This is part three of an ongoing novella. Read the previous segment (and find a link to all preceding parts).

1

When Kasparov played Deep Blue, someone had to move its pieces. He beat the machine once, back in 1996. Then he decides to play it again. Why put off the inevitable, I guess. The machine wins. People celebrate, dance around like zealots at the end of days.To make it worse, Kasparov’s next move is to V the world, a match which he wins.

The machine beat the world back in 1997 and things just went on like normal. But the best of mankind lost to a machine--we all lost to that machine. We lost... something. Something fell, again-- the way it has been falling since the beginning of time. And Kasparav had to head out east of Eden, cyborgs guarding his home with flaming swords.

2

Outward, ever westward, through the farms, the parks, layers of housing like layers of earth, a sprawling, consumptive universe.

Walls.

Cars live here.

Always moving onward, devouring the old self, building a new, better self, always moving on to somewhere else. To the next place that we don't want to be. It’s like the World’s Fair is always coming to town and these elaborate structures and systems are erected only to be torn down. A constant harvest, fermented fruit falling from trees gathered by increasingly drunken monkeys. And we blackout, forget everything. So we level the land, build it up, age it so it looks like it’s been there forever, get drunk again, regret it and leave.

Abandon it.

Leave your soul behind. Bury it somewhere in the soil.

How many different houses did you live in your whole life? I must have lived in about seven houses and three apartments, went to six different schools. It was always the same: Easy to cut school. Burger King, McDonald’s they'd always serve you food if you had money. It didn't matter what time it was. When I was older, it was liquor. It was legal to buy it in the morning, and they would sell it to you by the grocery cart full as soon as the clock struck six, just like in Leaving Las Vegas.

But none of this even happened. It happened in time past and in a place that no longer exists. A place that burned down or went out of business or was leveled, a competitor built on top. All of those lives converged for a time and then scatter/shatter apart so that you wonder if it ever existed at all.