THE INTERGALACTIC BATTLESHIP LACUNA

Sheldon felt relaxed as he took his seat on Amy's couch. It wasn't his real seat, of course, but upon the (regular, timetabled) occasions when he visited Amy at her own abode, it served very well as a substitute; its position vis-a-vis fresh cool air in the summer was quite the equal of his real seat, and while it couldn't match his real seat's freedom from uncomfortable and perhaps germ-laden drafts in the winter, he had nothing to fear from them this balmy California July. He gave a little sigh of contentment as he looked over at Amy, who sat at a carefully measured distance from him which ensured chasteness while at the same time not being so remote that they had to raise their voices to converse.

"Well! This is peachy," he began.

"It is!" Amy concurred.

"And what could make a peachy situation even more peachy than a game of my own invention?"

Sheldon didn't quite like the way that Amy took a few seconds to think about that question, but decided to put it down to her superior, analytical mind taking a scientific approach to the query and studying every possible answer before replying -

"Nothing, I'm sure. Why, the only way this could be peachier would be if we were to be suddenly and inexplicably teleported to Georgia."

Sheldon blinked. "I don't think I would like that. Travel on anything faster than a train upsets my digestive system. Teleportation is by definition instantaneous. I'd lose all control over the timing of my bowel movements."

"It's just a figure of speech," Amy assured him. "Because peaches come from Georgia."

"As far as I'm concerned," Sheldon corrected her, "peaches come from the supermarket. I don't need to know trivia about where they came from before that. My brain's storage banks are entirely devoted to useful information."

"So noted," observed Amy. "Now, what is this game you're talking about?"

The mere question made Sheldon beam. "I assume you're familiar with Battleships?"

"The movie, the game, or the large ocean-going vessel with a plentitude of sailors aboard?"

"The game, although," Sheldon could not prevent himself from digressing, "the movie and the vessel are cogent to the game, being based around the same theme, id est, the attempt of one side to sink another's ship either in reality or on paper before its own ship is sunk by its adversary."

"Battleships is an extremely simple pencil and paper game for people of small ages or small IQs," pointed out Amy.

Sheldon smiled again. He had hoped Amy would make that exact point. "True. Which is why I have invented Sheldon's Space Battleships."

He reached into his briefcase and withdrew a folded-over pad of graph paper, spreading it out on his lap. The paper was large enough to cover him from chin to knees and beyond.

"No longer are we constrained by ten or fifteen squares on a side!" he proclaimed. "In Sheldon's Space Battleships, we fight on a grid a thousand squares by a thousand!"

"By a thousand?" Amy added. "Space battles are ipso facto fought in three dimensions."

So like Amy to home in on any minor snag in a plan! "Yes," Sheldon conceded. "But to create a three-dimensional space battleground is rather beyond my ability to construct out of sheets of graph paper from the department stationery cabinet. For now we must confine our titanic struggles to the X and Y axes alone. If you like," he added, "I'll work on a computer-generated 3D version, after you've played this prototype and seen how much more fun it is than the original."

"Continue," invited Amy.

"Upon this grid of a thousand by a thousand," Sheldon went on, enthusiasm swelling within him, "two mighty space cruisers face off. Not for us the dreary limitation to battleships, cruisers and submarines of two squares, three squares or five squares arranged in a tedious straight line! In Sheldon's Space Battleships, the only limit to ship design is your own imagination! Always provided, of course, that you can justify the exact shape of your ship according to astronautical and scientific principles," he hastened to add.

"So your space battleship can be any shape you like and feel able to justify?" Amy pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at Sheldon with a piercing eye which, for some reason, made him feel a little uneasy.

"Well, yes! If you wish, you can recreate a famous ship from science fiction on your graph paper, such as the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars or the Enterprise - any of the Enterprises - from Star Trek. Or you can let your imagination run free and design your own from scratch! That's what I'm going to do."

"Very well," Amy decided. "Your challenge is accepted. And I'm going to send your spaceship back to its planet of origin in little chunks of scrap metal."

Sheldon sniggered. "Oh, I hardly think so. It's perhaps a little unfair of me to challenge you, since this is my game and thus by definition nobody else can be as good at it as me."

"Let me just check. Apart from the difference in grid size and ship design, the other rules of Battleship remain as before?"

"Why, yes."

"We take it in turn to call out grid references, and the winner is the player who first maps out, by this method of trial and error, the exact location and dimensions of his opponent's ship?"

"Why... yes."

"I'm going to send your spaceship back to its planet of origin in little chunks of scrap metal."

"Bring it," Sheldon rejoindered. "I propose half an hour to design our ships, and then let battle commence. No quarter asked..."

"...no quarter given," finished Amy. She picked up a pencil from the side table next to her and wielded it in a manner which Sheldon thought unnecessarily menacing.

Half an hour later, the ships were complete, and their commanders sat behind the enormous sheets of graph paper. Sheldon was starting to think that his original choice of battleground size had perhaps been a little over-enthusiastic, but he banished the thought. "As the inventor of the game," he said, "I claim first shot."

"Very well," Amy responded crisply. "Point your laser."

"X axis 500," Sheldon called out. "Y axis 500."

"Hit."

"Hah!" Sheldon grinned at Amy over the top of his paper. "The old start-in-the-middle-technique pays off again. Your turn."

"X axis 250, Y axis 750."

"Miss!"

After the first five salvoes, Amy had suffered five direct hits from Sheldon's particle accelerators, whilst Amy's mass drivers had scored only one hit on Sheldon's vessel.

"Do you surrender?" Sheldon challenged.

"Hell, no. This battleship fights to the death."

After twenty rounds, Amy's score had advanced to six, but Sheldon was still running at a perfect 20/20. After forty rounds and forty hits his brow began to furrow; after fifty rounds and fifty hits, he gave Amy a suspicious look.

"While I'm an acknowledged master tactician of spacial warfare," he said hesitantly, "even my chops aren't normally enough to score fifty straight hits. I call shenanigans."

"No shenanigans," Amy replied cheerfully. "My spaceship is designed entirely in accordance with the rules as stated."

Alarm bells began to ring in Sheldon's mind. Loud, clamorous alarm bells, of the sort which invite the hearer to evacuate the area without delay.

"You stated that the battleships could be of any shape," Amy went on. "At no time did you specify that they were to be constrained by a maximum or minimum size. . Ergo, in order to ensure victory in this fascinating but sadly one-sided game, all I had to do was to design a battleship that was a thousand units long by a thousand units wide, thus filling the whole of the game board and ensuring that you will take one million hits to finally destroy it. Meantime, if your own battleship is of smaller dimensions, the odds in my favour of blowing it out of the sky before you can destroy mine are overwhelmingly in my favour." She put down her paper. "Do you concede?"

Sheldon spluttered. "That's not... fair!"

"It is entirely and completely fair and in accordance with your rules, ergo, it is fair," Amy corrected him.

Sheldon took five full seconds to examine the situation for loopholes and found none. "Oh, very well. I concede," he sighed. "But whoever heard of a huge square spaceship that filled the entire sky? You may have won, but you have won by unrealistic design."

"On the contrary," Amy corrected him again. "My design is taken directly from Star Trek. The Borg Cube."