Free The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) by Chad Huskins

song to cue up.  The first few heavenly notes play so teasingly, giving the feeling of being transported someplace far, far away.  Very dreamy.  Then, the single snare drum, and the song kicks into gear.
     
    “ Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
    Then we didn’t have to wait so long;
    And wouldn’t it be nice to live together,
    In the kind of world where we belong? ”
     
    In the kind of world where we belong , Rook thinks, considering those words heavily.  An entirely different meaning now that the world he knew was gone.  But he still hums right along.
     
    “ You know it’s gonna make it that much better,
    When we can say goodnight and stayyyyyy together ”
     
    He taps a few more keys, checking the resolution of the images from the high-gain antennae.  Ahead of him, the probes that Bishop constructed zip ahead, scanning and sending back valuable data and images.  There is ample obsidian and pahoehoe lava below—vast lava lakes that have formed and frozen solid, with more lava being slowly added down through the millennia.  Scans also detect frozen water far below the surface, likely never to see the light of day.
    He taps the intercom switch.  “Bishop, can you come up here to the cockpit?  We’re approaching the coordinates you specified.”
    A moment.  Then, “Compliance.”
    Rook feels a little tense and awkward.  He doesn’t know how to speak to Bishop now.  Indeed, he is only recently getting used to the idea that there are alien beings in the universe—despite having fought them, despite having captured them, despite having seen his comrades die at their hands, and despite the fact that even the most conservative inputs of the Drake equation long ago demonstrated that, at minimum, there are millions of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way alone, a part of Rook’s mind still doesn’t believe.  Just as easily believe in ghosts , he thinks.
    While setting an approach vector, Rook thinks back to his first reaction to the Cerebral threat, to those first days when we all came into contact with something we conjectured about countless times, but never thought we would live to see.
    He was in the bed when the call came from Madison, his former college roommate.  The micropad was buzzing, and with the wave of a hand he activated it.  The holographic image of Madison was sketchy, and he only got out a few words.  “Hey m…did…gotta see…”
    “Whuuuu…?”
    “Dude, you…can’t…it’s all over the…”  Then, the image blinked out, and all that was left was the holo message floating in the air: SORRY!  THE CONNECTION IS BROKEN!  CHECK WITH YOUR QEC PROVIDER FOR MORE INFORMATION: SERVICE CODE 118A-420-000-1260.
    The young man sighed heavily.  He was tired of switching QEC providers—they claimed that this new quantum-entanglement communication was all ready to go, but obvious there were still bugs.  Groggily climbing out of bed with the intent to call his service provider, he threw the tangle of sheets off, fighting to loosen one piece that had wrapped around his ankle like a tentacle.  He staggered down the hall to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice and made the call to his provider.  Lo and behold, wouldn’t you know it, no service to them , either.
    Great , he thought, and downed his orange juice.  When he lowered his glass, he looked out the window over the sink at the expansive family farm, what had been in his family for four generations.  The farm was mostly flat fields that stretched across Kansas and even dipped into parts of Oklahoma.  Those fields were vast stretches of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers, terminating at the verdant green hills that rolled far off in the east.  The agri-bots were out in full force, helping tend to the 3,000-hectare farm, watering, spreading pesticide, and targeting weeds while they were still young plants.  Two of them needed repair, though, and so far Dad hadn’t saved enough to get a decent repair bot, so that