Read The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) for Free Online Page B

up the program on his own micropad, considers his pieces for less than three seconds, and just moves a pawn to B4.  “Is that sufficient?”
    Rook snorts.  “Ya know, if you really don’t want to play, you don’t have to.”
    “You spoke of this word—camaraderie?—and said it is required where you come from if proper bonding is to occur.  My people have— had —similar customs.”
    “Yeah, but…friends don’t really force friends to do things they don’t wanna do.”
    “They don’t?  Strange.  That does not seem like friendship to me.  A true ally will always push you to do things you don’t want to do, to try harder, to make you stronger.  That is our way, in any case.”
    “Yes, well, I mean…yeah, friends do that , but what I mean is we don’t force each other to play games when we don’t—ya know what, just forget it.”
    “I am determined to learn the game of chess,” Bishop says.  “I can see it was important to your race.”
    “Not to my race, just to me and certain others.”  Rook sighs, and taps a few keys to rotate the 3D topographical map.  He looks at Thor’s Anvil, marvels at its great size, and wonders fleetingly at how it can have remained that tall with so many constant eruptions.  The only logical explanation is that the tectonic plates are still pushing the mountains up, up, up, like how the Grand Tetons were formed on Earth.  Earth…chess…both bring back memories…
    Before he knows it, Rook is back home, back on the farm.  There is the house his dad built, not with bots as had become trendy, but with his own hands.  During his younger life, Rook’s father had been an electrician, plumber, painter, and carpenter.  He had the skills necessary to design and build their home to his wife’s specifications, and he had.  Two stories tall, white and pristine when he was growing up.  Of course, that white paint was chipping badly by the time he went off to ASCA.  His father’s left knee had given him so many problems, and the arthritis in his hands meant he couldn’t do as much.  That’s why leaving the farm for the Academy had been…
    Rook turns his thoughts away from that, and instead looks past the white house, at the verdant green fields that stretched out as far as the eye could see.  In the spring, when the fields were at their greenest and the wind came in strong, it looked like a sea of green , undulating water, with its own tide coming in and out.
    Then, there he is, standing on the front porch, telling his mother goodbye.  Eyes swimming in tears, she held her arms out.  “It’s all right, Ma,” he told her, taking her in his arms.
    “I used to hold you while you cried,” she said, sniffling.  “Now look how big you are, and now I’m crying and you’re holding me .  It’s not supposed to be this way.  A mother holds her child, not the other way around.”
    “I told ya, it’s all right,” he said to her.  “I got this.”
    In his mind’s eye, Rook makes a different decision, decides to remain where he is, takes up the farm and dies with his parents when the Cerebs come.  Then, he fantasizes that the Cerebs never came, and that he got to work the farm until his father went into peaceful retirement—or, let’s be honest, semi -retirement, since the man no doubt worked until his death.
    Until his death , Rook thinks.  What was that like?  How did it happen?  Did they witness the blooming orange when the Cerebs set fire to the atmosphere?  Or were they asleep when it happened?  Did they go quickly, or did they choke on the inescapable smoke that filled the air all over the planet?  Did they get to an underground shelter somewhere, one of the ones the government set up in the cities?  And if they did, how long did they last?  How long before the Cerebs came in and exterminated them all?  Did Dad hold Mom in his arms?  Did Mom die first?  How did it happen?  How?
    “You have that look about you,” says Bishop.
    Suddenly,