That Nasherkan Legacy

(Ahem(clears throat)...Ladies & Gentlemen, I hereby assume great pleasure in announcing that I have completed my first ever work of fiction. It is full of amateurish glitches and inconsistencies, but it is nevertheless mine, and, as a proud Father, I firmly stand by it. I also got it published on Sffworld here, and would be waiting for some frenzied criticism from all quarters. Brickbats ahoy!)

Odin watched in horror as the sweat drop fell to the floor, splattered against the surface & disintegrated into numerous droplets. For hours he had been guarding against this very event and now just a short nap had undone all the hardwork. The alarm soon reached its crescendo, and even in midst of the cacophony, he could hear the clamour of machine parts down the tunnel. He had about 5 minutes before the installment’s tracker application pinpointed his location in the maze, and another 30 seconds before he got executed through a high voltage jab sent at the corner where the sweat drop was detected – his corner. The security system always worked this way, ruthlessly terminating any attempt to transgress the boundary of the installment. It had been a bad idea to escape, right from its conception, but still Odin wanted to take his chances. After all, a chosen death is preferable to an inflicted one.
It all started off with a simple game of Nasherkan. It was in this very installment that he had challenged Oni. Odin had always been a good player, but more than confidence in his skills, it was a sense of adventurism that had made him challenge Oni, the reigning champion of Saarga multiverse. In his hot blood, even Oni’s dark & mysterious ways hadn’t deterred him. An uproar was expectedly caused when Oni put down his conditions, as was customary for the challenged. The game was to be played locked out in this installment and the loser was deemed to be terminated. There was no way out, he contended, when the clash is for the title of ‘Champion of Saarga’. These conditions were ratified by the Council, Nasherkan’s regulatory body, and it was decided that all the other rules would be kept intact.
The game of Nasherkan was played in a two player mode in Saarga (though in other multiverses, there had been instances of multiplayer games too). The game was both virtual and physical in nature - virtual for the players, as they viewed everything in the game with Nasherkan headgear, and physical because the actual action was performed physically through the simulation controllers. The game’s playground was a small spherical ball known as Terra, portions of area of which were divided equally between the two players, the division being sporadic like polka dots, as per the player preferences. The players were then expected to create their own ‘growths’ – patterns of quasi-intelligent characters and surroundings, collectively known as societies, with the help of the simulation controllers, placed at a short distance from the Terra, which was enclosed in a glass chamber. A Ring of Ignorance (ROI) was also established around the Terra, so that the growths remain concerned with themselves. These growths were reared to be antagonistic towards each other and, in the ensuing warfare, the player whose growth got eliminated first was deemed the loser. Thus, the wholesome objective of the game was total annihilation of the rival growth, and any steps taken for building, and maintaining growths were mere means to the end. The moves were made in real time and could be made even simultaneously; and the players had full freedom to manipulate their growths in any way they wanted. None of the players were to directly expose themselves to their or their rival’s growths, but, with the help of the simulation controllers, they effectively ‘played God’ to their societies. The Terra to be used was to be picked from a heap of lumps from the installment itself, as per the rules of Nasherkan. After a read-out of this full charter of rules, a bluish lump was chosen as Terra and the game was on.
It was fascinating to see the two of them play – one a hardened champion, the other a courageous rookie. Both went about their jobs with utmost dexterity, working out patterns, surroundings, & characters effortlessly with the simulation controllers. In the initial part there was not much to do. The players had mutually decided to increase the time rate on Terra to 2.3 Billion of the rate on Saarga, so that the game could be over in just under 2 days time. Initially, both of them went about creating characters with little or no intelligence. As they had put in tough surroundings around these characters, the societies became more engrossed in survival than in countering each other. As a result, no evolutionary version increase was being achieved. Without a version increase, the growths were lesser likely to fight, and there was the danger of the game ending in a tame draw. So, both the players agreed to wipe off everything, and make a new start to the game. After a brief lull which followed the wipe-off, the players moved on to create their most effective foot soldiers – the Naras.
The Naras were totally different from the characters that had been created till now. For the first time, the most effective weapon (MEW) of a character race was not physical. In fact, the Naras were one of the weakest characters on the physical scale. But they were provided with an unparalleled intelligence as their MEW. This set them apart and changed the whole approach to the game for both the players. Instead of the earlier skirmishes & petty fights between the growths, now planning and strategy came into the picture.
While being almost perfect miniature copies of their creators’ race (as a tribute) in physical terms, the Naras were engineered to be far different on the cognitive scale. The people of Saarga had long renounced violence (it existed only in virtual games like Nasherkan now) and related grade II attributes, whereas the Naras were made to be suspicious, quarrelsome and inimical towards each other, the society, and the surroundings. This constant sense of enmity in Naras was crucial to the game’s outcome, and was thence mandatorily incorporated in them by the players. As they were provided with the superior most intelligence on Terra, with its help they gradually spread over to each and every corner of it, and became the ruling class – perfect for the battle setup of Nasherkan. But because of their enhanced intelligence and resulting inquisitiveness, it was difficult for the players to maintain the ROI around Terra which had been easy to maintain in the case of the prior characters. Ever since their conception, it was not uncommon to spot a Nara looking up towards the pseudo-sky (which had been created along with the Naras, as a key component of the ROI) with a puzzled expression on its face. This increasing curiosity made the Naras attempt research in a major way, and, though this was desirable to the players as far as the research was military, it was anathema for them if it turned non-military. For any non-militaristic research had a chance, even though a miniscule one, for overcoming the ring, and such a scenario would have resulted in immediate termination for both the players. Also, both Odin & Oni wanted more control over their ‘foot soldiers’ – who, given their intelligence, had a very high chance of going the peaceful Saargian way. So they gave the Naras’ cognitive scale a loophole in the form of superstition & herd mannerism. As direct contact was not allowed in Nasherkan, this was the perfect channel to control the Nara mind. And with its help, every major attempt at non-militaristic research was vanquished by the players by turning the majority against a handful of researchers. However, a little quasi research was allowed to be carried on, as a part of the ROI.
After all, ignorance too has to be taught in order for it to remain ignorance.
In order to exert their influence and strengthen their growths, the two used entirely different modus operandi. Odin relied more on symbology & myth-dispersement, mostly extolling grade I attributes in filling up the Nara scale with an unwavering faith and commitment to Odin. The approach was direct and, given the natural Nara affinity to revere grade I attributes - much akin to the Saarga people - was convincingly successful too. Hordes and hordes of Naras joined the ranks of the Odin society, and Oni’s growth started looking hopelessly outnumbered. The Nara design had been a joint venture between the two players and both had retained an equal number of Naras at their conception, but the influence of Odin slowly proliferated even the highest Onian Nara ranks, and an exodus of sorts towards the Odin side happened. Odin, naturally buoyed by this success, went about creating societies with the same theme, and made his many symbols to be worshipped by each one of them. Whatever that belonged to Oni was labeled as an arch enemy, and was deemed to be attacked on a spotting. Grade II attributes, another Oni domain, were ostracized and shunned, and thus that every possibility was thwarted which could have possibly become an attempt by Oni to access & influence a majority of Naras.

