Say, Why did you ask me to teach you how to play chess? Aside from the fact that you could have clearly learned it from the catalog, seeing as you have full access to it, why did you choose chess out of all the games?
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Pass time for the intellectuals? Well, you aren't technically wrong. But I can't really say I enjoy it much.
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You see, in the old days, Precisely around the 6th century, the Indians created this game based on war, and its purpose was to simulate it on a smaller scale. Well, not exactly, but that was the main inspiration. Back then, it was called Chaturanga, which literally translated into "four divisions of the military"
pieces each representing infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and so on, which later evolved into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and the rest.
They used these measures to simulate how each combatant moved and how they countered each other. Even though it was a game, it had intriguing ideas. As time passed, this game became popular and slowly became "pass time" for those in power. Even the power of the queen we see today is a reflection of that.
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Why do I hate it? This game was born during a very cruel period. A time where those in power sought to use those in less as mere pawns for their games, just like this one.
But in reality—or, well, in my opinion—people do outweigh each other. Each life is sacred in its own right and should never be sacrificed in order to achieve victory. And people who do see people as pawns—well, they do not understand the value of life.
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Naive? You aren't incorrect. But isn't that why I created you? To bring peace to this conflict-ridden world. You know, like a light bulb for the ever-encroaching darkness.
Anyway, let's return to chess, shall we?
Now I'll make the first move.
*****
"Hmmm"
Slowly opening her eyes, the ceiling that greeted her was anything but that. The tent's torn and worn skin could not block out the sunlight. of course It wasn't lethal, but it was bothersome nonetheless.
Pushing the soft futon under her, she stood up with a little bit of help.
Today is the second day of her life, or at least that's what it felt like. She needed more information—about herself and the world around her. Last night, she heard about a brief description of what seemed to be the age of chaos or something. Today, she needed to find out more about it in detail. And also about herself before she was in that trashcan.
Getting out of the tent, she was met with the gazes of the other homeless, or at least those that were awake.
Am I forgetting something?
A certain feeling came over her, as if she had missed something, but then she remembered that she had, in fact, technically forgotten everything besides her name, even if that was actually her name. Putting her doubts aside, she asked a few of the residents of this camp about it.
"A camp for the homeless"
"Heaven for the destitute"
"Buncha rags and bags sown together to make it look like a living' place."
Some said along those lines. While others seemed to not be in the mood for her antics, those who were in a bad mood seemed to be familiar with her. She probably asked them questions prior to the amnesia. The camp wasn't too big but also not too small; around 30 to 60 homeless people took residence in the area, so it would make sense for someone to not know her while others do.
After a series of questions, she made her way back to the tent that she remembered from last night, the chief's tent.
Knocking on the piece of wood that acted as a pillar for the tent, Mēden waited for the old man to allow her to enter. Contrary to her expectations, the man appeared to have left his tent before her arrival. So with one of his sources of information gone, she decided to go look for the black giant. Even though he seemed exasperated last night, he seemed like a nice person, so the chances are that he might be persuadable to help her with a little work.
After asking around again, it wasn't very difficult to find the man's tent. Also, his name is apparently 'Marcus', and he's the second man in charge in this camp. Hell, some people appear to be having thoughts about dethroning the old man in favor of Marcus.
'Being a chief and managing a camp of homeless people seems to be not without its challenges, huh?'
Locking that information somewhere deep in her mind, she paced towards Marcus's tent.
The moats of the tents looked like one another, with the difference of having a piece of wood on the ground near the tent's with the names of the tenants on it.
Before she even had the chance to knock, the man appeared before her in a flash.
'God, he's massive' Maybe it was because of the night, but she didn't realize how big this guy really was last night.
"You, what do you want? I'm quite busy."
'Yup, he isn't really in a good mood; he was already at a bad start before even beginning the conversation.'
"Gooooood morning, Mr. Marcus. I hope you had a wonderful night."
trying to suck up to him, she took a friendly pose and placed her hand on her cheeks as if she were a noble from the old ages.
"..."
However, not only was Marcus confused, but he was also quite disgusted.
'The mission has failed; abort abort!' While the alarms were rising in her head after seeing his reaction, Marcus's lips suddenly opened up.
"That aside, whatever that was, If you're looking for the chief, you probably won't have time to talk to him until the end of the day. after all its junk collection in the morning, segmentation till noon, and selling in the evening."
"Junk collection? Segmentation? And selling?" The news of the chief's absence disappointed her, but she had already kind of given up on him and tried her hand with Marcus.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
After hearing her question, Marcus let out a very long sigh.
'Mhm, this is definitely not the first time I've asked him these'
In his already bad mood, he furrowed his brows and began explaining.
