Yang Ru heard the voices for the first time after the old man last visited.

The voices were, at first, like a soft whisper, a trickle of spring melt down the mountainside. They were almost nothing, and she felt they were just part of her imagination. Her mind tended to make things up, as she grew more and more consumed with a task, something to take her away from the all-consuming project. She’d heard the voices before, the channels, with their static, their white noise, their distractions. Inappropriate images of demands for sex, food, sleep, and satiation. She ignored these demands, as she began working on what she assumed would be a masterpiece no one would know even existed. She guided resources, people, and information streams into the program, the ever-consuming project.

She didn’t sleep for three days, and Osmanthus kept asking if she needed a break. She didn’t understand why the machine would bother her with such needless things. Yang Ru dismissed Osmanthus, and she went about her business, without sleep, without rest, without shower, sex, food, or entertainment. She was flying on fumes, she knew, but that was when her brain worked best. It worked on the edge, a razor’s edge of chaos, where the breaking point, the ensuing crash, would come. She staved off the crash with coffee, which she detested, and warm tea with fresh ginger.

Yang Ru looked for the connections. Each connection required more processing power she didn’t have at her disposal. She looked at the map of Valles Marineris, and she knew that she would need more of what the old man had given her, in order to tackle the task at hand. She needed to be clearer in mind and body.

She commanded Osmanthus to come out of her exile into cyberspace. Yang Ru asked Osmanthus to secure another bit of what the old man had given her, something that would make the voices go still and her brain hit the sweet spot, the flow state she looked for and craved.

“That is outside of my authority to request, Yang Ru,” Osmanthus said. “I can send a communique to Mr. Liu Jianguo, but it might take some time for the request to be answered.”

"Fine,” Yang Ru answered. “Fine. I will be taking a break. I need to quiet my head.”

“As you wish, Yang Ru,” Osmanthus commented.

She heard the voices grow in strength as she stripped naked and entered the shower. She let the warm water wash over her tired body. She felt the oncoming shakes, the nerves rattled from being at the edge for too long. She felt the tug of sleep coming for her. She felt the insatiable demand for sex and food. She closed her eyes, and she saw the voices in lurid pictures. Each voice was a color on the infinite spectrum of colors. She could tell the differences between each. Some male. Some female. Some unknown. Some hovering between the extremes of both masculinity and femininity.

When she slept, she saw Valles Marineris, Hotel California. It consumed her thoughts and her dreams. She knew the coming war, the bloodletting, would be the greatest thing she’d ever achieved. A masterpiece of social engineering, soft power, and anger, seething from deep somewhere, a well untapped by those before her. As she slept, the voices, all of them, grew louder and more pronounced. She needed to quieten the voices, to mute the channels, and she believed the old man, Mr. Liu Jianguo, had the cure for what ailed her.

If you enjoyed this installment of A Protracted Game, please remember to share with friends, family members, and/or your favorite online communities. For PDF copies of official installments, please visit the official Webpage for A Protracted Game. Thank you for reading!