Why Humans Make Bad Pets!

Im a strategic genius II

Home. That thought sure put a damper on my mood. Once the blue-giraffe necking session was over, those who had been taking cover in the engine room began looking for survivors throughout the ship. I guess the weapons the pirates had been using weren't that powerful even by alien standards +*Thank. Goodness.*+ and the only wounds that were fatal were those to the chest or head. There were still an alarming number of such wounds. Only a third of the crew had survived, and of those, half were unable to work. That made the task of restoring the ship back to working order nigh impossible.

Wouldn't you know it, there seemed to be a bigger, better cargo ship docked to our port airlock whose previous owners showed a decided lack of interest in its continued use. Not wanting to waste such a generously given once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the crew readily relocated into their newly acquired vessel. There was very little to move from our cargo bays, as most had been destroyed when their holding crates toppled over during the hull breach. Only a few commodities which were stored in such heavy crates that they had not been affected by the sudden redirection of atmospheric pressure had survived, as well as some oddly colored crates which Mama had seemed to fawn over.

There were so few things to move that even the few crew still able to work were able to transfer everything in two trips. I had been meaning to help, but by the time I saw how they used the larger versions of the crate-transportation-bed that Dink had used to move my bath, they were finished. I thought about pushing one of the blue-giraffes aside and forcing them to see me help working, but decided that if I was going to attack one of them in order to prove I was sapient I might as well just e*****e them. I considered that for a moment too, but then rejected it out of principle.

Once they'd settled the wounded, transported the cargo, and completed logistics, the crew looked more tired than I was, which wasn't saying much, so I'll revise that by saying they looked darn tuckered out. They were done working for the day, and the crew that wasn't sleeping or tending wounded were relaxing in the common lounge - just one of the creature-comfort rooms that the last ship had lacked. I walked in just as two blue-giraffes I had not yet had the pleasure of naming were sitting down at a table with a familiar silver clam between them.

Eager to watch real blue-giraffe chess players at work, I pulled a chair up to the table and stood on top of it so I was tall enough to see the game board from above. The two players - one which I named Dippy on account of his face's natural expression, and the other Whip on account of his physique - at first looked at me in curiosity, then in amusement as I gazed upon the glowing board. They probably thought I was mesmerized by the pretty lights. Morons.

"Hey Fttfk, check it out. Cqcq'trtr's mesmerized by the pretty lights!"

"Strrk, you're a moron."

The game started, and I could immediately see both players were better than Dink and Jiggles. Then I started seeing their mistakes. Whip seemed marginally decent, but Dippy was only better than Jiggles because he planned a couple moves ahead. Neither seemed to be using the board's programming to their advantage, and both failed to deploy their pieces in formations utilizing even half their potential. It was a game of patterns, and these two were painting the board like toddlers given a year's supply of crayons and a blank white wall. It was better than Dink and Jiggles, but it was their three year old crayon scribbles to Dink and Jiggles' game play, which held the elegance of a chipmunk dunked in paint and then set free on an acre of acorns.

After they finished their first game, which took three times as long as it should have, they started a second game. Not being able to bear the thought of watching them blunder through another travesty of a game, I decided to enlighten them with a didactic demonstration. Flicking Dippy's hand away - a slap might have injured him - which had been about to move perhaps the only piece on the board placed correctly, I tried to move a holo-token that was so far out of position that for all intents and purposes it might have well been dead.

My hand went right through the board without interacting with the piece. Apparently you had to be a blue-giraffe for the clam to allow you to interact with the pieces. Whip and Dippy were making odd noises and shaking in their seats. Laughing at me, were they? I looked Dippy in the eye, pointed to the offending piece, and then pointed to where it should go. His laughter increased. Exasperated, I grabbed his hand and forced it to move his piece.

That got his attention. Both idiots goggled at me as the board registered Dippy's move and signaled Whip to take his. They couldn't take the move back, so Whip moved his piece, looking at Dippy apologetically and clicking something. Dippy glanced at me nervously and slowly started to move his hand to the same piece which didn't need moving. I grabbed it again and forced it to another woefully placed piece. Now the players were getting mad, clicking at me in anger and making shooing motions with there hands, and there I stood, not understanding a word of it. Whip took his turn again, and the moment he finished Dippy flung his hand towards one of the pieces I had just moved, trying to put it back out of position.

He wasn't fast enough, and I grabbed his hand before it could touch the board, forcing it to do my bidding. Dippy went into a frenzy, and Whip made a motion as though to close the clam. I blocked his hand, then glared at him, willing him to take his turn. Anger now replaced with fear, Whip complied. Not even bothering to let go of Dippy's hand, I took his next few turns for him. Then a hex lit up. I had barely managed to get the bare minimum of Dippy's pieces into what I thought to be a decent position, but the results were noticeable. The hex was a full three spaces closer to several of Dippy's pieces than it ever had ever been. Whip and Dippy blinked. Whip's pieces were out of position, and I easily managed to get a piece onto the hex before he could stop me. I just needed to do that 6 more times before I could win.

Dippy's reluctance to allow me to borrow the use of his appendage evaporated, and I was able to move my pieces without hindrance. Six more hexes lit up, and for each one I managed to get there before Whip could stop me. It really wasn't that hard of a game. So long as I had enough pieces to narrow down the possibilities, I could reasonably guess which hex would light up next. After I moved Dippy's hand in its first victory move, I looked into their dumbfounded faces. "One of these days I'm going to introduce you to a real strategy game. It's called Chess."