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Yip Chow's Chinese Garden

by ‘Suisjeme’.

Calista Weng was unusual, not just because she knew she was only fifteen and pretty. She held the highest score on the latest Coin-op at the arcade, in a rundown South American town on the edge of the desert. It was a brilliant game. Her father said it was like the old games "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" brought up-to-date, just an ordinary "shoot 'em up". And so it appeared in their small, poor society, where hardly anyone owned a personal Games console, let alone a computer. Calista didn't agree.

Each level of the game she played brought new problems until she was Star Captain, Second Class. The final challenge, to gain her Star Commander award, was causing problems. The main thing was the game time factor, but she also knew her father was annoyed by time - with the hours she spent down at the arcade.

It wasn't that she spent much money, indeed no one had very much money. She only needed one chance and, using the skills perfected at each level, she'd shoot through the early stages of the game. It did take time, but she usually managed to preserve her three lives to the twenty-fourth level.

Her fame grew. After school, nearly the whole year group would crowd into Yip Chow's Arcade, "The Crystal Palace". But she couldn't complete the circuit of the Console Universe to achieve the final accolade and bonus points.

Each planetary system fell to her skills in the early levels. Deft flicks of her fingers gained her rapid mastery of the Home planets, then it was that first swing round Sol to catapult her into the neighbouring star system of Andromeda. In a cascade of beautiful visuals, masterpieces of animation, she'd cunningly balance gravitational forces and end up facing the enemy Captain of his Fleet. In a blaze of interstellar gases from a destroyed planet, she'd zoom up on her evil enemy and blast through the shields, crippling the vessel.

In the blink of an eye, she'd take her Command Ship into a spiralling attack and manage to release both the laser-guided bombs and keep her mind on using the whole battery of guns directed at the power plant of the enemy craft - crippling it. Success! The crowd would cheer and old Mr Yip Chow would hobble out of his Office to tell them to behave themselves.

Meanwhile, Calista would be executing that precise balance needed to swing her into the next system. The audience would become silent as her speed built up, and in a glorious burst of dazzling light and sound, her thrusters boosting her to the limit, she'd zoom beyond light speed into a tranquil Warp state, with star systems silently blurring around her, waiting to hit the button that would jerk her into the next round of mayhem and blasting.

"I will not have you going down to the arcade after school!" Calista's mother was very annoyed. "Your father's going to be very angry. You missed your extra biology lesson."

Calista knew she was facing failure. She knew that the twin suns in the final star system meant reassessing the gravitational forces. The methods used in the main game didn't work. Her hesitations allowed enemy defence ships to disable her shields and slow her down. There had to be a way to penetrate the defences of the Enemy Commander's Home planet and keep the attackers at a distance. She didn't hear her mother.

"Calista! Listen. You must settle down. You're obsessed with that silly arcade game. I'm going to ask father to go down to see Yip Chow, to have you banned from "The Crystal Palace". You are too young, anyway!"

Calista was trembling.

That evening, Mr Yip Chow arrived at her home. Her father had telephoned the arcade and insisted the owner come and discuss the problem.

They all sat round the table. Her father explained how Calista's chances at school were being ruined.

Mr Yip Chow looked even smaller and older. He waited while Calista's father and mother repeatedly emphasised Calista's obsession.

"I am very sorry," the ancient figure said humbly, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. "Perhaps I could help Calista with her Biology. I have a beautiful garden at the back of my house next to 'The Crystal Palace'. You wouldn't guess that it was there. It is an excellently peaceful place to study. If I limit Calista's time in the arcade and if she can only play one game... And if I make her study in the peace of the garden before she plays..." The wizened figure made another gesture of helplessness.

Calista's parents muttered together, while she stared at Mr Yip Chow. He was very old. His skin had the yellowish look of old ivory. His black eyes glittered. Calista realised he wasn't being humble at all. He wanted her to play the game.

"We agree. But only for two weeks, upto the school examinations. We will see how things turn out. And we must inspect the garden first," her father said sternly.

Calista's friends were disappointed on the next Monday. She explained that she had to study in Mr Yip Chow's garden, before playing the game.

It was a strange garden. There were hardly any plants. The sandy expanse was dotted here and there with smooth, round boulders and smaller pebbles."Where would you like to sit?" Mr Yip Chow waved his thin arm vaguely.

There was one large rock nearer the edge. There was room to rest a book or two. Calista brushed a stray hair from her face and moved towards it.

"An excellent choice," murmured Mr Yip Chow. "You must study for at least thirty minutes. Then I will test you."

Calista shivered. There was something odd about the way he said he would test her. She took her place on the seat-like stone and opened her Biology textbook. When she looked up again, Mr Yip Chow had disappeared.

It was indeed peaceful. She couldn't hear the crashing gears, the growl of rusty truck engines from the one main street or see the awful red dust they threw up in clouds. She decided that was because the arcade and the house protected the garden from the noise and dirt of the street. She looked round the garden. She knew, of course, something about Chinese Gardens from her father. They were traditionally places of contemplation and peace. When you made such a garden, the idea was to place the boulders and rocks to create a sense of balance and calm. She stared around.

Calista had always been an energetic and athletic girl. She loved her sports almost as much as her science and mathematics. She knew the adrenalin was always flowing in her veins and everyone loved her energy and sense of fun. The garden did calm you down. She felt sleepy and her eyelids were becoming heavy. She tried to focus on her book. Biology was her weakest subject. She ought to try.

