Doubled Pawns

Posted on Sun Aug 5th, 2018 @ 4:25pm by Qurban & Lieutenant JG Zork

3,311 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: S1E1: Bynars Be Bygones
Location: Mess Hall, Overwatch Station
Timeline: MD 12

The mess hall. It was a junior officer’s nightmare, especially on a first assignment. Especially on an installation such as Overwatch Station, where Zork had come to learn that turn over was high even amongst senior officers, and that he had been deemed “transient” by the resident AI due to his position and experience level. He’d been made to clean out every orifice of a Borg drone - and there had been an unnameable number of orifices - a job which had taken the last two days to complete, before being assigned permanent quarters. He was apparently not expected to last his first mission by Ferrofax, and the lack of interest in him from the mostly hollow eyed, seemingly always-on-edge duty officers only served to reinforce the feeling that he was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

The suite was meant for two, but Zork had yet to meet his roommate. He assumed he had a roommate, anyway. It was under this assumption that Zork considered the apparently opposite duty shifts a blessing, since Buddy’s goo (Buddy being the friendly, playful ball of organic polyplastic that secreted a harmless but pungent epoxy-like substance when excited) had gotten all over the floor and a majority of the furnishings. Cleaning the mess had involved getting clearance from the acting Operations head to acquire the solvents necessary to do so because Zork’s rank and position was the very bottom of the ladder, and nearly everything aboard was beyond his current clearance. The bunk had remained almost sterile because when Zork was not on duty, he opted to spend his time in the mess hall. He’d ensured that his uniforms were pressed and hung, neatly prepared his bed, and left with his replacement PADD and designs on learning a new hobby: Three-Dimensional Chess. His desk was traded for an eight person bench he ate alone at; where he read the accessible personnel files of the various crew and available mission logs; where he was allowed to use the infinitesimally small amount of processing power to engage in a surprisingly intensive holographic training program that guaranteed mastery if followed exactly.

It was in the mess hall that Zork sat now, still alone with his chess program. “Blunder,” the computer stated flatly, “Black checkmates in three moves.”

Zork huffed and looked over all three planes of the chess set on the table in front of him, unsure of how taking the knight that had forked his bishop and queen was a mistake. He sighed heavily in frustration, “Computer, restart the game.” The pieces scattered across the board disappeared only to almost instantly rematerialize in their respective beginning positions. He ran a hand down each of the pronounced lobes on either side of his head once in an instinctive, absent minded effort to assuage some of his frustration. He was obviously hesitant to begin another match against the program.

Qurban sat in the corner, sipping his tea quiet observation of the Ferengi. This was not the first game that he had forfeited, and by all appearances would not be the last. The former Q got up from his corner chair and walked over to Zork.

"Tell me, Ferengi. Why do you not play with Ferrofax?" He seated himself in an empty chair and sipped from his cup.

“Well,” he began with a reasonable facsimile of the disinterest the rest of the officers had exhibited, “the program says to play a live game.” Zork’s eyes wandered up and about. “And Ferrofax is a program.” It was an odd statement to make, in that it was directed to the room at large rather than his guest. It was the kind of statement that betrayed the anxiety and slowly growing paranoia he felt in such an alien environment. His attention quickly snapped back to Qurban, and the Ferengi visibly perked up, “You’re the first person to really say anything to me,” he was ready to burst, but Zork tried to cover his excitement with a memory of his father; what would Daimon Blott say on Overwatch Station? How would Daimon Blott treat these longview strangers? Zork spoke with a marked increase of confidence after this moment of reflection, in that his voice remained steadily casual when he invited the man to stay, “You wanna play?” Zork appeared to have an expectation of what the answer would be.

Qurban offered a wan smile. "Sure." He seated himself, then pressed the button to initiate a live opponent on the black side. "It's never easy being the new guy. Plenty have come and gone in my time here. Let me ask you this, Master Zork. How many others have you approached?"

