Bogdan Mendez seldom raised his eyes from the chessboard. But he did now when he saw her step out and prop herself against the broad trunk of a nearby leafless tree. What did she want with him? It had been, what? Ten, twelve years?

Bogdan shrugged. The boy across from him didn’t notice. Eyes fixed on the chessboard, he scanned those sixty-four squares for a favorable solution that did not exist.

“You’re sacrificing your queen?” the boy asked.

Bogdan grinned and ran his hand through his graying beard. “Look closely before you act, Jonathan.”

Bogdan watched Jonathan’s eyes as they swept the board left to right and top to bottom.

“I shouldn’t take it, should I?” Jonathan didn’t look up, eyes still transfixed by the black queen’s precarious position.

“Do you think I’m trying to entice you?”

Jonathan looked up. “So it is a trick. If I take it… I shouldn’t take it, then?”

“Why do you think you have another choice?”

“Oh.” The boy frowned and squinted at the board. “If I don’t it’s mate in… mate in one?”

“Correct. The best sacrifices are those your opponent must accept. A sacrifice must force the issue. It places your opponent in a situation where he must take the very step you mean him to take.”

“By force.”

He stole another glance at her, standing to his right in her long black wool jacket. How long had she shadowed him? For the better part of an hour, he estimated. Probably longer.

“By force, yes.” Bogdan turned to his left. Seated on a park bench, he saw Jonathan’s mother, hugging herself, shivering inside her ridiculously ballooning jacket. He waved at her as he usually did when the lesson neared its conclusion, then returned his attention to the chessboard.

Jonathan’s hand wavered over Bogdan’s queen for a moment before he captured it with his rook. Bogdan captured the rook with his pawn.

“Wow. That’s cold,” Jonathan said. “It’s mate in two, as soon as you queen that pawn. You get your queen back, and my king’s dead.”

“The pawn doesn’t have to promote to a queen,” Bogdan said with the most gracious, benevolent smile he could manage. “A rook will do just as well, won’t it?”

“All right, game over, I guess.” The boy turned toward his mother, refusing to lay down his king or to say he resigned.

Bogdan decided not to force the issue this time.

“That’s the fourth game you win with a sacrifice,” Jonathan said. “First it was a knight, then a bishop, next a rook, and now…”

“Now a queen,” Bogdan said loud enough for the woman in the long black jacket to hear.

The boy’s nostrils flared. “I guess next time you’ll sacrifice the king. I’d like to see you pull that off.”

“Oh? Do you think that would be possible?”

“I’m kidding.” He turned to Bogdan. “You can’t sacrifice the king because if you lose the king you’ve lost the game.”

“Hmm. Maybe if we change the definition?”

“What do you mean? Like change the rules?”

Bogdan smiled at the boy, winked at him even. He had promise. “Let’s think about it. We might come up with quite the innovation, no? Call it the King’s Sacrifice.”

The boy shrugged, looked over at his mother.

“Is the game over?” she asked.

Jonathan stood up. “Yeah, way over.”

Perhaps in solidarity with her son’s sullen demeanor, or pouting all on her own, she said, “You know, when it’s this cold, I really wish we could do these lessons indoors.”

Bogdan wasn’t about to repeat past discussions on this topic. He shot her a benevolent smile. “Perhaps next time we will be blessed with warmer weather.”

She slipped an envelope out of her jacket and placed it on the table. Bogdan watched them walk away. To his right, the slender woman in the long, black jacket stood in place for a few seconds.

He smiled at her.

She nodded back and approached.

“Do you have a little boy you’d like me to teach?”

She sat down, deflecting his question with a coquettish smile. “How about a game?” she said. When he didn’t reply, she added, “I’ll make the bet thick and rich.”

“I’m afraid that would be quite illegal.”

“Oh? No one’s seen you play a game without money exchanging hands, usually in your direction.”

