The infinite game of pong: an exercise in the logic of game-theoretic thinking about strategy, ethics and morality.

I am an old man now, and this old man has no time for anything but pong. I've been playing it all my life. The ball is in play and the table is full of holes; the ball bounces off the backboard a dozen times until the point where it will finally go "in" when it lands. But not right away: there are many possible paths to follow between here and there, and only one of them leads to victory or defeat, and there's no point in thinking ahead about where you're going; the moment is the essence. There are no rules but those of the game, nothing but your own mind. This old man has lost his sight long ago, and can't even see what the ball looks like as it rolls along the table. All he has left is hearing. When I hear the sound of the ball hitting something else, then I know that my goal has changed slightly (or sometimes quite radically). Sometimes the ball bounces on top of the backboard and comes to rest right in front of me, so close that it takes a second to register that it could be a good shot, if I were able to move my hand quickly enough from here to there. Then the sound is different, and I know that I have to take a different path to get to where I want to go. Other times the ball rolls out from under the board, which changes the entire situation again, sometimes dramatically. The other players at the table (who have no eyes either) keep their mouths shut and wait for my signal to start the next round. They may be saying things behind my back. If they do, they don't say it to my face. My opponent never says anything to me; he doesn't need to. He always knows exactly what I'll do, and he makes sure that the ball follows the best trajectory available to him: a simple, clean game that never gets complicated. It's only after the fact, long after we have beaten all the other teams (which can be very frustrating), that my opponent comes up to me and tells me that I had played well, that he thought I was playing well from the first frame onward, that it's the first time he ever felt like his balls weren't getting in his way.

There aren't any rules. There is no point to winning or losing. You don't play to beat anybody else. You play to play. The ball is coming toward me, faster and faster, until at last I can hear it no longer.

The game of pong is forever.

A young man is standing before me with a big, heavy book open in front of him. It is a large black leather bound volume, which has been carefully opened by someone who didn't want any pages to fly away. Now the young man is flipping through the pages and making notes with a marker; he writes his name at the top of each page and puts a star beside his name.

At first glance it seems as if the young man is writing down the names of the other people he meets during the course of his lifetime. But after a few minutes I realize that it isn't that: this is something else altogether: the name written in the top right-hand corner of every page is mine, and not a single one is the same. Some of them are written in large letters, others in small. They don't all look the same. Some of them seem to have been written in a hurry, while the others have had more time to think about their message to me. All in all there are thousands of the things, each bearing some sort of message directed at me.

Here is one:

The game of pong is forever.

There are many more like these, which seem to mean something entirely different. I'm afraid to touch any of the pages that have fallen open on the ground. It would be too much for my weak heart. I just watch him work, and hope that I won't be here when he's done. I want to ask him what it all means, but I don't dare. For years I wondered what it was that I should be doing with my life, and how I would know when I had found it. I never knew until I saw the young man in the library, sitting at a table looking through this giant book.

Now there are only three people left alive who have ever seen the world in its entirety, and I am one of them.

I went back to our old neighborhood in Brooklyn after I got out of prison for a visit. I hadn't been back since I was released, and the area had changed quite a bit. The old apartment building itself was still there though, and the view that I remember was exactly the same as it was when I went to live there in 1950. In fact everything seemed to be the same. And yet I know that this couldn't possibly be true. Time has passed. It passes for everyone. For me in particular it has been the most intense and eventful period of my existence; I know that I am going to die soon, and there is nothing more urgent in my life than trying to make sense of all that I have experienced. So what does it mean? How can I possibly account for how things looked in 1950, when I can see the difference clearly here and now?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

There are four of us in this room. The other three are dead already, and have left their bodies in the closet by the entrance: two women, and a man wearing a suit. When we walk past, they don't pay any attention to us. Maybe it is the light that blinds them, maybe they are waiting for someone else. There are three chairs around the table. We all sit down in one of them, although it is impossible to tell who sits where: we each occupy a different chair. I sit at the far end, with the woman to my right.

Our host turns the lights down low, and we begin.

"It doesn't matter what you call it, as long as it's good."

So said the old man—who, it transpired, was also our host—in response to one of my questions. It seemed to me that, if nothing else, it was an excellent way to start a conversation.

For a long time we sat in silence, staring into the fire. The old man's eyes were bright red. Sometimes I felt that he was looking at me even when he wasn't. He seemed to have the power to make the flames dance just by turning his head slightly. The man's fingers twitched on the glass in front of him, and the flame licked up once more. The woman sat very close to the fire, and I could feel her warm breath on the back of my hand.

There was a time when we were all friends, and we shared everything. I don't know how long ago that was: it seems to have happened centuries ago, but I am not sure. It might have been the late 1800's, or even earlier, but it feels like we have known each other much longer than that.

We used to gather regularly, as friends do, to swap stories and make jokes. Sometimes there would be food. The old man could cook a mean roast. We used to drink wine, but not from bottles. We preferred bottles made of glass and kept in the closet at the end of the hall. Our conversations took place around a table that looked something like this one. This photograph is the only thing that survived in the old man's apartment: it was part of the evidence against him. We had gathered together because we needed to talk. It had been a difficult few weeks, what with the war and all. Things seemed to be getting worse by the hour. People had begun to lose their tempers: they argued with each other about politics, and the war, and the government. It was hard to keep track of anything anymore, and we all needed to talk.

One day the old man appeared unexpectedly at the door and invited himself inside. He wanted to tell us something, he said. A message from God, he called it. That was another thing that made him sound suspicious: calling God in as a character witness. "What are you talking about?" the old woman cried. "Do you mean to say that you think all this is happening because of some sort of divine intervention?"

I was sitting next to her, and I could see the anger building up in her eyes. She had always been a temperate soul, but she didn't seem to be able to control herself these days. The old man, for his part, simply laughed. "Look at us!" he said. "You and I are the living proof of how mistaken we have all been! You're right to question me."

She started shouting and waving her arms about as if she were trying to scare off crows. The old man looked at me, but made no move to leave. He didn't seem concerned in the least; and then he began to speak, and it was impossible to stop listening. His voice was low, but filled with authority: a quiet assurance that made me want to believe in what he was telling us. I thought the others might have noticed this, too. They listened quietly, almost politely. But the old woman was still angry. "I never believed in this nonsense," she shouted. "I've seen my share of wars, thank you very much! If I ever hear the name God again, I shall throw up all over your precious rug! Get out of here!"

The old man did just that. He went out through the door and closed it firmly behind him, and that was the last time we saw him. He had come to tell us that he was going to start writing a novel, he said, and he wanted our help. That was how we became four people, in one room, with three chairs.

We haven't talked to each other since that night; we have simply waited for the police to get here. I don't even know their names.