Chapter 11
Gambler's Fallacy
The fit of the mock Pactbind around her throat was perfect. It rested exactly at the nape and looked unremarkable to anyone passing by. It wasn’t too snug, it didn’t pinch, but the presence still made her lungs heavy with some unspeakable weight.
Or maybe I am weighed down by the struggle to behave around this man.
Davik’s smile when he came bounding down the loading ramp to meet her was infectious enough to lift her out of her own worries.
“Shore leave!” he howled as he darted off towards the city proper. “C’mon, you’ve been cooped up in that boat for the better part of a month. Let’s go!”
Without a moment of hesitation, she sprinted after him with an excited flash of green along her scales. This place may not have been all shine and glitter and clean streets, but it was vibrant in a way that soothed a need she hadn’t realized had gone untended.
The station-city was hundreds of levels tall, and they were squarely on the bottom-most floor.
The central dais he led her towards opened up to the top of that glittering dome that curved overhead, showing a straight path past the uncountable levels above.
It shone with a synthetic sky made of bright lights, mimicking the sky of that distant, out-of-reach Earth.
Banners advertising wares and services in the districts below dotted the blue expanse, interspersed with tiny wisps of clouds.
The level they were on seemed to be a mercantile ward, bustling with voices and the scents of street food wafting in the delightfully warm air.
A sea of mismatched stalls with brightly colored signs lined the thoroughfare.
Throngs of humans and the occasional Icthian milled about, many wearing light and flowy garments in styles far different from what she had remembered being the norm.
It was beautiful, and boisterous, and utterly silent in the Chorus.
A curious, discordant tune caught her attention amidst the chaos, and she wove through the crowd to follow the noise. Her meandering path led into a shop with a wall of loud, flashing machines, and before Davik could stop her, she had followed her curiosity through the entryway.
Despite the cacophony, the place had more empty seats than patrons.
The only others around were a few exhausted-looking dockworkers and a particularly beleaguered and elderly Icthian man.
All mindlessly tapping buttons on the screen, their faces lacking the enthusiasm that the chiming machines held.
“Ooh,” Fia cooed as Davik followed through the beaded curtain entrance. “This is a game parlor?”
“Eh, not quite. I mean, you can certainly lose games here,” he replied with a snort. “It’s, uh, gambling. You slot a few coins in, hit some arbitrary buttons that you think might affect the outcome, and you get drip-fed just enough dopamine to trick you into thinking you’re winning.”
Despite his words seeking to paint this as a negative, Fia was enthralled. She wandered up to one screen showing a rainbow-filled series of wildly wavering curves and spirals with vibrant, cartoonish characters.
“So, what does this one do?” she asked, gently tapping on the glass surface.
“I think it’s some kind of race,” he said, squinting at the words flying by on the top edge of the screen.
“You pick your prize pony, put in a coin, and they race.” He shrugged and gave the bottom of the case a gentle kick.
“It’s all digital, though. So this is just a glorified roll of the dice, probably weighted for the house. ”
Fia’s eyes were wide saucers of black, blooming with the reflections of the machine, utterly enraptured.
“Davik…” She put her hand on the glass and looked at him with her best attempt at a pleading expression. “If I promise to pay you back—”
He didn’t even let her finish the question. He just let out a hearty laugh and palmed a few chromatic-plated disks into her hand. “Go nuts. These things only take a few credits a spin, anyway. Just don’t get addicted.”
Fia plucked one coin out of his palm with a cautious gesture, examining it closely. They were roughly the size of her jacket’s buttons, and just as light. “No promises. Physical currency?” she asked, turning the coin in the light.
He nodded again. “Yeah, the electronic creds fell out of favor in the settled systems a while back. Too many cases of large-scale fraud, EMPs knocking out entire financial blocks, and with how crumpled the datastream infrastructure is,” he shrugged. “Physical is easier.”
Physical is usually easier. However, physical is incredibly complicated right now, Davik. I am usually quite good at physical.
She shook her head, drawing her focus back to his words.
She missed at least a solid twenty seconds of him talking about the difficulty of interstellar currency exchange.
Not out of a lack of interest. One of his canines always peeked out when he was talking, and it was very hard to keep track of that and what he was saying at the same time.
“… And I have no complaints, makes our job—” He paused. “Well. My job, easier. Also, I guess your job. Did we ever officially employ you, or is this a prolonged hostage situation? I really should have asked.”
With a grin, Fia popped the coin into the slot of the machine. “You have, as of just now, paid me. I am officially in your employ. The hostage situation has been resolved.” Her focus turned to the box before her, and she pressed a button to begin the race.
A symphony of melodic noises rang out as the screen made a dramatic show of launching the little racing figures around the track. Her chosen speedster began with a hearty lead, neck and neck with the other lanes. Until it hit a sharp corner and slowed enough to lose by a millisecond.
Davik mimicked the sad musical tone from the machine and chuckled. “Tough break.” Fia held her palm out expectantly, and Davik obliged. “Don’t get addicted to these, Fi. It’s a little dopamine drip that will suck you dry.”
Her grin was wild, and she felt sharp despite the sensory chaos around her. As she slid the coin in, she closed her eyes to breathe in deep before she shifted her focus to view the electrical impulses in the device before her.
It revealed an absolute nightmare tangle of datastreams. So much obfuscation, so much randomization. This machine had been designed to prevent malicious attackers, and designed well it was.
