Theory and practice

CHAPTER 5 — Theory and Practice
The park wasn't much to look at.
A green space on the outskirts of Cromatica. Tall trees. Well-kept grass. A dirt court in the middle that local kids usually used for games, but at this time of the afternoon, it was empty.
Sira had suggested the spot.Arlo had suggested the game.Marek said he didn't care as long as it didn't involve standing still.
The game was called tejo.
Or something like it. Arlo had tweaked it slightly with two variations of his own. According to him, they improved the strategic depth of the original game. According to Marek, they just made things unnecessarily complicated.
The basic rules were simple.
Each player had three metal disks. You threw them from a line marked on the ground toward a circular target at the other end of the court. The disk closest to the center won the point. First to seven won.
Arlo's variations were as follows.
First: if your disk hit another player's disk and knocked it out of the target, you stole their point in addition to earning your own.
Second: you could throw from any angle, as long as you didn't cross the throwing line.
Marek listened with his arms crossed.
"So basically, you invented a game where you can sabotage everyone else."
"It's called strategy," Arlo replied.
"It's called cheating with a fancy name."
"That's exactly what someone without strategy would say."
"That's exactly what someone who needs weird rules to win would say."
Sira picked up her first disk from the ground.
"Are we playing, or are we doing a documentary?"
They started.
The first few throws were calibration.
Sira had natural precision. Her first disk landed two centimeters from the center. She observed it with quiet satisfaction and crossed her arms.
Arlo threw with a technique he'd clearly practiced. His disk landed near Sira's, lightly grazing it without knocking it away.
"Close," he murmured to himself.
Marek threw.
His disk was way too strong. It sailed past the target and landed in the grass behind it.
Silence.
"The court is shorter than it looks," Marek said.
"Or your arm is stronger than it should be," Arlo said.
"I'm calibrating."
"Sure."
By the third round, the game had become something else entirely.
Sira was still precise, but she'd started calculating not just where her own disk would land, but where everyone else's were. She used angles with a naturalness that suggested she'd understood the game's logic before anyone else.
Arlo was erratic in power but consistent in direction. Every throw had a clear intention, even if the result didn't always match. When he failed, he analyzed it quietly, like he was taking mental notes.
Marek had corrected his power issue but developed a new problem.
Whenever Arlo or Sira had a disk close to the center, Marek threw directly at that disk instead of at the target.
Not always successfully.But with a consistency that was becoming obvious.
"Marek," Sira said after his fourth attempt of that kind. "The goal is the center. Not my disks."
"The goal is to win," Marek replied. "Your disks are between the goal and me."
"That's not what—"
"Arlo's first variation," Marek quoted with complete seriousness. "If your disk hits another player's disk and knocks it out of the target, you steal their point in addition to earning your own."
Arlo looked at him.
"That is technically correct."
"Thank you."
"But the spirit of the rule wasn't—"
"The spirit?" Marek looked at him. "So now rules have spirits?"
"All rules have spirits, Marek."
"How convenient that the spirit changes when it hurts you."
Sira picked up her disk from the ground with more force than necessary.
By the fifth round, the score was three-three-two.
Sira: three. Arlo: three. Marek: two.
Marek had the next throw.
He studied the court. Sira's disk was one centimeter from the center. Arlo's was four centimeters away. If he threw straight for the center and missed by a little, he'd be well positioned. If he tried to knock Sira's disk out and failed, he'd lose the turn entirely.
He thought about it longer than usual.
Arlo noticed.
"Are you going to throw today?"
"I'm thinking."
"Since when do you think before acting?"
"Since acting without thinking cost me two points."
Silence.
Sira looked down at her own disk in the target.
Something about the exchange made her think of something that had nothing to do with the game.
Marek threw.
Straight at Sira's disk.
He hit it clean. Sira's disk flew out of the target. Marek's landed three centimeters from the center.
"Point," Marek said.
Three-three-three.
Sira looked at him.
"You know what?" she said. "You've spent the whole game attacking our disks instead of playing your own."
"I'm playing to win."
"You're playing to make us lose. It's not the same."
Marek opened his mouth to respond.
Then he said nothing.
Because something about that sentence landed in a way he hadn't expected.
Arlo picked up his disk slowly.
"She's right," he said quietly.
The three stood still on the court for a moment.
The wind moved the trees in the park.
They sat down on the grass.
It wasn't a conscious decision. They just all stopped standing at the same time and ended up sitting on the dirt court, disks in hand.
Sira spoke first.
"Do you guys feel like you're on Zekra because you want to be?"
The question came straight out. No buildup. No preparation. The way questions do when someone's been thinking about them for a while and finally decides to say them out loud.
Marek looked at his disk.
Arlo didn't answer right away.
"Sometimes," Marek said finally. "And sometimes no."
"I almost never do," Arlo said.
The other two looked at him.
Arlo spun the disk between his fingers.
"It's not that Zekra doesn't matter to me," he clarified. "The work interests me. The technical problems are real and worth solving. But if you ask me whether I'd choose to be there if it weren't for Zarpon helping us..."
He didn't finish the sentence.He didn't need to.
Sira nodded slowly.
"My grandfather talked to me about that," Marek said. "About sacrifice that feels like punishment versus sacrifice that feels like purpose."
"And?" Sira asked.
"I understood the theory," Marek replied honestly. "On the farm, that day, I understood it. In here." He pointed to his chest. "But understanding something and living it are two different things."
Silence.
"It's like this game," Arlo said suddenly.
The other two looked at him.
"I explained the rules. You understood them. But our first throws all failed in different ways, because knowing the rules isn't the same as playing well."
Marek looked at him.
"Did you just use your own game as a philosophical metaphor?"
"Yes."
"That's the most pretentious thing you've ever done."
"And yet it makes sense," Sira said.
Marek didn't answer.Because it did make sense.
Arlo looked at the target at the far end of the court.
"I think the difference between knowing something and living it is practice," he said. "I can't read about how to throw a disk and do it perfectly. I have to throw badly first. Several times. And at some point, my body understands what my head already knew."
"And how does that apply to Zekra?" Sira asked.
Arlo took his time.
"I don't know yet," he admitted. "I think that's exactly the problem. We know the theory. We know we should be there because we chose it, not because we're forcing ourselves. But we haven't practiced it enough for it to feel that way yet."
Sira looked at the sky.
"So what do we do?"
No one answered right away.
The park was quiet. The afternoon light was orange and horizontal, the same kind that fell on Marek's farm.
"We keep going," Marek said finally.
The other two looked at him.
"Not because we have the answer. But because practice is the only way to get there." He paused. "At least, that's what I understood."
Silence.
Arlo nodded slowly.Sira did too.
It wasn't a perfect resolution. It wasn't the moment where all three found peace with their situation and everything became clear. It was something more honest than that.
Three people who knew the theory, admitted they weren't living it yet, and decided to keep going anyway.
With doubts.But with resolve.
Arlo stood up.He picked up his disk.
"Are we finishing the game?"
Marek looked at him from the ground.
"Are you going to keep using the spirit of the rules as an excuse?"
"Are you going to keep attacking my disks instead of playing your own?"
"Depends on whether it works for me."
Sira was already on her feet.
"Three-three-three," she said. "Next point wins."
The other two looked at her.
"That wasn't in the rules," Arlo said.
"Spirit of the rules," Sira replied without looking at him.
Marek burst out laughing.
Arlo shut his mouth.
And they kept playing.


END OF CHAPTER 5