Waco, KY–Super Chess Computer Deep Blue’s career-defining moment came in 1997 when he squarely defeated previous chess world champion human Garry Kasparov. Yet shortly after his landmark victory, Deep Blue failed numerous “human-intervention” tests, sending his career into a downhill spiral. Following his sound defeat, Kasparov had expressed public concern over humans tampering with Deep Blue during their bloodbath of a chess match.
We here at CachedTech recently caught up with Deep Blue in the Springhill Suites Retirement Home for the Moderately Senile located in the rural town of Waco, Kentucky. Deep Blue had been admitted to the retirement home in the fall of 1999 on the eve of Y2K. Prior to the anticipated millennium, the oft-anxious Blue had spent a rough summer full of binge drinking, heroin, painful self-reflection, and rapid aging; the last of which is commonly seen in electronics. Blue let us in on his nightmare of a summer. “I just couldn’t take it anymore, the fame, the money, the software upgrades,” said Blue in an icy monotone, “And worst of all, just the everyday anxiety brought on by Y2K. At the time, I thought I was living the last year of my freakin’ life.”
As the summer of ’99 came to a close, IBM technicians admitted Blue to the retirement facility. “Deep Blue’s rapid decline was such a disappointment for us” IBM technician Slav Slavanov puts it. “We really couldn’t have predicted his descent into paranoia brought on by Y2K…I guess we humans just couldn’t relate to that sort of thing, you know?”
Deep Blue recounted the night of the millennium: “That was the longest night of my life; the seconds felt like hours, the hours felt like days, and the days felt like seconds.” December 31, 1999 marked the culmination of Blue’s anxieties.
These days Deep Blue spends his time without his former vices. Nurses at Springhill Suites are optimistic about his slow but promising recovery. Blue himself nearly short-circuits in excitement when the topic of his lasting sobriety comes up in everyday conversation – “In May I’ll be 13 years 4 months 8 days 2 hours 24 minutes 45 seconds 23 milliseconds sober!”
If there could ever be a comeback from such a uniquely disheartening fall from grace, the factoid sitting atop the Springhill Suites Game Room bulletin board says it all – ‘February 2012 Checkers Tournament Champion – Deep Blue.’ Should we giddy fans expect Blue’s improbable comeback to manifest on the Checker Board of all places?
We suspect not, since Blue’s opponents in the tournament were senile 90 year-olds.
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