An Infinite Game

For a thousand years, I've been watching the Estigies plot their wars, and run the course of history. The parasites have manoeuvred nations to do their bidding, sacrificed countless lives to fill their need for conflict. They shifted their focus from all-out slaughter to subtle manipulations-- architects designing architects, schemers behind the schemers behind the thrones. To what end do they play their games? Toward what goal do they march? I've yet to discover that hidden truth.

I suspect it may be little more than sheer boredom that impelled them, at first, to toy with our world. Their unending existence must have been terribly, maddeningly dull before humanity rose to a level worthy of their attention. Like a sudden breeze with a strange smell across an unending, uninteresting plain, we immediately became their sole recipient of their studies and experimentation. The games began when they realized that their own brethren wanted to play with us on their own. They behave like children, destroying what they have to prevent others from having what they want for themselves. Unlike children, instead of tossing us aside in a tantrum, they have plotted to ruin us for their brethren in an eternal game.

Ha, would that it were eternal. The closing gambits have come sooner than the Estigies ever expected. The game has taken on a life of it's own, further driving their interest in playing, but has also exceeded their designs, moving faster to it's inevitable end. Our suns are setting, and they are mad with the desire to end the game in their individual ways. They are desperate, even knowing that once the game is done, they will return to their infinite and pointless existence alone in our realm.

What of humanity? As a rule, we are unaware of the game being played, even as the dice are cast, and we are moved across the board by hands well-cloaked in shadow. It is only recently, compared to the length of the game as a whole, that a new player has taken a seat at the table. An unknown variable, further confounding the desperate Estigies, has manipulated a small number of us, changing us into players in our own right. None know the purpose of The Player, but it seems obvious that its goal is to disrupt the Estigies' game.

Our eyes have been opened and we have been made to see the hands of the Estigies as they move us in accordance with their plans. We have seen the game being played and in our indignant rage, we have thrown their plans into turmoil. We hate them for their presumptive control of our lives. That they treat humanity as playthings is despicable. We strike at them where we can-- their pawns, their knights, and given the opportunity, we would undoubtedly strike at the Estigies themselves.

I am one of the chosen few plucked by The Player to become more than a pawn. I have been alive for a thousand years, since the nineteenth century. In that time, unlike some of my peers, I have spent more time watching than waging war against our unseen manipulators. There is more afoot here than even the Machiavellian schemes of the Estigies and the chosen humans. The purpose of The Player is unknown but accepted as beneficent to humanity. I alone ask why The Player has interceded.

Is it cynical to doubt an apparently altruistic move? Could The Player be yet another of the Estigies in the guise of a stranger? For all the things we know, we realize we cannot know everything. I have taken it upon myself to investigate the seeming source of our salvation.