The Woman Who Reads Ga Guides
A battlefield alternating between black and white squares. Two forces are locked in a fierce battle. The war is so intense that even the kings and queens of both nations have joined the fray.
On this side, the queen and knights have fallen, and one of the walls has crumbled, but many soldiers remain. On the opposing side, all walls have collapsed, and the soldiers have been wiped out, but the queen and knights are still intact.
The enemy knight charged forward, aiming for my king.
[Check.]
I frantically tried to move my soldiers to defend, but they couldn't keep up with the speed. anwhile, the enemy queen had stealthily infiltrated my rear lines, moving square by square and decimating my forces.
"Damn it."
This is a certain defeat. As a last resort, I sent in a suicide squad to charge, but they were all blocked. To finish the battle, the opponent’s second knight advanced, and my king was now surrounded by knights from both sides.
[Checkmate.]
Artemis declared.
"…"
No matter how much I thought about it, there was no escape.
"I lost." I moved my king on the touchpad and admitted defeat. Today's chess match in the gaming room ended in yet another loss.
[That last desperate charge was a terrible move.]
“If I’m going to lose anyway, might as well go down fighting instead of slowly withering away.”
[Bold words. So how many tis have you tried this desperate charge in your past gas? Seven. And how many tis has it worked? Zero. Quite the competent commander.]
From the surround speakers built into the walls of the room, the sound of thunderous applause echoed.
“Oh, co on, no need for all that, haha.” I got up from my seat and waved both hands in acknowledgnt.
[I wasn’t praising you, you fool.]
“I know.”
Although I’ve played chess with her many tis, today she seed a bit more irritated than usual.
[The queen should never be moved recklessly.]
The reason was simple.
[Chess is a ga that exists for the queen. Pawns, knights, and other pieces move back and forth in her service, and once the ti is right, the queen descends onto the battlefield, like the goddess of war. That’s how you elegantly play chess. But you moved your queen too early and lost her aninglessly.]
She was displeased that I had lost my queen so early in the ga.
[Besides, shouldn’t the king and queen be together until the end for a happy ending? Let the underlings do the dying.]
“Well, I’ve always preferred getting my hands dirty, both when I was in service and now, so I wouldn’t know much about that.”
[Hmph.]
Artemis scoffed.
Playing chess against the pinnacle of human technology, a supercomputer, might seem like madness, but it's surprisingly manageable. Obviously, if she played at full strength, I wouldn't stand a chance. So, she sets up certain handicaps to make the ga fairer.
First, Artemis creates a "chess-only mory space" that she uses for our matches. That space contains no stored chess records or strategies, just general knowledge on par with an average human.
As she described it, it’s a "room where I beco dumb." Secondly, in this "dumb room," her cognitive processing is deliberately slowed to match my reaction and thinking speed. It's not sothing you'd expect from soone as prideful as Artemis, but she does it anyway.
When I asked her about it once, she said, "Sotis, dropping to your intellectual level is a stimulating challenge. It's like being soone who lost their entire fortune in an hour at a casino. Except, instead of money, I’m losing my precious intelligence. And when the ga ends, and I return to my full self, I feel like I’m being reborn. It’s refreshing."
Thanks to these penalties, my chess record so far stands at 17 gas, with 5 wins, 10 losses, and 2 draws. Though I’m still at a disadvantage, it’s a winnable level.
Artemis always accepted my challenges. She loved the concept of gas. Chess was just one of many; she also enjoyed 20 Questions, Mafia, board gas, and even video gas.
By the way, her way of enjoying video gas is incredible. Humans interact with gas by manipulating the mouse and keyboard, and they experience the results through their senses one by one. It’s the only way, but it takes ti.
Artemis, however, is an AI. She doesn't need to process sensory inputs like humans do. Instead, she devours the ga’s data and code all at once. It’s like watching a cartoon character swallow an entire lunchbox in one gulp. Like grabbing a grilled fish by the tail and sucking it clean in one bite, leaving only the bones.
