Risk

I play a game. It's call "risk".

It was originally a board game, but I play it as an app on my phone, against the simulated players. They aren't real. That's very important.

The aim of the game is to conquer the world through taking over countries of the world, while your opponents attempt to do same. You start off with maybe five or six players. But it will eventually be whittled down to just two.

The exact details of game mechanics aren't really relevant. But my favorite tactic is to build up a large army of at least fifty men, over a few turns, then crush a whole opponent in one turn.

Sometimes this works so well, that it is I and one other player, that is has but one army left, in one cornered region. What I should then do is destroy this last enemy. Then the victory screen comes up, it has fireworks and triumphant music. It's very nice.

But... I don't kill that one last foe. I let it live. It fights back against me, but to no avail. The tendrils of hope it sends out against me are instantly crushed by my now colossal force.

So there it sits. A lone defender. Waiting death. Alive only by my mercy.

If it were a person, I'd explain to it, that I don't want to kill it. It and I could be friends. We could work together to make this tiny simulated world a better place. Turn over these years of war-strewn horror for a time of peace and kindness. But it won't have that. It still tries to fight me. It defies me!

Well, that's not it's fault. What else could it do? Sometimes I even let it escape and build up its numbers again, give it, if not a genuine chance, a reason to believe I've made a serious mistake. Could it not now conquer the world, too?

The answer is inevitably no. Even as this happens out I roll the huge juggernaut that is my reserve troops. Its resistance is destroyed utterly, like an insect.

Sometimes... I want to fight it to the last man, then stop. Surrender. Lay down arms and to the other players astonishment, allow myself to be run through and collapsed on the eve of my total dominion.

But that, sadly, is not how life works in risk.

Or in life.

Life is a savage place. And my risk metaphor is as transparent as the lie of peace.