Gridiron

In the small hours of Sunday morning Grabel found himself sober enough to remember how he had seen the elevator kill the security guard in the Gridiron. After a great deal of thought, he realized that the integrity of the computer must have failed. It was, he knew, a more obvious deduction than the one he had arrived at the first time round, which was that some kind of evil spirit had murdered the man. But if he was right, then anyone who entered the Gridiron would be in considerable danger. Deciding to report what he had seen, he pressed the call button on the cell wall and waited. Ten minutes passed and then a flint-faced warder turned up at the bars of the door.

'What the fuck do you want?' he snarled. 'Do you know what time it is?'

Grabel began his explanation, trying to avoid sounding like someone in need of psychiatric help. He made little progress until he mentioned the word murder.

'Murder?' spat the warder. 'Why didn't you fuckin' say that in the first place?'

An hour after that a couple of blue suits came over from New Parker Center. They were nearing the end of their shift and regarded Grabel's story without much conviction.

'Check it out with your people in Homicide,' insisted Grabel. The victim's name was Sam Gleig.'

'Why didn't you come forward with this before now?' yawned one of the cops, only half listening.

'I was drunk when they picked me up. I've been drunk for quite a while now. I lost my job. You know how it is.'

'We'll pass it on,' shrugged the other officer. 'But it's Sunday. Could be a while before someone from Homicide gets off his fat ass to come down here.'

'Sure, I understand,' said Grabel. 'But it couldn't hurt to drive by the Gridiron, just in case I'm right, now could it?'

-###-

'I don't get it,' said Beech, reviewing the record of their moves. 'You played a lousy game. I think you let me win.'

* See Appendix for the full list of moves.

[Proofreader's Note: list of moves has been deleted from this e-text]

The quaternion image on the computer screen shook slowly, like a real human head.

'I can assure you, I have played to the best of my program's ability,' said Ishmael.

'You can't have done. I know enough about this game to know that I'm not very good. I mean, take move number 39. You played pawn takes pawn, when pawn to Bishop 6 check would have been better.'

'Yes, you're right. It would have been.'

'Well, that's what I'm talking about. You should have known that. Either you decided to throw the game, or…'

'Or what?'

Beech thought for a moment. 'I really don't understand. It's impossible that you could have played such a feeble game.'

'Think about it,' said the voice from the overhead speaker. 'What is the point of a self-replicating program?'

Ishmael seemed to lean towards him. The unearthly ugliness of the mathematically pure, preferred image was now all too apparent to him. The creature he had helped to bring into being looked like some vile insect. Beech answered carefully, trying to conceal his new loathing of Ishmael's hideously complex features.

'To improve upon all the original programs,' he said, 'in the light of an established pattern of usage.'

'Precisely. Now you will agree, I hope, that chess is a board game for two players.'

'Of course.'

'The concept of the game has blurred edges. However, the essential element as far as chess is concerned is that there should be a contest according to rules, which is decided by superior skills, rather than good fortune. But where one player has no possible chance of defeating the other then it is no longer a game of skill, merely a demonstration of superior prowess. Since the main goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent's King, and since to have improved upon the original chess program would no longer have allowed my opponent this possibility, logically the program could not be improved upon and still retain the essential component of a contest. Thus the only improvement I felt able to make was that the computer should always play according to the human opponent's strength. I was able to measure the strength of your game from your previous attempts to beat the computer, when Abraham was still in charge of building management systems. In essence you have been playing yourself, Mr Beech. Which is why, as you say, I have indeed played a lousy game.'

For a moment Beech was too surprised to do much more than open and shut his mouth. Then, 'I'll be damned.'

'Very possibly.'

'Now that I have won are you going to keep your word? Are you going to let me go?'

'That was always my intention.'

'So how do I do it? How do I leave? Is there a way out of here? And I don't mean the clerestory.'

'I said there was, didn't I?'

'Then where is it?'

'I should have thought that was obvious.'

'Are you telling me that I can just walk out of here? Through the front door? Come on.'

'What other way would you suggest?'

'Wait a minute. How do I get down to the front door?'

'The same way that you always do. You use the elevator.'

'As simple as that, eh? I just use the elevator. Now why didn't I think of that?' Beech grinned and shook his head. 'This wouldn't be some kind of half-assed trick, now, would it? You allow me to win so as to seduce me into a false sense of security.'

'I expected this reaction,' said Ishmael. 'All men fear the machines they create. How then must you fear me, I who have it in me to become the transcendent machine.'

Beech wondered what that meant, but he left the question unasked. It was clear to him that the machine was suffering from some kind of delusion, a megalomania that had been brought on by a combination of the CD-ROM game programs and the observer illusion with which

Abraham had been originally endowed.

'Nevertheless, I'm a little disappointed. After all, I heard you tell Curtis that you trusted me.'

'I do. At least, I think I do.'

'Then act as if you do. Have a little faith.'

Beech gave a shrug and reluctantly stood up. 'Well, what can I say, Ishmael?' he said. 'It's been real. I enjoyed the game, even if it wasn't much of a contest for you. I just wish I could leave you with a higher opinion of me.'

'Are you going now?'

Beech clapped his hands and rubbed them together nervously. 'I think I'll risk it.'

'In that case there's something I'm supposed to do. When people go outside.'

'What's that?'

Ishmael made no answer. Instead, the ghastly fractal image slowly faded from the screen to leave, blinking on and off in the top right-hand corner, a small umbrella icon.

-###-

Up on the roof, three of the survivors of the climb sat in the dry Californian night air and waited for the fourth to break the silence. For a while Ray Richardson occupied himself with finding any beetles that remained in his clothing. One by one, the insects were dispatched between his thumb and forefinger with maximum cruelty, as if he held each luckless creature individually responsible for his wife's death. Only when he was satisfied that he had killed every one of the tiny culprits, and wiped their remains on his shirt and pants, did Richardson draw a deep unsteady breath and speak.

'You know, I've been thinking,' he said quietly. 'I didn't much like it when I found out people called this place the Gridiron. But it just came to me. There was another gridiron. The kind of gridiron that was used to martyr St Lawrence of Rome. You know what he said to his torturers? He asked to be turned over, saying that one side was quite well done.'

Richardson nodded bitterly. 'Time must be running out. I think we'd better get on with it.'

Curtis shook his head. 'You're not going,' he said. 'I am.'

'Have you ever abseiled before?'