To Answer THE Question

To Answer THE Question

Forget the meaning of life. For chessplayers there has only ever been one burning question: Who is the greatest? You might have thought that since the machines took over chess, after the 2176 World Court ruling on Artificial Intelligence Equality and Integration, that this debate would have fizzled out. True, these alternate life forms have dominated the top levels of the game for centuries now; this has seemed to rob humans of the egotistic urge to excel – few outstanding players have appeared since the Golden Age of the 20^th Century. Even now, over a millennium later, seekers of truth analyse the playing styles of the greats ...the great humans, I should say.... trying to compare the fevered brilliance of Morphy to the wildly inventive speculation of Tal's play; the field-annihilating dominance of Fischer versus the cool, relentless calculation of Kasparov.

Well, this was 3124 and the time was long overdue for ending this debate. As a trusted member of the Historical Society I was entitled to annual independent voyages into the past to view events using one of the State-owned time-ships. The trip authorised was for a simple prearranged “stop and see” jaunt; no interference was permitted and this was regulated and enforced by the AI pilot on board the ship. That would have been the end of matters but for one of my closest friends, a mechanical man (this was the fashionable if slightly retro term) called Kestron Tar. He had, maybe ironically for an AI, also developed a fetish for ancient human chessplayers and their works and we had corresponded at length on this subject, in addition to meeting frequently in a replica chess café. The replica cafés were where people would go, often dressed as their heroes, to re-enact famous chess matches. Kestron would play using subroutines to emulate playing styles of various maestros. Once he turned up an hour late on a night he was copying RJ Fischer then complained about everything when he finally appeared; he was known for his sense of humour that way. Anyway, Kestron Tar had managed to get himself on the duty roster for operating the time-ship I was scheduled to use and we had acquired some other, mainly illicit, equipment also.

The ship was a wonderful creation made possible by breakthroughs in a number of scientific fields: time travel, obviously; spatial event-fixing, to home in on a key place and moment; phase-shifting, to allow the travellers to be present but not occupy any physical space – this was the normal method employed so large groups of tourists could view key scenes in history; most important of all, especially for our plan, stasis field generation which allowed you to effectively freeze a small segment of time. This last feature was usually used for investigations of crimes and worked by the ship back-pedalling in time, so to speak, using its time drive to “tread water” at a given moment. It didn't actually freeze time but it may as well have – you would see the scene as a tableau, people caught mid-action.

Our official programmed trip was to view (but not interfere with) the death of a pioneer of chess: Francois-Andre Philidor. This journey was set up for 1795 in London, where Philidor, now in his late sixties, spent his time in exile from the French revolutionary government. Kestron ran through one final check of our supplies and we talked over each stage of what we would do. Ready at last, we nodded to each other and he activated the time-ship's controls. As always, to say the journey was surreal was an understatement. The time-ship took on a translucent appearance for everything, us included. The tech experts assure people in the training/orientation sessions for using the ship that we were impervious from harm by any matter or radiation in this mode. It was still unnerving. Of course anyone outside the ship would have seen nothing of us, only we saw the phased reality. It was uncanny how the ship zoned in on the correct location and time but suddenly we were there – it would have been thrill enough to have been present in 18^th century London but as we neared the house where Philidor lived I marvelled. To actually see the great man! We could see the inside of the house now as the time-ship glided effortlessly through the walls. I recognised Philidor from archived images; he had a man attending him, clearly a doctor, as he lay dying in bed.

As we watched, the moment of death came and the champion collapsed back on to the pillows. We acted immediately and the scene froze in that instant, the doctor consulting a pocket-watch to record the time of death. With no particular hurry but every care instead, for time was of no issue now, we scanned Philidor's body and fed the data into our matter transmuter – one of the devices we had brought with us. Within minutes we had a doppleganger corpse, an exact copy right down to the clothing. We substituted this for Philidor and put him straight into a stasis pod. Once there, healing could begin, and even rejuvenation of years. For this was our intent: we would bring back the world's chess greats and have them play the most momentous chess tournament of all time.

We left immediately – our work here was done and the next recruit was waiting, or would be, some eighty-nine years into Philidor's future. The time-ship came with berths for forty tourists in case of breakdown during a sightseeing voyage – not a common occurrence but when it did happen there would be no rescue vehicle to call on; the AI on board would normally fix any problems but this could take a little while if it was complex. For us, though, it meant we had ample room for the dozen passengers we proposed to take on. To this end we had enabled eight stasis pods – they were quick-acting and would not require long to heal the occupants. As I was saying, though, our next target was in 1884, in New Orleans: Paul Morphy was going to have a stroke and then, after he died, the surprise of his life.

