Sci Fi & Fantasy / Chance

WEDNESDAY

The little ball clicks and clatters its way around the wheel, before coming to rest in a familiar spot.

“36, red,” calls the croupier, being met with the familiar mix of sighs and high-fives.

It’s very crowded in the Stardust Sands Casino, Las Vegas. It’s also four days until the end of the world, and I’m excruciatingly busy.

I’m walking between tables, keeping an eye on the events at each and every one of the hundred and twenty one roulette wheels. From the highest of the high rollers to the nervous gamblers tentatively pushing a twenty dollar chip on to red or black, I pace the floors and see exactly what’s going on. It was easier back when they trialled out the large scale digital roulette wheels, but they were only slightly more popular than genital herpes, and so the old fashioned way came back into the casino very quickly. People will trust that the casino hasn’t rigged the wheel, but unless they can see the ball fly round at pace and drop ‘randomly’ into a numbered slot, they just won’t suspend their belief in the likely outcome long enough to make the casino some serious money.

“Red again!” exclaims one man to my right. He seems pretty pissed about his luck as he doubles up on black once more, thinking for some reason that five reds in a row mean that a black is surely just around the corner. His wife, who clearly spent more at the surgeon’s than she ever spent on her education, just simpers and nods her head.

I’ve never really understood it, the need for these people to gamble their lives away. I’ve seen old ladies sinking literally millions of dollars into slot machines, just to see the reels spinning around and slowly returning them less and less money. Then they have to recharge their cards and carry on with their slow attempts to increase the value of the casino in ever decreasing circles. In some ways though it’s worse to see the young people, those that aren’t probably just there to see a friendly, smiling face that will recognize and welcome them no matter what their age. The younger ones seem to largely be of a single mindset. If they win then it was a skillful betting strategy; a bold and brave move that paid off for them. If they lose then it was chance that was plotting against them; who’d have thought that the dealer would hit a Blackjack the time they doubled-down?

So I watch them; the needy, the lonely, the drunk, the cocky, the great and the good. From the groups of the newly legal dressed in their garish, shiny jackets, to the older, quieter men refreshing their stacks of chips with their palm implants; another technology once heralded as the next great step forwards, only to turn out as obsolete as DVDs and silicon microchips.

I don’t really feel any great draw towards any of these people. Individually they can mean something to me, but in groups they’re just like some strange animals with pack instincts that really jar with the way I see the world. Three of them stand next to a couple of girls, trying to impress them with the images moving on their VCD shades and the fractal patterns flashing in and out of focus on their wristbands. I wish they’d just ban the stupid pieces of krupt and be done with it. I don’t care what the Surgeon General says about them being totally safe around epileptics; they give me a headache.

I’d like to go and tell the gentlemen to remove themselves from the vicinity of the ladies, who don’t seem to be having the greatest time, but it’s not really my job here. I’ve got other things on my mind, but it still grates to have them there, speaking so fast it’s as if they’re on Rhapsodize, or even low-grade Blabber, and they cut that krupt with rat poison half the damn time. Alas, the Stardust Sands didn’t spend close on two billion dollars installing lacerating edge BloodWork™ sensors to let anyone through without the purest blood. If you’ve got more than alcohol, tobacco, or a prescribed drug like aspirin, codeine or THC in your stream the alarms go off discreetly and you’re ushered into a room where hard-headed men show you the error of your ways in horrifically technological and surprisingly legal ways.

It’s gotten pretty quiet for the correctional officers over the past year or two. Once everyone knew that it’s pretty close to impossible to enter the Stardust Sands with anything other than legal intoxicants in your bloodstream most stopped trying. There are still one or two people with double digit IQs that think they can bribe their way through it, but they’re few and far between. Trying to get one over on the biggest and richest casino on The Strip is just not something done by the sane. The Stardust Sands (never call it just ‘The Sands’, upon pain of lawsuit) is indeed the number one location in Las Vegas, sprawling over the area that used to be inhabited by the Bellagio and Ceasar’s Palace before the bombings. Gone are the days of organized crime running the city, ever since big businesses realized the straight-up earning potential and tax breaks of sinking untold billions into resorts and simplistic games of chance.

