August 29. The final field of the online tournament called the Last Chance Marathon is released. For some reason, there are multiple teams, and not just from Kansas or Missouri, attending the tournament at the psychiatric hospital. And not just the Quantum Computers either: OneGogi is also attending.

The field is very varied: the entrants are as grand as the China national team (Survivors), second-rate like Al-Azhar or Hwasong, or even some school teams, such as Voronezh #12's Unpaid Bills. Hundreds of teams are vying for one spot at the ChGK Worlds because the marathon drew five top-100 teams. The 9 players are in a Teams videoconference:

"Let's go over the plan one last time: first shift is Bohdan, Lanisha, Catria and me. Second shift is Yakiv, Vira, Sergei, Stephanie and..." Patricia lists the players assigned to each shift.

"Me!" the sixth player interrupts Patricia.

"First shift takes place from the start of the tournament until the designated time, between six and eight AM, at which point the second shift starts. We should aim for everyone playing approximately the same number of games, a total of twelve. One game per hour, twelve questions and once the twelfth question is over, we all get a break until the next hour"

"Even with that plan, there's a reason why tournaments that long are not common. They're exhausting and nerve-wracking to the extent not even Worlds would be" Vira explains to them.

"Never in American ChGK history has a marathon been held, charity or not" Bohdan explains to the newcomers, who seem to have most to learn about the odd tidbits of ChGK.

Even Moscow or St. Petersburg, two of the major hotbeds of ChGK, only have 2 marathons a year and they usually didn't count towards MAK ratings, much less Worlds qualification. But the IAMG allowed the Last Chance Marathon to be that long precisely because the organizers weren't from ex-USSR countries or European. To the IAMG's eyes, the LCM's tournament director is Ainslee, but everyone in the ChGK circuit knows that Ainslee lacked familiarity with the inner workings of ChGK so the real TD would, to the eyes of so many, be the appeals committee's head.

Six teams appear to be present in person for the Last Chance Marathon's Kansas City playground: the St. Louis Club, the Kansas State Team, the Quantum Computers, OneGogi and one more team each from Kansas and Missouri. When Ainslee starts the feed that makes every emissary, from Pyongyang to Damascus, as well as other cities around the world, listen to her reading the questions when midnight strikes:

"I'm Ainslee Gale, tournament director of the Last Chance Marathon, held for the benefit of the Partnership to End Addiction. Without further ado, live from Kansas City, USA, let the tournament begin! Attention, first question: this weapon system also shares its name with a song from the same era it first saw combat use. Name the weapon system" Ainslee asks the teams competing.

"At this point I would say it could be a medieval song; there are some songs with weapon names on them, but songs with guns in their titles are dated from well after the Middle Ages so it can't be a song about any kind of firearms" Catria begins the discussion.

"By that same token, it must not simply contain the name of a weapon, the song's title must be the same as that of the weapon" Lanisha adds to Catria's comment, but draws a blank as to what song it could possibly be.

"If it was about any kind of pre-gunpowder weapon, be it a sword, a spear, a bow, an axe or any variant thereof, you can be almost guaranteed that any song would be significantly more recent than the weapon. Does anyone have any idea what does that leave with?" Bohdan asks.

"A chemical weapon?" Catria asks.

"Chemical weapons might be involved in surrealistic songs, especially in the post-WW1 environment, but I'm afraid it was a little taboo at the time to title songs after the weapons themselves. I don't think it would be a viable answer" Patricia retorts.

"ICBM?" Lanisha asks, in turn.

"ICBM the song was released well after ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) were put in service" Bohdan continues to speak.

"HIMARS?" Catria asks, unsure of when HIMARS were first used in battle, but knowing HIMARS, as a song, was released in 2022.

"Ukraine asked for HIMARS because they were proven to be effective on the battlefield" Bohdan shoots down Catria's suggestion.

"The only remaining answer is Katyusha; that song was released while the Katyusha was in its early stages of development, and it was used in combat at every step of the way against Germans" Patricia adds, with about 10 seconds to go.