Morphy had been troubled in his last years, this much I knew. What my mechanical friend and I hoped was that our tourney would restore his purpose and his joy in chess. As with Philidor we were aiming for when he had just died. We got there a little early so watched, unseen. Paul had arrived back after a brisk walk and asked his mother to fix him something to eat, getting into a cold bath in the meantime. He never got that sandwich as the cold of the bath brought on his stroke and he died. We stepped in and “froze” events again, making another corpse-substitution as before. As we bundled the great American player into his stasis pod, Philidor was starting to look a little better in his. This was welcome progress. Now it was time to visit New York, sixteen years later to pay a visit on the last hours of Wilhelm Steinitz, a sometime contemporary of Morphy, but himself the first official undisputed world champion.

It was not any particular need by the time-ship to collect the masters in mostly chronological order but simply we felt that as they started to revive it might be best for them to encounter champions nearer their own time-frames. They would either know each other or know their play more intimately, possibly even be shaped by each other. Back to Steinitz – in his later years he was poor, having lost his way financially, struggling from one match purse to the next. When we collected his just-deceased body we were leaving behind his widow who would run a small shop to make ends meet. I wished we could help her but that would be tampering with the time-line – it was one thing taking something that wouldn't be missed, namely an identical corpse to one we left in its place, but quite another to alter someone's fortunes. With sadness, Kestron Tar set the controls for the second world war, 1941 more specifically. We would stay in New York for our next two “pick-ups”, seperated by just a year: two truly great players, ironically both from the same hospital in that city. I will spare you details you can guess at; we would again tread water in time and intervene, copying the bodies and putting the originals in stasis pods. From 1941 we recruited Emanuel Lasker, who died of a kidney infection and from 1942 arguably the best player of all time, at least to my mind: Jose Raul Capablanca, who passed after a brain haemorrhage.

To my delight, the stasis pod panel indicated that Philidor was hale and hearty again already. We had anticipated some difficulty in re-integrating him but his astute mind had a surprisingly firm grasp of events from the moment we fully revived him. We explained briefly what our mission was and he readily embraced it; the notion of playing against the finest chess minds of all time appealed strongly to him. For most of our recruits, particularly the later ones this would be the chance of a lifetime to play their heroes; for others, notably the earlier ones a similar attraction, but for the different reason that they had lacked the challenge of the later eras to test them. Philidor agreed to be the greeter as the other champions emerged from their pods – who better than him? We spent a little time answering some of his many questions – a few about the world and its changes, the rest about developments in chess theory.

We were setting the controls for the next target when Paul Morphy started to revive. We helped him out of the life-supporting pod and led him to a seated area where Philidor waited. Kestron and I looked on concerned as he sat, legs understandably shaky. Morphy had, like a few of the champions, had difficult later years which, depending on what rumours you paid heed to, included paranoia and depression. He looked alarmed at first but our supporting arms were needed more for the look of shock on his face when he saw Philidor rather than for any infirmity of body or mind.

“I saw your picture many times when I toured Europe” Morphy exclaimed. Explanations followed, but before long we were able to leave the two great players talking enthusiastically. Kestron and I moved back to the time-ship's controls and selected the data set for just after the wartime we had taken Lasker and Capablanca from, to 1946 in Portugal to collect Alexander Alekhine. Meanwhile, Philidor took Morphy on a brief tour of the ship; Morphy apparently was quite excited to see Steinitz in the next pod after him – I understand the two had played and talked prior to their deaths. I wondered what it must be like to talk to an old resurrected acquaintance: it would be strange on many levels, I mused.

The recovery of Alekhine's corpse would be slightly more problematic. The other decedents had been horizontal in position but Alekhine was in a chair in his hotel room when he choked on something he was eating. We had to freeze the scene and then pose his double carefully in his place. This done, however, it was a routine extraction. We put him in his pod but I couldn't help wondering how his contemporaries would view him – there had been some ugly rumours about his Nazi ties in the records about him. Time would tell. On, now: nearly fifty years from that point to recover Mikhail Botvinnik from 1995 – many of the people we played with at the replica chess cafés disliked him from his reputation as a Soviet bully but personally I admired his tenacity to cling to the top of the power structure of chess for three spells there. He was 83 when he died, of pancreatic cancer; one of the features we had built in to the rejuvenation machines was to bring the masters back at what was effectively age 50 in terms of cell structure and mental cohesion, for those who made it that far. This meant we would have most of them at, if not their best, close to their top form.

