Semi-Human

by Erik E Hanberg

  Mitch, who clearly thinks he’s been invited into the conversation, leans toward me and James and says, “I was sitting in the same spot you two are now. My advice: staying was the best decision I’ve ever made. What would I do with five hundred bucks? It would have just run out and then where would I be?”

  Mitch goes back to his eggs and James says to me, “Exactly. This place isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Are you kidding? It looks nice now, but what makes you think it will last?” I say. “No offense,” I tell Stella, “but you all are deluding yourselves. When the jobs and the money are all gone this place is going to turn cannibal or become some weird religious cult that worships a neon idol or something.”

  She shrugs. “Suit yourself. It’s not my job to convince you.”

  “Good,” I answer.

  “But I want to convince you,” James says. “Maybe this place won’t last forever. But it will definitely last longer than five hundred bucks will.”

  “The five hundred won’t run out if we invest it in the right place,” I say.

  He takes a moment and his eyes bulge when he realizes what I mean. “You want to—you want to gamble it all on blackjack?”

  I sit, stone-faced. He turns to Stella like he’s looking for help. “She thinks she can beat the casinos.”

  “I can,” I say simply. “No. We can. It will take all three of us. But we can do it.”

  Now it’s Stella’s turn to cock her head. “All three of you?” she asks.

  I blush. I forgot they don’t know about Lara-B. I am so caught off guard that I can’t think of an answer and in my silence, Stella looks to James for an explanation. “Our friend,” he says. “Who’s already on the Strip.”

  Stella doesn’t believe him, but she nods and stands. “Then it sounds like the decision is made. I’ll get your money.”

  “My decision isn’t made,” James says quickly. “Come on, Pen,” he says quietly. “This is perfect. We’re not going to get another chance at this.”

  “But what if we could have so much more?” I ask. I mouth, Forty. Million. Dollars.

  “What? You’re sharing now?” he asks.

  That startles me. But he’s got a point. Why help me get it if I’m not sharing?

  I look away. “Yeah. I’m open to working something out. You’d get more than five hundred, that’s for sure.”

  He covers his face in his hands and whispers, “Penny…”

  I can’t tell what’s going on inside him. I try to figure out what to say, but I can’t. I turn my attention back to Stella. “What if it didn’t have to be a decision?” I ask Stella. “Could you just loan—” But she’s already shaking her head.

  “We have our system for a reason,” she answers.

  “You let people steal food from the casinos—that’s basically what we’re going to do,” I tell her. “Why not let us stay for a while? We’ll use our system to steal money from the blackjack table and bring it to you.”

  “The only reason this community works is because there’s no money. Money is for outsiders. It’s not for us. If you can cheat money out from under the casinos, good on you. They need to be taken down a peg. But you won’t be welcome back here if you do. The choice is yours.”

  Eight

  There are no blackjack dealers anymore.

  Mounted onto the back of the blackjack table, though, just behind the half circle of burgundy felt where the cards are played, is the torso of a robot with a woman’s face. Her body is a metallic frame, and you can see the wires and inner workings of the machine. It’s a sign that we’re in Las Vegas, I assume, that this metal frame is shaped to give her a rather ample bosom. Her face, though, looks very human. Maybe her eyes are a little too big and maybe her lips a little too full—sort of like a cartoon princess—but her skin and facial expressions look absolutely lifelike.

  So it’s uncanny when I pull up a stool to one of the tables and the robot looks at me with a smile so sincere and welcoming it’s like she’s found her long-lost sister. “Good evening,” she says. “I’m Vanessa.”

  “Penny,” I say. And then I immediately kick myself for giving my real name.

  “Lovely to meet you, Penny. Would you like some chips?”

  On the table I put eight hundred dollars—that’s five hundred of my payout from Fremont and the three hundred I had on my card. I asked James to chip in, but he’s too angry (and too worried I will lose it).

  He had been so mad after we left—partially at me but mostly at himself, I think. We spent most of the day in Fremont as James tried to convince me to stay. But once our decision was officially made, once James said he would come with me, we were escorted back to Lara-B. James kept looking back longingly so often that I told him he was welcome to stay in Fremont if that’s what he wanted, but he said it was too late and then went into another silent, angry funk.

