Chess

It was the first, official week of winter in New York. The snow had fallen and dusted the sidewalks with what looked like sugar icing. It was already 2 pm when the man and his hound finally emerged from his apartment and took to the streets to the agreed meeting point where his friend would undoubtedly be late. He didn’t like being out in the cold for too long, it held bad memories of a time long past so he always delayed until the last minute before venturing out for his chess rendezvous. He missed his hat too, his friend had held onto it and he wanted it back.

He enjoyed this annual familiarity of routine, and they had kept to it for so many years now it was as much a part of them both as DNA was. He wondered if science would ever work out the answer to the Nurture versus Nature argument once and for all but he suspected he and his chess-playing companion had an entirely different result for them.

The big dog bumped up against his leg affectionately, the man reaching down to ruffle his thick coat and play with his ears, momentarily sparking a contented bark before they both headed on towards Washington Square Park.

The streets were filled today, he liked that. The bustle of society was comforting in a different way to his previous life where he sought isolation and enjoyed the company of few. Standing at the corner of Bleecker and Sullivan he took in the sight and breathed it in. The dog nudged him, he was just as eager to keep this appointment too because the man’s friend always brought snacks. The man smiled warmly, “you’re a traitor, you know that?” he said, “come on then, we’re not far and you can run around for a bit first.”

Reaching the park they headed straight to the chess corner. Thankfully, with the colder weather, it wasn’t as busy and the sharks were out in limited numbers. He picked a table, brushed off the snow with a gloved hand, and sat down. The dog tugged at his lead, urgently reminding the man of his promise earlier so he removed it from his collar and set him free. “Stay close, y’hear?!” he called after the dog, who had already trotted off to investigate other humans playing chess. Some recognized the dog, immediately beckoning with a ‘hey boy!’ to which the dog obliged because he loved the attention. The man smiled again, a greying, bushy beard hiding just how widely he beamed, he loved that dog. Scanning the park he saw a few others, like him, and wondered if they saw him too before he closed his eyes, took in a deep breath of the winter air, and let his thoughts drift inwards.

He could hear the rushing of his blood, the threads of his muscles relax as he drifted. It was a peculiar side effect of the incident, ‘autophony’ they called it, where a person could hear the noises of their own body — the whooshing of their arteries, the sound of your own eyes moving. To many it would drive them mad, for him it was unnaturally calming. Outwardly he was motionless at the table, but inside his mind there was turmoil as he visited events that reshaped him almost 40 years ago.

It was cold. So very cold. He could barely feel himself being lifted away to another place as foreign voices shouted above a loud, rhythmic drone. In and out of consciousness, flashes of images, faces, a base, a doctor wrapping him in thermal blankets. Shouting. Another figure lying next to him in the room. A sting in his arm. A rush of bodies as someone else pushed themselves into the room, a young woman. Panic, was it panic or relief in her voice? he couldn’t tell.

Like someone fighting sleep paralysis, he tried to yell at them, warn them. ‘No, don’t do this, you don’t know, you don’t know.’ Nobody heard his mind screaming above her screaming.

The doctor had done the right thing, medically of course. Taking a transfusion from the other figure in the room who appeared to be in better health, pushing that through a jury-rigged blood warmer, and then recirculating it into his own body to fight the hypothermia was a genius and improvised move under the limited conditions and equipment the doctor had to work with. It took several hours before he fully regained consciousness, by that time things had changed forever for him, the woman, and everyone else at the base. Only one person had remained the same.

And he’d no doubt be late again. He was always late for chess.

His mind flashed forward. Both he, and his two friends were at another base now, much larger, and by open water. At this point, he and his companions were a threesome so working together made things a lot easier. He was a pilot once, his male companion a mechanic, she a scientist. It was a match made in heaven. Or in this case, in the middle of a perpetual winter’s paradise — a match to escape a frozen hell. They desperately needed to get away from this icy infinity, all three driven by a desire for warmth. The personnel at the base made them welcome at first, they were all brothers and sisters of science and discovery. But soon it all turned ugly. It always did.

The base’s inhabitants turned on them all. A team of scientists even tried to recommission an old nuclear generator, turning the base into an irradiated wasteland before he and his friends could get away. But they failed, only succeeding in destroying themselves. To survive requires preparation, and between them, they knew how to build and repair metal to take them all away from all this hate and fear. A distant memory recalled a time where the air offered a chance for freedom, this time they took to the water and it worked. They arrived in New York and made it their home for a while, waiting for things to pass before answering the call for something warmer.