And here I am, in my own little way helping to ruin them. Or at least give them a bad day or two.

“Another krupting red!” curses a girl who doesn’t even look old enough to drive, let alone gamble and drink that Mojito.

Nearby another couple smile, having long since decided that the black numbers were just not having a good day.

They all go about their business, not knowing that in four days the world will come to an end, and it’s all my fault.

THURSDAY

The little ball clicks and clatters its way around the wheel, before coming to rest in a familiar spot.

“36, red,” calls the croupier.

It’s three days until the end of the world, and if anything it’s getting busier.

I walk away from the tables in the Stardust Sands casino and move to the bar. It’s purely an affectation, as with my job I certainly can’t get inebriated, but I find solace in it somehow. Pretending that I’m just like everyone else here is comforting. Maybe it assuages some kind of guilt I feel over it, but to be honest it probably just smooths out the frustration a little. If it wasn’t for the Auditors coming down so hard then life as a Designate would just be peachy. As it is, I feel like I’ve got a thousand things running through my head at the same time, everything having to be put in exactly the right place. It’s not far from the truth, to be honest, but everyone needs to clear their head from time to time, or at least a decent chunk of it.

I step outside, glancing up to see if there are any clouds in the sky. It doesn’t look like there’ll be any rain, and Erland would definitely have warned me if they were expecting any sulfuric showers, so I forgo the usual protective gear and start walking. The Sun doesn’t seem too bright today, and I can probably stay out for a good half hour if I stick to enough shadows. Below the six towers of the Stardust Sands, I think I can manage that. There are supposed to be whole streets of lost people milling around the back of the casino, hidden away from view, a strange shanty town created by the failed gamblers lucky enough to still be drawing breath. I’ve never seen it myself, or at least never paid enough attention to the possibility. The realm of chance is inside the casino; by the time that they fall into those gutters or get dumped there, minus their right hands, they’re long gone. I’m only interested in the ball spinning or the coin flipping, not the heart stopping.

And yet…

And yet I don’t want the world to end. I’ve grown somewhat attached to it over the years, seeing it develop and become ever more complex. Being a Designate means that, of course, I’m not human, and that when the world ends I’ll survive it, but that’s scant consolation for the amount of work I’ve done through time immemorial.

“Spare me a hundred, please?” asks a voice, which jolts me back to reality.

I’ve walked further than I had planned to, getting careless. It’s been things like this that made the situation what it is in the first place.

“Just a hundred… I’ve got no protection.”

I look at him and try my best not to shudder. The environment has clearly taken its toll on him. His face is as craggy as a Norwegian fjord and his clothing is torn, with numerous holes worn and burned through. Even patches of his skin that are visible seem to be marked by countless abrasions and black marks. Sleeping rough in Vegas is something you simply do not want to do.

I check my pockets, but I don’t have anything as small as a hundred. The thought only softly strikes me that what does money matter now, anyway?

“Take this,” I say, handing him a two thousand dollar bill and watching with grim satisfaction as his face opens out. “Go to the Tropicana and put it all on 27. You understand me?”

The man nods, though I can tell that he’s torn between his lust for glory at the tables and the noise that his empty stomach is making.

“Put it on 27, and then get some reconstructive surgery,” I say, and hope it’s made his mind up.

“Krupt…” the man mutters, staring at Clinton’s face as if he’s never seen money before.

I shrug, and turn on my heel. I hope that he can get some small amount of joy out of the world in the remaining hours that it has. Perhaps it’ll make up for whatever decisions he made that led him to here, or whatever manipulations left him destitute. I feel a twinge of regret that maybe I was responsible in some way, and it’s very possible, but at least I’ve done what I can to him. Maybe one soul’s happiness will be weighed up against the legions that will die because of my inattention and lack of care, but I doubt it.