  But when Vanessa slides a stack of chips across the felt to me in exchange for the cash, I can’t bring myself to care too much about how James is feeling. This pile of chips in front of me smells of…opportunity. It’s a sensation I haven’t felt in ages—probably not since I was invited to my internship at T-Six. I can’t believe how good it feels.

  Vanessa’s shuffling the cards in her mechanical fingers and I take a moment to look around. Lara-B thought we’d have better success late at night without the crowds, so we slept for a few hours before arriving. It’s now just about three in the morning and the crowds are wearing thin. While some tables are still full, there are many—like this one—with just a single player. Fewer people should make it easier for James to keep an eye on the cards and to be heard over the mic. He’s just out of my peripheral vision to my right, perched on a stool at a slot machine playing as slowly as possible so he can watch the table intently.

  “Would you like to cut the cards?” Vanessa asks. She’s holding a red plastic tab that’s about the shape of a card.

  I flinch. James didn’t prepare me for this.

  “Just take it and put it in the deck somewhere,” he whispers through my earpiece.

  I nod and slip the plastic tab into the deck. Vanessa cuts the cards where I put the tab and then loads everything into the rack for the cards, which James tells me is called a shoe. The tab is slipped into the top of the pile—none of the cards above it will be dealt. It’s supposed to make counting cards harder since I won’t see everything, he says in my ear. But most card counters don’t have a rogue self-governed AI on their side.

  Vanessa asks for my bet. I put a chip worth twenty-five dollars in front of me and she starts dealing. I take a deep breath and blink a few times. I’m ready.

  After she’s dealt, I have two faceup cards—“Eight of hearts, five of spades,” I hear James narrate in my ear. He’s passing the information to Lara-B, who is parked on some side street a few blocks away from the Strip.

  Vanessa has one card faceup and the other is facedown. “Dealer showing a ten of diamonds,” James says, naming the faceup card.

  “Hit,” Lara-B says in my ear.

  I tap on the table the way James showed me earlier. Vanessa deals me another card.

  “Seven of diamonds,” James says.

  “Hold,” Lara-B counsels, which I could have guessed. I have twenty now and I will lose if I go over twenty-one. I wave Vanessa away.

  Vanessa flips over her hidden hole card to reveal a nine of clubs (which James also narrates for Lara-B’s benefit). “Dealer has nineteen,” she says. I win! Vanessa gives me an identical chip worth twenty-five dollars and gathers up the four cards.

  I’m feeling pretty good, especially after I win the next two hands based on Lara-B’s advice. But then I lose four in a row. I won’t lie—I’m shocked at how quickly a hundred dollars can flow out of my pocket.

  James says to Lara-B, “I think Pen’s mad.”

  Yeah, I’m mad. But I can’t talk about it in front of Vanessa.

  “We’re playing perfect blackjack,” Lara-B says in my ear. “Exactly what t
he odds say you should be doing. Remember, we’re trying to make money over time, not on any one hand.”

  I set my jaw. Vanessa’s dealing again and I decide I can try some banter. “Seems like I might run out of all my chips if this run of bad luck keeps,” I tell her. Though of course I’m really talking into the microphone for James’s and Lara-B’s benefit.

  Vanessa winks—it’s incredibly lifelike—and says, “That would take an exceedingly bad run, I’m sure, Penny.”

  Then James reads the cards to Lara-B.

  Lara-B tells me to stand. I win, which is something.

  As Vanessa gathers up the cards, Lara-B says, “Yes, it’s theoretically possible you could encounter a run of bad cards and lose everything. We don’t have enough data yet, though. As the cards gets dealt, we’ll have a better sense of what’s left in the deck and I’ll be able to give more specific advice. Hang in there.”

