it was a game of chess. i moved a soldier, you moved a soldier. i moved my horse, you moved another soldier. you were playing against me, trying to bring me down, make me lose (and i guess by the end i was doing the same to you). and you succeeded. one by one, you killed my players. first a soldier went down, then another, then my horse, my bishop. you killed them all. eventually even my queen fell.
the king stood alone. its protection gone, its legs, the foundation it had stood on, depended on was no longer there. scared. terrified.
alone.
his army had given him an identity. he had felt confident. he had felt whole. but one by one you had killed them. and now he was lost. he didn't know what to do, who he was. he didn't know how to be anymore. he stood and looked at you, so full still, and he hated himself. he had nothing to like anymore.
he didn't know what to do...
so he did the only thing he could do. he rebuilt his army. slowly, slowly, one by one, he brought them back. a small lowly soldier first. then another. then another. all the way up to the queen.
oh but you resisted. my king was minding his own business, just rebuilding his army, but you kept on trying to kill them didn't you? you kept on bringing me back into it didn't you? (and i guess i still wanted to play - i do love chess...)
finally only the queen was left. all the other players had been rebuild, just the queen was left.
the queen.
the queen is the strongest player. it has the most movability, the most power. it is more important than even the king. really, without the queen, the game is lost. so her return was essential.
you made it so hard. but the king's army protected him, even without the queen, and just worked day and night to bring her back.
i saw your strategies then, saw how you had killed each of my game-pieces. i saw your game plan for what it was. see, before that i hadn't known. i had kept on playing but i was playing by different rules. i had been playing under the assumption that i would stay alive, not knowing how different the reality would be. now i could see it. and something strange started happening. each time, each time, i saw one of your strategies, the ugly truth of it, one of your players died. isn't that weird? i wasn't playing chess anymore. just looking, looking at the strategy, rebuilding my army, preparing for the next game, learning. but you just kept on dying. one by one. a soldier, a horse, a bishop. none left.
except the queen. the most important player. it stood. it was my beacon, that queen. all your other players were murderers. but not the queen. it was good. it had been good. whatever else you had used your pieces for, at least your queen was commendable. i kept it standing. that way at least i could say i had played against a worthy opponent (sportsmanship and all that). my king, my players, dead and resurrected, revered your queen.
"look, look. at least the queen is still there. at least the queen is good. however else the game may have been played, at least the queen is standing."
ha.
the thing about chess is that it is a mathematical game. it is strategic. you play not by chance, but by the mathematics of those 64 squares, of the constrained movements of each of the pieces.
so your queen stood majestically for a while. but chess is math. it's formula. it is truth. and you know the thing about truth don't you? yes, that it always comes out?
well, it came out.
just like a beautiful little equation, each part was put together. see, another thing was, since your queen stood, one side of the equation (the stragety) did not use to equal the other side (the outcome). but then i found out the truth she was hiding. i realized what a shaky foundation she stood on. and now i know the bottomless depths of its ugliness. and you know what's funny? it was revealed to me. revelead to me. like a prophecy. don't you think that's funny? a prophecy - from the outside - like i was meant to know.
to know the truth.
and the truth shall set you free...
ha.
so your queen fell. it died.
meh...