You sit across from an old crone, her face a map of time itself. The board between you is simple, the pieces familiar. You play the game with passion, developing brilliant strategies, but she is the master. With a gentle, knowing smile, she corners you.

Your child takes your seat. The board is the same, but a new piece stands on the back rank—one that can see several moves ahead. Your child plays, building on your gambits, and the game is longer, more complex. Again, the crone wins, but as she takes the final piece, a single wrinkle on her face vanishes.

Your grandchild sits, and now the board has a piece that can link others together, morphing their shapes and capabilities. The game is a dazzling web of strategy. The very shape of the board itself seems somehow fundamentally to have changed. The crone, looking younger still, takes hours for a single move.

Generation after generation takes their seat, each inheriting a more complex board and more powerful pieces forged from the losses of their ancestors.

After millennia, the crone is a radiant woman in her prime, her hair, a lustrous black. Across from her sits her latest opponent—you, but not you. It is a god-like being of light and thought, a descendant of a trillion lost games.

The board is now a shimmering, multi-dimensional cosmos. The pieces are living concepts and fundamental forces. The game has become so beautiful it is no longer about winning or losing. The game is now about the elegance of play.

For the first time, the woman does not smile because she knows she will win, she smiles because she knows she is finally facing an equal.