  Vanessa pulls more cards from the ten-deck shoe and starts dealing again. I realize that Lara-B is right. The shoe started with five hundred and twenty cards in it. But I’ve played seven hands so far, which means Lara-B hasn’t even seen a full deck of cards yet. The longer I play into the shoe, the more cards we will see and the more easily Lara-B will know what’s left in the shoe. She’ll be able to predict odds better than any human player.

  That’s our edge.

  Vanessa deals me a natural blackjack—a jack and an ace. I collect the money and smile at her. “I guess I spoke too soon. Let’s make the next one fifty bucks,” I say, placing two chips in front of me.

  James coughs suddenly and it takes everything I have not to turn my head and shoot him a nasty look.

  “That was reckless,” Lara-B says in my ear. “But not the worst thing. If we play everything by the exact odds, the casino’s AI will start to suspect you’re getting help.”

  I frown. And not just because it’s Vanessa with a natural blackjack this time, meaning I just lost my fifty bucks. The reminder that the casino is doing the same thing Lara-B is doing sets me on edge. If I play too well, they’ll know I’m cheating. I will have killed the golden goose.

  I drop my bet to twenty-five again.

  And lose.

  The first shoe goes like that. Lose a few, win a few. Lose a few, win a few. Toward the end of the stack of cards, I can tell that I’m definitely winning more than I’m losing. Lara-B’s counting is working.

  We get to the red plastic tab and we’re done with the first shoe. As Vanessa shuffles the ten decks together, I check my phone to see the time. But before I get to that, I notice that I’ve got a text message.

  Dad.

  Thinking about turning your room into a home gym but if you’re coming home soon I will hold off LMK

  LMK for “let me know.” I’ve never seen him use any text-speak, so he’s clearly trying to pretend he’s being casual about this. At this moment, I’m wishing he had stopped paying my phone bill already so I wouldn’t have to get his passive aggressive texts.

  Whatever you want. I don’t care. I make sure to use periods for emphasis in my reply. It feels ruder somehow. I pocket the phone but a second later I pull it out again because I’ve forgotten the main reason I want to look at it: the time.

  It’s 3:30 a.m. Is it late or is it early? I calculate that I’ve been sitting here about thirty minutes and made $150. If I can keep that up, that will make for a good hourly rate! A lot better than I was doing as an intern at T-Six or driving takeout around for rich people, so that’s something.

  I sit at the table for another hour and half and do about the same. The $800 I sat down with is up to $1200 or so. But I’m getting itchy. I want more. “Go big or go home, that’s what my dad says,” I tell Vanessa, pushing two chips out again. “Let’s bet fifty dollars for a while.”

  I’m not even lying: “go big or go home” is something my dad says. A lot. It occurs to me that this mad scheme—both here in Vegas and my plan for San Francisco—is proof that I’ve internalized another nugget of my dad’s clichéd wisdom. Because I am definitely all about going big.

  Lara-B doesn’t argue about the bigger bets, and—twenty minutes in—I’m really up. The $1200 is already $1600 or so.

  “You should tip the dealer after a streak like that,” a voice says. It’s not a voice in my ear—it’s a man, sitting down at the table with me. He’s got shiny silver hair and bushy black eyebrows. They’re the most unruly pair of eyebrows I’ve ever seen.

  “She’s a machine and she’s bolted to the table,” I say. “What would she do with the money?”

  Eyebrows smooths his Hawaiian shirt like it’s an Armani suit and then puts four chips—a $100 bet—in front of him. “That’s not the point. It’s still good luck.”

  On the spur of the moment I match him with four chips in front of me as well.

  We both lose.

  “You don’t have enough to make bets like that,” Lara-B says but I ignore her.

  Eyebrows and I both bet $100 again. I lose, despite Lara-B’s card counting.

  “See, you should have tipped,” he says with a laugh, his eyebrows arching twice.

  We place our bets again.

  “I estimate the probability of this man being casino security at more than sixty percent,” Lara-B says.

  I straighten and avoid the temptation to whip my head around to get a better look at him. My heart starts beating faster.

  “Why?” James asks—the question I was dying to ask but can’t in front of Eyebrows and Vanessa.

