Epilogue
Every organised activity has its super-fans. See that big guy over there in the bar, watching the sport channel with his mates, the one with the beard and the dad-bod? He’ll tell you more than you want to know about the offside rule. See that aging gentleman in the blazer? The one with the rough bristly moustache which fails to hide impacted teeth? He has his fund of tedious anecdotes about the perils of fielding at short leg. And that slim young man in his lycra who just cruised effortlessly by? He knows a thing or two about the tactics of the breakaway from the Peloton. These fans know their heroes and heroines, obsess over them, are polarised by their champions’ feuds and animosities.
They are not typical.
They are too few and don’t suffice to pay the global circus bills. What the world wants is volume: revenue streams in torrent, crossover market share.
What the world needs is stars.
When the American, Lance Armstrong, went to Europe in the nineteen nineties he found that road racing there was awash with drugs. An unaided rider could not win against the best cyclists on dope. Armstrong came to a cold decision: if that was what it took then he would apply his formidable intelligence, his logistical skill and iron determination to be the very best doper.
For more than a decade Armstrong dominated the sport, winning the Tour de France seven times in succession. The public loved to watch him, commentators were in awe. His fame brought riches to the cycling authorities: wealth and power and prominence. There were those who thought it was all too good to be true, dogged reporters who were literalists on morality. But who really, had an interest in killing the golden goose? For years he was protected by the authorities: the good and the great.
Armstrong was eventually brought down. Perhaps the culture of total-doping was just too egregious to survive. But does ‘good’ always win-out in the end? How would we know?
When Daniel had his nervous breakdown, resigning the match in a fugue state, Petra was catapulted to superstar status. She was the superstar of chess: sassy, good-looking, an ultra-competent woman in a world of men where she had bested the best.
So it was reported.
Most pundits, most executives, think she is the best thing which ever happened to the game. The purists may pore over her matches which seem to them, as to Daniel, too good to be true. Yet her play is not perfect: many of her moves are sub-optimal according to the omniscient engines. She does just enough; her wins are effortful but relentless. Her growing fan base empathises with her occasional setbacks and her more frequent successes. Drama beats perfection: Petra becomes the leading character in her own reality show.
Petra talks to her father. They’re in a New York hotel. Tomorrow Petra will play in a major US tournament but tonight she is pensive.
“I don’t worry too much about being caught. You’re so clever and no-one important wants to rock our boat, but do you think it’s right? As far as I can tell, none of my opponents are getting help during games.”
“They’re dinosaurs,” Hans says, “They don’t understand the world we’re moving into. No-one cares about chess anymore. There’s nothing new for people to explore - the machines have stolen all of that. All that’s left is spectacle: drama and confrontation. That’s what the machines will never provide.”
“Chess as show business?” Petra says.
“The difference is we know it, Petra, and your opponents don’t. Maybe chess used to be like boxing but the engines changed all that. Now it’s wrestling: choreographed emotion, a canvas for catharsis. And you, Petra, you are the focus for millions of people and long may we keep it that way.”
Petra is doubtful.
“Don’t you think that the excitement depends on my opponents not realising that it’s not just me that’s killing them? Isn’t it their naïveté what keeps them so highly-strung, so serious and so determined? Doesn’t my audience crave authenticity above everything?”
And finally, “Do you think what we have here is really stable?”
To these highly apposite questions Hans has no answer.
Though Daniel’s star has fallen so deeply into the pit, he is not vindictive. Daniel does not do vindictive - he just does truth. He knows he was not wrong. He simply underestimated her cunning. He doesn’t know how she does it but to an expert the tracks are clear enough. He follows her games obsessively, compiles his mounting dossier, waits for the day the reporters come to visit, the day when he will finally be vindicated.
Yet what if he succeeds, if he manages to bring Petra down? He is too honest not to let this worrisome thought run on. Chess would return to its former drab state: obsessives contending in an eternal second division while the machines go forth to chart an astral - but ultimately sterile - space.
While an uncaring world passes on, regarding not.
His entire life would revert to meaninglessness.
Could it be, he wonders, that victory is not everything?
The full story text (part two of my novel) is also available here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) - as a formatted book on Amazon for easier reading.
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