Dan and Stacey got into the God Machine with sneers on their faces. Neither had played before but both were equally certain they would exit the winner.
Dan was a clever man with many achievements under his belt. He was in his mid-twenties and already made a small fortune by founding and selling businesses in the renewable energy sector. As an investor, he treated the activity like sport, doubling any sum of money in a matter of days.
Stacey was a star academic pupil with a lengthy list of accolades as well. Although still in Medical School, she was already on track to become one of the top heart surgeons in the country. In her spare time, she produced musical theatre to raise funds for cancer patients.
Their contrasting forms of brilliance set the stage for an entertaining competition. However, there was no description of the rules to be found. It wasn’t clear whether the God Machine was a game at all. Nonetheless, the goal was clear: defeat the other at all costs.
The two had been dating for a little over a year and had developed a playful but ardent rivalry in which they couldn’t stand to lose to one another. The rivalry had become so contentious that they had established an unspoken rule to never play a game of chess as they knew it could lead to the undoing of their relationship.
As the God Machine started up, both Dan and Stacey felt their minds expand and melt into the infinite void of possibilities before them. Flickers of colours, smells, and unintelligible concepts blurred across their stream of consciousness. Once their thoughts had settled from chaotic teeming pools of abstractions and complexities, into clear, malleable ideas, they were ready to play.
They opened their eyes and found themselves in an abyss of blackness sitting in the chairs of the God Machine. The chairs resembled over-engineered dentistry recliners with astronaut-like helmets over the headrest. Stacey stood up and walked around her chair. Her body felt weightless yet extraordinarily responsive. Her mind was clear and in control. Dan remained seated and watched her. Stacey then noticed an identical copy of herself standing beside her. Upon further inspection, Stacey realized her copy was slightly more provocatively dressed. The copy of Stacey walked over to Dan and sat on his lap. The God Machine chair that Dan originally sat on now resembled the couch in his apartment which the couple commonly made out on. As Stacey became infuriated, Dan was slapped crisply across the face out of thin air. Both Stacey and Dan began to understand: their thoughts would crystalize into physical manifestations here.
Stacey smiled and a tall, dark, and handsome Spanish man stood beside her. He knelt down and reached out to hold her hand in his. The Spaniard’s face radiated an unmistakable look of love and admiration.
The Spaniard then put a hand to his chest and looked down to see his fingers bloodied. There was an iron pole stuck through his chest.
Shocked, Stacey looked over to see that Dan, dressed in a fine black pinstripe suit, was in a high-end 1920s themed bar that deserved to be at the top of a New York skyscraper. It was packed with an assortment of exotic people that were all clearly in awe of Dan’s presence. He smirked as his eyes met with Staceys.
Stacey now stood on an auditorium stage, set to replicate an emergency room amidst a life-saving surgery. She sang with a degree of beauty that she could never quite muster in the real world. A perfectly choreographed ensemble of dancers dressed as nurses pirouetted around her. The audience stood eagerly cheering the spectacle on. Photographers and news reporters stood at the sides flashing pictures and scribbling notes with looks of amazement plastered in their faces. Even the attendees of Dan’s bar had left to crowd a balcony overlooking the production.
Suddenly, the back half of the auditorium stage collapsed in a cloud of dust, evoking screams from falling dancers as well as concerned audience members. Dan walked on to the stage beside Stacey amidst a hush from the crowd. A white backdrop unfurled behind him as a projector displayed images of a paradise city adorned with mansions, luxury vehicles, and decadent vistas. To the surprise of the audience, everyone held keys and deeds of ownership in their hands. Money rained from the sky of the theatre.
But Dan’s brow furrowed as the crowd booed and threw their new keys at him, along with an array of vegetables. Stacey stood, arms crossed, rolling her eyes at Dan’s bewilderment.
The walls of the theater then dropped outwards like a collapsing dollhouse. An army of military personnel, ready to take down the whole building at Dan’s bequest, flooded into the theatre. Each soldier, outfitted with state-of-the-art tactical gear, took up a strategic position in preparation for battle. The crowd was silent.
But Dan’s army looked small from the tower’s stone balcony, upon which Stacey was now perched. Below, a brigade of her kingdom’s guardians stood on a hillside, lined up in neat rows, marching towards the holed-up soldiers in the theatre. Stacey’s guardians did not have the bodies of humans. Instead, long triangular white stone pillars gravitated around blue orbs at the center of these creatures’ chests. Their appearances were angelical in nature and each stood eight feet high.
Dan looked around from the stage where he stood to find all of his soldiers impaled on glowing-blue spears. Impressed, he returned his gaze to Stacey as darkness fell over the land. The bodies of his soldiers reanimated and absorbed the glowing blue spears as though any piece of matter they interacted with would only make them stronger. Additionally, the darkness from above was not for aesthetic purposes — fleets of invincible morphing soldiers loomed overhead in massive airships.
As Stacey’s guardians were absorbed into Dan’s soldiers, Stacey pondered her options for a moment. Then, the skies crackled and boomed. The earth’s crust wrinkled. Mountains of soil and rock twisted up into the sky as a violent tornado consumed the entirety of Dan’s army, the remainder of the theatre, and the unfortunate audience members along with it. The ground upon which Dan stood peeled apart and eroded as a gale clawed him into the storm. His body flailed into the tornado which continuously bombarded him with debris. Two cliffs of earth rose up around Dan and swiftly shifted inwards to crush him.
As the two cliffs collided with Dan compressed in the middle, he transformed himself into a living vortex the size of the Solar system. He instantly consumed Stacey’s apocalyptic storm, bringing down a continual barrage of raw energy and matter on Stacey that dissolved anything in its wake, making it impossible for her to stay in her own body any longer.
Their bodies, now both whirling vortexes of space, collided and fought for dominance in an all-encompassing toroidal wrestling match.
Locked in a draw, Dan turned his vortex into a delightful mint-chip gelato, Stacey’s favorite flavor. Her vortex pulsed abruptly, as she couldn’t help but laugh. She transformed into a sea of the happiest and cutest puppies Dan had ever seen, Dan’s weakness. Dan turned into a massive pair of lips to kiss the sea of puppies only to be joined by the lips of Stacey’s.
They then made passionate love as their bodies floated through infinity. Their warmth filled the entirety of the void. Eventually, they wilted, deflating back into their bodies holding each other. They found themselves in the softest and comfiest bed they could imagine surrounded by a fluffy, cool duvet. A soothing breeze flowed around them in this limitless space and, gradually, they awoke in their chairs, in reality, each to find the other smiling back at them. They thought to themselves, ‘Perhaps we could survive a game of Chess after all.’
