2:11 PM, MILDRED HELMS PARK, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, USA

Darryl and Tyrone studied the board carefully. There seemed to be a bubble of concentration around them amid the cacophony of playing children, squeaking tennis shoes, hollering teenagers and chattering families. None of the noises disturbed the comfortoble silence between them. Then, Darryl sat back, looking up from the chessboard. Tyrone was several years older then he was, and he studied the lines on his face.
“What do you think it’s all about, T?”
“Don’t call me that. You know my name.” Tyrone didn’t look up from the board.
“Seriously, though. Why are we here?”
“You always talk like that when you’re losing.”
“What, you don’t got an answer?”
“Nobody’s got an answer, Darryl. We’re here because we’re here. We’re free to make choices once we get here, but nobody gives us a choice to be born or not.”
“Yeah, but you could just off yourself, if you don’t like it.”
Now Tyrone looked up. “What, you gonna kill yourself?”
“No, no. I mean, isn’t it a choice to live?”
“Sure, yeah, that’s a choice. And we choose what we do with life too. But we don’t choose to be born. That’s God’s doing.” He paused briefly. “You gonna play, or what?”
“I don’t get the whole God thing.” Darryl moved a knight. Tyrone frowned at the board.
“Nothing to get. God is what we call what we don’t understand. Call it the Force, the Truth, Love, whatever. It’s whatever’s out of our control.”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a God to me.” Darryl looked at the kids on the swings.
“You haven’t seen enough of the world yet, son. Finish college, then talk about this stuff. Trust me; more you see, more you see God.”
Darryl shrugged, closed his eyes, and basked in a cool easterly breeze blowing through the small park.
“Seems to me, God is everywhere. Sure feels pretty good right now.”
Tyrone looked up again, chuckling to himself.
“Maybe you have seen enough at that young man. Maybe you have.”