“It’s that scary,” she leaned forward, cornering him in a bad place. “The Chessmaster is…”
Fabiola suddenly stiffened in place. The veins in her neck stiffened too. Then she began shaking, hands on her stomach, and then she vomited on Truckle’s desk.
And before he knew it, the White Queen fell silently to her knees, hardly breathing as if she was about to die.
Chapter 25
Marostica Mountains, Italy
The chess piece is a piece of art. It’s small, but when I focus on it, I totally admire the craftsmanship, though I am still weirded out that I am holding a piece of Carroll’s bones.
“Let me inspect it.” The Pillar pulls out a magnifying glass.
“Where did you get those tools from?” I pass the piece over. “Who walks around with a magnifying glass?”
“You never question that in movies, when the hero suddenly pulls out a gun while she was wearing latex all the time,” The Pillar says. “Why me?”
“Because we’re not in a movie.”
The Pillar raises an eyebrow. “Alice, we’re characters from a book.”
“What?” I am shocked. “Are you saying we’re not real?”
“I’m not saying that. I am just pointing out that we’ve been mentioned in a book that mostly we can’t escape. It’s like the blueprint of fate of our lives. But never mind, let’s focus on the chess piece.”
“Anything showing on it?”
“Nothing in particular, but wait…” he pulls the glass magnifier back. “I think it twists open at the middle.”
“Really?”
I watch The Pillar give it a couple of tries, then it works. The white Queen is split into two pieces, and he pulls out a scrape of paper from inside. “Like a fortune cookie, baby.” He looks amused.
“What does it say?”
“It’s a note…” He shrugs.
I know why, because it’s made of the same yellow note he’d written his Wonder upon — it reminds me that I kept my Tiger Lily safe in a safe box in Marostica and should pick it up soon.
“How come it’s the same paper you used for the note you gave me, your Wonder?” I tell The Pillar.
“I don’t know. Could be coincidence.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, and then tell him about the Red who’d saved me earlier today, using the same kind of notes.
“Why not read what’s on the note instead of investigating who manufactured it,” The Pillar offers. “It has writing on both sides actually.”
“What does the front say?”
“White Stones.”
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“Neither does Black Stones.”
“How about the back of the note?”
“Deep Blue.”
“This looks like it’s going to be a complicated puzzle.”
“Deep Blue isn’t actually,” The Pillar says. “Assuming, all puzzles are chess-related, I think I know what it is.”
“The suspense is killing me,” I mock him. “What is it?”
“Deep Blue is the name of the first IBM computer ever designed to play chess.”
“You totally lost me. IBM?” I am not sure how this fits into a puzzle.
“In 1997, IBM designed the first chess computer, claiming it can beat man,” The Pillar says. “It was a big scene. Actually, the story I am going to tell you changed mankind’s perception of machine.”
“I hope it will lead to solving some kind of puzzle.”
“IBM challenged the best chess player in the world, at the time of course, to beat the machine, and he accepted.”
“Interesting.”
“His name is Garry Kasparov, a fellow Russian chess player, not the Chessmaster of course, and he accepted the challenge.”
“And?”
“It’s a long story, but let me put it this way: Kasparov lost to the machine after six games and two weeks of an exhausting emotional breakdown.”
“Breakdown?”
“IBM played all kinds of psychological tricks on the man to get him to fear the machine.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Why do you think, Alice?” The Pillar has one of those smiles on his face again, when he is about to tell me one of the world’s biggest secrets. It reminds me of the time when he told me about food companies making the world fat when we were chasing the Muffin Man.
“Let me guess,” I say. “IBM sought for propaganda, making their name bigger and getting extreme exposure.”
“That’s part of it. It was a crucial moment in history, like I said. IBM managed to insinuate into the global conscious brain that the ‘machine’ will beat ‘man.’”
“You don’t really believe machines will beat us someday?”
“If we create the machine, then it’s us who still can dysfunction it, Alice. Don’t let anyone make you underestimate the fabulousness of being human.”
“Enough with the clichés, will ya? So why did IBM force Kasparov to lose, really?”
“Before the game, IBM wasn’t as big as they are now. They were merely suppliers for Microsoft and such.” The Pillar knocks his cane on the ground. “The most important part was: this was just a marketing scheme.”