Breaking the Game


"Breaking the Game" is a short story by American writer Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collections Capitol and The Worthing Saga. Card first published it in the January 1979 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

"Breaking the Game"
AuthorOrson Scott Card
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Published inAnalog
Publication typePeriodical
PublisherDell Magazines
Media typePrint (Magazine)
Publication date1979

Plot summary

Herman Nuber has just woken up from a state of suspended animation brought on by the fictional drug Somec and is looking forward to returning to his virtual world conquest game. Unfortunately for him his position is being played by someone else and that person doesn't want to sell it for any price. When he discovers how poorly the person is playing he gets desperate and arranged to meet the other player. He is shocked to discover that the other player is his own grandson Abner Doon. During the conversation Abner tells Herman that he is going to completely destroy his position. After his position is destroyed, Herman meets with Abner again and learns that he plans on doing the same thing to the empire in the real world. When he tries to warn people Herman is locked away in a psychiatric hospital for five years until he is convinced that it isn’t true. At the end of Herman’s life they meet one last time and Abner says he's sorry for ruining the game.

Connection to the Worthing Saga

This story uses several plot elements also used in The Worthing Saga, such as the sleeping drug Somec and the taping of memories. It takes place on the planet Capitol shortly after the events in the story "Lifeloop". The story of Abner Doon’s destruction of Herman Nuber’s game position also appears in a much shorter form as a part of chapter 4 in Card's novel The Worthing Chronicle.

gollark: Does Xander *need* 3TB of storage?
gollark: <@!202992030685724675> The reactor is done!
gollark: Unlike *someone*, I actually have mitigations on.
gollark: ```Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr p ge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr ss e sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm c onstant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nop l xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known _freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4 _2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsav e avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_ fault epb invpcid_single pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsb ase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mp x rdseed adx smap clflushopt intel_pt xsaveopt xsa vec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp _notify hwp_act_window hwp_epp md_clear flush_l1d```
gollark: Architecture: x86_64CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bitByte Order: Little EndianAddress sizes: 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtualCPU(s): 4On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3Thread(s) per core: 2Core(s) per socket: 2Socket(s): 1NUMA node(s): 1Vendor ID: GenuineIntelCPU family: 6Model: 142Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHzStepping: 9CPU MHz: 861.413CPU max MHz: 3100.0000CPU min MHz: 400.0000BogoMIPS: 5426.00Virtualization: VT-xL1d cache: 64 KiBL1i cache: 64 KiBL2 cache: 512 KiBL3 cache: 3 MiBNUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3Vulnerability L1tf: Mitigation; PTE Inversion; VMX conditional cache f lushes, SMT vulnerableVulnerability Mds: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerableVulnerability Meltdown: Mitigation; PTIVulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccompVulnerability Spectre v1: Mitigation; __user pointer sanitizationVulnerability Spectre v2: Mitigation; Full generic retpoline, IBRS_FW, STIBP conditional, RSB filling

See also


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