Eschaton — the homemade Academy game and its Interdependence-Day catastrophe

pivotal · origins B.S. era (Orin first game-master); the I.-Day game 8 Nov YDAU

• When: conceived in E.T.A.'s early generations (Orin its first game-master; Pemulis its greatest player; Hal's rulebook Y.P.W.); the pivotal game played Interdependence Day, 8 Nov YDAU
• What: E.T.A.'s signature homemade ritual: "the most complicated children's game anybody around E.T.A.'d ever heard of" — a global-thermonuclear simulation played by a dozen 12-15s across four courts with 400 dead balls as 5-megaton warheads, launched by topspin lob, adjudicated by a game-master (Otis P. Lord this year) running Pemulis's EndStat cruncher off the late JOI's D.E.C. in Schtitt's office. The administration permits it because devotees "develop terrific lobs." On I.-Day YDAU the game breaks down over a metaphysical crux: Ingersoll fires a warhead at a player (Ann Kittenplan), claiming players who stray outside their defense-nets become valid targets; Pemulis, Eschaton's eminence grise, rages that players are "part of the map, not the [...] territory"; Lord vacillates, dons the red Utter-Global-Crisis beanie, and the whole apparatus degenerates into a snow-blind free-for-all of real violence, ending with Lord diving headfirst through the computer's monitor. See Pemulis's timeline (event 4), event 15.