The Alpha and the Go
The man was a foreigner. Pale skin strapped to a gaunt and hallowed face. His knotted limbs fitted into his hunch. Clothed in a threaded grey suit and a dark leather strapped watch cuffed to his right wrist. When Hikaru shook with the man his hand was fully engulfed into endless sinuous fingers. The game room was chilly. Video cameras circled the two. Hikaru waited for the man to sit before pulling a chair to the go board. Another camera hovered atop the cleared goban. None focused on Hikaru's opponent. The man stirred his beaklike fingers in his go bowl and the white stones gurgled as a rattling lung would. The man looked at the computer screen then to Hikaru. Hikaru breathed the sterile industrial air. He placed the first stone. The man looked at the computer screen again. Hikaru waited.
The man was not an amateur. He picked stones clinically and laid them like tombs. The computer reflected the goban. There were no words from the man's hands. Hikaru was silent. Just the cascade of stone. Clacking like bones.
The game was an uncomfortable intensity. When the quiet was burdensome about them Hikaru cleared his throat. The man looked at him. Then the man looked at the computer screen. The grain of the stones shone nakedly in the ersatz lights. Hikaru's stones were divided. The pieced slate would join together. They must.
The black and white shapes crawled across the wood. Hikaru thought of his next move for longer than he recalled thinking of any decision in his life. Save the stones. The thickness of the white wall was hideously corpulent. Bloated and curled like an engorged grub. Impossible to break. Another black stone dotted the board. The man looked at the computer screen.
The game devolved into a battle of territory. A stone misplaced was a world lost entire. Gummy sweat clung to the nape of Hikaru's neck. His heart jostled the perimeter of his chest. The man was unbothered. The man looked at the computer screen.
The man looked at the computer screen.
Sai is in there, Hikaru thought. He's in there and helping this man. Sai is not in me. The man looked at the computer screen. Hikaru placed another stone and despaired.
3-0. The cameras fluttered close to study Hikaru's condition. Hikaru rose and shook the man's hand again. It will be solved. Everything about go. Hikaru looked opposite the barren slab of wood on the table where the man had been. The cameras circled in. His opponent was silent. He saw the game's memory in its face. A memory of each of his transgressions documented and recorded. The hand of god will not be found on the board. It will be dreamthings of a vermian nexus and pupated without warmth or joy and stenciled until scrubbed worthless.
He saw the whitehot stones. Hikaru looked at the computer screen.