Checkmate (Insanity Book 6) (10 page)

“A White Queen chess piece?” the Red Queen spoke to her dogs, hands on her waist. She didn’t care for her guards or advisors at the moment. Whatever was going on seemed beyond anyone’s grasp.

She paced her chamber, thinking about the chess piece. If the Chessmaster wanted Carroll’s Knight, whatever that was, why did they come across this White Queen piece? Was it supposed to really lead Alice and The Pillar to Carroll’s Knight? And why would the Chessmaster sacrifice the world to get it?

Her telephone rang. It was Margaret.

“Queen of England speaking,” she said, liking the sound of it. In her mind, being the Queen of England seemed cooler than the Queen of Wonderland.

“I know it’s you,” Margaret sighed on the line. “I called you on your private phone, so it has to be you.”

“Oh.” the Queen scratched her head. “So tell me, have you found anything out about the Chessmaster?”

“Nothing,” Margaret said. “None of us remember him from Wonderland.”

“He said he wasn’t a Wonderland Monster.”

“Which puzzles me. If he isn’t, why lure The Pillar and Alice to find Carroll’s Knight? And why do his puzzles scream ‘Wonderland’?”

“I agree. He knows a lot about us. Do you think he knows about our plans?”

“I can’t say.”

“So you’re useless like always, Margaret,” she said and kicked her son’s head toward her dogs. Her doctors hadn’t found a proper way to knit his head to his body again, let alone bring him back to life.

“I’m not,” Margaret said with a challenge. “Something happened to Fabiola a few minutes ago.”

“Fabiola?” the Queen of Hearts felt a lump grow bitter in her throat. “What happened?”

“I am sorry to say this, but I think she is dying. It seems she’s been poisoned.”

“When did this happen?”

“I was waiting for you to ask me this.”

“Why?”

Margaret took her time and spoke clearly. “Because our White Queen was poisoned right after Alice and The Pillar found the chess piece, which is that of a…”

“A White Queen, too…” the Queen of Hearts slumped in her chair. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“I can’t tell, but it’s far from being a coincidence.”

Chapter 29

The Pillar’s Plane

I am not sure how much I’ve slept, but when I wake up it seems like more than seven hours have passed. I rub my eyes to take a better look outside my window.

I can’t believe what I am seeing.

We’re flying low, gliding over a white snowy mountain in the middle of nowhere. The Pillar next to me is still flying the plane and listening to some Asian chanting melodies.

“Where are we?”

“Beautiful isn’t?” he says and keeps chanting,
meeha tu tu chi
or something like that.

“I asked you where we are.”

“First, you have to admit it’s beautiful.”

“Ok, it’s beautiful. Where are we?”

“Here,” he points at something that’s revealing itself in the snow.

I squint and lean forward, waiting for the structures emerging out of the snow to make sense to me. Either my mind refuses to believe it or I am hallucinating.

“Is this a Buddha structure?” I point with an open mouth.

The Pillar nods, pointing. “This one is Buddha, that is Duddha, the one on the left is Nuddha.”

“I’ve never learned of the last two.”

“They’re Buddha’s sisters, but no one ever mentions them because they were girls. You know how condescending religions are toward women.”

I neglect his remark. It’s The Pillar. No changing the way he views the world. I keep watching the structure behind the huge statues revealing itself. “It’s a monastery?”

“Jackpot!” The Pillar skews the plane, ready to land. “We’re in Tibet, baby? I hope you brought your orange robe along.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“We’re somewhere near Burang, China. Tibet’s autonomous region.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are we here?”

“This is where IBM keeps their Deep Blue machine,” The Pillar says with a happy face, already waving to a few monks waiting for us below.

“Why in here? This seems like the last place on Earth to hide such a machine.”

“You said it yourself. Bury a genius machine in a monastery in the snow. Genius.” He reaches for something in the back with one hand. “Here. You have to get dressed in this.”

I grab the monk’s cloth. “Do you want me to dress up in this?”

“We have to act like monks or they won’t let us see the machine. Trust me, you’ll love it here.”

Before I have a chance to argue, the plane lands with consecutive thuds onto the snow. It’s such a clumsy landing that most of our plane’s nose is buried in white, and there is something burning in the back.

