My partner Stephanie swore Eddie Ibanez was a fraud before I ever laid eyes on him, before I witnessed how the shape of him, his face, eyes, teeth, jaw, chin, his cartoon abdomen–his hair pieces–changed appearance as frequently as his biography. But I wasn’t listening. I was packing. Like everybody who surrounded Eddie, I wanted to believe in him.

I remember coming across the fact that the oldest cypress tree in the United States is 2,600 years old. Older than this country ten times over. Older than the British and Byzantines and the Romans. Not quite as old as Walls of Jericho. But older than Christendom. And older than Christ.

Suddenly, quietly, you see a long shadow rising from the lake.
Jack's hand emerges from the lake, and a pair of goggles fly towards the Louisiana sunshine.

“Yeeeeeeeee—”

Just outside the high desert ski haven of Taos, New Mexico, shortly after the adobe boutique stores give way to untamed, fenced lawns and the paved roads turn to dirt, a swarm of unusual structures begins to appear on the mesa. Glass-faced Earth homes with giant berm walls pop out from the ground, adorned in greenery. A circular Earthen fortress looks out over the horizon, resembling the turret of a castle. To its right, there’s a pyramid built with used beer bottles, wired and plastered together into packed walls. Inside, a ladder leads to a small altar, where a votive candle displays a recognizable figure:

A gray-maned man, holding up a peace sign, under an inscription reading…

I’ll never say die.

"Each blast of the jackhammer shoots through Jeff’s wrists and elbows, rattling his clenched jaw. He barely flinches, keeping the bit inside the tiny gap between the safe’s door and frame. Just a little more, a little more.

When the lock finally snaps, there’s a sudden rush of silence as the jackhammer rears up. Jeff tosses it to the side just before he loses control. The bit is stuck, but the force has busted the lock in half.  Jeff grabs the forgotten pry bar. With what feels like no effort at all after more than an hour of trying to tame the jackhammer, the older brother gingerly pulls open the safe door."

Beyond its cardboard parlor rooms lies a surprising connection to real-life crime solving, a legacy profound beyond pawns.

And, by 1996, a mystery surrounded the game itself.

Pratt, the game’s enigmatic inventor, had gone missing.

“Out of India's population of 400 million, the players are waived off by three lonely figures who stand at Ballard Pier shouting well wishes and good luck. Rex squints as the figures grow smaller, eventually disappearing into the horizon. Little does he realize how different his return will be.”