In contrast to the stern, workmanlike Botvinnik was the next Mikhail – “Misha” Tal. Only world champion for a single year, he was nonetheless a strong favourite with chess addicts of all eras since he took the centre stage. For him we had broken with our strict chronological order for reclamation – mainly because we had concerns about how long it would take to bring the ageing Botvinnik back to full health and ability. Thus, for once, we stepped back three years to 1992 to get the Latvian Tal, to the Moscow hospital where he had just been proclaimed dead from kidney failure. So many of our heroes had died of simple organ failures that our modern machines would have easily regrown for them. What barbaric times those twentieth century players had to endure. We were just putting this most charismatic player into his pod when Steinitz surfaced from his slumber to be greeted enthusiastically by Morphy who promptly introduced Wilhelm to Philidor and started to babble explanations. Kestron and I decided here that we should let the great masters take care of the orientation sessions themselves but did suggest they make their way to the main hall where we had some chess sets in place for analysis and casual bounce games of chess. They eagerly complied.

I was about to rejoin Kestron when I was hit with a wave of nausea; my vision started to blur and just for a second I forgot where I was. I recovered but was left a little discomfited. I hurried back to Kestron Tar but said nothing of what I had just felt – don't ask me why, maybe I feared he would abandon the expedition if he had concerns for my health. We took a little time to check on our “sleeping” passengers before setting off. As we entered the translucence of the time-travel, the chessplayers wandered back through to join us, curious. I told them a little about the process during the few minutes it took to reach 2008. We arrived in Iceland on January 17^th, at the Reykjavik hospital. We left the main viewing screen on so Philidor, Morphy and Steinitz could see what we were doing. I can only imagine their slack-jawed amazement at the frozen scene they would be witnessing. Bobby Fischer had just died from degenerative renal failure and with the usual reverence Kestron and I scanned his body then created a double on the ship. Steinitz and Philidor looked on rapt as the doppleganger was created; Morphy looked a little sick and I can't blame him. We swapped this for the original and popped Fischer in his pod.

All was going well: we had only three more pick-ups to make and our instruments indicated that Lasker and Capablanca were nearly due to revive; their pods' timers were so close together that we synchronised them for simplicity. No harm would come to either from this – Lasker could probably use a little more rejuvenation time anyway. They emerged, sure enough, simultaneously and we were glad of our decision – faced with the absurdity of their surroundings they at least had familiar faces with each other. I led them through to join the others, who were back in the games room. When we got there Morphy and Philidor were playing with Steinitz watching. I stopped also, myself entranced. Capablanca touched my sleeve to ask if the players really were who they appeared to be; I nodded and briefly outlined that we were assembling great champions of the game from its history.

I must confess, I was surprised at how well each of them had taken the adjustment to their new environment. On reflection, though each of them, no matter how nice or humble, was aware that they had been the best player at some point; couple this with every human being's innate megalomanic feeling that they would live forever and it shouldn't be too much of a shock – after all the brain is a very resilient organ. Certainly, it was not long till that universal translator, chess, had Capablanca and Lasker part of the little group, applauding fine moves and whispering analysis to each other or to Steinitz. When I left them, Morphy was a pawn down to Philidor but with some fierce compensation.

Next on our list was Anatoly Karpov, who passed on in 2037, aged 86. To think of assembling the chess greats without him was impossible. More, though, I prayed we would get to pit him against Fischer for the great 1975 match that never happened. In later years Karpov had shed all the weight he had put on in middle-age. We carefully carried his now waif-like form in to the pod. Part of its function would build him up a little again, at least to a healthier body-mass index. Before we could move on to claim our next target, though, Alexander Alekhine came back to the world of the living. “I dreamt I was choking,” he started to say, then realised how alien the scene was around him. I smiled warmly at him and we sat for a minute while I outlined why he was with us. Kestron and I had discussed his selection at length. Although we could not leave him out of our line-up, he was the most controversial. Not only was he viewed with disdain by many of his fellow time, and even since, because of alleged ties to Nazi Germany; there was also some financial bitterness between him and Capablanca. It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I led him through to join the others, especially Capablanca and Lasker. I need not have worried, though – what we were creating was above squabbles it seemed. No brotherly embraces were made but there at least were respectful nods from the pair that knew him. I left him to get better acquainted with the others also, who were now chatting away. The board they had been using showed signs of a brutal assault having taken place against Philidor's king, whereupon the position must have been resigned. Strangely enough, these great players appeared happy enough just to converse with each other – I think everyone recognised what a singular event was approaching in the tournament.

