Day 20 of 30 Building Up
day 20 of 30 2006"Are you someone who would like to volunteer to set up a game room around here?" Catalie asked, continuing on the original theme. The huge man continued to stare down at her for a moment, poker faced, unreadable. Then he asked "What is a game room for?"
Catalie shifted mental gears quickly, then replied "A game room is an area where people can go to relax in a special way. There, they have access to board and card games with which to have a structured interaction according to a few rules, during which each player attempts to be better than the other players. Some people find that stimulating, a relaxation from the difficult pressures of a job." Then she continued, "It is a friendly harmless way in which people can find out who is better than the other player, or players, at doing some interactive symbolic activity. It is something that your ego can have fun doing, and the results are not physically real, so the losers are not really hurt. Those who like to play games mostly enjoy the interaction with the other people, with the scores of the current game just something to pretend is important to their ego. Some games play for pretend ownership of property, too. The games all are designed so there are random factors which distribute the starting values for each player during each phase of the game, so that the results of playing the game involve both luck and the skill of the players." She paused, noting something in his expression ever so slightly revealed, then continued "Luck means random factors which happen to make it easier for you. And 'bad luck' means the random factors make it harder for the player to win. To win means to demonstrate that one was both better at playing the game and had good luck in that game play." She stepped back, turning, saying "I 'd like it if you would think about this volunteer task, and you can read up on the description more on the network under 'games'; then in a few days send me your decision though the network. I am Catalie, what is your name, so I can watch for your reply?" He was looking a bit interested as he said "I am Stable." Walking back toward the nearest spoke to the hub access to the other wheel, she was partly turned as she said, Oh good, I sure hope you will do this for me, this is something that would really help people relax over here."
Back in his quarters, Stable evaluated the new information. Up to know, he had easily sidestepped getting hooked into doing one of those stupid volunteer jobs, yet had a fine place of his own and plenty of food at the cafeteria. Yet, he had noticed that other people's egos were stronger when they were doing their stupid volunteer task well. But this volunteer job sounded interesting, a "game room" which he would set up and be boss there, and always be able to play games to show these guys that Stable was better than they were. It did look like he might have to actually learn how to do the game thing instead of surfing and skittling through things ever faking everybody out. But the games were not real, he said to himself. Even failing did not mean something bad, in reality. The whole thing was intriguing to him. He made his way to the nearest computer terminal, and for once was not there just to examine Improy's latest postings, but instead to look up the description of "game."
He found that there were too many things called "games" for him to gather them all in; there were sports games, card games and board games, each of which had a variety of rules and things played with as symbols of things to own and trade, or lose as a result of circumstance, and symbolic territory to be gathered or lost. One's position on a game board was meaningful too, often it involved traversing a path to reach its end before the other players did. This was looking real interesting. The losers would have to consider him better than they were, right? She had said something about card games and board games, that narrowed down the search a bit. Still, there were lots of both kinds. And each required some special equipment, such as decks of cards, poker chips, specially made game boards and game pieces, dice to roll, spinners to whirl, to establish luck. So he would have to get those things, and learn the varieties of rules for each. He could pick the games, it was to be his game room, so surely he could do that. The game called "Poker" looked like a one to start with, sine it only require the making of a deck of cards, which ought to be able to be done on the compute printer; and the game of trying to guess the cards the other players held, was something he could do psychically, and in fact would have to make deliberate errors at times so others could win occasionally. He would only win the really important games, and in the meantime he would be finding out how the other players minds worked. that would be something that always comes in handy when the real action starts in the real world.
When Catalie received an e-mail message from Stable, agreeing to take on the volunteer job of setting up and running a game room, and requesting assistance for making a deck of cards, she commented to Improy that progress was being made
regarding the incidence of "rivalry" that had been going on. She said that the guy had used a computer terminal for something other than provoking contest with Improy, in that he had searched for information about a subject on the network, and seemed to be taking an interest in doing something contributory on the station. And, she asked Improy if he could figure out how to make a deck of cards. They had no cardboard or paper up there, no printers, and no deck of card images from which to print even if they did. Already knee-deep in problems to solve with too few resources, he asked a bit exasperated if a deck of cards was really necessary. "I f you want to begin to tame a dangerous wild beast stalking among us" she replied, "a deck of cards and poker chips might be easier to fabricate than having to fix something destroyed in a worse game."
Improy found that there had been a standard set of cards for a lot of different games, and the one used in Poker was the same deck as used in a game called Solitaire, for which there was a set of images in an old computer game software. There were cards 2 through 10, a special number one card called an Ace, and three hierarchical people cards. And there were four distinct. sets of each. He had some left over spacesuit flat sheeting which he cut up into playing card sized chunks, He had a co-worker write the names of the various cards on the chunks of flat material, such as "Ace-Spades" and "Jack-Clubs." If the thing got popular, maybe they would try some images on the cards.
posted by Unknown @ 6:23 PM
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