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Metal claws scraped against the cold, hardened dirt as Theta continued its ceaseless trudge through the forest. Strangely enough and for possibly the first time since its creation, the machine didn't even attempt to explain this unusual occurrence; unusual because, only a few moments ago, it had been a pleasantly warm day. Despite the fact that it had no actual feeling, multiple sensors served to deliver the temperature, but the machine payed remarkably little heed to their updates.
Indeed, many things were suddenly and inexplicably changing all around the mechanical alien. The trees began looming over head, growing denser with every passing moment, tendrils of fog began sneaking in between their great gnarled trunks, even the sky, which had previously been bright and sunny, was growing dark.
But the machine didn't give any sign as to it even noticing these unusual alterations. It was much too preoccupied with more personal problems to notice the external curiosities. It had been a good few hours since it began its internal systems evaluation, and still it continued. It had combed through every layer of software above the core programing a hundred times, but it continued to search a hundred times more, looking for something, anything, that could be held accountable for its earlier lapse, any sort of error that it could fix or virus that it could purge. But still, it found nothing.
Finally, it came out of it's almost trance-like search when it entered a large clearing. The clearing was a near perfect circle, outlined with extremely tightly woven tree trunks; indeed, when the machine turned around, it saw that it had been walking through a path flanked on either side by an equally dense treeline. Mist swirled all about the ground, and above, the sky was black and starless. On the far side of the clearing was another path, and in the center of the circle there was a strange table with two chairs. They seemed to be made of gnarled root, dark in color and growing out of the ground itself.
Still, although this new sight had shaken Theta out of its internal evaluation, the machine did its best to pay as little attention as possible to it, simply depositing it into its temporary memory storage bank and moving on. It set off straight for the other pathway, but after only a few moments of walking the fog had hidden the clearing from view completely. And then, after only a few minutes more, Theta came upon another clearing, exactly the same as the first. Slightly confused, the machine hurried through the clearing and down the path on the far end. But again, only a few minutes later, it came out in the exact same clearing.
Now thoroughly stupefied, the machine tried once more to go down the other path, but still it ended up in the same clearing. This time it turned and made its way back the way it came, but this still landed it in the same clearing. Finally deciding to test if this truly was some sort of spacial paradox and not just the work of some eccentric madman with far too much time on his hands, Theta walked over to the table. Kneeling down and wrapping its metal hands around one of the many protruding roots that littered the ground, it tore the chunk of wood up from the dirt with minimal effort. Then, after placing the chunk of root onto the table, it set off down the path once more.
But this time when Theta came into the clearing, the root was not on the table; instead, it was in the hand of strangely clad man, reclining in one of the wooden chairs. The man was dressed all in black and white, his face shielded by a mocking mask.
“Now tell me, why would you go and do a thing like that?” he began. “What, are you trying to spoil my little illusion? I'll have you know it's really not that easy to make such a perfect spacial loop. Usually there's all kinds of poor texturing and a great deal of loading time, but I put some real effort into this one, and you had to go ruin the fun. You see, this is why I don't like dealing with robots. No appreciation for the dramatic, that's your problem.”
Unfazed (or at least, unable to show it) by the strange man's sudden arrival, Theta opened with its usual warm welcome.
“Designate species.”
“Oh, let's not get into all that nonsense. Having a species is so overrated, it really is.”
“State name.”
“A bit more welcoming, but you're not exactly the social type are you? Anyway, my name's Doctor Cavalian. I mean, you can call me Doctor Cavalian. I don't much like names, they feel too confining. I've got plenty of the stupid things, but when I'm on business people usually call me Doctor Cavalian. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?”
“State your intentions,” came Theta's poor excuse for a reply.
“Oh, where are my manners?” came Cavalian's only reply, completely disregarding the machine's previous command. “Please, sit.”
After a moment of consideration, the machine obliged and sat in the unoccupied chair, facing the masked man. As it did so, Cavalian came out of his reclining position and, with a flick of his wrist, dispersed the chunk of root he was holding into smoke.
“This is your doing?” came Theta's next question.
“What, you mean this place? Yep. Made it all special for you. Do you like it?”
“The establishment of a smooth flowing spacial paradox is impossible. How did you achieve such a feat?”
“What, is that it? Just some sciency nonsense? No comment on the aesthetics? I put a lot of work into this design, I thought it was pretty good. But if you want to take this somewhere else, I suppose I could do that.”
“You are capable of such a thing?” replied Theta, yet again ignoring Cavalian's eccentric personality.
“Of course. You hang around the multiverse for a few million years, you pick up a few tricks.”
After a brief moments of hesitation, Theta continued. “What are you?”
“Extra-dimensional sorcerer. Last one out there as far as I can tell.”
“What is your business with me?”
“Nothing really. Just wanted to chat.”
“Why?”
“I've been around a long time. Long story short, I've got nothing better to do.”
“You distort the fabric of reality out of boredom?”
“Yep, that pretty much sums it up.”
There was a long moment of silence as Theta realized that this actually was nothing more than the work of an eccentric madman with too much time on his hands, but eventually it was broken as Cavalian spoke again.
“So, what do you want to do? Oh! Wait! Forget that, I've got an idea. I think I saw this in a movie once.”
As he spoke, he began waving his hands above the table, and slowly, a strange liquid of swirling white and black began seeping up out of the wood. The colors began separating, forming different squares until the liquid had become a checkered board. Figures began gradually rising up out of two opposite rows of checkered tiles. Finally, two makeshift armies had been assembled, 16 soldiers on each side of the board, facing off. On Theta's side was a team of black figures, and on Cavalians they were white. Finally, when everything had fully solidified, Cavalian broke the silence once more.
“Tell me, do you play chess?”
((A bit cliched, I know, but I couldn't resist.))
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