1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.2    An Allotropic Realignment

1.3.2.24 Games

As they travelled east towards Hawk's Wall, industrial buildings started being eased out by decorative art establishments each topped by a couple of floors of genteel well-tended residences.

Bungo: {I think Etaoin’s Greatest Game is fundamentally a struggle played out in people’s minds, over the beliefs people hold about reality, about each other and about themselves. It is a struggle over the power to shape and control those beliefs, where the winner gets to define what others will believe has value. What people accept as their role and purpose, what they strive for, and even how they feel about themselves. If you define a person’s identity, you enforce not just a label for a box but also the very idea of a fixed box itself - what they think of as external and what they consider to be part of themselves, and whether that can change. Whether they can change who and what they are. It is a struggle of imagination to grow and speak freely in your mind, despite a pervasive pressure that tries to limit it, leash it, snuff it out. A suffocating pressure built of every doubt and deceit drummed into your head by manipulative dictators and abusive bullies. There’s no game that's greater or more important.}

She felt the passion in his words, and remembered how she’d felt about her own relisation of how important mental autonomy was to her. But was Bungo really speaking about that, or was this more to do with Bungo’s father, Irus the Blind? Irus had nearly shattered Bungo’s self esteem as a child and he was still working on recovering even after a decade of healing. It must have been painful to hear Irus not just mentioned by Etaoin but also praised by him.

Wellington: {We might be able to tell, actually. You can look at a set of physical laws, light speed limitations, Planck length, and make an estimate of how easy they would be to simulate on a digital Turing machine, to some specified resolution. You then compare that to the average of the other possible sets. If you live in a reality that is suspiciously easy to simulate, that raises the chances that the set of laws was picked in order to make it easy to simulate them and, therefore, that therefore you are living in a simulation run by an intelligence.}

Bungo: {You’re saying an NPC might spot that the comparative value of Torello’s various currencies just happened to reach a perfect 1:10 ratio between each successive type of coin just in time for the arrival of adventurers who’re new to the society and who’d appreciate being able to calculate change with simple numbers? And from that, they should deduce that the sole purpose of every major event in their history was aimed at achieving the current state of the world, and suiting it to the needs of questing spirits?}

Wellington: {No, that’s a different issue. An arlife example would be the holographic universe hypothesis, which would imply a volume of space containing no observers could be perfectly replaced by a correctly simulated two dimensional shell enclosing it. Potentially it would be much cheaper, computationally, than simulating every particle inside a three dimensional volume. There are other shortcuts a programmer could use, that wouldn’t be perfect but which would be good enough for the practical purpose of fooling the simulation inhabitants unless they specifically go looking for certain side effects and edge cases.}

Kafana: {You mentioned something like that yesterday, when talking about reality magic to Camillo. They exist in arlife too?}

Wellington: {Maybe. In terms of an NPC questologist in the game, the place they actually need to search is in the laws governing their biology, physics and chemistry. Does the hit point system exist to reduce the data that’s needed to encode the body of each animal and NPC? Are there detectable side effects of the lazy-evaluation algorithm XperiSense use to generate back history and books in libraries? Are the small scale magic and material structures some say the ancient Hellenes used to make legendary items really an excuse for not letting current NPCs magically sensing stuff at the atomic scale, which would vastly increase storage requirements?}

Way way too technical. Time for distraction.

Kafana: {Talking of chemistry, Bungo, did you have any luck with the data Alderney sent you?}

Bungo: {None. We should join up with her. We need a different perspective, and odd-ball discussions always work better in person. That’s why so many brilliant ideas start off written on the back of napkins - new people, new scenery, and a new activity. Changing mindset from “work” to “sharing a meal” gives your brain an excuse to stop dutifully trudging around a well worn loop of the thoughts you’ve categorised as relevant. Break out of the box by breaking out of the cubicle!}

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Bulgaria’s voice surprised her, and she realised it had been so long since he’d spoken, that she’d forgotten he was in the chat with them.