"I guess it satisfied the requirement of being from the same era so we're going with that" Lanisha comments.

And the Kansas State Team scores the point on the first question. The foursome keeps playing for hours but Ainslee proves to be a pretty rapid question reader so that a 12-question game lasts for not even half an hour.

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Meanwhile, Vira invited both the sixth regular player and Stephanie to sleep at their home prior to their involvement in the Last Chance Marathon. Around the breakfast table at Vira's home that morning, where chicken Kyiv Is being served to the guests:

"Look at the leaderboard of the Last Chance Marathon as of right now: in the lead is Azovstal with Survivors hot on their trail, and us, the Quantum Computers as well as Brain Art, a Kazakh team, tied for third with eighty-two points each!" Vira announces to everyone.

We beat Azovstal and Brain Art on Wednesday when our turn came to play the final of the International League! Why is it that Patricia and Bohdan can't beat them here? a puzzled Yakiv looks at the leaderboard on the tablet. Who's the biggest liability on the night shift, Lanisha or Catria?

"They gave us the signal that the eighth game is going to be their last game for the shift. Hurry up and eat, we will be playing eight games ourselves at the psychiatric hospital" Yakiv warns the players in his home.

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Back at the psychiatric hospital, fatigue starts to set in for the players on the first shift. I told the regular team often that they trust me too much. Catria is the only player on the first shift that didn't seem to trust me excessively. But at the same time, Stephanie, while a known quiz bowl quantity, is an unknown quantity in ChGK. I'm worried we aren't going to remain in the lead group. Not that we need to win per se, but we must not show weakness in the face of the Chinese, Patricia ruminates while she tries to save her energy for the drive back home, with the first shift's players in tow. Ainslee then has an inbound appeals committee member replace her to read questions.

"We're going to need a couple hours of sleep before we can play again, so we're sleeping at my home temporarily. Not the best place in the world, but better than no sleep" Patricia then yawns, with the rest of the team herded into her used car.

"All right, we just need to awake by about three PM then, I guess..."

Upon returning home, they all shower, brush their teeth, Catria going first, while the used sofa bed is being prepared for the couple to sleep in it. And, Patricia sleeps in a used sleeping bag, leaving her bed for Catria.

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But Patricia's sleep isn't good since she gets a bad dream that quickly turns into a nightmare. "This is the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence; open up!" an oneiric OTFI agent knocked on her door.

Why do I have OTFI agents on my doorstep? Has the Last Chance Marathon been suspected of being used for money laundering? While the Partnership to End Addiction is a legitimate charity, given the wide array of contestants, it could have been a variety of mobsters, the Mafiya (Russian underworld), Azeri, and not just Syrian or North Korean mobsters! Patricia's oneiric self ruminated while she reluctantly opened the door to the OTFI agent.

"I have no known ties with organized crime! What suspicions are you here for?" Patricia then asked the agent. "The Last Chance Marathon was held as a fundraiser for the Partnership to End Addiction! ChGK is a game played internationally, and donations were collected internationally, too!"

"The Partnership to End Addiction tipped us off about how a Kansas fundraiser could have collected such a huge percentage of its donations in foreign currencies! Rubles, Syrian pounds, Azeri manats, Latvian lats, hryvnias and so on, so forth" the agent sternly told her.

"If you look at the manifest of entrants in this fundraiser, you will see that there were only six American teams competing, the vast majority of the entrants were foreign, and I expected the donations to be in foreign currencies, too"

The North Koreans only paid their entry fees, but didn't donate anything beyond that. So the OTFI believed that the Last Chance Marathon was a vehicle that mobsters from Eastern Europe and Central Asia used to launder money? Extravagant conditions were often a red flag for donations, but the system I used to collect the money from contestants didn't give donors an opportunity to impose conditions, she kept ruminating while her blood pressure increased.

"Both the Partnership to End Addiction and the OTFI know next to nothing about ChGK other than I organized ChGK tournaments. You may as well ask the International Association of Mind Games for assistance in this matter! Come back here after getting your facts straight about ChGK!" a furious Patricia shouted at the agent.