It doesn’t take long to find an entrance to the casino again; they don’t make their money by being inaccessible. The BloodWork™ scanners check out my thoroughly human blood and pass me fit for entry, whilst the absurdly muscled doormen look me over to see if I look like a vagrant from the streets. In stark contrast to my latest acquaintance, I look the part in an expensive black suit, open collared white shirt and diamond cufflinks. In the Stardust Sands this lets me walk around practically anywhere without comment, though if comments were to be forthcoming I have more than enough ways to rebuff them.

I spot Erland hovering near one of the more expensive tables. He’s never really grasped the idea of either fashion or style in the last, well, ever, and he quite fittingly looks like he’s dressed himself in the middle of a hurricane. Nevertheless, he is left alone, despite looking like a fish out of water.

“Hmmmm. I’ve been waiting for you, Designate,” says Erland after he sees me. He’s still a good hundred yards away, but his voice carries easily to my ears without ever covering the intervening distance.

“I’m honored,” I respond.

I’ve never taken a name. In extremis I have been known to go by ‘Mikey’, but it’s just not been something that has ever sat comfortably with me. Erland, on the other hand, is kind of unconventional for a Designate.

“Hmmmm. How’s it going?”

“Not too bad. I think I’ve got a handle on it. It just seems futile though.”

“Hmmmm,” says Erland. “You’ll do it though?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s a big deficit, but not insurmountable. Why are you so concerned?”

“Hmmmm,” says Erland, again. His jowls wobble unnervingly, and his beady eyes dart about from side to side in a way that he likes to think makes him look like a covert secret agent. It actually makes him look like a fat man trying to sneak out a fart while there’s nobody around, but I don’t like to tell him that. “I just think you should make sure it goes well. For form’s sake.”

“Sure thing,” I say. “Krupt, Erland, you’re the only Designate who’ll even give me the time of day now. Is it going to be like that forever?”

“Hmmmm,” replies Erland, his habit of starting sentences as if they were a vocal exercise starting to grate on me. “Too early to tell.”

“You know something, don’t you?”

“Hmmmmm… can’t say.”

“Auditors?” I ask.

He shrugs.

I shake my head.

“If that’s it, Erland, then I’ve got things to do.”

He nods, but before I can leave he grabs me by the arm.

“I like you, Designate. You’ve done me favors before. I won’t forget what you did in ‘57.”

“That was a decade ago.”

“Yeah, but I feel bad about it. Just… just sort it out.”

This time I’m the one shrugging, before looking one more time into eyes that can’t, or daren’t betray anything. In scant seconds we break contact, and he blends away into the crowd, leaving me alone with my thoughts, and one hundred and twenty one balls spinning their way to numbers I’ve told them to land in.

FRIDAY

The little ball fails to click and clatter its way around the wheel. Both the metal sphere and the wheel are not moving one inch.

The croupier’s words are conspicuous by their absence.

It’s two days until the end of the world, and things are going to krupt. It’s my own fault, again, but juggling so many things at once is pretty tricky.

The Stardust Sands casino is less full than usual, and it might be something to do with the fact that they’ve cordoned off a large section of floor encompassing a good portion of their roulette wheels. Apparently some time this morning they started hitting 36, red, on every spin. Twenty tables, every spin, for half an hour.

Whoops.

The only people here now are either casino staff, workmen or law enforcement of one kind or another. I’m there too, of course, but nobody pays me the slightest piece of attention, mainly because my body is elsewhere, ingesting food so that it doesn’t keel over and die on me. Getting replacement bodies isn’t too taxing, but it’s just a hassle I don’t need right now, and since I can be anywhere I want to be, and indeed everywhere at once if I must, I observe from a distance.