“My best landing yet,” The Pillar says. “The last one, everyone died but me.”

Chapter 30

Outside Burang, China, Tibet Autonomous Region

The beautiful monks welcome us in their orange and red robes as if they hadn’t seen people outside their tribe in years.

I trot in my new boots The Pillar gave me and feel the chill of cold, though I’m wearing a lot of layers of orange. A few steps closer, I realize The Pillar is still inside the plane.

“Pillar? What’s keeping you behind?” I turn and say.

It’s only seconds before he appears from behind the plane. He is wearing a lush orange robe and looks pretty much like a Tibetan monk now. Not just because of the robe, but because he’s shaved his head bald.

“Seriously?” I grit my teeth.

“I am an expert in communication and we need to blend in. Most monks here are bald, so I figured I should too.”

“Do you know how long it’ll take for your hair to grow back?”

“They’ve got pills for that now,” he says. “I didn’t like to comb and wash my hair each day anyways. Always wanted to feel the drizzle of water on my bald head in the shower. It was on my bucket list.”

A closer look, I realize it’s a wig. A bald wig.

Behind us, Tibetans approach us. They speak in a language I don’t understand, but an old man, presumably their leader, smiles broadly and holds me gently by the shoulder.

I bow my head with respect, not knowing what to say.

“Alice of Wonderland!” The old man switches to English.

“You know me?”

“Who doesn’t?” He pulls out a copy of
Through the Looking Glass
, this one with a red cover.

“You’ve been reading about me?” I am flattered.

“In Chinese!” He shows me that the copy is in their own language. Everything is read from top to bottom instead from left to right. “The monks are crazy about you here.”

“Oh.” I am speechless, wondering if monks dismiss their prayers to read a children’s book.

The old man nears me, whispering, “The monks spend their time chasing rabbits in the snow, wishing they’d fall into a hole. It’s either prayers or rabbit holes around here. I’m Xian, like Xiangqi, named after Tibetan chess game.”

“Nice to meet you, Xian,” I say. “You have your own chess here?”

“The oldest in the world,” he says proudly. “They will tell you the one in Marostica is the oldest, but they don’t know squat.”

“Squat?” I raise an eyebrow.

“I learned English in Brooklyn, New York.” He laughs. “You know our chess game is said to contain the secret of the universe. The Nazis sent their expeditions to Tibet, wanting to find out about it.”

“Nazis.” I frown. “And squat.”

“Or crap.” He mirrors my eyebrows.

“So I assume you know this man.” I switch my glance toward The Pillar, assuming he may recognize him as the Caterpillar from the books, too.

The old man turns and faces the bald Pillar, and his smile broadens. “Of course I know him,” he says. “Who doesn’t know the famous Cao Pao Wong?”

Chapter 31

“Cao Pao Wong?” I glare at The Pillar.

“Better than Kung Fu Panda.” The Pillar remarks.

“You were here before?”

“It’s a long story,” The Pillar changes the subject and turns to Xian. “We need a favor.”

“Shoot,” Xian says, and I can’t fathom his dialect or slang. Maybe he is some sort of a modern monk.

“We have a puzzle that led us to you.” The Pillar shows him the note we found in the chess piece.

“Sticky note!” Xian seems fascinated with it. He sticks it on his head. “Haven’t seen one of those in about… hmmm… forty years.”

“I’ll send you a tank full of sticky notes later,” The Pillar says. “As you can see, it has the word Deep Blue written on one side.”

“White Stones on the other,” Xian says.

“Let’s stick to the part you know about,” The Pillar says.

“You mean the machine?” Xian looks all serious and worried.

The Pillar nods.

“You remember what the machine looks like, right?”

“Of course,” The Pillar says. “A long monolith-like black box. Inside it are all the wires and microchips that makes it think.”

“Good memory, Cao Pao Wong.”

“I think the puzzle is a secret way to open it.”

“No one has been able to open the machine ever before. I hope you remember that.”

“I know, even the guys at IBM believed it was haunted when they couldn’t open it after the game with Kasparov. Just tell me where you keep it.”

Xian rubs his chin. “This is going to be a bit of a problem.”