It was very strange. The smooth boulders in the sunlight, and their shadows, began to shimmer. Suddenly, they were planets swinging in orbit. She tried to shake off the weird feelings the garden gave her, but she couldn't. The stillness was a mirage. In fact, the whole scene was moving. The garden was a universe. The two larger boulders, just off-centre, glowed like twin suns. The other boulders were planets. She was able to float amidst an enlarging universe. She was being sucked into it.

"Have you completed your assignment?"

With a shock, Calista turned to Mr Yip Chow and realised he had a slight smile. She was dizzy.

"Let me give you a quick test." He fired Biology questions at her.

Calista heard herself answering with accuracy and precision. She couldn't remember reading a single word, yet her recall was remarkable. She knew the answers.

Within minutes, in the Arcade, she was speeding from level to level in her starship. Before half an hour was up, she was in that silence, at Warp Speed, about to drop herself into the twin-sunned system of Level Twenty-four, a Star Captain, Second Class, seeking to be a Commander.

She failed. She physically sensed the crunch as her ship received a direct hit to its Command Centre, and another to the propulsion units. The graphics were unlike anything she'd seen before in the game. The screen was a hot mess of reds and yellows with incandescent splashes of white fire. She knew what she needed to do, next time. She must not attack directly.

Mr Yip Chow gave her an envelope containing a praiseworthy report on her first assignment. As if it was almost an afterthought, he said, "Life and death are illusions here. All is in the balance. We proceed from level to level," The mysterious words echoed in her mind as she left.

She didn't know what he was talking about, but she had got further into Level Twenty-four. She had actually found and attacked the Commander's Ship, but didn't really understand how she'd achieved it.

The days flew by. Each time she visited the garden and opened her books, she let herself float into the spaces between the boulders. She sensed the relationships between their sizes and the distances between, but she couldn't control them like in the game. It was as if real gravitational forces were at work, in the garden.

In the game, her skill increased. She realised the enemy Commander in Level 24 was extremely clever. He seemed to be able to position his vessel differently between the planets and his defence ships every time. But she was becoming so fast at responding to the movements of the enemy, she never again lost by being destroyed. It was fuel, time. In holding back, she was wasting both time and fuel. She needed to do something else.

On the last day of the two weeks, in the garden, it came to her; a revelation. She dropped the Biology book and it woke her from her daze. Picking up the book and looking back at the serene universe of the garden, she realised - she had to drop back out, return to Warp speed at the crucial point, when it seemed all was lost.

She rushed to the game machine. A small crowd of classmates, who had waited patiently, clustered round in anticipation. Some seemed to sense this was the day the game would be beaten. They watched open-mouthed as Calista confidently swung herself through the Universe of the game to Level Twenty-four.

They gasped as she mopped up enemy fighters and approached the Commander's vessel, which was like some giant spider hanging in space, waiting to deal its death blow to Calista's Star-f ighter Dragon ship. As she swung towards it, she accelerated and knew that the very forces holding the enemy's vessel so delicately, which could twist and turn it in any direction, were the forces she could use to fire herself out of this system into Warp. She would leave the system and then drop back into it so fast that it would be as if she was disappearing from view and reappearing behind the enemy. She would need to turn her own ship at the same moment so that she was in a position to fire. That would be the really skilful bit.

In less than the blink of an eye, she swerved to use the pull of the remaining planets and their twin suns, and accelerated to Warp speed. At the same time, her fingers flickered over her ship's controls to turn her about. There were realistic G-forces tearing at her body. She was glad she was good at athletics and very fit. She gasped.

The audience gasped with her, staring at the screen. The Warpspeed stars rotated with dizzy intensity on the screen, as they had never seen before.

She slammed her thumb on the button to take her to the next level, knowing that, being the last level, she'd reappear in that life-and-death universe she'd momentarily left, facing back towards her enemy. The stones in the sea of sand and gravel within Yip Chow's garden were in her mind. The forces between them were becoming real.

It worked. She jerked her hand to depress the fire buttons. The laser guns lanced into the rear of the enemy Command ship at the same moment as the guided bombs were released.

Suddenly, drifting away from the scene, Calista watched as the trace of the guided bombs circled over and down towards the enemy. She knew she'd won. Her hands dropped limply to her side, wet with sweat.

She was exhausted. The screen burst into vibrancy -stunning, spinning zig-zags. The cheers of the audience were silenced by a crescendo of thundering sound. But Claista heard nothing. She was in the warmth and peace of a quietly humming Command console.

They stared at Calista. She was turning blue. The glare from the game machine was growing brighter and brighter, the noise becoming louder and louder. Everything was shaking, vibrating. A deeply resonant voice spoke from the console: "Welcome to Level Twenty-five. We are leaving in five seconds. Assume Command mode. Countdown begins... five-four-three-two..."

Mechanically, Calista's thumb moved to the red button to re-enter the game. As the voice finished the countdown, "-one!" she pressed down hard.

At "The Crystal Palace", no one was very sure what happened next. They were aware of Mr Yip Chow hovering in the background, but Calista's body seemed to catch fire. They heard her cry, "Yes - Commander, First Class! I WILL become a... "

Her voice was carried away in a storm of fire that consumed "The Crystal Palace" and Yip Chow's house. Amazingly, Calista's friends all managed to escape, somehow unharmed, but no one there ever saw Calista or Mr Yip Chow again. There was no sign of their bodies in the ashes the next morning.

Calista watched Yip Chow carefully. Her view from the Commander's observation port was stunning. The fires in Orion were dwindling in the distance. Beyond this galaxy in this Universe there were other evil powers to conquer in a new Universe, new galaxies to explore. She was only a First Level Commander, but she would do her best.

"Welcome to the Universal Federation, Commander Calista," Yip Chow intoned. "Remember to always keep the balance. Here, you have only one life."