Clark!

The rushing of blood in his ears almost drowned out his (late, as per usual) friend calling out.

Hey, Clark!

Slowly he opened his eyes and blinked away the memories. As he focused he saw the big man bending down to roughly play with the dog who had immediately bounded to meet him, licking his face in greeting. The dog barked loudly, demanding his present, and the bigger man obliged pulling out beef jerky from a pouch in an oversized rucksack. The dog devoured his treat with gusto before following him back to the table.

“You brought my hat?” the grey-bearded man asked, his voice had an unmistakable musical yet gravely lilt.

“You ready to lose it again?” the bigger man replied as he sat down, pulling a wooden chess board box out of the rucksack. He proceeded to set up the game as the dog wedged himself under the table, bumping the legs of both men. He lay flat, head resting on his outstretched paws. For a Husky breed, he was remarkably placid for just this one occasion every year. For the remaining 364 days his prey drive was just as his ancestry demanded.

“How you been?” the bigger man asked, eyeing his counterpart.

“Tired. I feel stretched thin. Been thinking why, could be because of them.” he replied, gesturing with his eyes towards some of the park’s visitors today, “The pandemic, I don’t think it’s something we even figured before.”

“I don’t buy it. I feel good.”

“You get lucky. It makes sense to me, it’s like admixture for him,” he leaned over his chair and patted the hindquarters of the dog for effect.

“What is this voodoo bullshit?”

“Wolves and domestic dogs have bred over the centuries creating hybrids, like Dire Wolves, each time there’s a mix where one trait supersedes another genetically but the baser instincts of the more dominant creature will always remain. I reckon the pandemic here has messed me up.”

The bigger man frowned. He was always a skeptic, sometimes violently opposed, but as he stared at and through his friend he could sense the thinness he described. “What do you suggest? We’re no doctor, and she’s the scientist. Have you spoken to her about this?”

“Yeah, she’s coming later. Anyway, I want my hat back.”

“Time you earned it then.” and the game began.

As pieces were moved, countermoved, sacrificed, and taken, both men connected again sharing thoughts and memories.

You still hate me for what happened.

I didn’t have a choice.

Do we need to do this every fucking year? I saved your life!

You took everyone else’s.

It was them or us. It will always be them or us.

What about her? Was she a part of the plan too?

She’s bright. We’re just men, we build things. She thinks.

Do you remember any of them?

I remember them all.

I want my hat back.

Fuck you, and fuck your hat! Check.

You’ve never been even-tempered, have you? Checkmate.

….Cheatin’ sonofabitch.

The two men stared at each other intently, then laughed loudly causing the dog to raise its head. Around them shadows had started to cast dark patterns on the snow as the sun hung low in the sky, time had passed around them unnoticed as it always did every year.

“Here’s your damned prize.” the bigger man said, reaching into the rucksack and pulling out a large brimmed hat, flopping it on top of the chessboard. His friend picked it up, symbolically dusting it down before settling it on his head. “You look like a damned fool now.” he chuckled.

“Hey Clark”, a woman’s voice broke the air and the dog excitedly leapt to his paws knocking against the table and shaking some of the chess pieces loose onto the ground. “Hey Clark, you miss me,” she repeated softer, ruffling the dog’s mane. Clark ruffed in agreement.

The bigger man cocked an eyebrow, his friend nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

“Good to see you Kate.” the man with the hat said.

“You two are as predictable as ever.”, Kate replied, “How are you both?”

“MacCready was telling me some voodoo bullshit about mixture.”

“Admixture, Childs,” MacCready interrupted, “and it’s not bullshit. Kate knows this new virus could fuck things up.”

“Kate?”, Childs gestured, pulling over a chair from another table.

She sat down, Clark settling down on his haunches next to her. “It’s true. We need to move until this thing is over and contained. Somewhere less densely populated.”

“Or where the population isn’t as dense.” MacCready joked darkly, looking around at the city’s inhabitants without masks. Even in the face of potential annihilation humans still found the capacity to ignore the obvious and help themselves. They’d happily fight tooth and nail and to the death against something they could see, but completely disregard what they couldn’t.

“What do we do? Where do we go?” Childs asked.

“I’m not going back to the Antarctic,” MacCready answered, “too cold, and too many memories.”

Kate felt into her pockets and pulled out a set of plane tickets, “How do you feel about New Zealand?”

Childs pulled out a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey from his rucksack and unscrewed the top. He took a mouthful, smiled, and passed it to MacCready.

The three looked at each other.

Clark barked.