The younger man had already opened with a pawn (e4) by the time Qurban had finished his first statement, at which point Zork had looked up politely. He was intent on every word the human spoke. His posture had improved, his eyes were open and expressive again, and it even appeared that the coppertone of his skin had been slightly revitalized. “I’ve only really talked to anyone on duty. I thought that,” his statement hung for a moment, already finding the fault in his approach to the station thus far, “I thought that would be enough.” He glanced back at the board, but just as soon looked back at his guest to add, “It worked on the New Jersey. And the Ableton!”

The young Ferengi's exuberance made Qurban chuckle. "My boy, did you think to set down roots? Look around at where you are." He swept the room with a flamboyant hand. "Turnover here at Memory Theta is outrageous because it's where things come to be entombed. The staff often transfers away to escape certain loss of life, limb, or sanity. You would be wise to do the same."

Qurban locked eyes with Zork as if to test his reaction.

Zork followed the hand and looked at the others present in the hall. They were undeniably a beaten down bunch, there was no denying that. “It’s your turn,” Zork stalled with a quick glance down at the board before locking eyes with Qurban. He leaned forward onto the table thoughtfully after only a moment, his voice at a hush, “They threatened to keep me on Sol duty if I didn’t take this posting.”

He looked around suspiciously at the room. It was painfully and immediately obvious no one else present could have possibly cared less about the conspiracy theories behind the personal politics a twenty-two year old Ferengi junior lieutenant was navigating, so he found himself quickly looking back at his guest, “They all but said it. I’d have gone insane doing that.”

Opening with the King's Knight, Qurban chuckled at Zork's reply. "Some might distinguish between insanity and boredom. Though they, such a the Q, might do so only out of self-assurance." He studied Zork once more, carefully assaying his body language.

“I’ve read about the Q,” Zork moved his queenside knight into the fray at c3, “are they here too?” With a sly smile, the young man straightened his posture in his chair and continued, “But I have classmates across three quadrants, and most of them weren’t even Reds.” The reference to a specialized flight of cadets was easy to interpret, even if one wasn’t familiar with Academy class structure. Zork made the remark with morose disdain, a tone that continued, “Taking this post was me reassuring myself.”

The young man looked up and put his hand out, “I’m Zork.”

"They call me Qurban, which is the only Q that I know if in Memory Theta." He moved his King Pawn one space, then smirked. "I've yet to acquire a color, though, whether red or any other." Shifting his weight back in his chair, he then regarded Zork in light of his answer. "One might infer from your admission that you already suspect madness in yourself. If one believed in fate, it would be tempting to see its hand in play here."

Zork shook his head in disagreement, “I feel like I’m sane in a mad world.” He decided on his queen pawn now, moving it two spaces forward (d4) in order to nearly complete the 2D classical opening he’d been learning to play for the past two and a half days. After a moment of analyzing the positions of the pieces on the board, Zork blinked rapidly and looked up, startled at what the man across the table had so humbly slid into the conversation. His ears imperceptibly widened in equal parts alarm and excitement, and the pitch of his voice jumped an interval and a half, “You’re a Q?!”

The young man shook his head in bewilderment and leaned back into his seat. His features soon relaxed, however not into the dead eyed Overwatch he’d been succumbing to earlier. He remained grave, there was no doubt, but had reclaimed the curiosity that typically defined the youth of junior Starfleet officers. “Maybe I am going crazy,” Zork started as, for the first time since leaving the USS New Jersey, he began to feel like himself, “After cleaning out that drone, wrestling with that blob, and dealing with Ferrofax for two days, I’m more worried about how to win this game instead of you turning me into a tube worm.”

Qurban threw his head back and laughed deep from his belly. "Oh, thank you... Zork, yes? I have not had cause to laugh so hard for some time." He moved his other knight forward to mirror the first. "The Continuum had no more use for me. Nor I it. With each passing day, I forget more and more of my prelapsarian existence. The standard humanoid one and a half kilos of gray matter evidently are not enough to retain Q... ness." Folding his hands to await Zork's retort, both game-wise and conversationally, Qurban added, "Rest assured, I could no more transmogrify you than you could me."

