The Game

The Game

One of the adages of Galactic history is that a  founding feature of any civilisation is games playing. It has been essential to the evolution of every society in the Galaxy and will continue to be so until the last gasp of Galactic life.

It was no surprise then that the once-in-a-generation event, The Game, dominated  the Galactic sporting and social calendar, creating endless debate and fuelling intense rivalries.

The arena for this great galactic tournament was midway down one of the two spiral arms, the densely inhabited one. As had been the case since time unconsidered, the Game was fought between the Inners and the Outers. The champions of each of the two halves of the spiral would face off in the grand festival final. The Inners were civilisations closer to the Black Hole at the Centre of the Galaxy and the Outers comprised those further than the halfway point of its spiral arm. In this latest contest, the Inners’ Champion was a bio-artificial hybrid whereas the Outers’ champion was one hundred percent natural bio. Such a dichotomy made for a more dramatic final than usual. A venerable society would battle against one of the youngest, rawest members of the Galactic Council.  

Sophisticate versus savage. Overwhelming favourite versus underdog.

Generally the Inners displayed a certain arrogant disdain for new societies because of the sophistication and longevity of their history. Age conferred cultural superiority. The Outers, on the other hand, believed they were tougher and more resilient because they were great pioneers who had learned to travel vast distances, often finding new homes, light years from their planetary origin. In short, Inners were in-breds and Outers, diasporans. That was the humour of it, anyway.

Though the Inners and the Outers were co-operative overall - wars having long since become obsolete -  the cult of individualism hung on in both camps as a mix of myth and sentimentality. It fed the enduring symbolic importance of The Game. 

To become a Demi-Champion and therefore represent your half of the Galaxy’s Arm, resulted in massive fame and riches. To become a full Galactic Champion was beyond dreams, conferring upon the individual an almost godly status. And what was meant by the term individual?  The Demi-Champion must be the smallest unit of independent thought in any given species. This could include cluster-lives but only if they naturally coalesced as a single working intelligence. In the main, individuals manifested as singletons. To become a Demi-Champion took supreme cognitive nous from birth. As The Game was played every fifty units of Galactic Universal Time (GUT), it allowed for the onerous business of training and developing a new Demi-Champion, via innumerable knock-out competitions across solar leagues. 

The galactic final involved extreme feats of memorisation, intuitive strategizing and immense meditative stability. The level of play was so high that a loser’s brain could be reduced to a mini-black hole from which it was impossible to recover.

The conditions for a succeeding tournament were published moments after the last one was decided - and they always involved novel rules, entirely unlike those in the tourney before. Being adept in one contest was no indication of having prowess in the next. 

For this contest, the organisers had adapted an ancient game, universally played in the early stages of every society's evolution, though it might have differed slightly with a solar systems’ social ecology. The deceptively simple rules involved memorising the characteristics of a genus of planets currently extant in the Galaxy Arm. Only planets exhibiting three major properties qualified for memorisation. These features were:

One moon of at least a decratum in size to stabilise their spherical bodies in orbit around their sun

One ocean of water, of which 50% must be older than the planet’s sun

One species capable of travel beyond its planet’s atmosphere

The contestants played alternately. Each had to name a planet which fulfilled the three conditions. Any repetition of a planet’s name could mean The Game was lost. Naming a second planet within the same solar system could forfeit The Game. Naming a planet that had more than one of any of the aforesaid features might prove equally calamitous. But these outcomes could only occur if an opponent successfully challenged the call - and an incorrect challenge would mean that The Game was lost. 

Because there were a vertiginous number - literally millions - of candidates for memorisation among extant planets in the Galactic Arm, The Game required a mind of phenomenal capability - unique among peers - to play it unremittingly, round after round. The Game normally lasted long enough to build high tension, at least a half a GUT.

The Demi-Champion for the Inners was a Glorian from Glorius Sextus. She was a fearsome elder of her nation with a vast and flexible memory capability. For the Outers the Demi-Champion was a precocious gender fluid Helian from the Helius system. The Helian was the first born of the latest generation of cosmic navigators and so was naturally bred for this contest. Currently male, he lived to play The Game.

Both contestants reached the arena after long journeys lasting several GUTs. The arena was called the Globe and was immense, completely spherical and constructed of impenetrable Margutian crystal. It was insulated from outside communication while the game was being played. But the game itself would be relayed to all technologically receptive societies, with neuronal feeds of the lightning shooting across synapses in the contestants’  brains. Those media centres  receiving the feeds displayed vast Galactic Arm maps to their inhabitants which zoomed into close-up on each planet being named in the game, and displaying its significant game-related properties.

At last the opening announcements were made with the full multi-sensory fanfare. Mind versus mind. Pure. A timeless conflict. No brain enhancements. The  multi-limbed  Glorian in her covering of silver tresses viewed her young opponent through a large bulbous eye of disdain. Her light-brown skinned, white-clothed, two-eyed, four limbed opposite, smiled serenely.

The toss of an ancient gold Godja disk gave the Helian first choice.

“Grobius 1V” the Helian said.

“Muter VII” she replied instantly

“Rankta III”

“Systing XII”

Map displays throughout galactic societies scrambled to keep up. It was always the same with opening moves. But as the contestants called more planets, the time between moves became longer, particularly from the Glorian. Her young opponent was more intuitive, thus his reflexes were faster.

Well into the second UG, a record for the contest, the Helian somehow summoned up a naming, even as the final syllable of the Glorian’s last offering still echoed in the air. The speed of the move threw her. It must be flawed. Her brain careered as she tried falteringly to review The Game’s history. The move must include a duplicated aspect of a previous move, surely? She challenged the Florian’s call. 

Her neuronal map turned a brilliant red on the watching screens as she tried belatedly to cross-reference. Then it spluttered and blinked and went as black as dark matter.  There were a trillion groans of desolation across the Inner planets. Meanwhile, across the Outer, there was wild jubilation.

Four GUTs later, the now richest and most famous individual in the entire Galaxy stepped out of the spacelift onto home soil. Thousands of fellow Helians greeted their Supreme Galactic Warrior with primitive, vocal appreciation.

“We are the champions!” They chorused the ancient nursery rhyme, dancing and holding hands. 

Their hero laughed and waved at the cheering, adoring fans, as they cavorted in animalistic, primordial joy.

“It was a hell of a contest,” his voice boomed over them. “But now the whole  Galactic Arm must notice. Planet Earth is on the map!”

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