A Brief Look at Competitive Chess Through 3150
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
"A Brief Look at Competitive Chess Through 3150" by John Leppik
Issue 3.4 | Fiction
In the year 2376, the East London Infinitum Supercomputer solved human immortality, and, incidentally, chess.
—
In the year 2480, Eddie Swallow unsolved chess by stealing the board from ELIS long enough to cause a runtime error, and would go on to become the first left rook for the North Atlantic Chess Team.
The World Chess Consortium was divided on this move for decades, and eventually made the biggest change to chess in thousands of years: Mr. Swallow’s move was retroactively made legal, thus opening up the immortal world of chess to a whole new range of possibilities and quietly removing the problem of computers making the whole sport boring for everyone. To accommodate, they made two rules that would establish the game of new chess as separate from old chess: pieces can only move if their player is at the board, and turns are skipped if they take longer than a day.
Becoming a team sport was only natural after that.
—
In the year 2572, Eddie Swallow, now number 9 left end defensive rook for the Great Lakes Chess Team, tramped through the forests of north Michigan trying to find the board. It was three days since he’d spotted any opposing players, but the other two members of his defensive line were setting a trap across the upper peninsula in a copper mine of the sort that was common back in the day when mines were still needed.
The opposing Nova Scotian Chess Team had done an impressive job despite playing in unfamiliar territory, but Eddie had received a tip from a local fan that they’d spotted several people moving east through the forest carrying what looked like a chess board. If they were able to set up the board for long enough to make a move it could spell disaster; but if he could get the board to his teammates in the mine, he could save the game.
—
“Happy 2690, and welcome to the trash chess podcast! We look at the worst of the worst in chess so you don’t have to.”
“That’s new chess, obviously. There were some horrible games back in old chess-”
“Horrible!”
“—but that’s what archaeologists are for. This is trash chess that we have certified, unmistakable video of.”
“I’m Lars Kudla, and this is my co-host, Benny Kramer.”
“And speaking of chess archaeologists, our game for today is a historic one involving the one, the only, Eddie Swallow, unsolver of chess!”
“What a guy! This is a game that started in 2570 and Eddie was still fresh off coining the ‘treacherous advisor’ gambit, where you’d have someone from one team infiltrate the other and start giving false information.”
“Absolute game changer! Opened up so many new strategies!”
“Right! So you might be thinking, ‘why haven’t we seen much from Eddie lately?’ NSvGL2570, that’s why. The uncallable game. So called because it was the game to make every game afterwards include forfeit conditions.”
“But they didn’t have those when NSvGL2570 started!”
“No, they did not. Benny, why don’t you set the scene for our listeners?”
“2572: the game’s been going for two years now. Great Lakes has the home turf advantage, and Nova Scotia’s getting desperate. They’ve already lost three pawns, a bishop, and a knight because Great Lakes keeps hiding in these old mines. You know, from back when it was called the rust belt?”
“I remember.”
“Right. If the piece you’re playing can’t reach the board, they can’t move. And Nova Scotia just cannot move with all these mines around. So they go for a reversal. Hit the GL players with a taste of their own medicine.”
“Well, not really their own medicine. This was definitely new medicine.”
“Okay, okay. So Nova Scotia waits for a group of GL players to duck into a mine. They think they’re setting something up, and you know, they probably were. They’re going to cause a cave-in and trap them in there long enough to finish out the game, then rescue them once it’s all over. But Lars, what mistake did they make?”
“They forgot to get their own guys out before blowing the cave entrance! So now guess who’s stuck down in the mine?”
“Yup. Three GL players, four NS players. And none of them have the board. The board is somewhere in Lake Superior, and both teams have already castled kingside.”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously. That was the move back before breakers got added.”
“And some say that Eddie Swallows is still in that mine to this day! Oooooooo!”
“Pfft, we say! ’Cause they are! But neither team wants to rescue the other because it would mean the other team gets out too. So it’s just been seven guys in a mine for a hundred years.”