The chess board was not quite as Zork had expected it to look after the almost mechanical lessons he’d engrossed himself in. He was confounded, however decided to stick with the plan by moving his second knight towards the center of the board. When he completed the move, which brought him solidly to the beginning of the middle game of the Classical Opening, he looked up with a subdued but unmistakably genuine smile, “Zork, yeah.” He pointed toward the human and asked, “Qurban?” in such a way that betrayed he already knew the answer.

"Yes?"

“So you’re not a Q, then?” came the expected clarification with a sharpening of pronunciation and a steady, rising slide in his pitch. By all appearances the game almost seemed to be an incidental at that point.

Qurban shrugged. "I don't know what I am anymore." And then he snapped his fingers. "But whatever I am, it's not Q."

Zork furrowed his brows in mild confusion at Qurban’s gesture, not quite understanding the connection between the snap and the two statements. ”Hoomans,” came the internal thoughts of good-natured derision, derision that really stemmed from his lack of experience with non-Ferengi coloquialisms, ”still just apes with spaceships.” Zork nodded and, in as flattering a tone as he could muster, observed “You seem very hooman to me.” After a beat, Zork’s manners got the better of him; he couldn’t allow the statement - which was certainly the kind of backhanded compliment his people were renowned for making - to stand, “No offense. You have a ... an innate charm, is what I mean.”

"It's quite all right," Qurban said through an amused smirk. "You aren't quite what I expected a Ferengi to be either."

“No?” he returned.

Qurban shot him a skeptical look. "Oh, come now. You've heard of the Q, but not pejorative slurs against Ferengi?" He moved queen's rook pawn forward two spaces. "Perhaps those very things are what have kept you from reaching out as you had hoped others would."

For a fleeting moment Zork’s expression fell. It was not into the disappointment and anxiety that accompanied the loss of his personal affects due to Ferrofax’s disregard, nor in the embarrassment that had come from repeatedly misspeaking to an admiral; it fell into something much darker for that moment, with a clenched jaw that shifted forward ever so slightly and cheeks that relaxed as to give his nostrils more room to flare. Even his pupils had dilated, though the center of the cartilage ridge above his eyes had pressed downward and his gaze was almost far away with memories that shot through his mind like nadion beams: ”Your mother putting her oomax pants on tonight, Zork?”, “Prove to me you did this, Cadet!”, “Can’t leave anything laying around now, can I?”, “How many times a day do you count your latinum?”, “It’s like a Klingon, just runty and uglier.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “I’ve heard a few. It’s made me ....” Zork sighed heavily and relaxed once again, reminding himself that this man was not any of the cadets or instructors who had, maliciously or thoughtlessly, insulted his heritage over the past several years, “... skeptical of others.” He shook his head and almost grabbed one of his bishops before reexamining the board, “We don’t help ourselves much with all the greed and strict self-interest.”

"Nothing wrong with self-interest," Qurban said. "Life would be awfully short and boring without it. As would this game."

“Rule six,” the young Ferengi began his list in a near sarcastic tone, “Rule sixteen and seventeen, which are sometimes considered Rule sixteen and 16a - or even b - under a few jurisprudences; Rule twenty one, Rule twenty three, Rule forty eight, Rule - Rule one-oh-two ...,” Zork trailed off and looked up from the board. Despite the argument he was making about his people not helping themselves with the philosophy he was citing, the easy familiarity with the breadth of it seemed to be a point of pride, “We can take it a little far.”

The chess game had now gone entirely off script with Zork’s last move to a4. It seemed he’d spotted something the program hadn’t taught or couldn’t impart. Either that or he was making an amateurish mistake.

Qurban smirked at the Ferengi's antipathy for his own people. He moved his queen's pawn two spaces. "Or maybe not far enough. Don't you find it odd that for a people so taken by the notion of profit that there are so many handicaps and restrictions placed upon it? Your 'Bill of Opportunities' is parodied by the Tower of Commerce and its Rules. Even subverted, from a certain point of view. What would happen if the Ferengi Alliance were to act in complete and utter self-interest? Would they not find that in helping others they help themselves, as the rising tide raises all boats?" He settled back to wait for Zork to survey the board and consider his words. "Perhaps you would do well to look after yourself a bit more as well."