There were only two more grandmasters to collect and I was pretty excited about both of them. First was Garry Kasparov, who had held the world title for far longer than any of the others and had defied Deep Blue in what was the acknowledged first real test of the best against the machines, albeit that the machine did come back stronger and get revenge. He outlived his great rival Karpov by just eight years, dying in 2045, but aged slightly younger at 82, in the city of his birth Baku. I eagerly set the controls on his stasis pod and turned to Kestron. “One more to go, my friend.” He nodded excitedly – the difference with Artificial Intelligence constructs over regular machines was partly that they had emotions, or near as possible to them. In ways, they made much better friends than humans as they seemed to place little value in deception, except where it protected feelings or sensitive information. Not only would this venture have been impossible without him, my life would have been much emptier. But enough maudlin wallowing – let us just say that we were both committed to what we were doing on many levels. I could only hope that the authorities would see later how careful we had been to preserve the time-line and not come down too hard on us for our abuse of our privileges. I knew we had created no ripples as no-one had come back through time to arrest us...so far.

The settings on Botvinnik and Tal's pods were close together, like with Lasker and Capablanca before them, so we decided again to synchronise them. As there was not long to go, we decided to wait the twenty minutes more it would take to safely prepare them. We spent this time with the revived champions in the main hall. Lasker remarked, to the agreement of the others, how sharp his mind felt, charged with zest and zeal. I explained that little aberrations and wear-and-tear on their brains had been undone by the healing machines – this would naturally make their faculties more acute. Kestron could see they were curious about him so he took a little time to give them a brief working knowledge of the principles of his design. Up till now, he had largely taken a back seat where the players were concerned, staying mainly at the controls of the time-ship; there didn't seem to be too much culture shock for the players, though: they were all imaginative men, brought up on the works of Jules Verne and the like; this future technology was conceivable to them. We left them, though, explaining that we had two more of their companions to revive. Back at the pods, we did this and showed Botvinnik and Tal through. Botvinnik was full of questions for Kestron, being an engineer himself; Tal was delighted with the other masters waiting and launched into animated discussion with them. We tore ourselves away reluctantly – we still had one last person to obtain.

This journey took us to 2106 where, thanks largely to anti-ageing advances, the last great human chessplayer was dying at age 114. His name was Barna Grastik and he had the distinction of being the only human to ever beat a grade two AI in a competitive match. By modern standards that was primitive of course; even mobile units like my friend Kestron Tar were grade sevens but it was still a singular achievement. While this did not necessarily mean Barna was better than our other champions, it certainly merited his inclusion in our walking, breathing hall of fame. Science in 2106 was, thankfully, still unable to detect the passage of our time-ship so the collection and substitution went without any problems. Having gathered all our passengers, we headed for 2235, to the middle of the Sahara desert. We had chosen this locale obviously for its seclusion; the date was as late as we felt we could go without risk of detection from the people of that era. Kestron landed the ship and cloaked its appearance to match the dunes outside. As we were landing, though, I felt again the attack of the sickness. My sight went cloudy and I nearly keeled over, a roaring sound in my ears. It passed quickly; my mind seemed to force my body to shrug it off. Kestron's attention was on the ship, to my relief, letting the moment pass without comment. One by one, while we waited wreathed in the sands of the desert, the last four champions roused from their hibernation.

We put on a buffet using the ship's considerably equipped kitchen facilities for auto-production while waiting. For a chess addict it was the party of a lifetime. Each master there was described in a speech by the one reanimated after him, for the benefit of the ones from before them; their achievements, style and impact on the game laid out. Morphy spoke in glowing terms of Philidor, Botvinnik addressed the room about Alekhine, and so on. Fischer revived and was brought in; after adjusting to the setting and meeting everyone, he gave a glowing report of Mikhail Tal, who he had known and respected while they were both ...well, alive. I was pleased to see even he fitted in comfortably – I think there was a calming effect for him to be acknowledged as a great alongside Capablanca and the other legends. Moreover, like all of them, Fischer now had the chance to prove himself as he believed: the greatest of all time.

Karpov in turn came back, looking much healthier and fitter than when we had put him in to the healing coma. He gave a speech about Fischer, describing the latter's cessation of play as the greatest loss ever to chess. We took this opportunity to allay the concerns of many present regarding the format of the tournament. We would give them all a week to acclimatise and consult our opening databases to brush up on their favoured theoretical lines. The tournament would then be an all-play-all event. In the result of a tie we would use sum of opponents' scores to adjudicate; failing any resolution there we would have a play-off. It was clear that many of the players were put at ease by these arrangements. Their minds may be sharper now than they had been for some time but it would have been unfair to give a huge theory advantage to the later players.

