Banner wasn't wrong. It wasn't all about the extras. The money and the fame. But he wasn't about to talk about what chess gave him to someone he'd only just met. How could he say that it meant order in a world where there was none, focus when all around you were people telling you that you were wrong or you were nothing. Less than nothing. He'd used those 64 squares to become something better. To understand the world around him and what gambits and plays he needed to use to make it work as he wanted.
That was what the world was to Freddie, pieces and what he needed to do to make them move in a way that made sense. Not to control them exactly, just so he could fit. So he could have those things that were normal.
"The world is what it is, Chess isn't gonna shape it into something different. Its something I can do and do well, something I taught myself, and yeah, the reason things changed for me. I care about the game, of course I do, no matter what the press thought."
But back to the computer. He could turn things back to that and not his past. A topic he'd never been hugely fond of anyway. Most of the time it was something the press left alone, enough storming out of interviews and they decided it wasn't worth it.
"So who am I playing, am I playing you? Or it. And just teaching it the basics and working up. I mean I'm happy to go along with whatever its just a lot to take in y'know? And what's it for. I mean, is it just to see if you can? Which I can't argue I guess, I read about that other computer, the Deep Blue thing you mentioned. Did people really just build it to see if they could?"