“A hundred twenty today!”
—
The 2781 edition of The New York Times was surprisingly quiet about the 2781 World Chess Championship, considering both the importance of the game and the unimportance of the rest of that day’s news. Buried beneath a piece on the continued non-existence of alien life and an article on the continued extinction of all coral reefs was a brief mention of what the on-scene reporter had gotten from the match: Stockholm wins in five moves over Moscow, will advance to semi-finals in November.
What the reporter neglected to mention was the fact that Stockholm’s “five moves” were all done through a plan by the Stockholm team’s chief strategist, Agnes Lundell, to forcefully kidnap the Russian team’s entire backline via helicopter, thus both crippling the Russian team’s ability to play and causing a diplomatic incident.
The match was officially recorded as “1. e4, e5 2. Nb3, a5 3. Bd3, f6 4. Bf3, g5 5. Qh5#” but unofficially recorded as “The Swedish Surprise,” which became the name for the gambit of using rules technicalities to bring outside vehicles into chess matches. Helicopters had been banned from the game, but only through a clause against “motorized vehicles.” Since the helicopter in question was being powered by two dozen people spinning flywheels inside the craft, the move was deemed legal, thus sparking the international incident.
Luckily, The Swedish Surprise also did a great job of making an otherwise unremarkable chess match into unmissable TV. Vehicles would be much more common in future games.
—
2910’s premier Truck Chess league is just getting started! With loads of names you love returning, like King Queensmasher and Jacob Heartbreak, this is one chess match you won’t want to miss!
We’ve got loads of footage straight from the trenches as each pawn is driving, for the first time, their very own motorcycle, complete with live camera feeds straight to your screen! It’s unbelievable, and these chess players won’t hesitate to smash and grab the board for all they’re worth! (Live board display available for $10.99/view or subscribers to NexChessTV.)
—
The Y3K Millenium Chess Match was held on the Apollo Moon Base at enormous expense, promising to be an Earth-shaking (and moon-shaking) event beamed live via laser to stations on Earth.
The actual event would go down as one of the most monumental failures in chess history, as while players couldn’t die on the moon, they also couldn’t breathe, meaning suits and buggies were required at all times to play on the moon’s surface lest the players pass out. This would have been fine if the council responsible for establishing the rules of the game hadn’t forgotten to remove one particular rule from the previous year’s competition: “Once a player’s hand touches their piece, they must move the piece, and pieces must be moved by a player’s hand rather than any sort of assistive device.”
Gloves were determined, via ruling after match start, to not count as “a player’s hand”. The chess world watched, at the turn of the millennium, as two teams of astronauts sat around for two weeks waiting for an official to be carried to the moon to give a ruling on the game.
“Nope. A glove isn’t a hand.”
After another three years, the game was a draw by mutual forfeit. No moves were made.
—
“Eddie! Eddie, wake up!”
“What? What are you— holy shit.”
“Yeah. Holy shit is right.”
“That’s sunlight, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“Go get the rest of the guys. We made it! We actually made it! What year is it?”
“3150.”
“3150. Holy shit. Five hundred years and we finally did it.”
“Wait, Eddie. Some of the guys are... You know.”
“Right. Look, I think I can get checkmate in six moves. I’m a rook, I’ve got options.”
“They gave up a while ago. But if you don’t end it, they might start, you know.”
“I know. Shit, what do you think the world’s even gonna be like out there? It’s been half a millennium.”
“Give or take. I’d say, better.”
“Always the optimist.”
“Enough to keep digging.”
“Damn. I’ll bet the rest of the team’s not even together anymore.”
“We’ll be making chess history, I’ll bet.”
“I’m Eddie Swallow. I’ve always been making chess history.”
—
John Leppik is an English educator and bird lover currently working to bring affordable roleplaying to Minnesota libraries. His work has previously appeared in the Minnesota English Journal, CommuterLit, and the anthology “Innards.”
Comments