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Checkmate.

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8/2/2010 2:16:43   
_Depression
Member

Prologue:

Every so often, the simplest move is the best to make. When facing the best of the best, this is even more true. Who would expect you to come straight at them, when they know you can run circles around them? In the case of a tournament for chess Junior Grand Masters, no one is expected to play a full frontal attack. And then Justin came along.

It was the final round of the tournament, a match between two of the nation's greatest chess players, to determine the best of all of the Junior Grand Masters. And after two days of playing countless maneuvers with names from languages he couldn't speak, Justin had had enough. Of course he wanted to win, but he was tired of over-thinking his opponent's moves, trying to recognize the move as part of a thirty-step attack he was planning.

The match was short, sweet, and in the end Justin's bishop was the only piece he had left, against his opponent's knight and two pawns. He scanned the board, looking for a way to come back. One pawn was close enough to a promotion that Justin needed to focus on it - but the knight was two moves away from throwing his king in checkmate, and the second pawn was on the opposite end of the board, protecting the black king in a spot that the bishop couldn't take without being taken in return.

Ten moves played out in his head, and Justin saw himself losing; he changed the third move, and lasted another nine before being beaten. In a matter of thirty seconds he had processed four different ways to lose. But as Thomas Edison had said, after being asked about all of his failures in creating a light bulb, "I didn't fail to make a lightbulb a thousand times. I just learned a thousand ways not to make a lightbulb." Or something like that.

The important part was, Justin knew he could win. He just needed to figure out how. With a glance at the timer he saw that he was running low, and remembering his tactic from the beginning of the match, he slid his bishop in between the black knight and the pawn that was close to promotion. The knight moved away, and the pawn was taken. Another minute passed as the black side thought about his next move, and then the knight moved back from the white king, retreating to regroup. But Justin would give his opponent no chance to regroup, charging recklessly forward with his king and watching the knight try to maneuver itself into a spot to attack.

It wasn't until Justin had placed his king behind the last black pawn, giving his bishop a direct - and clean - line of attack on the pawn. In the next move, the pawn was eliminated and the black king in check. Then it was just a matter of outmaneuvering the knight.

In twelve more moves the match was over, a stalemate between the kings. It was better than a loss.

[Comments]

< Message edited by _Depression -- 8/2/2010 2:38:09 >
AQ  Post #: 1
8/2/2010 2:39:57   
_Depression
Member

Chapter 1 - Minor Promotion

It was one thing to have a birthday on the first day of school; it was quite another to have a birthday on the day where college acceptances were slated to be released. Justin waited in his room that morning, browsing his Facebook page as all thirty friends sent him birthday wishes, glancing every so often out of the window to see if the mail truck was outside. His house happened to be an early stop on the mail route; all that meant was he had less time dreading the mail coming, and more time regretting what was inside the letters.

"Justin," his mom called from downstairs, closing the door behind her as she walked in the house. "Justin, I have the mail."

It took him a moment to understand why, as he simply stared out the window. The truck had not even reached the blocks farther down, let alone his house. But as he slowly stood and walked downstairs, he realized that his mom and the mailman had been good friends in high school and college, and that his mom seemed to "run into him" a lot when she was running errands.

As he walked into the kitchen, Justin glanced at the pile of mail sitting on the table. He had applied to ten universities; he counted eleven letters. "That's all for me?" he asked, looking to his mother.

"All you," she said, nodding and leaning back against the counter. She would be there while Justin opened his letters, like any good mother would.

With a resigned sigh, Justin organized the letters into a stack with his first choices on top, then his safety schools, and then his reach school, one of the top-ranked universities in the country, a university he would only get into because of his extracurricular skills and still would never be able to afford.

"Here we go," he said, a bit reluctant as he opened the top letter. He read the first line to himself, then aloud. "I guess they didn't like my SATs," he added, and dropped the letter on the table as he picked up the second.

When Justin reached his tenth letter - his reach school - he took a moment to recount what he had opened so far. Out of six of the schools he wanted to attend, only two had accepted him, neither one his first choice; he was accepted into two safety schools, both community colleges. All that remained to be seen was now sitting in his hands. He slit the seal, pulled out the letter, and stared for a short moment at the embossed letterhead before turning his eyes to the text on the letter.

"Dear Justin," he read aloud, "we thank you for application to our university, but at the moment do not have an opening for you. We have placed you on a waiting list, and if you are subsequently selected you will receive a phone call within the next month."

"Well, there's still a chance," his mom offered, smiling a bit.

