The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum

Bar Songs

The other patrons were no more clear-headed than Qayam, who had set the whole thing in motion and had meticulously arranged the connections between patrons. They were all high as kites, and only the most experienced of hedonists could pretend to see straight. Yet in their stoned drunkenness, each would, if Qayam’s calculations were accurate, find that within them which would bring them closer to bliss. In this he followed the wisdom of the ancient Aatari sages, who were fond of quoting obscure poems about circumventing existential despair:

Ah, fill the cup:—what boots it to repeat
How time is slipping underneath our feet:
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,
Why fret about them if today be sweet!

One moment in annihilation’s waste,
One moment, of the well of life to taste—
The stars are setting, and the caravan
Starts for the dawn of nothing—Oh, make haste!

Quatrain illustrations by Edmund J. Sullivan to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, First Version (translated by Edward Fitzgerald), 1933 (from Wikimedia Commons).

Qayam’s calculations worked to perfection. Out of the 27 patrons who had sought shelter from the icy tornado, he had selected 8 — Zadar, Quilini, Horsefly, Venoozia, X, Y, Dactalla, and a strange man called Eff. These 8 patrons registered some of the most complex energy patterns he had ever seen. Their cerebral activity was off the charts, especially that of Zadar, X, Dactalla, and Eff. Qayam hoped that with a little careful engineering their energies would fuse, igniting into a riotous conflagration of wonder and affection. It would be the party of the century.

Yet Qayam was so taken by Dactalla that after two hours he forgot to keep an eye on the cerebral energy outputs and the hormone locking patterns around the table. The thought of tinkering further occurred to him at one point, but he was so wrapped in the promise of bliss with a stunning Derelectan (and in any case everyone around him was so wrapped up in each other) that he said to himself, What the hell, leave well enough alone! His eyes were so mesmerized by the swirling patterns of Dactalla’s chest that he didn’t even notice that Dactalla kept sneaking glimpses at Zadar, who was having an earnest conversation with Eff.

Because Zadar was talking to Eff, Qualini was free to talk across the table to Y, who was secretly jealous of the story Zadar told about his romance with Qualini. X had more or less dragged her from her comfortable life among the white ladies of the Meliflorium illuminati.

The Nymphaeum, 1878, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Haggin Museum (From Wikimedia Commons)

Qualini on the other hand was deeply indebted to Zadar for saving her from her parents and for opening her eyes to the real dimensions of the cosmos. Yet she was also a librarian and didn’t really want to fly from place to place, on the heels of a Swarm that seemed like a horde of mosquitoes. Every time she tried to sit down and read peacefully, it would buzz and draw patterns that Zadar watched for hours. It was useless trying to get the damn thing to buzz more quietly. Secretly, she longed to be back in the stacks of Lactar8, plugged into data banks of stories and knowledge. She even started to miss her predictable life with her parents, who at least had the decency to leave her alone in the bedroom.

The stories Y told Qualini about sipping red wine with the illuminati on the silent star-banks of Meliflorium intrigued her. She wondered what it would be like to take up with the likes of Y, who clearly liked her as well. On the table below her, poems magically lit up or faded away, although no one was sure if other people saw them as well. Qualini saw the following:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow. 

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864, by Simeon Solomon, from the Tate Britain (Wikimedia Commons).

While Y was busy talking to Qualini, Zadar turned to Dactalla and asked her if she had ever heard of the Swarm.

Qayam looked down at his handcom and saw that the relational and cerebral readings were more or less what he expected. He was, however, a bit disappointed that his cerebral reading was only 7, whereas Dactalla and Zadar had a reading of 9. Whoever this Eff was, he had a reading of 10! Qayam’s low reading perhaps explained his weak connection with Dactalla. It seemed his attraction was a one-way street.

Qayam had been hoping that his earlier reading had exaggerated somehow the strengths of the others, but seeing this wasn’t so, he started to wonder if perhaps he was out of his league. Or perhaps he could use his relative anonymity to observe without being observed. This optimistic thought was short-lived: when he opened the cerebral activity scale beyond 1-10, he saw that there was a patron who he knew nothing about. His handcom merely read “identity unknown.” The patron was located just above Zadar’s head, and had a reading of 9 to the power of 723.