The cold, hard truth is that Patricia wasn't lying. Yet what comes next made her squirm. "You're under arrest for obstruction of justice! Further charges of money laundering might still be held against you. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you might say may be held against you. If you don't have a lawyer, the court will provide you with one" the agent then handcuffed her and, once she arrived at the police station...

"The IAMG would probably be of more help compared to what I could provide on my own. I'll give you the email address or phone number of the IAMG if necessary!" Patricia shouted across the police station.

Even though the IAMG wasn't considered a criminal organization, the response of the IAMG was quick: Patricia was banned from the IAMG for life in a TD or emissary capacity. And then her real self awakens, screaming in horror.

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"I had a big nightmare: I was arrested for money laundering because the police believed that some entrants were organized crime members looking to the Last Chance Marathon to launder money. Latvian, Syrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Azeri were the main nationalities represented among the people in the nightmare using this tournament to launder money!"

"Who are you kidding?" Lanisha asks, startled by this description.

"If the Achievement Junkie Invitational is any indication, people didn't seem to want to donate large enough sums of money for the risk of money laundering to be real. The largest donation from that tournament was, like, five hundred dollars..."

Patricia then checks on the leaderboard on LiveJournal for the status of the team, about thirteen games in. I really hope that Stephanie is up to the task of keeping the team afloat while we are resting! But Azovstal appears to be losing steam, and we are 3 points behind the leaders, Brain Art. But between Brain Art and us, the Chinese are nowhere to be found. The Quantum Computers, however, overtook us, Patricia reflects on how the team's performance has changed with Stephanie as their primary source of erudition. For years now, they seemed to have trusted me far too much; they definitely won't trust Stephanie to the same extent they did me. But that's Stephanie being very erudite as well. Not the same kind of erudite as I but still. I feel like large erudition or intellect gaps can make others in a team trust their betters too much. Then again, it seems like this tournament shows the limits of the Red Army's question sources: most people supplying questions for the Tv show are at best as hard as Nats. If so, Stephanie is competitive nationally but doing so internationally might be premature. Same with Catria, really.

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At the psychiatric hospital, some inpatients get a chance to perform music for the players at the tournament as soon as the sixteenth game starts. The inpatient counselor overseeing the statsionarnyy (inpatient) musicians also reads the questions for the final 9 games. "Get ready to play 4 games!" Sergei texts Patricia after the sixteenth game ends.

The team on the first shift is hurried into eating so they can arrive shortly before the seventeenth game begins. But now Azovstal is back in the lead, with the Chinese falling behind them as well as falling behind the Quantum Computers, Brain Art and Kansas. She briefly meets with the second shift players:

"If it comes to us playing in a shootout, I want the regular team playing unless anyone has any objections?" Patricia asks her team.

"Yes, I have my objections" the sixth player then sternly tells his captain.

"Who would you rather want for a shootout between Lanisha, Stephanie and Catria then?" Patricia asks the remaining 7 players.

"What's a shootout in ChGK?" Catria asks her teammates.

"It's how overtime is called in ChGK"

The remaining players then argue between each other as to how best to fill the gap left behind by the sixth player. But time is short, and there's one question left unanswered:

"How do you feel about playing ChGK?" Patricia asks all 3.

"I am not sure. While I am afforded more time to avoid negging, and I negged like crazy in quiz bowl, it can get very mentally taxing to play" Stephanie comments.

"The first shift gave me big headaches" Lanisha continues to speak.

"I guess, we don't have a choice, but I will be playing in the shootout if it comes to that" Catria then sighs, not realizing that the top 3 teams must be clearly sorted out per IAMG regulations as applied to Worlds qualifiers.

"With that said, Go Kansas!"

While the last 4 games of the first shift players begin in earnest, some teams started losing steam and they don't score as much as they used to. Including but not limited to the 4 American teams not in contention. On the leaderboard, teams that are no longer mathematically in medal contention are now marked in red.