It’s an interesting and strange arrangement that we Designates have with humanity, and with the other sentient beings of the Universe. Some might call us Angels, but that would only be out of a misguided sense of romanticism, or some religious brainwashing. We are living entities, just like humans, but with different senses. We exist over more dimensions than the reality of corporeal beings, and that brings us a number of what you’d probably call advantages. Time and space being ‘optional extras’ to us, we really can be omnipresent, at a push. We can exist wherever we are required to fulfill our duties. To humanity our abilities would seem nothing short of miraculous, but to us it is just the way that we are. To even try to explain omnipresence to someone lacking the ability to achieve it would be akin to explaining nuclear fusion to your dog.

The human race would call us aliens, but we’ve been there longer than they have, shaping the way the world has moved, for better or for worse, until death do us part. Which, at the moment, looks like being tomorrow, and it’s their death. It’s my fault, and that’s why the other Designates other than Erland are refusing to even have contact with me. Even he feels aggravated by the whole episode. Over centuries you get get used to a place, and learn to call it home, and my laziness is forcing a whole host of infinitely intractable beings to change what they’ve been doing for a long, long time.

I’m the Designate of Chance.

I oversee the determinism of probability, which is a very grandiose way of saying that I can decide exactly where a ball lands on a roulette wheel; I can decide if a coin lands on heads or tails, I can very easily pick the lotto numbers as whatever I want them to be, and so on to infinity and back. It’s also my duty to ensure that chance does not become skewed.

There are thousands of Designates, though only a certain number of them are stationed on Earth. Depending on the depth of your imagination you may be surprised by either the sparsity or abundance of them on one small planet. There are roughly a hundred and thirty of us making sure that every aspect of life falls within parameters. If we mess up, we get Audited.

I’m the Designate of Chance. Erland is the Designate of Weather. There are Designates for a wide range of events and possibilities. Do not confuse my duties with those of the Designate of Fate or the Designate of Destiny. There are subtle distinctions, so whilst I could take your life by fixing a game of Russian Roulette, I’d never throw a cat at your legs as you walked past an open sewer or mold your entire life towards a fantastically coincidental demise. I’m just the numbers guy, really.

Sometimes it seems like a krupt of a job, having to look after another species, but really what we do suits us perfectly. Unless the Auditors get particularly angry then we practically live forever, and have precious few requirements during that time. It is pleasurable for us to use our senses constantly, and if we keep it within the boundaries that have been handed down to us then we can pretty much do whatever we want to. All in all, it’s not a bad life.

We’re not gods though. What we can do might seem like we could be, but we still make mistakes. If to err is human, then to err on a whole new scale of erring is Designate. Sometimes going omnipresent can make you forget things, or not concentrate fully, which brings us back to the current conundrum. I was kind of reliant upon the spinning wheels of the Stardust Sands, and here they are, immobile and useless to me. For all that I can do, getting this casino open again and rid of a federal investigation is not one of them.

Elsewhere, my body wanders the floor at the Luxor, one of the few former Super-casinos that wasn’t blown to pieces or burned down to the ground back in ‘42. It’s a shell of its former glory these days, as the rebuilt Upper Strip gathers all the affluent custom, but it still houses a good number of roulette tables and enough dice games to keep my attention.

Double one comes up in Craps at the same time as a 00 on the high stakes wheel, and the croupiers greedily rake in another fifty thousand dollars worth of chips. Still the gamblers’ blind faith that their luck will prevail against the odds makes them spend money they can’t afford to lose and watch it get drawn back down to companies that don’t even really need it.

They all say they’re going to hit the tables, but in the end the tables always hit back, and they hit a damn sight harder.

All immaterial now, I suppose.

But I still need numbers to complete my job before the end. I’ve genuinely got monks in the Far East flipping coins at an amazing rate, but wheels are somewhat rarer than coins. The only way I can succeed is to do something that’ll probably close down the whole city.

Then again, what does it matter now?

