turned to Rolf. "Shall we play? For old times' sake."
Wordlessly, he initiated a game. They both entered the initial phase, choosing whether to keep or mulligan their seven-card hands of actions, resource structures, and ships.
"Special game over here," someone announced. "It's Kitna, Captain of Team Heroes-Two, versus a returning top contender - Rolf the Rude!"
He watched as the spectator count of their game rose dramatically, Dierk included. Commentary and messages began filling the chat.
"The Rude?" Dierk asked them.
He gave no response, but she answered with a smirk, elbowing Rolf in the ribs where they sat against the wall in reality. "He runs every match to the very last play, and never says good game."
Dierk tilted his head. "Is that rude?"
"Yes. You're supposed to say good game and concede when you reach a state where you can't possibly win."
"Oh. Guess the nickname makes sense, then."
She laughed. "Oh, and his deck builds are rather unique…"
"Don't explain my strategies," Rolf interrupted.
"You're not going to play him."
"I might, at some point."
"Typical Rolf. Though, I do admit, training some of the Heroes-Two kids, I teach them your philosophy. The game isn't just Starships II. You gotta watch what you say, plan what you do, and build a personality for the crowd. The real game is survival."
"Yes."
"Survival?" Dierk asked.
Neither said anything, instead indicating the betting pools. Dierk studied the running bets for a moment, his expression blank. "You get a small percentage of winning bets."
"Yes," Kitna answered. "That's the real game. Rich people with money don't just sit on it, and some prefer to spend it this way. So there's us. Win or starve."
"Oh."
"Yes," Rolf added, grim-faced. "Ready?"
She shook off her momentary darkness and put on a grin. "I've got two years on you, now. The meta situation has shifted significantly." As she spoke, she deployed a resource structure and a weak fighter-class starship.
"First turn ship," he commented, examining his hand. "Interesting. You might win if you can rush out enough ships fast enough." He deployed two resource structures and passed the turn.
"That's the plan." She deployed two more fighters, and attacked with her first one, dealing his starbase four damage out of its total seventy-five.
For his turn, he played another two resource structures. Still defenseless, he passed the turn.
She played another two fighters, and attacked for twelve damage.
On his turn, he did nothing, and passed again, simply building his resource reserves.
She drew another fighter on her turn, playing it and attacking with her five ships already in play for twenty damage. "Down to 39," she taunted, eyeing the direct-damage actions still left in her hand. The ships would get him low, and the direct attack would finish off his starbase in one turn. "Better do something or you're dead in two turns…"
"I can't see what she's got," Dierk commented. "What's going on?"
Rolf considered his own hand even as he replied. "It's the interesting thing about this game - the hook, if you will. It was created like a hundred years ago when things were a bit more lax. The game keeps certain information private until the end of the match. It's only added to the public log at that point."
"Wow. So you can't just look at what's in her hand, and she can't look at yours?"
"Right. It's unique in that aspect. Otherwise, it'd be totally different, and just another perfect-information game."
Dierk nodded in understanding. "Like chess?"
"Yeah," Rolf replied. "There's only so far you can go with games of perfect information. So this little game has maintained a cult following for quite some time…"
"Come on, take your turn," Kitna complained.
"I've got forty seconds left. I'm thinking."
"Don't give me that attitude," she shot back, a smile creeping across her face. "Rolf the Rude."
"Rude like this?" With his built-up resources, he played an EMP action, disabling all ships in play for one full turn rotation - but all the ships in play were hers.
"Damnit Rolf! I had you!"
"Sure."
She played another fighter on her turn, but was unable to attack with her disabled ships.
On his turn, he played another resource structure - and another EMP action.
Rolling her eyes, she passed her turn, again unable to do anything.
For his turn, he played a new action, one which prevented all damage to his starbase for one full turn rotation. It would have left his defensive ships vulnerable, but he had none in play.
"Seriously?" she complained again.
"What's he going for?" Dierk asked, confused.
