Checkmate
"Mister Data, you're late."
"Please excuse me, Captain. I was doing the impossible."
"You have my curiosity, Mister Data. What is that?"
"I was sleeping."
"But you never sleep. You're an android, Mister Data."
"That is true, sir. I am an android. But it is also true that I was sleeping."
"Well, we don't have any crisis here, so I have some moments to be amused. Tell me, how could the impossible have happened?"
"Well, sir, I went to the Holodeck. In my previous visit, I had played chess with the grand master, Aragon of the galaxy Winsip. He had defeated me, and you know that, too, is impossible. So I have spent the last week going through all the libraries of the known universe, studying the greatest chess games ever played. I was looking for that one move my memory bank may have overlooked, the move I could have used to put Aragon into a corner from which he could not escape. And I found it, sir."
"So you went back to the Holodeck."
"That I did, sir. I summoned Aragon, and we launched into a new match. He played brilliantly, as did I. After something like three hours, it appeared we were about at a draw, and Aragon excused himself. He said he wished to get a chalice of mead. I think he called it a Spotted Cow, sir. While he was away, a woman—quite beautiful by Earth standards—entered our gaming area. She said she had been sent by Aragon to entertain me while he was away refreshing himself."
"Entertain you? How?"
"I wondered that myself, sir, so I asked. And she said she was prepared to entertain me with stories greater than those of the greatest writers of all times past, greater even than those of Tomlinson, Freiburger, Schneller, and Ellestad. In truth, sir, her stories were not."
"Really?"
"They were boring, so boring, so banal that, after the third story, my eyelids grew heavy, and I closed them. I don't know for how long, sir, but it was your calls on my communicator that awoke me."
"Was she still there, Mister Data, this woman?"
"No, she was not."
"And the chess game?"
"This is very strange, indeed."
"Why is that, Mister Data?"
"It appears, sir, that Aragon and I must have resumed our game at some time, I do not know how or when. But when I awoke, I saw on the board before me my queen—in checkmate. Aragon had defeated me again."
© Jerry Peterson.