By the end of the 19th game, Hwasong was marked in red, and the North Koreans are the first team at Worlds to be eliminated from Last Chance Marathon. North Korea and especially Syria came a long way in ChGK; two years ago, North Korea needed a wildcard entry to play at Worlds and placing 97th, ahead of Syria and 2 more teams from more established countries. Today, both Syria and North Korea can answer about two-thirds of the questions at this level. But sometimes questions feel like questions at Worlds, sometimes they feel more like questions at Nats or even State for the "nuts", that is, the easiest questions, Patricia muses upon looking at the leaderboard when more names go red at the end of the game.

That is not to say that North Korea is a bottom feeder at the Last Chance Marathon, far from it: North Korea is actually in the top thirty as of the end of the 19th game, out of a field of over 200 teams.

One game later, the Kansas State Team keeps chugging along towards an opportunity to prevent the Chinese from winning the LCM.

"Down with the Chinese! Down with the Quantum Computers!" Patricia shouts as a signal for the second shift players to get into position for the last 4 regulation games.

"Azovstal and Brain Art then?" Bohdan asks, while Catria is rolling her brown eyes.

Over 3 hours later, with one question left to go, Brain Art, is declared the victor, which was also qualified for Worlds since they are expected to be a top-50 team on the next release of MAK rating leaderboard. However, fatigue got the better of so many teams. Like Al-Azhar, eliminated by game #21 and, surprisingly, is not the second-worst team qualified for Worlds at this tournament. Once midnight tolls...

"After twenty-four hours of competition, we have a four-way tie for second place" the inpatient counselor announces, before leaving the scene.

Several teams remain that are still capable of winning. Azovstal, Quantum Computers, the KST and Survivors. It becomes a question of who can answer the final question correctly and who can't. Ainslee returns to read the shootout questions:

"First shootout question: the ability to jump through hoops is often valued in certain white-collar fields. A narrow subset of these fields tends to hire from schools in which this effect is very pronounced. What is it?" Ainslee asks, while Stephanie returns home, her role on the team being over.

"What is the meaning of jumping through hoops in this context? Yakiv asks.

"It might have to do with the hiring process for these jobs in question, or the kinds of graduate programs ultimately allowing one to practice specific professions" Catria then provides some semblance of an answer.

"Even though I teach elementary school ELL (English as a language learner), some parents already stress out over whether their kids are falling behind..." Vira sighs.

"Recall that the Red Army question writers are overwhelmingly Russian. Ask yourself: would the logic hold in Russia as well?" The sixth player asks them.

"Jumping through hoops, as I understand, refers to testing, of which there are multiple layers in Russia" Bohdan explains to them. "The USEs and then the tests for the major"

"It's even more true in the American context, where there is more than just testing as hoops, so I'm OK with career funneling" Patricia then has flashbacks of the stress from her time in high school.

Of how high I aimed; of all the stuff I was doing because of my aims. And not just scholars bowl, extemp and Congressional debating. Of the writing center and the literary magazine. But in college, I was focused mostly on quiz bowl, grades and on getting internships. The good news is the Chinese are now beaten. The bad news is we still need to deal with the Quantum Computers and Azovstal, Patricia's mind is wandering, while the second shootout question, which is of Ainslee's own, gives headaches to everyone else.

Well into the second shootout question, in which the real Worlds qualifier could be decided since neither Azovstal nor the Quantum Computers are ranked high enough to qualify by MAK rating:

"Cuh-laire, Massiekur, and implants. My hunch is that it feels like an espionage novel, and probably an indie one at that" Catria explains to them.

I hate the Quantum Computers so much! They stole our thunder at Nats last year, if they get to Worlds this year at Last Chance... Vira muses about how the Last Chance Marathon evokes bad memories to her. And forces her to dive deep in her memories of what espionage novels she could have read.

Unfortunately, Patricia didn't recall having read any book at all that seemed to feature all 3 of these things, so she draws a blank. All of these things sound like FVEY (Five Eyes) stuff to her, but no more than that.

"Anyone? It seems like no one here read espionage novels, so Falsebound Kingdom is the first name that comes to my mind, for some reason. I guess we have no choice but to