Free The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant by Jeffrey Ford Page A

boundary of the dome and the structural complex that was the city at its center. He was a hard worker, and although he was by nature shy, he was well known for his expertise at a popular strategy game played with corn kernels on a board that carried a labyrinthine design. The name of this entertainment was Maize. In his time away from the fields, he designed boards for this game and recorded some of the more interesting points of strategy from famous games he remembered having played or seen. There were very few players who had ever beaten him, and the lucky ones who did never repeated the feat. In this fact, he enjoyed a modest notoriety all throughout Aldebaran.
    Once when he was playing in the city park, a large group of onlookers present, he called for his next opponent and a young woman stepped up to the table. She was carrying a board of her own making, and when she placed it down on the table for all to see, the crowd gasped at the complexity of the design. Sikes smiled at her, for the only thing he wanted more than to be admired for his play at Maize was a real challenge. The game began and right from the very start, the young woman took the lead. Play was heated and corn kernels came and went from the labyrinth so fast that many of the onlookers couldn’t follow what was happening. Near the end, when it looked like Sikes was about to lose, he put into effect a secret strategy that rapidly depleted the woman’s store and closed down the labyrinth around her. He had trapped her only remaining viable pieces, causing them to (in the parlance of the game) rot.
    Sikes knew that he had met a formidable opponent, but it was not until after he was finished playing the game that he noticed how beautiful she was. Her hair was long and light, the color of the beams from the artificial growth lamps that were positioned throughout the fields. Her face was unusual in that it was not as pale as that of the predominance of citizens but still held the tone of some ancient Earth ethnicity. The eyes also were startling in their exotic almond shape and deep green like the fabled wandering star, Karjeet. He quickly packed up his board and pieces and followed her out of the park. On the street that ran past the entrance to the underground generators and gravity replicators, he caught up to her.
    â€œHello,” he called.
    She turned, her hair whipping in a bright wave over her left shoulder, and he knew he would never forget the sight of it. As he approached, he felt weak, but held himself together and inquired as to her name.
    â€œMethina,” she said.
    They exchanged some comments about the game. He told her about his job in the fields, and she said to him that everyone who played Maize knew about him. She volunteered that she was a laborer in the fission plant.
    â€œAnd can you tell me that strategy you used at the end of the game?” she asked, smiling.
    â€œThat is my secret,” he said. “It must be initiated in the second move of the game or it will not work. I call it the Winner’s Conceit.”
    They walked on for a time down the street together, conversing, and when they came to the place where their intended paths diverged, Sikes, who had always been very shy with women, very much a loner, set his courage and asked if she would join him on the upcoming holiday when the city governors allowed the gravity replicators to be turned way down and everyone gained, for an hour’s time, something akin to the power of flight. To this she agreed, told him where and when to meet her and then turned away, leaving him standing on the corner. It took a few moments for her acceptance to sink in, and when it did, he dropped his board and box of pieces, his kernels scattering everywhere.
    On the day of the holiday, they met as agreed upon at the outdoor café in the center of town. Methina wore a long, white dress that billowed around her, and when she leaped and swept through the skies above the city she