I had just made this announcement when Kestron led through Garry Kasparov. He shook hands with the others; we explained as he did so what we were all doing. He needed little prompting to address the group – I remembered he had been a politician also – about the worth of Anatoly Karpov, his immediate predecessor. Kasparov seemed to me to radiate power and authority. I asked forbearance of the assembled masters to wait for one last guest; I knew some of them would be tired from the shock and excitement of this gathering. They all seemed happy enough at this; the synthesised vodka and other drinks we had on offer were working a little magic of their own. Finally, Barna Grastik came in, looking like a man with new life breathed into him, which he literally was. As we introduced him to everyone, he had something to say about each of them – from compliments on Philidor's vision at a time when chess strategy was in its infancy, to Capablanca's stunning grasp of endgame positions, to Tal's ability to conjure something from seeming nothing, and more. Last of all he gave a deep bow to Kasparov, the highest rated human player of all time. I pointed in the direction of the sleeping quarters and invited the players to retire to their rooms whenever they felt ready or to burn the midnight oil as long as they wished. The party continued on for a while but a few did start to peel away not long after, others following in their own time. Kestron and I stayed to the end, chatting with our heroes. I think my life will have no greater high point ever.

Over the next week the masters immersed themselves in our portable data-screens, pausing only to play out certain convoluted lines on boards, each in worlds of their own. Kestron and I acted mainly as waiters, bringing sustenance when requested. At one point I was shocked to discover Tal gently weeping to himself. I asked him why and he said the move he had been looking at was too beautiful for words. Humbled, I left him to his joy.

Finally, the appointed day came and we set up the tables into two rows of three, clearing the others to one side and stacking them. These six tables would encompass all the hunger and ability of the best dozen players of all time and we would at last answer the question – who was the greatest? The masters drew lots to see who would play whom first – naturally they would all play each other at some point anyway. The first round started: Capablanca facing up to Botvinnik, Tal against Karpov, Alekhine versus Fischer, Kasparov with Philidor, Grastik matched to Lasker and Morphy playing Steinitz. Kestron Tar and I were officially the arbiters in the event of any dispute but I doubted there would be any. These players were hopefully beyond all that – they knew just by being here they were the best ever and would live up to that. We watched the games partly from the top of the hall but mainly on our own little data-pads which gave us all the games as they happened, flagging our attention to each board when a move was made. Such glories unfolded as I was proud to have witnessed. Magnificent pawn centres against hypermodern assaults; daring pawn sacrifices for open lines with positional advantages; edge of the chair defence against kingside attacks – all this and more. Kestron and I had ringside seats at the best show in town. Any town.

So caught up was I with all this that the sickness took me by surprise when it hit again. This time I felt like I was falling into an abyss, my ears again roaring and my sight going all white. I couldn't fight it, try though I did. To my horror everything around me started to disappear in a field of blankness, then I could not even see that. I was dimly aware of voices above me and crashed into a fitful sleep.

When I started to come to, it was all hazy. Gone was the pleasant décor of the time-ship, nowhere to be seen was Kestron Tar. I tried to sit up but found my arms restrained. A figure in a white coat peered down at me. “Lie still, Mr Purvis, we have given you quite a lot of Clozapine to bring you back to us.” I sputtered, confused “Back to ….3124? How is my tournament going?” He shook his head seriously. “No, Mr Purvis, it is 2011 – remember?” I started to howl I think, I cannot be sure. A nurse hurried over to my trolley with a needle; I heard her slapping footsteps then she was there, rolling back my gown's sleeve. Before I went under I clutched the doctor's coat-tails. “Just tell me, who won? Who won?” The doctor smiled sadly. I collapsed in misery, knowing the moment had escaped me. My last fading thought as the sedative took effect was that now I would never get the answer...

Well written, though a somewhat cruel ending.

Well done.

Thanks, Anatoly.

Darn that ending!!!!!!!! :(

Spassky still living in 3124?this guy needs help...seriously man nice story,I enjoyed content and style.

and I agree with Elona about the ending,which should have been">>>but they all got smashed by a wee drunk guy from Glasgow called 69tat"

...pass the Clozapine...

"Whoa. That_was_plenty".  Not a lot I can say to that.

Well you can requote your story again for more "plenty" xD