Sighing, Justin put the letter down and picked up the last, unopened envelope. There was no return address and no marking to show that it was from any other university. "Forget it," he said after a moment, folding the letter in half and putting it in his pocket. "I'm going back to my room."

As soon as he walked into his room, Justin quit out of his Internet browser and went to sit on his bed. It was bad enough that he had failed to get into the schools he wanted, he would have felt exponentially worse if he had to scroll through dozens of posts of people congratulating themselves and their friends. So, resigned to spend the rest of his day moping, Justin laid back on his bed, throwing his arms out to his sides and staring up at his ceiling fan.

"Nothing could make today worse," he said to himself, or the ceiling fan; either way, he wasn't expecting a response. After a moment of waiting, he rolled onto his side, and heard the unopened envelope in his pocket crinkle. More bad news, probably. But might as well get it over with.

Justin pulled out the now folded and slightly-wrinkled letter and opened it slowly, dropping the empty envelope to the bed as he held its contents - a small card, just ever so slightly larger than a business card - in his hands. The side he was looking at was blank, and when he flipped it around, he saw only one line of text, scrawled along the bottom of the card in black pen. "You have been invited to join the White and Black Society of Harvard University. (617) 555-6273"

For a moment, Justin was clueless as to what to think. First, whoever had sent the letter was certainly playing a cruel joke; second, and more importantly, they did a horrible job of making it seem legitimate. "555" numbers are fake, used by movies and television. Everyone knew that. And why would Harvard, one of the most prestigious universities in the country, send a letter to him written in black pen, on the back of a small piece of expensive paper?

But just as Justin was crumpling up the card and preparing to toss it in the general direction of his garbage can, his cell phone rang. The number was not in his contacts, but he immediately knew who it was; 617-555-6273.

"Hello?" Justin said into the phone as he answered it.

There was a short silence on the other end, followed by an automated voice. "Hello, Justin. This is the head of the White and Black Society here at Harvard University. I would like to invite you to come by and visit our facilities, tonight at 11 PM. If you choose to come, I will be waiting outside the main entrance to the campus. Thank you, and I hope to see you tonight." And with that, the line went dead.

Justin hung up his phone and stared at the number, blinking on the screen before disappearing and being replaced by his wallpaper. Someone was going through an awful lot of trouble to create this prank. But it was interesting, and Justin could not help but be tempted to go to the meeting that night, if only to find out who was behind it all. He glanced at his alarm clock; thirty minutes to noon. It would be a long eleven hours of waiting.
AQ  Post #: 2
8/9/2010 0:03:52   
_Depression
Member

Chapter 2 - White and Black

At five minutes to the meeting time he had been given, Justin stopped his car just inside the front gates, and killed the engine as he awaited the arrival of whoever had gone through the effort to get him here. Or, that was what Justin expected; he hoped, on the other hand, that the joke would go further. It was exhilarating, like when he used to play in chess tournaments across the country. He wanted nothing more than to see the plan continue, so he could try to guess what would come next, to expect what his opponent would do before he even did it.

With one minute left to eleven, another car pulled up, this one parking just outside of the front entrance. A man easily in his fifties stepped out, dressed in a white suit and black tie with his hair slicked back in a neat mix of gray and black. He looked at Justin's car, looked away again, and then back again just as the clock turned to eleven.

Justin opened his door slowly and stepped out, his eyes holding steady on the other man as he tried to judge his demeanor. Was this the man behind it all, or just another pawn? It was hard to tell, with the shadows from the overhead street lamps throwing dark shadows across half of the man's face.

"Hello," Justin called, walking over to the man and stopping a few feet away.

The man in the white suit nodded, and gestured to his car. He wanted Justin to get in.

"Where are we going?" He was almost sure that the joke was innocent and harmless. Almost sure.

Instead of answer, the man in the white suit walked to the back door of the car and opened it enough for Justin to see its occupant - a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, dressed in a smooth white dress and smiling at him with bright, white teeth. "Come on in," she said sweetly.

Justin sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and walking over to the car. It was one thing to be around strangers; it was quite another thing to be around attractive women. Justin always had a problem with girls who were pretty but had no knowledge of chess - it seemed whenever he tried to talk to one, all that came out were corny jokes or weak conversation starters, most of which having something to do with a king, bishop and knight in a bar together.

The girl in the white dress slid across the seat for Justin to get in, and when the door closed she moved closer to him again, smiling again with her too-white teeth and offering her hand. "Hi," she said brightly, shaking his hand lightly and nodding. "My name's Kylee, and I'll be your escort for tonight."

