It was Leonid Yevgenevich Konstantinov's ten-year-old son, Alexsandr, who first thought of the idea that would save the Soviet empire just when its final collapse seemed inevitable, and give it the weapon that would win the world. Not that Alexsandr had anything quite so weighty and dramatic in mind at the time. He was simply exasperated at being checkmated by his father for the fifth time in a row as they sat playing chess on one of those interminable rainy Sunday afternoons.
"You need to think more about your pawn structure," Leonid said.
Alexsandr reacted with the uncanny ingenuity that boys his age everywhere display in the art of eliminating a problem without actually having to work at it. "I'd rather use a time machine," he replied after considering the suggestion for a few moments.
His father frowned, not comprehending. "How?"
Alexsandr explained, "If I had a time machine, I'd get a copy of the best chess-playing program that there is and start it running on the biggest computer, and send the computer back a million years. Then, by today, it would have figured out every reply to every position, and I'd only have to look up the right move to win every time no matter what you did."
Leonid smiled dubiously. He wasn't sure offhand what a realistic estimate might be for all the possible moves that would make up all the possible games contained in the complete game-tree of chess. But he didn't think that a million years would come close, even for the most powerful of contemporary machines.
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