She absorbs everything—the cinematics, characters, systems, quests, story, combat, and every hidden elent—in one go, directly from the code. The intensity of the stimulation she experiences, compressed into a single mont, is beyond imagination.
The problem is that she burns through gas too quickly, and her threshold for excitent has beco so high that almost all gas now bore her. So, she ca up with a new way to enjoy them: watching and supporting.
What’s that like, you ask?
[What should we do next? My recomndation is this one.]
Check out the single-player ga she recomnded. It's a post-apocalyptic survival ga, exploring a world ruined by nuclear war. There are puzzle elents, so difficult enemies unless you use a specific trick, and hidden paths and rooms.
[You’ve already been down this path. Go right at the fork from earlier.]
[If you attack the sensor, you can break the IFF function and make them fight each other.]
If I wandered aimlessly or struggled for too long, she'd give hints.
“What’s up with my inventory? It's all over the place. Can I sort it alphabetically, by any chance?”
Once, the inventory system was so inconvenient that I ntioned it to her.
[Hold on, modification complete.]
She instantly added an item sorting mode in an update. Items that were chaotically listed were now sorted alphabetically, and even categorized by type—sothing I hadn't even asked for.
(dical) Jet
(dical) Stimpak
(Drink) Dirty Water
(Drink) Purified Water
(Drink) Whiskey
(Food) Iguana Skewers
(Food) Squirrel Stew
(Ingredient) Corn
(Ingredient) Dog at
(Ingredient) Spam
How easy to read is that? The dical items, frequently used in battle, were placed at the top, while ingredients that are almost useless until cooked were neatly organized at the bottom. Such attention to detail! She truly understands gars. She even went as far as modifying the ga files to remaster the graphics or fix bugs.
Loading screens were gone too!
She handled all the computations instead of the console. Whether transitioning between maps, saving, or loading, everything happened instantly. I would navigate through challenges with Artemis’s guidance as my beacon, while she enjoyed watching my reactions. This was the playstyle we had grown fond of.
Her advice was perfectly tuned to maintain the challenge of the ga, while adding a layer of enjoynt through problem-solving. She would sotis comnt on my moves, providing a live comntary, and her reactions every ti I overca a challenge were excellent. At this point, I couldn’t imagine playing a ga without her.
[Alright, let’s call it a day.]
“Already? I was just getting into it.”
[It’s already been three hours. You need a break now.]
“It’s fine, three hours isn’t that long.”
Plenty of people ga for 5 to 10 hours straight, becoming complete shut-ins.
[No, three hours is enough. Your optic nerves are probably starting to get strained by now. You’ve got maybe 60 years left of life at best.]
I’m already in my 30s, but with the dical technology here, I could probably last another 60 years, at least.
[Until I develop better life-extension techniques, you’ll have to stick to the current standards of health managent. That’s it for today.]
At her declarative words, I exited the ga.
***
There was only one more task for today. A few hours later, I headed to the research lab. A new drone for crowd control had been developed.
“It only has one rotor?”
The single rotor was encased in a round plastic guard, with the top and bottom open.
[It’s a newly designed unit based on previous drone research. It has a model na, but you can just call it ‘Hornet’ for simplicity.]
Beneath the rotor was a small cara and a taser gun. The magazine was particularly unique—it was shaped like a revolver cylinder, with large square chambers, each housing a battery.
[We’ve implented a revolver-style loading system, allowing it to fire up to six shots per unit, and it can be recharged. It's wasteful to use disposable systems. It flies over a target and—zap!]
Impressive. This will reduce the need for deploying multiple robots in so situations.
“What’s the production plan?”
[We’ll start with 150 units. Since they can fly anywhere quickly, we don’t need a large quantity.]
The Hornet demonstrated remarkable agility during its obstacle course in the test area. Thanks to the protective guard around its rotor, it navigated through tight, winding alleys, bumping around but still reaching its target in the end.
With this, crowd control during relocation from a settlent to urban areas will be much easier. Whether soone tries to escape into a building or zigzag through alleyways, the Hornet will chase them down to the very end without worrying about crashing its rotors into walls.
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