Sunday May 20, 2001
Book 1: The Tub of Happiness — Battle for the Wormgate

It's Choose Your Own Justification Time!Take a close look at the checker-board in the penultimate frame, and then choose the following reason why it does not bother you enough to email the author.


A) You don't know how to play checkers, and are okay with that since you are relatively sure you DO know how to play the firing mechanism of an AR-15, and are more interested in focusing on survival skills in today's modern world.
B) Obviously when force-mapping a five-dimensional probability curve onto a two dimensional grid, and then further forcing that into a checkers match, a few rules may safely be bent.
C) In the 31st century, "checkers" will have evolved to use more than just one color of squares on the board. The board will have evolved, too, so that the game can be played with sticks, dice, and an AR-15 if the players are up to it.
D) You wish to engage in an apathy contest with the author. If he doesn't care enough to fix this discrepancy with the checkers people know and love, you don't care enough to email him.
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Transcript

Narrator: Behold the enemy, Poised for blockade, Holding hostage the very life-blood of commerce for the Nejjat system, Even her only wormgate.It's common knowledge that there's no way into or out of hyperspace without using a wormgate. No-one can sneak up on them.
Narrator: Common knowledge is nowhere near so trustworthy as common sense.
Nejjat rebel ships: (blue) Oww! Sensor white-out!(green) We're being scanned!(pink) It's a probe drone! Intercept and destroy! Now!
Nejjat rebel ships: (green) We got it, command.(blue) Kill confirmed. Bogie is chaff and charnel on all bands.(pink) Reconfigure all defenses, stat. Somebody wants to know where our forces are. Let's keep 'em guessing.
Nejjat rebel ships: (blue) Roger that. Executing delta three-one.(green) If something else comes through, we'll be ready.
Narrator: Such is the chatter when mortals manage space combat. Poor amateurs...
Narrator: Now behold the mind behind the probe drone. A mind that can reduce five dimensional probability curves into a game of checkers. Meet P.D.C.L. AKA Petey:
Petey: Probe complete. Victory solution plotted, captain.
Tagon: Make it happen, Petey.
Petey: It's happening as we speak, sir.
Petey: King Me.
Footnote: It's Choose Your Own Justification Time! Take a close look at the checker-board in the penultimate frame, and then choose the following reason why it does not bother you enough to email the author. A) You don't know how to play checkers, and are okay with that since you are relatively sure you DO know how to play the firing mechanism of an AR-15, and are more interested in focusing on survival skills in today's modern world. B) Obviously when force-mapping a five-dimensional probability curve onto a two dimensional grid, and then further forcing that into a checkers match, a few rules may safely be bent. C) In the 31st century, "checkers" will have evolved to use more than just one color of squares on the board. The board will have evolved, too, so that the game can be played with sticks, dice, and an AR-15 if the players are up to it. D) You wish to engage in an apathy contest with the author. If he doesn't care enough to fix this discrepancy with the checkers people know and love, you don't care enough to email him.