Gamer's End

**Gamer's End** is a short story by Yoon Ha Lee set in the Machineries of Empire universe. It was first published in Press Start to Play (August 2015) and reappears in Hexarchate Stories.

## Excerpt

*Your realm is a vast one: worlds upon worlds you’ve never heard of. Some have more strategic value than others. The Taurags care a great deal about what they call honor. They make a point of sparing civilian targets. But your people are still losing.*

## Blurb

*Concerning a Shuos Academy graduate and a deadly game*.

## Summary

A newly graduated Shuos cadet arrives on the Citadel of Eyes for special training as the realm assembles resources to continue a two-decade battle with the Taurag Republic. An instructor introduces the cadet to virtual reality training exercise. Partway through, the exercise is interrupted and the cadet thrown out of the setting to be informed that Taurag infantry have invaded the Citadel.

With only an incomplete map for guidance, the cadet reaches an armory, is nearly blown up by a real grenade, and kills several attackers, recognizing the violet eye of one of them as a Taurag trait. Several bloody encounters demonstrate the reality of the invasion. Guided by a transmitted voice, the student reaches the Citadel's spatial stabilizers and is told that the enormous incoming Taurag invasion force can only be stopped by using the stabilizers to destroy the Citadel and the invading fleet. Realizing that the Citadel's destruction would demolish a significant portion of the planet they orbit, including civilian populations, the cadet refuses to comply, determined not to be worse than the notoriously honorable enemy. Injured by the previous fighting, the cadet lays an ambush, but loses consciousness before the next attackers arrive.

Waking in a medical unit decorated by Shuos Mikodez's knitting, the student is informed by the instructor that the firefights were indeed a training exercise, populated by volunteers who were truly killed. Only such a realistic exercise could ensure that the student's reaction were sincere. The student's refusal to trade mass civilian casualties for a tactical victory, even at the cost of a strategic military target and their own life, shows the values that the instructor wanted to see, and he is recommending them for the fleet being assembled to accompany a new superweapon into the battle against the Taurags as an officer who can be trusted to spare civilian lives instead of taking them.

## The Cadet

After a last year of study included harrowing strategic simulation games, the cadet has just graduated from Shuos Academy planetside, having taken the infantry/assassination track, and is one of few cadets chosen for advanced training at the Citadel. The cadet is broadly aware of the state of the realm, its factions, and an ongoing two-decade war with the Taurag Republic, as well as the publicly-known history and reputation of Shuos Jedao.

The cadet is a skillful fighter and is familiar with orbital mechanics. Like many students, the cadet hates adjusting to simulations. The cadet's old roommate, who also disliked simulations, described the associated augment adjustment as "the sensation of your eyeballs turning inside out in a dark room."

The cadet is adamant against taking indiscriminate civilian casualties, citing Taurag values in explaining that there must be a better way than being worse than their enemy. Furious that the test's design required taking actual lives as a form of training, though acknowledging the need to field soldiers with trusted morals, the cadet promises to come for the instructor after dealing with the Taurags, and the instructor says he'll look forward to it.

## Trivia

* Though placed before Glass Cannon in Hexarchate Stories, the events of Gamer's End take place afterwards, appearing out of order to allow Glass Cannon to end the book. Since its place in the continuity could complicate further books in the series, it may eventually be declared AU.
* The story takes place twelve or twenty years into a war with the Taurags.
* Gamer's End is the only hexarchate story to be told in the second person.
* The instructor is not named in the story, but is revealed through details and dialogue to be Shuos Jedao.
* This is the only story to mention the planet around which the Citadel of Eyes orbits and to establish the location of the Shuos Academy campus and the violet eyes of the Taurags.
* The use of living performers portraying enemies to be killed mirrors the ancient Kel use of non-Kel "marionettes" for training exercises. However, the cadets in the modern exercises were volunteers.
* The author thanks Chris Chinn, Yune Kyung Lee, Joseph Betzwieser, Daedala, and Sonya Taaffe for beta-reading the story, and mentions “Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality,” an essay by John Kessel, as providing inspiration.

## References

1. ↑ Author's website
2. ↑ Author's website
3. ↑ Open Thread: Hexarchate Stories
4. ↑ The Chameleon's Gloves
5. ↑ Author's website