Bulgaria: {Already arranged. Planchet brought word of an event we can’t possibly miss out on. We’re heading there now, and Alderney will be joining us in time for lunch.}

Kafana: {Is that why you’ve been so quiet? I wondered. You haven’t told us yet what you think it is.}

Bulgaria let amusement enter his voice. {The Greatest Game? Oh, that’s an easy one. I didn’t want to ruin your attempts at philosophy and, besides, someone had to pay attention to the surroundings or Alderney would throw fire bombs at us for starving her of usable recordings to publish. I’ve been watching the long procession of thieves, urchins, beggars and gossip mongers who’re trying to tail us or each other, without being noticed.}

Tomsk: {Are they a threat?}

Bulgaria: {I don’t think so. Most of them are low level and it is easy to spot which are the few competent ones, once you know the trick.}

Bungo: {You’ve a skill for that? I thought a person’s level couldn’t be identified.}

Bulgaria: {No, not an in-game skill. When we move slowly, the ones on the rooftops won’t lose track of us if they take safer but slower detours when there’s a wide gap between buildings. But each time we walk swiftly for a while, they’re forced to jump or fall behind. A really devious fellow would pretend to jump badly and occasionally fall, but there’s only one High Master Assassin on my list of those remaining at large, that any of our tails might match. We’re safe. Enjoy yourselves.}

Bungo sounded suspicious, and not a little sarcastic.

Bungo: {No, no. We acknowledge your expertise, oh Bulgaria the Great Philosopher. Solve the mystery for us humble mortals, we beg you. What is “The Greatest Game”?}

Bulgaria: {Are you sure you want to know?}

Bungo: {Yes.}

Bulgaria: {I warn you, the answer is self-evidently true, but it won’t satisfy you. Are you really sure?}

Bungo: {Yes!}

Bulgaria: {If I tell you, you’ll just kick yourself. You could get the answer from any pub in Little Britain, no matter how loud the drinkers or distracting the wide screen broadcasts.}

Bungo: {Tell me! Tell me right now, or so help me I’ll shave you bald, burn your clothes and then glue you inside a wooden barrel as a warning that philosophers will tremble at the tale of, long after you have died and time has turned every pub you’ve ever drunk at to buried ashes.}

Bulgaria raised a placating hand.

Bulgaria: {Ok, ok, I’ll tell you. The answer to the question, of what The Greatest Game is…}

Bungo: {Yes?}

Bulgaria: {...is…}

There was something masterly in Bulgaria’s voice and the way he could play people with it. Everyone joined in the chorus this time: Bungo, Kafana, Tomsk and even Wellington.

{YES ???}

Bulgaria, with great aplomb and satisfaction, finished his sentence with a final grandiose conclusion.

Bulgaria: {Football.}

The miscreant fled along Bauer Lane, his victorious laughter clear for all to hear, despite the hollering of the four behind him, pursuing him with outraged cries and weapons drawn.

Bungo was faster, thanks to his enhanced dexterity, but he was hampered by his emotions and Bulgaria took full advantage of knowing the local area and his practice at dodging in crowded streets. It wasn’t until Kafana cast a speed buff that the miscreant was eventually brought to bay and forced to kneel, Tomsk’s legendary sword Nothung radiating cold as he raised it into a dramatic pose - an executioner with cold eyes to match his blade.

Bulgaria threw himself upon their mercy, offering abject apologies to Bungo in a loud heartfelt voice that put tears in the eyes of passers by, head humbly lowered to hide his own eyes that positively twinkled in satisfaction. Bungo could only accept or carry through with his threat of using a barrel. His mouth twitched, especially as a cart piled high with barrels of apples trundled past, but prudence won and the apology was reluctantly accepted.

And that was how they departed Tickton, leaving behind a wake of bemused spies and new stories about the crazy Wombles. Lurid stories, as memorable as any crafted by a playwright’s pen, or planted by a gossip’s skill. Stories that almost seemed designed to spread and grow, drowning out any tales of lesser interest; including inconvenient tales whose value lay only in their greater accuracy. Stories to capture the imagination, and shift (if just a little) the beliefs of all who heard them.