*

SATURDAY

The little balls click and clatter their way around every wheel in the state, and then some, before coming to rest in many familiar spots.

“36, red,” call a group of croupiers.

“27, red,” call numerous others.

“12, red.”

“9, red.”

“32, red.”

“1, red.”

It’s a global cacophony to my finely tuned senses. Thankfully I’m managing to throw in a few erroneous results in there so as to not get the tables shut just yet.

This all goes back to the Auditors. We weren’t meant to have another visit from them until 2100, but they skipped in thirty-some years early and wanted to see the records. You see, at the end of every year, the stats are supposed to balance. Red and black on a roulette wheel are equal partners, and it’s my job to ensure that they stay that way. There are billions of spins in every year, and since over time everything should be on a level, having red or black not be equal would just be wrong in the long term. So I’m supposed to make sure that red and black are equally likely; that heads and tails are a fifty-fifty choice; that dice are unbiased and fair. Any time there is a statistical chance of a result, it must be noted, compiled and added.

The world is ending because I got lazy.

The Auditors of the Universe are supposed to visit us once every hundred years. That gives you quite the comfort zone as long as they stick to their word. To my cost, and the cost of every living being on the planet, they are not creatures that need to keep their word. If anyone is a god, it is them.

I got lax. When casinos were cheating, I didn’t pay attention. When people used weighted dice, I laughed at whichever idiotic krupt they were fleecing at the time. When statistics skewed for a period, as they are bound to do, I didn’t lift a finger to change things. I knew I had the time to change it all, but it’s easier to observe than it is to change things. I can see probabilities better than colors, but manipulating them is harder. It takes a degree of concentration, and whilst the amount needed to keep the world on an even keel isn’t particularly high, we all like a bit of time off.

So, as it stood when the Auditors visited, heads was ahead of tails by a few million, which is actually easy enough to rectify. Dice were geared towards the low numbers, but not aggressively so. Cards were surprisingly even, at least amongst regulated games. Everything else was fairly simple to rectify. Given one week to fix it all, I could concentrate and all would be fine.

But for roulette.

Somehow I had let it slip so far over the years that black were in credit not by thousands or millions, but by slightly over a couple of billion spins. An impressive number, but one that could be clawed back over time. Alas, doing it over seven days without just hitting red after red after red on every wheel in the world would be slightly trickier. Taking out the biggest casino in Vegas (and, sadly, I appear to have lost concentration in several other casinos around the world) was also not what I would call a great help.

So it comes to this. I can feel the time trickling by, and I can see the sweat starting to bead on my brow. For all of the climate problems these days in the desert, I’ve managed to live without ever having to resort to the primal, messy effort of sweating. It’s been a badge of honor, but as I see my reflection it’s one more thing that I can no longer keep.

Time goes by me, and I find that I’m barely even conscious now, just making sure that balls fall where they are supposed to, so that the world can end with everything in order. The numbers have to be exact, and the Auditors will be pleased with what I’ve managed to accomplish. You simply have to please the Auditors. I can’t begin to explain how tragic a genuine death is to the Designates, a race of people practically immortal and unable to reproduce.

Somewhere in my senses I register that I’ve been told there’s half an hour to go, and that I’ve been stopped.

It takes me a few minutes to clear my head, and only then do I realize that most of my senses are missing. It’s like having my eyes gouged out and my eardrums blown in as I stand next to a roulette table and work out that the Auditors have handicapped me by design. They’ve made me human. It’s hard to express how hard it is to have the mind of a Designate in the body of one… of one of them.

“You have done well,” say the Auditors.

They are no more corporeal than I am, and even with my full complement of senses I would not be able to detect them unless they wanted me to do so. I’d love to say that they look like shadowy figures in dark robes, but in truth I can’t. They’re not gods either, they’re just the next step on the biological ladder, and we’ve grown to accept that, and all it entails. The Auditors sometimes work in mysterious ways, so the saying goes, but we know that their plans are for the good of the Universe.