The only catch was that Oni had no such attempt in mind.
Oni was a Champion of Nasherkan. And Odin forgot that. Oni’s technique was never confrontational. Instead, it was better off for him to have his growth reduced to miniscule proportions as it made detection more difficult and even resulted in collateral damage to his adversary in form of fake encounters. But what Oni conspired was something far more sinister and damaging that a collateral damage.
The two growths fought a slow but steady war for most of the time. Sometimes the conflict was made to reach a crescendo deliberately by Odin, so as to get a decisive verdict sooner. War I and War II were the result of such efforts. The wars were a treat to watch, and on more than one occasion, it looked as if the game would be over in a few more Saargian microseconds, but at the last moment, due to one glitch or the other, the wars could never be decisive. It was a glitch to the neutral and the Odin eye, but it was a maneuver to the Oni eye. He believed in slow and steady eating up of the Odin growth as it spoilt itself with its own grandiose & imagined achievements. With each war, which Odin seemed to have won, he actually became weaker. Soon, it dawned upon some Odinian Naras that war itself could be the root cause of their downfall - if it ever happened - and they decided to counter it. And it was here where Odin made his biggest mistake of the game. He paid no heed to the non-militaristic viewpoint of his able and intelligent growth yet again, and chose to eliminate the section of Naras which had gone the anti-war way. What could have been a winner strategy was curbed even before it could materialize into something substantial. The inevitable War III happened, decimating all Nara population with it, barring one – an avatar which Oni had judiciously kept out of the war zone. Avatars were the Nara versions of the players, which were totally controlled by the players themselves, and were another way of controlling the growths. This avatar had been the major disperser of grade II attributes into the Naras as it roamed around even in the rival growth without arising suspicion. But just prior to war III, it was safely tucked away by Oni, only to be resurfaced at the war’s end, proclaiming the Onian victory. Odin had been caught totally unawares by this, as he had expected complete annihilation. Had that been the case, the game could have been continued with creating new characters and societies. But now, it was all over.

The voltage jab came as soon as this thought process of Odin got over; it was often said in Saarga that all the moments in a person’s life flash before his eyes before he dies, but somehow it was only the fast forwarded memory of this game that touched his eyes. After that, it was only white light as Odin of Saarga was terminated as a prisoner trying to transgress the boundaries of the installment.

In Heaven, meanwhile, God punched his palm in exasperation as he suffered another setback while playing the game of Nasherkan with Lucifer on that lump called Saarga.