The second coin was a sacrifice she spent, just observing at first. She watched the flow with intense scrutiny.
There was confirmation of payment. A secure line to an external, off-station data bank.
Then some internal encryption, appearing too quickly for her to make much of a note of.
Then, the animation began. No random generation, no calculation of odds, nothing.
Just a flashy display, and then a sad series of honks to announce the loss.
“There is not even a chance.” She squinted, tracing her fingers over the glass and feeling for the telltale sticky, barbed sensation from an encrypted data-line.
“It decides if you have lost the moment you put the coin in,” she murmured, almost breathlessly.
“You do not affect it with your choice, even remotely.”
“Yeah, told you, Fi. Rigged from the start.”
She clicked her tongue and shook her head.
“That is just petty cruelty. They give you the illusion of influence.” With her eyes still locked on the screen, she held her hand out a third time.
She heard Davik sigh, but she couldn’t risk looking away to indulge in seeing what was almost undoubtedly a very adorable expression of annoyance.
It is rigged from the start. So that is where it is vulnerable. Not at the end, but at the beginning…
Mere inches from the surface, she could feel the heat from the screen on her face. She just needed to shape the stream into the right signal, mimic the encryption, and lure her quarry to give her what she sought.
The din and clamor of bright lights and ringing bells made her heart jump into her throat.
Surely she had tripped some failsafe, set off alarms. This was the cacophony that heralded certain pain and failure, punishment for her hubris.
She was not bred for espionage. She was just an observer, a protector, and an occasional meddler.
“Ay!” Davik hollered, his voice raucous and full of bewilderment. “Look at that, third time is the charm. That’s enough to get a decent meal, too.”
Her vision, blurred from concentrating on datastreams, allowed her to just make out a faint outline of his form. He was kneeling beside her, gathering a handful of the small, pebble-like coins in his palm to hold up towards her.
She had won. A small prize, but a prize nevertheless.
“Ah, yes. That was just … charm,” she said with a wry smile, turning to face the machine. With newfound confidence, she repeated her push, pull, and deployment of malicious weavings to trigger the win a second time.
“You doing some sort of space princess magic?” Davik whispered while he helped her collect her second handful of winnings.
With a nod, she tapped her claws along the screen to queue up her third spin of the night. She was so entranced by the flow of lights, signals, and heady glee that she didn’t notice Davik’s hands on her shoulders until the fifth win had clattered into the tray below.
“Fia, c’mon, quit while you’re ahead. You’re gonna draw heat if you keep that up,” he whispered insistently.
She could just lean back, press into him, and be able to seal this spree of petty theft with her own indulgent mischief.
I am complicating things. This is definitely not keeping a “low profile”.
To her dismay, his touch was gone as her vision slid back to focusing on the tangible world again. But his bright voice remained.
“Let’s get out of here, high roller.”
As they left the parlor, Fia helped Davik heft the now coin-laden bag onto his shoulder. The credits were surprisingly heavy, and they clattered around as they walked.
“Now, what do we do?” she asked, clapping her hands together.
“We put some distance between us and this place, and then you go on a shopping spree. As much as I love seeing a tall, pretty lady in my pants, you probably want something of your own,” Davik said with a wide grin.
“Should this not go to your brother?”
“Ah, that’s sweet of you, but this is a drop in the bucket, all things considered.
” He gave his overladen bag a jostle. “It’s all small denominations.
Looks substantial, but you were playing the bit slots.
This is how much we’d pay you for two, maybe three weeks of work.
So, hey. Consider this a very late payday. Don’t worry about Marius.”
“I do not know Marius, so I do not worry about him. I worry about you. You are working yourself to the bone to get him home, and if this buys you a week or two early reprieve—”
“Fia, it’s fine. It’s okay. And if you want to logic this out, I am a logistics guy. The creature comforts of you being able to buy your own shampoo, shirts, and trashy smut reels will make you less prone to burnout. So, there. A logical path for you to keep it.”
I should ask him for the logical path to his bed.
“C’mon, the best shops are on level eighty.”
The credits took very little time to disappear, but Fia had six or so bags full of clothes, toiletries, and various other supplies to show for it.
She had offered to help carry her purchases, but Davik refused, and she didn’t mind having a strapping young man doing the heavy lifting for her.
He was even giving her useful pointers as she picked out necessities.
He let her know when she was getting price gouged, he pointed out important taxes, decent brands in TC, and other very vital information she was doing her best to remember.
But then, destiny would do something cruel like put a piece of errant lint on his shoulder that she would need to reach out and pick it off.
Then her fingers would glance along his arm, and everything he said would fall out of her head while she watched his skin prickle with goosebumps.
She had only one purchase left to make. She told Davik he would need to wait around the corner as she shopped around for this one.
There was an implication that it was something personal and embarrassing, but the reality was that she wanted to get a gift for him.
A show of appreciation. Something he might use when she was gone.
It seemed incredibly silly, but the cashier at the shop reassured her that getting him an old-fashioned chef’s knife was a classy thing.
She had it tucked safely in her new backpack as she left the shop, and she felt a thrill of excitement as she started down the stairs, back towards the bench she had left him on.
The bench was empty, with her bags knocked aside and spilled on the ground.
Her vertiblade was in her hands before her feet touched the bottom step.
Complexity could no longer be avoided.