“What’s going on?” I vocalize.

“Hmmmm.”

I look up and see Erland, and next to him the Designate of Minor Illness and the Designate of Electricity. Turning my head around I see over two dozen Designates surrounding this one roulette table. I’ve never witnessed so many in one place, presumably here to witness my demise.

“You have done well,” repeat the Auditors. “We have taken control of Chance, and will normalize all activities without suspicion, should this world continue.”

Despite my limited biological constraints, I can’t help but notice the ambiguity in their voices.

“Should this world continue?” I ask.

“Yes. Your judgment will be passed in the manner of your Designation, and of your failing.”

“What do you mean?”

Before I can blink an eye, there is a single chip in front of me, embossed with an image of the planet. I almost laugh as I anticipate the words of the Auditors.

“Red or Black.”

“For the world?” I ask.

“For the world,” they confirm.

I turn the chip over in my fingers. I can feel the pressure of the Designates all glaring directly at me, knowing that if I choose wrong that all of their handiwork is gone. They must have known all along I’d get this final chance, and to hold their destiny in my hand is not something that sits well with them. Especially the Designate of Destiny. If I get this wrong, all that they have done is ruined, and all that I have done will be washed away. I’d be truly alone, and at the whim of the Auditors. What would my next role be? Could they ever trust me with the Chance of a major planet again?

I turn the chip over and look at the two boxes. Should I choose the color that got me in the mess, or the color that got me out of it?

I can no longer see probabilities. I can no longer see where the ball will land. It’s a genuine fifty-fifty choice, as I know the auditors will cover the zeros. Part of me wonders at the novelty of it all, but most of me just wants to curl up into a ball and never be seen again.

In fact, it takes me a few seconds to realize that I’m not going to pass out or die. It’s just that the tension in my chest is unbearable and my heart feels as if it is about to burst through my chest. Adrenaline is firing on all cylinders, and the hairs on my arms are raising themselves up off my body to stand erect.

You can take your modern slang and cursing…

“Fuck!” I exclaim.

Sometimes only the classics will do.

I reach forwards to place the chip, and finally the epiphany strikes me. This is what it feels like to be truly human, to stake on one spin of a wheel and the random bounces of a ball more than you can afford to lose. Be it money for them or the entire world for me, I now understand it all.

I close my eyes. I listen for some kind of divine inspiration. I hear nothing.

“Red.”

I’m almost surprised by my own voice, and I slowly, almost reverentially, place the chip into the red box and wait for it to happen.

The croupier, a human calmed and controlled by the Auditors, spins the wheel and then fires the ball around the outside.

“No more bets,” he says, softly.

I feel like I’m having a heart attack. Every Designate is looking at me with eyes that could tear through sheet metal and obliterate me without a second thought. If I lose this, it’ll only be the fear of the Auditors that keeps them from doing just that.

The ball spins, seeming to take forever as my blood pressure flies to dangerous levels and I feel tension like never before. In these moments I feel alive, standing over the abyss and peering right into it.

This is why they gamble. Without a shadow of a doubt, this is why they do it.

The little ball clicks and clatters its way around the wheel, before coming to rest.

My world shrinks to a pinprick. I cannot watch. I cannot breath. I cannot be.

“36, red,” calls the croupier.

Everything comes back into focus. I feel my senses switching back on, one by one. All the lines of probability swim in my vision, more vibrant and full of life than ever before. In the smallest fraction of a second my essence flies from the casino and around all of the rooms and lobbies in Las Vegas, all around my city.

My body smiles and casts what I hope is a knowing glance at the assembled Designates. They’re still angry at me, but for the moment relief is keeping them from saying anything untoward. I feel bad for putting them through all this, but in time they’ll calm down and I’ll return to the fold. It’ll take a while, but as the song goes, we have all the time in the world..

Reviews

Showing 1 - 10 of 15
Next →