The Great Game

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction!

Alice shakes her head. “What’s outside the window?”

“That’s where we are.” The idea makes me shudder. “This place is built inside a fibre of space-time, stretched out and round to loop back into itself, set totally apart from the rest of reality.”

“Oh.”

I get the feeling we both rather wish she hadn’t asked.

“So then,” I say briskly. “Are you up for looking for Eadida’s body?”

“I suppose so.” She doesn’t look exactly thrilled by the prospect, but that’s hardly a surprise. “We’ll need to find Massinisa.”

His room is down the corridor a short way, close enough to Alice’s and to mine that it is going to stay in the same place.  He’s on the block, in other words. Alice knocks, and a few seconds later he answers the door.

Massinisa is dressed in reds and golds and browns today, silks and linens, lots of fluttering edges. It’s very grand, but it must be horribly impractical. My God, is my closet going to make me wear worse outfits than the one I’m currently stuck with? It’s a frightening thought.

“Hello, Alice.” Massinisa sounds grave. “And to your friend, too. You look sad.” Behind him, his room looks surprisingly minimalist and sterile — chrome, glass, white surfaces, everything his clothing isn’t. I wonder which is the real him?

“Hi Massinisa,” Alice says. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m afraid we need to find Eadida’s body.”

Massinisa wrinkles his nose, and sighs. “That poor girl. I left her in a ghost room.”

Ghost room… “You mean a blank node, right?”

He looks at me curiously. “They are without content or form, filled with hints and shadows.”

I nod. “Yes, that’s a blank node.”

“It is where we let the dead rest,” he says. “It seems fitting.”

“Can you take us there, Massinisa?”

“I will take you there, Alice. Both of you.”

She smiles at him, and I can see some of the tension ease out of her shoulders.

It takes about half an hour. We walk in silence, wrapped in thoughts. The way is not straightforward, and I wonder idly how Massinisa can find the place again. There’s nothing en route but door-speckled corridors, not even a rec area, and I find myself wondering if the hotel is deliberately keeping our way clear of distractions. We end up at a white door in a stretch of corridor that looks like it came from the same designer as my clothes. The carpet is predominately orange and brown in an ugly hexagonal pattern, and the white doors look cheaply laminated.

I don’t doubt Massinisa’s word, but the room in front of us is not an empty node now.

 Loading ...

Today’s photo is by Gaelx.