“You’re suggesting that I gamble, and as I said, that’s quite illegal. Not to mention the inherent connection to games of random luck, whereas chess is quite the opposite. I do collect a game fee, for the pleasure of my company and skill—a fee I waive if I lose.”

“Which apparently doesn’t happen.”

“Not often.”

“If often and ever were synonyms, then yes. Not often.”

Bogdan began to collect the chess set into two leather bags, one for the black pieces, and the other for the white ones. “How long have you had me under surveillance?”

She looked away, before turning back to him with a coy smile.

“You’re looking good, Bogdan. The beard is a nice touch. Makes you look very distinguished.”

“Thanks. But isn’t distinguished code for old?”

“It looks like you’ve been taking good care of yourself. Working out, I hear.”

Bogdan rolled his chessboard, stashed it into his red bag. The chess clock went in last.

“Twelve years is a long time before paying a visit,” he said.

“Everyone thought it was best. Like they say, time heals all wounds.”

“Time gets you closer to the ultimate wound, the one that puts you six feet under or inside an urn. This truth will become self-evident to you with, what else, the passing of time.”

He thought about standing up, walking away, leaving her behind, disdaining her enough she would leave him alone. But sitting there and looking into her eyes, he realized all over again how much she’d meant to him, how much he’d longed for her all these years.

“Why now?” he asked, hearing the crack in his voice.

“Now you’re doing better.”

“I’ve been doing better for some time.”

She reached across to caress his chess bag. “Do you enjoy it? Giving lessons?”

He considered whether to tell her how much chess meant to him, how much of an escape and a release from life it gave him. He almost told her how chess ushered him into a world where everything made sense, where rules always applied the same way, where calculation and foresight always won over emotion and random nonsense. He also almost told her what a rush he received when he bested someone, and how much a defeat crushed him intellectually. But would she get any of that? Or would she laugh at him inwardly?

“Yeah, I enjoy it,” he replied.

“That’s good, to do something you enjoy.” She smiled in that pleasant, calming way he recalled. “I know you probably would have liked to take a shot at the chess scene when you were younger.”

“But career and success got in the way.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Why now, Sylvia?”

She looked to the left and the right. “We’d like you to take a look at something for us.”

“You need my help?”

She looked at him, her eyes blank, her smile long gone.

His stiff joints ached as he pushed up from his seat. “And you’d like to discuss it somewhere more private.”

“Yes.” She stood up as well, and he took her in now, up close. So young. So slender. Still strong. Her bright brown eyes a bit tired now, but just as sharp. Her brown-auburn hair shorter and tidier than he recalled.

“Can I at least dream you’re prepared to do whatever it takes to entice this old man back into his old games?”

She smiled, this time with that coy, flirtatious air he recalled. “Sure. You can dream.”

He stepped beyond the table, turned and offered her his free elbow. “I have this beautiful Burgundy bottle back at my place, just the kind you love.”

“Oh? I thought you couldn’t drink,” she replied, stepping up and curling her left arm through his.

“No, I do not drink. Not one drop. But as I don’t think you are under such a restriction, that bottle’s label most definitely features your name rather prominently.”

Sylvia laughed as they began the walk back to his apartment, no doubt remembering the last time she’d had one of his bottles, nearly all of it, as best he could recall. He hoped that with that memory she’d also smile fondly at the love-making that had followed.

“That thing you told the boy,” she said. “About the King’s Sacrifice.”

“What of it?”

“Just head-gaming him, or for reals?”

He grinned and avoided her gaze. “Just making sure he considers all possible outcomes and weighs their ramifications.”

Bogdan expected her to laugh at his cleverly vague reference of their past professional connection. Instead, he felt her arm tighten around his, if only for a brief moment.

King’s Sacrifice is one of four stories in my Our Cyber World story collection, Random Origins. These stories detail the early period that shows how Our Cyber World got its Random. To read the rest of the stories and the rest of the collection, you can order it now…