prospect. “Can you imagine? Charn Chai, the man who killed Emperor Maximus II? Playing against his dead son? The optics are phenomenal. If they destroy us, my nascent political movement will be similarly destroyed. Everything will be on the line.” Virgil sighed happily. “But if we win? Haalberg’s risking everything here. For if we win, our movement will become undeniable.”

“What was Charn Chai ranked at?”

“His Average? Oh, it was obscene. S9. Even amongst the Nullpoint elite he’ll be a standout. We’ve practically no chance at all.”

“Then why do you look so happy?”

“It just makes me so glad to be alive!” Virgil’s smile was unfiltered and honest. “What a game it’ll be. Our best shot. I’d rather wager everything on an impossible, all-or-nothing attempt than try to grind out a victory over multiple seasons, and in the process lose the urgency and freshness of our appeal.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Yes!” Virgil laughed. “You’d have to be to get this far. But if I had been sane, rational, and circumspect, we’d never have left the Bandit Leagues. Healthy amounts of delusion are necessary to believe you have a chance of changing the world.”

Charoen tried to master his emotions. No, not his emotions; the old Charoen’s emotions. They caused his stomach to flutter, his breath to grow shallow, his skin to tingle. Even his eyes were tearing up with the automatic response.

“He’s not my father.”

“No, but then again, yes?” Virgil hesitated. “I’m not completely sure how it all works out, your being an Echo and all, but… he’s close enough?”

“He’s not my father. He’s the dead Charoen’s father. I have nothing to do with him.”

Virgil peered at him. “You look pretty upset for someone who has nothing to do with Charn Chai.”

Charoen rose to his feet. His body was rebelling against him. He couldn’t catch his breath. It was absurd. He was the prisoner of a dead man’s traumas. “Charoen hated Charn Chai. He hated him for abandoning his family. For haunting him. For always being better than him. He died in his father’s shadow. He was never better than him. I don’t—I’m not Charoen. I don’t need—his father isn’t—”

“Hmm.” Virgil leaned back. “Yes, obviously. Well said.”

Charoen tried to master himself, to not open himself to further ridicule, but it was all he could do to stand there, breathing rapidly, a headache blossoming behind his eyes.

“Look, you asked me for fuel, well, there it is. You need to defeat your father. You need vindication. You couldn’t ask for a better yardstick to measure yourself against. He’s the ultimate. And—well.” Virgil hesitated, but then fell silent.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’ve got plenty of ammunition already.”

Charoen took a step closer. “What were you going to say?”

“It’s just that—well. You see, the matter is actually far simpler than you understand. He’s—I think this is going to come out eventually, regardless, so you might as well hear it from me. Charn Chai isn’t your father.”

“I know that.”

“He’s not the other Charoen’s father, either.”

That gave him pause. “What are you talking about? They—we—even look exactly alike. Jessie, my mother—our past was clear—”

“You’re not even listening to yourself. You just said it. Charn Chai isn’t your father, not exactly, because you’re him.”

Virgil raised an eyebrow expectantly and waited for his words to sink in.

“I’m… Charn Chai?”

“You’re his Echo. Just as the first Charoen was. Did you never wonder—or, I guess, did the dead Charoen never wonder at how exactly they were alike? Why Beatrice—do you remember her? She was in love your father, and got all kinds of wickedly confused when she met the dead Charoen. They even had an affair before it got all kinds of unhealthy. Because you’re his exact genetic duplicate. You’re not his son. You’re him. You’re his Echo.”

Charoen’s knees went weak and he sat down abruptly, almost missing the stool. “Charoen was born. He had a childhood. He—he was raised, he wasn’t—”

“Oh, he wasn’t a goo-boy like you, he was gestated in your mother’s womb. But he was implanted there. Not conceived. One hundred percent Charn Chai, zero percent mom. Which makes Jessie your half sister, I think. Or—now this is weird—your daughter?” Virgil paused to consider. “Yes, I think that’s right. Jessie’s your daughter. God, what a mess.”

“You knew?” Charoen tried to wrap his mind around this revelation. “For how long have you known?”

“Oh, come on.” Virgil clucked his tongue. “It would take a blind idiot to not put two and two together. Of course I knew.”

“And you didn’t tell me—him? You… all that manipulation, that time you took him to the Antarctic to meet Charn Chai—you never thought to tell him?”

“That would have been idiocy. Charoen was already in over his head. This revelation would have overwhelmed him altogether. No. That would have been counterproductive. I was keeping this truth in my back pocket for the right time. When he—or you—needed it. And I’m glad I did. Because here we are.” Virgil’s eyes were almost glowing with a feverish intensity. “See? You came to me asking for motivation, and I had it. You need to get strong not to defeat your father, but to defeat yourself. To carve out a place in the world for yourself. To prove that you are the prime Charoen, or Charn Chai, or whatever you decide to call yourself. This couldn’t be more existential.”

Virgil leaned forward. “You need to fight for primacy, Charoen. This is your truest arena. You must kill your father, and in doing so, free yourself. Become yourself, whomever you want that to be.”

“Kill my father,” said Charoen woodenly.

“Yes.” Virgil beamed. “It’s a little Grecian, I’ll admit, but it couldn’t be more primal. Don’t you feel it? That need to master that is chaotic world? To stamp your mark upon it? To assert that you are the real individual, that you are the most singular and important expression of your unique genetic code? The dead Charone failed in that regard. But you can succeed. You can defeat Charn Chai. You can raise your fist and become the exemplar, the luminary, the best expression of your inherited talents and abilities.”

Charoen felt the medical facility swirling around him. His stomach lurched. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Virgil’s magnetic stare, his feverish grin.

“You asked for motivation? I’ve given it to you. Now you just need to realize your talents.”

“You knew all along.” This fact somehow was the most dreadful of them all. “You strung him along with lies and half truths. You were never on his side. You… nothing matters to you but your victory.”

“Pshaw,” said Virgil, leaning back and batting this statement away. “Tell the world something we don’t all know. But that doesn’t change the facts. And you, you can now seize the moment, you can train like never before, and—”

Charoen’s Reactions was ranked at S3. His Strength at A8. His Power at A9.

Before he knew what he was doing, Charoen lurched up off the stool to tower over Virgil and hammer fist him in the face. He brought his fist down with all his strength, faster than the könig could follow, and such was the inhuman might of his blow that Virgil’s head crumpled and burst, skull shattering, face caving in, blood and brains splattering out over the pillows.

Red warning lights began to flash on Virgil’s biometric panels.

Charoen jerked his fist clear of the wrecked bone and rapidly spreading pool of blood that ran out and down the pillows to begin pooling about Virgil’s shoulders.

The white fluorescent lights hid absolutely no detail of the man’s death and ravaged biology.

Charoen stared down, eyes wide, his whole body trembling, gore dripping from his fist.

“You… you knew all along,” he whispered. “But you… you didn’t know… this.” Fury and anguish and horror welled up in his soul. “You couldn’t… you didn’t see this… did you?”

There was no answer.

Virgil’s death had been instantaneous.

Mind blank, barely able to breathe, Charoen turned and strode numbly away.

Nothing made sense. The world was a vortex of fury and blood and pain.

But one thing was clear: Virgil and his madness had been stopped.

No matter what came now, the könig’s horrific manipulations had come to an end.

Tears running down his face, Charoen stepped out into the Faroese sunlight, and inhaled a deep and desperate and ragged breath.

And not knowing what else to do, fully expecting the entire camp to erupt in shouts and chaos any moment now, he turned and began walking down the trail.

Down toward the stream, the bridge, and then into the training complex.

He’d train until they came to arrest him.