It opened on the 2-1 point.
I’d been bumming around from job to job for years. Methanostations, two corgi-run clothing shops, and some business with a Valkyrie I’d rather not remember too hard. Shit jobs for a guy with shit luck. Turns out being good at Go in high school doesn’t get the money flowing in NovEau Claire when you’re 25 and that’s the only skill you’ve got.
I’d been serving assholes, dummies, and dumb assholes for 3 years when ExoBrain called. Bunch of guys who’d actually applied themselves, finding minds in far-flung systems and integrating them into ye-old-human-pastimes, with the grand goal of grinding us earthos a little bit deeper down into the dirt. I’d say I hated their goals, and hated their ethos, their distance from the common Earthoid, but honestly it just pissed me off that they were making so much money and getting jumped out to Saturn-nineteen or wherever the fuck but still didn’t have a decent Go player among them. Thought these types were supposed to be smart.
I woke up, surrounded by dead vapeocigs, and that goddamn landline was ringing from every nodule of the room, so sure, I answered. Sue me. They said they’d discovered some micro whatever that they thought might lend itself to my old pastime, and they needed a player worth his lanarkite to give it a real run for its money. Whatever, right? They want to pay me to kill all the groups of some single-celled bullshit from a thousand jumps away? Why wouldn’t I? Easy money - if those exo-raised copper-spooned kids didn’t know they were suckers, it wasn’t my job to enlighten them. So I thought. I’ll play their little bacterioid. Easy. I thought.
I was hungover as fuck - we all knew about activated charcoal by now, but any doctor will tell you that it can’t make up for 18 ounces of Karmotrine in 4 hours, and guess who was spinning up too many dockergirls at 3am to remember to step outside and dip his head in a multilake? Yeah, me. Surprised? But even an Earthoid 4 hours post-blackout can beat a cyano-wannabe-Sedol. So as soon as the copper came through, I opened my Teamslink and connected. Normal interface, 19x19 grid, you already know.
It opened at the 2-1 point. Hah! Like taking uplinks from a LoRA. We were centuries deep into the Kata era. I knew, and I knew they knew I knew, the old stories of humanoids losing their shit over opening moves that seemed too low. So they’d decided to fuck with me by going lower. At the cost of -8 points in expected value. Happy to see it. Star point on the other side of the board. Around 94% winning percentage by move two. I’d say it was a huge waste of time already, if their transfer hadn’t tripled the size of my copper stash. But if they’re paying, I’m playing.
It approached my star point… at the 5-5. Was their move-enterer high on phosphate? Or was the cyano that stupid? I extended underneath. Huge, thick corner, at move 4. Some of you might know that old humanoid saying - third grade - remember? - “Head in the clouds?” ExoBrain had their heads a thousand jumps above the clouds. We all knew the katascores - I was 10.4 points ahead. Done.
Fuck. I still. I don’t. I still feel. I still feel like. Maybe I was still blacked out. Puking charcoal vomit into the toilet. Some fever dream. Fuck. Sciheads talk about some made-up condition they call vapeobrain. Maybe that’s real. I don’t.. I don’t.. I didn’t…
At move 35, my corner died.