Cross My Mind

CHESS PIECES

Garba and the rest of the thirty one players regained consciousness In a different facility from the waiting hall they were in and this time around it was not just Garba but everyone has no idea how they got to the facility.

Garba turned around and have a proper look at the entire facility. It is similar to the waiting hall but three times bigger, it has a ridiculously high number of ventilators and cameras spread out all over the on the ceiling and walls of the space. Garba deduced in his mind that they must be in an underground facility but this begs the question of what is the next brutal thing they will male them do to each other in the disguise of playing a simulation game?

After a brief observation, Garba realizes that there are seats laid around a central structure about forty times the size of a boxing ring. In it were large tiling of alternating black and white all over the isolated center with a glass cube with several punches on it that he immediately realized are for ventilation.

Mila and Lucy stand next to Garba but unlike his new deductive nature, they were confused and scared beyond reasoning. The rest of the players also stood up looking confused for not remembering how they got here and what the place is supposed to be.

A loud booming voice started simultaneously with an explanation window which appeared in each player’s view.

“Welcome contestants, you are among the top contestants that have survived till this point and with this last game, we shall determine the winner of the twenty million dollars pool prize. Please Proceed downwards towards the glass cube for balloting the rounds. We are going to divide all of you into a two teams, we will have team Garba and Team Carson. Of course both Garba and Carson can choose the first seven people who will join their teams. If both Garba and Carson choses a person, then the person earns the right to decide which team they want to join. As for the remaining sixteen players, A random ballot would be carried out to determine the which side of the game each of them would be in”.

GARBA instantly chose Mila and Lucy to be part of his team, he randomly selected five more players from the remaining players.

The rest were balloted and both Garba’s team and Carson’s team how have sixteen players.

“I see, this all makes sense now. We are going to be playing a game of chess, or to be less specific, a game that will have strong similarly with chess.” Garba thought and instantly, another floating window appears with an box item on it. Written above it ' please tap the box to determine your role'.

Garba quickly tapped the box and all the other players turned to look at him, at first he didn’t understand why they were staring at him but immediately understood because as soon as each of the players look at him, they started tapping their own boxes and suddenly, Garba watched as virtual hats matching that of chess pieces start to appear on their heads.

He quickly opened his status window to see which piece he got and was a little relieved when he saw that he is a knight and Lucy is a queen. But what really put his mind at ease was when he saw that Mila, who was behind him at the moment was got the king.

On the other side, Garba started studying Carson’s team to see who their king is and he was surprised to find out that it is Carson himself that got king. He quickly check the status window and again, realizes massage that says once a player’s role has been decided, there is no way to change it.

A floating window suddenly appeared in each of the players vision with Akihiro on it, “ I am now going to explain the rules of the game. This game will decide who wins or loses the twenty million dollars at stake, at the end of it all, the last players or player standing gets to take all the money with them irrespective of the methods they used to achieve their win. The game you will be playing next is the game of chess, as many of you must have realised after the assignment of roles.” Akihiro explained.

“The inside of the glass cube has identical flooring as a chess board, each player is entitled to carry a dagger into the cube, each player moves based on the pattern of his chess piece but, when it is a player’s turn to take a piece of equal footing,, they are allowed to use their dagger but the other similar piece of the opponent team can also fight back only in this case without the dagger. Any of the elite pieces can kill off any pawn when it is within their pattern of movement just as they would in an ordinary chess game. The pawns can only fight back against pawns about to kill them but the depending pawn will be fighting without weapon. This applies to rook Against rook, knight against knight, bishop against bishop, queen against queen and king against king.” He added.

He stepped aside and Nora continued from where Akihiro stopped.

“The other rules are that if any piece successfully reaches the end of the board, she or he can change their role to whatever piece they want with the exception of the king. This is the only way to change your assigned role. Failure to obey the king’s command either through refusal, moving where the king did not command or delay of more than five minutes will result in piece elimination from the game.” Nora said.

“Each king is the chess player of his team, the king holds absolute control and cannot be disobeyed. Once the enemy team capture or kill off your king, you automatically lose the game just as it would be in a normal chess game. However, is a kind fails to give their command within five minutes interval allocated, a random piece from their team will be incapacitated as such that the piece may be the one about to kill the opponent’s piece but will lose the advantage of wellness and health because of the incapacitation injury that has been inflicted on them.” Nora added

“with this, all players should step in the board so that the final game may begin. May the best player excel.” Akihiro said and the Glass cube surrounding the entire board area was lifted up and the thirty two pieces all arranged themselves according to normal chess arrangement. The glass was lowered down, covering the entire space.

“I forgot to mention that any piece that moves out of their designated spot without their king’s permission would be shot” Akihiro added and a group of men dressed in red clothes holding guns walked forward and placed the tip of their guns on the punctures that are on the glass cube.” Akihiro said and switched off the transmission.

Garba who knows that this is not a simulation game suddenly broke a sweat.

“Whatever you do, do not break any of the rules, we can win this” he shouted to his team members.

(Department of software engineering CALTECH)

Dr. Reece and professor Ababio looked at each other with completely lost at what to say. Reece is just learning for the first time about an artificial intelligence that is advanced enough to copy it’s own codes and make a reprogrammed clone of itself to function as it’s own extension and to return to the server and merge with itself so that the core of it will absorb the accumulated information from the clone and be as it was the clone all along.

“Mother, there are more important things I want you to see immediately.” MEDULLA said and pulled out some files.

In these files, Reece and Ababio learned of the brutally inhumane game Akihiro and Lockwood have exposed the trial volunteers to, the two also learned that the game is currently ongoing and Lockwood would allow Akihiro to continue with the program until they get what they want.

They also learned that two people called Mila Goldenberg and Garba Danladi among the volunteers have already formed the mental space and are able to not just receive external brain signals from another individual, but also send them as they please.

“The Akihiro I know would experiment on these two till the end of their lives, we need to help them survive” Reece said to MEDULLA and Ababio.