Justin closed his eyes and groaned mentally; he knew all too well what kind of tone the term 'escort' carried, and for as much as he was a teenager suffering from raging hormones and no outlet for them, he was also a pretty decent Christian, at least when it came to alcohol and adult pleasures. "Hi," he managed to say, opening his eyes again and trying to return Kylee's bright - and by bright there was really no other word to describe it - smile.

As the car started up and took off, going back in direction it had come from, Kylee began inching closer to him and, eventually, pointing out toward different landmarks of sorts. "That's where a lot of members go to get their morning coffee," she said, pointing to a near empty Starbucks. "And there's the mini-golf course that the last President of the Society designed and built with his own two hands."

By the time the car stopped, Kylee had all but crawled onto Justin's lap, and when the man in the white suit opened the door on Justin's side, he nearly fell out with Kylee on top of him. A part of him wondered if she had wanted that. "Where are we now?" he asked as he quickly hopped out of the car, looking around and trying to collect himself.

"This," Kylee said, stepping up next to him, invading his personal space again and spreading her arms in a dramatic fashion, "is the White and Black Society."

Justin looked around, taking in the 'view' of an aging wooded area that bordered the small, two-way road they had stopped on. "Wow," he said, letting his disappointment leak into his tone. "After everything that led up to this, I was expecting... more."

"More?" Kylee asked.

"Well, it's all a bit anti-climactic, isn't it?"

The man in the white suit closed the car door and locked it with a press of a button, then pocketed the keys and turned off to walk down a barely-distinguishable path into the woods. Kylee started to follow him, taking Justin's hand and smiling at him in a way that reflected the street lights off of her teeth and almost directly into his eyes. "You're silly," she said, suddenly sounding even more bubbly and giddy than she had on the drive. "We can't see the actual buildings yet!"

Justin should have realized as much; whoever went through the trouble to get him into a car with a slightly intimidating man and an "escort" in a white dress, would not be the type of person to stop halfway. No, there would be more. He let Kylee lead him into the woods, noticing as she slowed down to come up alongside him, groaning again mentally as she shifted the grip on his hand from pulling him along to walking as if the two were taking a moonlit stroll on the beach.

As she drifted closer to him, he came to realize that the man in the white suit had gotten far ahead of them, and was now out of sight. Kylee seemed to be content to stop and spend however much time she could with him in the woods, and Justin felt himself giving way to her. In a snap decision by his moral compass, he stopped and looked over at her. "How much farther is it?" he asked, letting go of her hand.

"Just a bit further," Kylee said sweetly, clasping her hands behind her back. "Do you want to take a break?"

"No." Justin's reply came quicker than even he expected, but it did the trick. Kylee nodded silently and brushed her dress off with her hands, looking at the ground for a moment before looking back up at him and, without the same giddiness as she had before, gestured for him to follow her. "Come on, it's just another hundred feet or so."

Sighing softly with relief, Justin walked behind her, glancing around the woods that were, as he quickly noticed, lit by some light that he could not see; there were no obvious lamps or even a strong enough light to judge by the shadows where the light was coming from. And now that Kylee had stopped smiling, Justin was left without any possible light sources. "Hey, Kylee?" he asked. "Where's all the light coming from?"

"Oh, that's the reflections of the moon," the girl in the white dress said, almost nonchalant. "The members of the White and Black Society wanted to have some light in here, but of course wanted to maintain their secrecy, so they installed small shards of glass into the trees and bushes and stuff."

"Oh." Justin was left dumbfounded, which was a rare occurence. "Well, that's... cool." He wondered how much time it had taken for the entire process to be completed. Looking around at the dozens of trees he could see - and thinking about the hundreds of others in the area - he figured years.

Kylee glanced back at Justin and, seeing his stunned look, smiled lightly. "Come on," she said, "they're going to be waiting for us by now." She took his hand and started to lead him forward again, weaving around the trees as they began to grow closer together.

Justin followed silently and glanced around at the trees as he did, trying to pick out the mirrors in the woodwork. But as he walked, he saw the trees starting to thin out again, and turned his eyes forward to where there was a new - and distinctly electric - source of light growing. "Is this it?" he asked, wanting to be ready for the next step of the practical joke.

"Yes," Kylee said, nodding. "This is it." She led him out of the woods and turned to him, giggling despite herself at his stunned face. "It's like he was expecting something else," she said airily, looking over at the man in the white suit, who was now accompanied by another man - also dressed in a white suit, but with a white tie instead of a black one. This second man had an air of authority around him, but not from size or intimidation. He was a leader.

The man smiled a white, gleaming smile at Justin. "I'm glad you made it."

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AQ  Post #: 3
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