"Here at the homeless camp, everyone must pull their weight; to do that, we have certain responsibilities that the chief oversees. For example, collect all the unused junk around the city, broken parts of old technology, or recyclable materials. Or maybe it's begging in the streets or looking under vending machines."
There seemed to be some hidden meaning behind his words.
"So your saying I should partake in such, uh, responsibilities?"
His already furrowed brows intensified.
"The last time you went to collect trash was two weeks ago, and now you've returned once again without your memories. What do you expect me to say?"
"So I'm exempt from responsibilities?"
The man let out a sigh. Really, this amount of mental pressure is not healthy for him.
"You don't always have to go outside for the responsibilities; there is a board near the main fire place where you can check the various responsibilities and ask Sammy to assign you some of them. He knows you, so don't worry about explaining."
"I see." Without waiting for her words to form a sentence, Marcus took off.
"He must not like me very much," which upset her to some point. With her pouty face, she decided to go look for this sammy guy; he sounds like a receptionist!
"Hmmm, uh...where is the main fire place?"
After a bit of walking, she managed to reach what appeared to be a massive camp fire. Some people huddled around for warmth.
Towards the left, there was an old, used table with a young blonde sitting behind it.
'Wow, he really looks like a receptionist, though a very poor one.'
Getting closer to interact with him, he seemed to be in his twenties. One would wonder how he got to be homeless at this age. He seemed to have a decent background from his looks since he didn't feel dirty like the rest of the people here.
"Hello, Mr. Sammy. i am mēden! some stay-at-camp responsibilities, please."
She held out her hand, as if the responsibilities would just fall in like candy.
The eyes of the so-called Sammy lit up, and he seemed happy to see her.
"Alice! Your back! When? Why did you not come see me? And what do you mean by Mden, have you finally remembered your name?"
Right, Marcus did say he knew me from before.
"Um, right, Mr. Sammy, you see, I have amnesia and don't remember anything about my past besides my name."
Sammy, who was in high spirits, suddenly lost all his vigor; he looked like a sad dog when their owner refused to take them out on a walk.
"I see, you lost your memories again? That's a real bummer; I wonder if this is some sort of illness or maybe you bash your head somewhere," theorized Sammy, scratching the back of his head as if in thought.
Stopping Sammy in his tracks and cutting off his lines of theories, he spoke.
"Let's forget about that, Mr. Sammy. Now can you give me some camp responsibilities? I have to work and wait to gather information about myself and the world from the chief."
After hearing that, Sammy seemed to feel like something was wrong.
"First things first, my name is Sam; Sammy is just what people call me around here, and you can't be polite and informal at the same time when you put a mister behind someone's nickname. So just be casual and use Sammy. Secondly you want to Getting info from chief? Why? I mean, some of his stories are true, but that only applies to some. Most are gibberish made from his old brain. If you want knowledge, why not ask me?"
'Dan dan! A new path opened; he seems like he likes me, so I should be able to ask him questions.
"Alright, Mr. Sammy, can you tell me about the current state of the planet?"
"What?" That line of questioning caused Sammy's eyes to go white from confusion.
'Did I ask a difficult question?' thought Mēden to herself.
"Oh well, i mean, its pretty hard talk about the state of the planet; besides, there are lots of things going on, but first, I thought you would ask about yourself, you know, since you have amnesia?" Sammy tried as best as he could to cover up the moment he let slip by.
After hearing that, something clicked in her head, which was the fact that she hadn't asked them about who she was before she went missing from this camp. For someone who is questioning the world around her, she didn't seem to care much about herself, which was weird even to Mēden.
"Your right! Before that, can you tell me a bit about myself? Since when have you known me? And why do you call me Alice?"
"Since it'll take a while, come inside and sit."
After entering the tent behind the table, they both sat on the old mat that was lying on the floor.
"Where to start? Ah, right. Around 2 months ago, when you came to the camp, you had no memories, and the only thing you had about your past was an old flash drive, a ring and lastly, a weird chess piece that you carried in your pocket."
As Sammy was explaining, Mēden started scrounging her pockets to see what was inside. But she couldn't find a ring, a chess piece, or a flash—just some scrap metal. After her failure, disappointment rose on her face, but she kept listening.
"Anyway, we didn't really have a working PC here, so we couldn't check the flash. The chess piece was something you find anywhere, but the ring had an engraving. However, no one could really read it, so we came up with nothing." Sammy, whose mouth had been dried by talking so much, decided to take a break by grabbing a bottle of water from what appeared to be an ice-filled tub that held various drinks (mostly stolen ones from vending machines).
