Observations placeholder

from The Stargate Chronicles

A year later Scotty called me into his office, along with the rest of the shop. He had discovered a new kind of game.  It looked a lot like a cribbage board, with five holes across and a line of rows perhaps thirty in length. It came with eight different color pins that fit into the holes. The first row had a dark black cover, which would hide the first row of pins. The idea of the game was to put in the starter row and not tell anyone what it was.  It could be any combination of pin colors, or even all one color, whatever you wanted to put there. Once it was set up, the opponent would guess the colors of the pins. For example if the first row was

RED GREEN BLACK YELLOW WHITE

And the person guessed

RED BLACK YELLOW GREEN WHITE

The person controlling the game would then put in a white pin where they were correct and black pins where they were wrong. So, the player would see

WHITE BLACK BLACK BLACK WHITE

This would tell them that their guess for the first pin and last pin was correct, and they would continue to guess until they could name them all in appropriate order.

Scotty had already set up the game and had it sitting in the middle of his desk. He announced that he had played it with his wife for a couple of hours the night before and the absolutely best game was three moves. He said according to the book three moves was exceptional. He looked over at me and asked me to give him the colors in proper order and we would see how good I was.

Initially, I was angry with him, because it was obviously meant to put me in my place, or otherwise prove that I was only lucky. The fact that he had invited everyone who was there inside to watch was adding to the insult.

"Go ahead, Joe, do it." Ken poked me on the shoulder.

He was actually giving me support, because we had become very close friends and he had a lot of faith in me.  So, I closed my eyes and let my breath out in a long, slow exhale.  My mind became totally blank. I relaxed into it and began shutting out the rest of the world.

After about five minutes of total silence with me sitting there, eyes shut and  meditating, Scotty said, "'Well, are you going to do this, or aren't you?"

I opened my eyes and very calmly said, "I'm waiting for you to pass the answer to me." Which wasn't completely honest, but I knew it would make him uncomfortable.

He kind of chuckled at that but closed his eyes for a second, then quickly opened them. "Okay. I've passed it over, what's the combination?"

'Without hesitating a second I gave him the five colors in order, got up, and walked out of his office. I didn't even wait for a response. There was silence in the office as he slowly raised the black-plastic cover. By the time I reached my desk I could hear a soft, "Holy shit, he did it!" Which kind of drifted across the room. Ken came out of the room smiling ear-to-ear. That was the last time Scotty tested me.