ChessGame_MoShang

I open my shop at dawn

The door makes no sound

I arrange the antiques

Each one in its proper place

A customer enters

I offer tea

We discuss the weather

We discuss the price

I never mention

That I know what she wants before she speaks

That I know what her enemies will do in three days

I just smile

And refill the cup

Behind the smile the numbers run

Probabilities contingencies forks in the path

Every word she spoke: a data point

Every glance: a vector

Every hesitation: confirmation of a hypothesis

The tea was warm

But the warmth was calibrated

The conversation was friendly

But the friendliness was a function

She leaves satisfied

I remain computing

The door closes

The algorithm continues

The city wants me to choose sides

The City Lord's faction the Green Wood Sect the Iron Merchants

Three paths each with its own cost

But I am not walking any of them

I am building a fourth path

Where none of them can reach me

I sell the core technology in three pieces

Each piece to a different buyer

Each piece missing the critical component

Now they need each other

Now they cannot move without me

They think I am patient because I am kind

They are wrong

I am patient because I am angry

And I have learned that anger is most useful

When it is not seen

Every time I smiled at an insult

I was filing it away

Every time I said "it doesn't matter"

I was mattering very much

The storm is not coming

The storm has been here all along

I just built a very good roof

I look at my own reflection in the Observing Mirror

And I see what I have become

A man who is so good at hiding

That he has forgotten what he is hiding

A man who is so warm to others

That he has become cold to himself

A man who calculates every outcome

But never calculates the cost of never being surprised

I am the protocol's most elegant bug

A system that debugs others

While running corrupted code internally