“Why so?” I interfere.

“Like The Pillar said. It looks like a monolith, black, intimidating and huge. You look at it and feel strange and conflicting emotions.”

“So?” I ask.

“Let me put it this way,” Xian says. “It looks like the monolith in that Space Odyssey movie by Stanley Kubrick.”

I haven’t seen the movie so The Pillar explains it’s about space exploration, where a mysterious monolith is found by astronauts. The monolith is shown in the movie to have taught the first man, apes precisely, how to hunt and make a weapon. In brief, it showed man how to make things, from a hunting weapon to a thinking computer in our modern day.

“I get it,” I tell Xian. “So the IBM machine looks like that monolith in the movie. What does this have to do with us seeing Deep Blue now?”

Xian takes a moment and says. “Well, my monks are now worshiping the machine in the middle of the snow.”

Chapter 32

Xian walks us to where the Deep Blue machine sticks out of the snow. It’s about two meters high and slightly less than a meter wide. It also looks like it parts from the middle, only if you punch in a combination of secret numbers in the digital pad on top. A sixteen number combination.

“So the issue is to how to get the numbers?” The Pillar asks Xian.

“I’d call it your secondary issue,” Xian says. “The first would be them.” He points at the monks in orange praying while facing the monolith. A few of them are already suspicious about us.

“So they think Deep Blue is God?” I ask.

“Todd,” Xian says.

“Todd?” The Pillar asks.

“Yes, Todd.” Xian says.

“Who’s Todd?” I ask Xian.

“God.” Xian says.

“Todd is God?” The Pillar asks.

“Or God is Todd.” I remark, loving the insanity.

“How can God be Todd?” The Pillar asks.

“A misspelling.” Xian says.

“You Buddhist misspelled God’s name?” The Pillar says.

“Not at all,” Xian says. “One day, I took my monks to New York. They asked a man whom New Yorkers pray to. A drunk man on a Sunday morning told them ‘God’ in a slurry tongue. They thought he said Tod. And since Deep Blue is a computer, and my monks believe computers are western inventions, they called it Todd.”

“What about Deep Blue?” I ask.

“You can’t worship something called Deep Blue.” Xian noted.

“Why even worship a machine?” I ask. “Are you sure you guys are Buddhists?”

“First of all, not all of my monks worship Todd. Some of them don’t. Secondly, we’re not really Buddhists; we’re left out in the cold wearing those silly orange robes, and we don’t know why we do it. We were just born that way.”

“And third?”

“That part of my men worship Todd so they get an American visa.”

“What?” My voice pitches up.

“They were told if they worship a machine from California, and the machine likes them, they’d end up with an American visa.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“A green card maybe?” Xian scratches his head.

“You’re being outrageously offensive right now.” I tell him, about to tell those poor monks the truth.

“Work Permit?” Xian wonders. “They wouldn’t mind that. It’s really cold and lonely in here.”

“Stop it.” I hold my head from internally exploding. “Who the heck told those poor monks they can get a visa by worshiping a machine?”

Xian shrugs, looking sideways.

“Who?” I pull him in from his robe.

“Him.” He points at The Pillar.

I turn and find The Pillar is already praying with the monks, avoiding me. When I near him, he is talking a woman into marrying him and giving her British citizenship, which is way cooler than American.

Chapter 33

It’s hard to do something about The Pillar’s atrocious behavior right now. I don’t even know when he was here in the past or what he’s done. All I get from his wink is that he is distracting the monks so I can solve the machine’s puzzle.

“Come with me, Xian,” I tell the old man, walking back to Deep Blue.

“So you know how the numbers go to the machine?” He asks.

“Hardly,” I say, looking at the note again. “All I know is that the other side of the note should be the way to do it.”

“White stones?” Xian wonders.

“Do you have any idea what it means?”

“I am trying to think.”

“If Lewis, or Fabiola, or whoever designed this global puzzle, meant the ‘white stones’ to help us open the machine, then it should point at something nearby.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing nearby.”

He is right. My eyes dart back to the machine itself. I notice the back of the machine is divided into small squares, carved with a sharp tool. The squares are many from top to bottom, and they have circles inside. Not all squares but some.