Free The Gist Hunter by Matthews Hughes

contemplate a move without causing it to happen before I had definitely decided that that was what I wanted the pieces to do. Now, however, I had achieved what my partner called a modest but promising ability. A few more games, each one followed by a thorough digesting of my defeat at his hands—I use the expression loosely; they were more like the claws a bear would have if a bear were a species of insect—and he promised that I would approximate a good opponent.
    I tended to ponder long over each move, whereas he made his with an alacrity that at first frustrated me. In our latest match, however, he had lingered in the portal, which gave him limited access to this continuum, assessing the deployment of my pieces for quite some time.
    Finally, he said, "You have divided your forces."
    "Indeed," I said, exerting the mild effort that kept the pieces where I had willed them.
    "What do you think that will achieve?"
    "It would be premature to say," I said. "It is your move."
    The shifting colors and shapes that filled the portal assumed an orientation that I had come to recognize as his equivalent of a frown of concentration. "Take your time," I added.
    He emitted a noise that combined a thoughtful hmm with a rumbling growl and reformed his reserves while launching a cloud of what I called fast-darters into the middle-middle of the playing area. His plods—that is how I thought of the slower, larger pieces—moved heavily in formation into the lower-forefront, waited while the terrain exhibited one of its regular oscillations, then rotated and inched forward once more before stopping at a barrier that emerged from the "ground." The plods then changed color to become two shades lighter.
    "Hmm," I said, and looked thoughtful, although his move was almost exactly how I had expected him to respond to mine.
    "I shall return when you are ready to make your next disposition," he said.
    "It may be a while," I told him. "I am about to pursue a discrimination that will almost certainly require me to leave these premises. I may even have to go offworld." I told him briefly about the impending search for Sigbart Sajessarian.
    "If you wish," he said, "I can tell you where he is, now or at any moment in his lifespan." His access to this realm was limited but his perspection of some aspects of it was limitless.
    I did not wish him to do so. "We have discussed this," I said. "I value you most highly as a partner in such pursuits as this"—I indicated the game—"because you have largely drained the swamp of boredom in which I long floundered. But my profession is an essential element of my being, and your omniscience threatens to leave me without purpose."
    The swirling colors assumed a pattern I recognized as a shrug. "As you wish," he said, "but I am interested to see where your strategy will lead. Perhaps you might take game and portal with you, in case you have an idle hour during the search for Sajessarian."
    "I might, at that," I said.
    He departed and immediately I turned to my assistant. "Integrator, consider the disposition of the pieces. Note that our opponent blanched his plods by two shades instead of three. Project my ten most likely strategies that I may evaluate them." I had found it easier to let the device present the options; when I envisioned where my pieces might next go I must exercise will to prevent them from drifting in the foreseen directions. The effort could become tiring.
    " Your opponent," said my assistant.
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "He is your opponent, not mine," said the device. "I am only your aide."
    The correction was technically precise, and I had designed the device to be exacting in its use of language. As we speak, so do we think, after all. Still, I thought to detect a tone that, in a human interlocutor, would have betokened jealousy.
    But when I inquired of my assistant if there was anything it wished to discuss regarding my relationship with my transdimensional visitor, it answered my query with a