"You'll never beat me!" Grin.
Whuck!
It screeched through the air and landed squarely on the line at the far corner of the opposite court, guided with utmost precision by the intrinsic yet delicate instrument known as the human hand.
Thunk!
Oryost landed just micrometres from the shuttlecock on his nanobot exoskeleton, his arm stretched out, racket having left his hand from the high G impact.
"A game of badminton moves so fast you'll need a supercomputer to return those answers fast enough. Even then, your mechanics would be at their limit to MOVE you!" Yakov chuckled, "biologists will always win when it comes to this. Bio is way more complicated than you physicists can handle. Our building blocks are already capable of such wonders, what more for multicellular organisms such as this?" he pointed to himself.
'Hmph!" was all Oryost could let out. "I refuse to admit! You'll receive a call in a few weeks time after I fine tune these algorithms!"
Yakov was eagerly waiting for the next few weeks. They were good pals of course, and it was always fun to have a game every now and then. That call didn't come though. Apart from the usual lunches, dinners, gatherings, he just fell silent. Yakov didn't want to ask. Something was brewing, he could feel it, the calm before the storm. Oryost was never one to leave things hanging, and he was fully aware of that.
The weeks turned into months, the months into a year. The phone eventually rang. It was him. "You must be getting old! Took you long enough!" he eagerly greeted Oryost.
"uh... yea yea..." he muttered something about work. "Usual place, usual time, Sunday."
"So... You've improved your computing algorithms eh? What's it this time? 3 simultaneous integrals? 6 dimensional matrices? Recurring functions?" Despite being confident that it wouldn't work, Yakov couldn't help but inquire. These physicists are interesting, he thought. They put in so much work, make things overly complicated, and yet get nowhere! Nature had already given such great building blocks. Each a life, a factory, capable of every function needed. They were called cells. You could easily program them with a double helix, why go reinvent the wheel? If it was one thing that made him pick biology over physics it was this.
"Oh, you'll see." he flatly replied. No hint of excitement, no hint of fear. What has he got this time? Yakov was puzzled. It wasn't totally unlike him to be this calm, but there was something in his voice that pervaded that air of tranquility. Seriousness? No that's not right. Indifference? Maybe... But wait, that's it! It was a tiny hint of mockery! "That Oryost!" Yakov announced to his autoclave and piles of petri dishes in front of him, "He thinks he has gotten some breakthrough. Haha how wrong. Who can pit themselves against mother nature and win?"
The court was empty as usual when Yakov reached it. "Hello! It's been some time since I played against you on the court," Oryost called out from a bench in the corner startling Yakov a little. He turned to face Oryost. Surveying him from head to toe, he was taken by surprise. There was nothing. Nothing unusual at all about his attire. A plain t-shirt, shorts, and sports shoes. A sweat band snug around his right wrist. He was normal!
"Ah! You've finally given in haven't you? Ah ha, why didn't you tell me that you're now playing normally? At least I could have prepared less intensively! Now where's the magic in that?" Yakov teased. Oryost was finally admitting that biology triumphed over physics in handling complexities.
"Ah, you see, the magic," he lifted his shirt, "is in," there was a belt around his waist! "here." He clicked a button. Oryost's form melded into a thin gray mist that blanketed his side of the court.
"What's this!?" Yakov sounded shocked, "It's not fair if you're not playing you know!"
"Relax... I'm still here. You'll see..." Oryost's voice came from the mist, "now let's begin."
"Some camouflage tactic," Yakov thought, "it's not going to work!" He shot the serve. It was a long one. He could imagine Oryost scampering backwards to get it from the edge of the court, but strangely, there was no sound this time. The grey mist continued to remain calm, undisturbed. "He's not moving," thought Yakov, "but why?"
The shuttle cock reached its apogee and sailed downwards to the line. Silence. "Is he even there?"
It continued the downward trajectory.
It was almost touching the mist.
It touched.
Woosh! As if a vacuum was turned on, all the mist was sucked right to the spot. Oryost appeared. Ever in the right position, ever in the right stance. His racket swung and blasted the shuttlecock back towards Yakov, then in another woosh, he dissolved. The mist covered his court again.
Unfazed, Yakov made an immediate smash down front court. "There's no way he can run that fast!" he thought. Oryston appeared almost instantly. The mist vanishing into him. Again in an ever perfect stance he returned the smash with another. Yakov's right foot slipped. He missed. Serve goes to Oryston. He appeared in front of the net, walked over to Yakov's side and picked up the shuttlecock. He wasn't panting at all. Back at his own court, Oryston gave a high serve and dissolved into the thin grey mist again.
"This can't be... No, I'll give him all impossible shots. He'll surely fail on one!" and with that Yakov put all he had, left to right, front to back, opposite diagonals. They were near impossible shots, yet Oryston just returned them one after another, so sudden, yet so calm. Yakov couldn't keep up. He missed. 1-0 to Oryston.
"What... What's behind this? At least let me know!" Yakov was almost begging.
If anyone could see Oryston, he was smiling. That piece of technology, the device around his waist was indeed revolutionary. He was right now, everywhere in his court, distributed with equal probability. Each time the shuttlecock disturbed the mist it interacted with the mathematical function causing it to collapse entirely into unity, thus defining himself wherever the shuttlecock landed. Once it left the field, everything became evenly distributed again.
The mist disappeared, vanishing into the middle of the court. Oryost stood, vindicated. "You biologists never understand. You play with nature's building blocks, seeing them as perfect, asking us why we build from the basics, why reinvent the wheel. But the answer lies there! You'll always be limited to that. Redefine the basics, and you redefine the universe!"