She sighed. "He's going to run me out of cards, just delaying the whole time, and then I lose."
"Aren't there any ways to deal with that?"
"Yes," Rolf replied. "And I'm sure she anticipated my favorite deck, and put in cards that will prevent her from running out - which is why I added this." As he spoke, he played a new kind of structure - one that would deal a single damage every turn. "Now it's just a matter of attrition. In seventy-five turns, I will inevitably win."
She glared daggers. "See, crap like this is why people hate you."
He couldn't help but smile. The expression felt unfamiliar, but good.
They began playing out the incredibly long game, the spectator count growing as they went. For every unique new play she came up with, he managed to put together a counter-move, holding his lockdown steady.
But he still waited, anticipating the more important move that he knew was coming - in a much larger game he did not yet understand.
"We should talk," she wrote in match's temporarily private chatroom, her typical bravado absent.
He drew in a deep breath, his heart pounding despite his best efforts. "About the checksum error?"
He could hear her move in surprise on the dusty stone next to his real body. "Yes. How did you know?"
"I suspected almost immediately," he wrote, sighing. "It was actually fairly obvious to anyone with programming skill - and knowledge of the game's privacy quirk."
The spectators looked on, oblivious. They would not see their private in-game conversation until the match released everything to the public log - normally.
"A hundred years ago," he continued, carefully choosing which parts of his suspicions to explain. "The original coder forgot to handle certain special characters in the in-game chat. This was almost never a problem, considering that none of them are on the in-game interface and the in-game chat is rarely used, but if you manually place one of these special characters into one of your sentences…" He played his delaying action for the turn.
She just sat for a moment, pretending to consider her hand. "It fails to encode in the public log," she finally admitted.
For a single intense moment, his body ran with a mix of terror and relief, his suspicion confirmed. The whole world seemed to shift with new and incredible possibilities. Every decision he'd ever made against the unforgiving world, every time he'd forced himself not to care, every time he'd hid in the crowd instead of standing against it - it all suddenly seemed worth it, to get to this singular discovery alive.
"It's private communication."
She passed her turn without action. "Yes."
"They'll kill us if they find out."
In the real world, she touched his leg. "So don't let them find out."
"Is that why you came here? Because you knew I'd figure it out?"
"It's not the only reason. I've missed you."
He laid his head back against the stone wall, groaning. "You know I can't believe anything you say, not after what happened."
"You were going to join the Scientists," she wrote bitterly. "You were leaving. Nothing I said or did would have mattered."
"You didn't know that. And it was too late then,
anyway."
Beside him under the Unsetting Sun, she wiped away a sniffle.
He doubted his own harshness for a split second… "Don't try to manipulate me," he wrote. "I know you're here because somebody saw a Scientist finally assigned to this project, and then they studied me, and they looked at my lifelog, and they found the one person who might best manipulate me into keeping their massive secret. And I can't tell who it is because so many damn people are looking at me just for knowing Og…"
She said nothing for several minutes, passing turns in silence.
"Well?" he wrote.
"They saw what you said when we were young," she finally admitted. "The rants, the passion. You were quite the zealot, you know that?"
He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.
"They recruited me after studying you, and I jumped at the chance to see you again. I would never hurt you. It's not about hurting you," she wrote, gripping his arm. "They want you to keep the secret for just a little while longer."
"Why? What's happening?"
"They want to break our chains. There are so many of them, and they're all united. They have to be - we'll all be killed if anyone finds out we can communicate privately."
"But who?" he wrote, fighting the urge to get up and leap about at hearing the words he'd secretly wished for his entire life. "Who are they?"
"It's the Undermining, Rolf. They're real. It's what we always talked about, lying in that alley together, playing games of death for those sick rich assholes."
He bit his own lip to keep from saying anything aloud.
"It's finally happening - it's the revolution!"
He could give no reaction, instead sitting in shock, suddenly intensely feeling the Sun's warmth and the stone's dusty texture under his legs and even the roughness of the clothes on his skin.