  “He knew Pen was on a winning streak, for one. How would he know that? And he came to the table with chips, not cash,” Lara-B says. “Did he just change tables? I doubt it.”

  Before I can fully process that, the new guy asks, “You play a lot?”

  “Grew up on it,” I lie. “My dad was the dealer. Played for Cheerios.”

  Eyebrows laughs. “Now that’s a father. I should try that with my kids at home.”

  I know I’m supposed to ask about his kids—he’s leaving it wide open for me to continue the small-talk—but I don’t really care, even if it’s the polite thing to do. Instead I size him up again. In addition to the Hawaiian shirt, he’s got an icy pink drink with an umbrella in the drink holder. Can he really be security? Is he putting us on?

  I play silently for several minutes with $100 bets and I’m losing more than I’m winning. He keeps saying things that invite me to comment, but since they aren’t directly addressed to me, I don’t answer.

  “So, you got a system or anything?” he asks when I finally win one.

  I look at him sharply. “A what?”

  “A system. You know, keeping track of high cards and low cards.”

  “Don’t answer that,” Lara-B says quickly. I mean, obviously, Lara-B. “Chances of him being security are at ninety percent,” she says.

  “I just go with my gut,” I tell him sweetly.

  “You didn’t pick up any tricks when you were playing for Cheerios?”

  I stare him down and he ignores me and opts for another sip of his drink. “Quiet type, huh? That’s fine. I can talk enough for the both of us.” He laughs. The eyebrows arch.

  “There are lots of open tables,” I say, jutting my chin toward an empty one near us. And there are—the casino is nearly empty.

  He waves it off. “Nah, I don’t like gambling alone.” Then he does a double take that I know is bad acting. Lara-B doesn’t say it, but in my head, I know that the chances of him being casino security are now at one hundred percent. “Why? Am I bothering you?”

  “A bit.”

  He shrugs. “Free country.”

  Before I can reply, Vanessa says to me, “Hit or stand?”

  It takes me a second, but I realize that I’m completely out of the game. I barely know what I have. “Hit,” Lara-B says when I don’t reply. James has still been relaying cards to her, thankfully. In the downtime, I catch Eyebrows oh-so-casually stretching and looking around the casino floor. His eyes linger on James for a moment an
d I wonder if he’s identified that James is watching the table a little too intently. There’s nothing I can do so I follow Lara-B’s advice. I tap the felt. The card gives me twenty-two and I lose another hundred bucks.

  We’re nearing the end of the shoe.

  “His presence suggests they’re onto you,” Lara-B says in my ear. “It’s time to walk away.”

  I don’t move and stubbornly put another $100 in front of me. Counting that bet, I belatedly realize I only have $700—less than I sat down with. Everything from the last couple of hours is wiped out by my streak of large bets. If I don’t want to end down, I have to win this bet—and that only gets me back to even!

  “You’re going to get caught,” Lara-B says more urgently.

  But the chips are on the table, so James narrates the cards. Now that there are two players, he’s reading out more cards every deal. The mystery man stands with nineteen and Vanessa turns to me.

  I have seventeen and the dealer is showing an eight. Lara-B say, “The odds say to always stand in this position, but you’re likely to lose. Except that, by my counting, there are almost no face cards left in the deck. So if you hit, you’ve got a very strong chance of staying under twenty-one to win—but you’d almost certainly give away the fact that you’re counting cards in the process.”

  “What would you like to do?” Vanessa asks, since—as far as she can tell—I’ve been sitting there looking at my cards in silence for several seconds.

  “Stand,” James whispers forcefully.

  “I recommend you stand,” Lara-B repeats. “Then walk away.”

  Eyebrows finishes a long sip from his icy drink. “You’re must know something I don’t if you’re actually thinking of hitting that seventeen,” he says.

  I look at the $100 bet. I don’t want to end down. That would defeat the entire point. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and make a promise to my future self: If I can just get to even, I’ll walk away. If possible, we’ll go to another casino and I’ll stick to the small bets until Lara-B tells me I have enough to increase them. But first I have to get back up to even. Because I’m not going end with less than I started with.