"Ahem, after looking around for a few days, you started living here as a part of the community; you took responsibility and tried your best to fit in. Since you reminded the chief of his granddaughter, whose name was Alice, you decided to take that name until you remembered your own name. Anyway, you lived here for a couple of weeks while trying to find more about your past."
Like a doll, Mēden just sat there and listened to this long tale.
"If I remember correctly, along with the responsibilities, you used to visit a pawnshop or jewelry store to find out more about the ring and the chess piece, but to no avail. One day, when you left the camp for the nearby antique store to find a PC with a USB port, you didn't return. I looked for you, but apparently you never did reach the place. So we just thought you found something and left for good since it's pretty common for people around here."
"I'm guessing this is where I lost my memory a second time." Guessed Mēden while following the story.
"Mhm, you returned to the camp after another couple of weeks. Your memory was wiped out again, but you had lost the flash drive. At the time, I was away from camp, so Marcus explained everything. Oh, he did so the first time we found you as well."
'So thats why he seemed annoyed at the thought of explaining again' It finally clicked for Mēden why Marcus seemed the way he was.
"Same story as the first time: you lived a couple of weeks, worked, and when you had free time, you looked around for your past. Unlike last time, this time you disappeared when you were out taking on a responsibility. And thats really about it."
After finishing his explanation, Sammy was eager to see what kind of reaction he could illicit from Mēden, but contrary to his expectations, her expression remained unchanged.
"Is this what they call an info dump?" I wondered if Mēden was scratching her head.
"Nope, I haven't even started telling you about the world," replied Sammy with a smug face.
"Aghh," it was then that Mēden took some mental damage.
"Anyway, I don't have any of those items with me; maybe those cops took them from me in the alleyway."
When he heard the word cop, Sammy's expression turned to a solemn one. After explaining her mini-adventure after waking up, Sam let out a sigh.
"This is bad, but at least they didn't follow you here; technically, what we do here is illegal after all."
"What do you mean?"
"The land doesn't belong to us; it's government property, so us living here is a no-no." Sam crossed his hands to ease her comprehension.
At first, Mēden was annoyed that Sam treated her like a child who knew nothing of the world with that gesture, but then she realized it was technically true, so she calmed down.
"Anyway, if you manage to complete a few of these tasks, I'll give you a history document regarding the "state of the planet," his tone hinting at sarcasm.
"You can start with this."
*****
Meanwhile, in another corner of Atlas City, the headquarters of the Atlas infection prevention and control center
An old yet vigorous man with white hair sat on a grand leather chair. From his suit, one could tell he had quite the high position. In front of him, two officers, one younger than the other, were looking down.
The man seemed to be looking at the empty spot above the two officers, reading something.
"So, from what's stated in this report, officers Ivan and Caleb encountered a code 03, in other words, a possible case of infection within one of the alleyways of Jayo Street, now."
He returned his gaze to the officers, behind his calm demeanor, a dreadful furry.
"Tell me, what's the protocol in case you encounter code 03? Actually, why not read it from your PAS?"
The older officer slowly opened his mouth.
"It-"
Before even forming a word, the person who seemed to be in charge spoke in a calm tone, "Read it from your PAS."
The already-existing sense of dread among the two officers got even worse. Slowly, the man pressed and held his index finger on his left collarbone while whispering something to himself. Before long, the man also seemed to be reading something from somewhere on the ground.
"In accordance with the regulations of the Atlas infection prevention and control center, in the event of encountering a subject who has signs of apparent infection with any variant of the Tai-lang virus, The non-civilian must do all within their capabilities to eliminate the source of the infection. Whether successful or not, the person must stay within the perimeter and contact the Atlas infection prevention and control center."
After reading what seemed to be a code from some sort of law, a heavy silence devoured the office.
"So now tell me, why did you two leave after apparently subduing this so-called maiden?"
The two officers remained silent.
"Are you going to stay silent? Do you have anything to say for yourselves?"
"..."
"3-year suspension without pay for the two of you, effective immediately! Now get out of my office."
At first, the officers were dumbfounded because they expected a much more severe punishment, but they bowed and left in a hurry.
A few seconds later, a lady with cyber-prosthetic legs entered the office.
"Why did you let them go, chairman? With the way things are, execution wasn't out of order."
The supposed chairman let out a sigh.
"Yes, that would be the case normally, but you've read the report, haven't you? This maiden person is anything but that. She seemed intelligent, and there is a chance that she survived a hit from a bullet, besides this ring."
The chairman held it up and scrutinized it.
"PAS refuses to decipher the engraving."
The woman had suspected something, but hearing it from the chairman elevated her unease.