First blood: e2xd5. Zork remained silent, though, as to better ponder Qurban’s words regarding the philosophy that dominated the social structure of his people’s society. He kept his focus on the board during this time, however split his mental faculties equal parts between the escape the game provided and the interesting hypothetical that had been proposed. He looked up just as soon as the wordless moments began to border on what could have been considered rude, “I don’t think the Alliance would be quite as ...,” he struggled for the right word, “quite so benevolent with the rewards of unmitigated self-interest as you’re thinking. Helping others means, ‘help me help you help me.’”

"Symbiosis is the circle of life," Qurban observed. "You will never find parasitic lifeforms larger than your fist--well, biological ones, that is." He chuckled at the morbid truths hidden behind his self-correction. "If an uninhibited Alliance were to be fully parasitic as you predict, then it would collapse upon itself as the Klingon and Romulan Empires have done time and again. There is a reason that your people have withstood 10,000 years of peaceful successions of power, and with no formal declarations of war."

Qurban lifted his queen and moved it forward to dominate the center board. "Balance. Your Rules of Acquisition serve as the Alliance's balance to unchecked profiteering. But what if a Ferengi began to value wealth on a different scale?" He raised his eyebrows, enticing Zork to follow along. "The Black Nagus is but one example. For him, wealth is measured in power and secret knowledge. But what if another DaiMon were to challenge the status quo on a different level? Social equity, mutual cooperation, universal benefit, just to name a few suggestions. The Ferengi who stacked his portfolio with those commodities would be well-received in the Divine Treasury, would he not?"

The young man frowned, “Black Nagus?” It was a mildly sarcastic rhetorical question with a hint of disbelief to it, as the fabled antithesis of the Ferengi Alliance hardly ever came up between sober adults, “Old-Banker-Rolls and make believe don’t make for good arguments, Qurban.” Zork took the black queen with his knight - Kc3xQd5 - and looked up with a contained satisfaction, “But I agree there’s more to be gained out of this life than money. The treasury isn’t concerned about anything but deposits, though. At least to hear the Nagus and the Great DiDaiMons talk about it.” The little known ranks beyond Daimon were dropped as though they were familiar terms, and the fact the extra emphasis on the word denoted an entirely separate rank with the Alliance power structure was casually ignored. Zork was enjoying the conversation that thoroughly.

"You are on an automated station run by a capricious artificial intelligence playing a game with an exiled Q," Qurban said as he reviewed the board. "There are worlds mere dozens of parsecs from here who would call you crazy for stating the truth of that observation." Qurban moved his bishop forward to challenge Zork's knight. "But to your point, I was speaking of deposits, though with different currency. Anyone can make profit, but can you make life? Surely life would be the rarest and most valuable commodity to offer the Treasury."

“I got into that argument once,” Zork mused idly as he pounced with his knight to c7, his recently ingrained tactics lesson keeping him in the lookout for just such a fork, “My elders strongly disagree with the two of us. Check.”

Qurban sat back and smiled. "Ah, but they won't be the elders forever, will they? One day you will be..." He pressed a few commands into the computer console. "... and the tables will turn."

The board flickered for a moment. "Parameters changed. New rules instated." Qurban maneuvered his king across the board, hopping multiple pieces, and seized the other king's bishop.

"Checkmate," said the Q Exile with a fatherly grin. "It was a pleasure making your acquaintance, Zork."

Zork’s mouth fell agape at how hard a left the game had taken. He stared at the board in stunned silence, though it didn’t take long for him to look up incredulously, “Did you seriously just Kobayashi me?!” After a moment the frustration turned into a big, sharp-toothed smile. There was a certain amount of admiration pastor Qurban as, between amused chuckles, Zork continued, “You just Kobayashied me! How’d you do that so fast?”

Qurban rose to leave. "Simple," he said in parting. "I never play by another's rules."

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