Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  “The first thing to do is soak up the atmosphere. Get used to things, ride the wave. A bit like surfing.” So saying, the Doctor tripped off to check out the slot machines with a haste that would have been ill-advised had there been any real waves around.

  At the back of the hall were a number of real AirCars and other luxury vehicles, with a sign above reading: HIT THE JACKPOT AND DRIVE AWAY IN ONE OF THESE BEAUTIES!

  The Doctor sat down at a slot machine near the cars. Even as he explained its workings to Balot, he was pouring coins down its hatch. The cylinders started revolving, and the moment of truth approached. One of the symbols clicked into place, then another, and the Doctor’s fortune was decided. Of the four lines he had bet on, one just about resulted in a payout, and five twenty-cent coins clattered into the tray below. “Not a bad way to test your luck, eh?”

  Carefully, he slid some more coins into the slot and pressed the button.

  For a moment, Balot thought she might try snarcing the machine to produce the result she wanted.

  But her Oeufcoque-gloves pulled Balot’s left hand away. Then the palm of her hand was by her ear, and she heard Oeufcoque’s voice. “Don’t underestimate the security here.”

  Her heart thumped.

  The machine was swallowing up all of the Doctor’s coins. But the Doctor seemed unconcerned and continued throwing in more coins with abandon, as if he were testing out its rhythm.

  Balot stopped and sensed the inner workings of the machine. It was set up so that the slightest bit of external interference would cause it to lock down completely. Not the most subtle system in the world, but all the more secure for it.

  Suddenly, Balot felt that she was being watched. She looked up at the tall ceiling. All sorts of colored illuminations were scattered around, and in between them Balot noticed an incredible number of security cameras, all firmly set in place. She gulped involuntarily.

  –The Eye in the Sky, Oeufcoque said, sensing Balot’s thoughts. Originally developed for military use. Every single one of those cameras is powerful enough to accurately distinguish between different sets of footsteps in a field from a distance of twenty thousand meters. There’s a whole team of surveillance staff watching behind the scenes, probably, watching every move down here. The second you try anything with the slot machine, the warning goes up and cameras will be trained on you from all angles.

  Balot squeezed her hand, indicating to Oeufcoque that she understood him loud and clear.

  “Would you like a go yourself, Balot?” the Doctor asked suddenly. It seemed that his coin count was fluctuating up and down, winning some then losing them again.

  Balot nodded, then asked a question through the crystal on her choker.

  –Am I allowed to choose my own machine?

  “Why not? Let’s split up for the next half hour or so, see how we do on our own. We’ll establish our supply train here, ready to move on later. May fortune smile upon you!”

  Balot left the Doctor and started wandering around the machines.

  She stared at them one by one, trying to feel the wave that the Doctor had been talking about.

  She may not have been able to snarc the machines to manipulate them directly, but she could at least sound them out for variations and anomalies.

  Each machine moved to its own complicated rhythm. It wasn’t as if they were all standardized to some sort of median average. Before long she started to get a feel for the overall patterns.

  She remembered something she had once read. A wave may be made up of individual droplets of water, but the wave doesn’t actually move the surface of the water; all it does is cause the surface of the water to bob up and down as it passes.

  Balot was now starting to experience this for herself.

  Balot sat down in front of a machine. It was a one-dollar slot machine in the shape of a whiskey bottle. She’d selected this one because she felt that its rhythm was settling down.

  Balot had been sensing all these loud—exaggerated—sounds from her surroundings. She felt that these were due to the complicated rhythms of the machines ebbing and flowing, never quite calm enough to properly read, but this machine was different. Calmer, she sensed.

  Balot placed some coins in the slot, pressed the button, and watched the symbols spin around.

  She sensed their movements as she stopped the wheels. Each one landed on a different symbol, almost impressively so.

  Balot put another coin in the slot. Just the one, this time. She spun the wheel.

  No luck. She put another coin in and again had no luck. She repeated the process a number of times, and suddenly she had won.

  Balot grasped her feelings at that moment. She thought that Oeufcoque might have tried to say something, but she couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t even hear the tumultuous roar of the machines around her anymore.

  Balot continued with the machine, losing the next round. She felt just like the machines all around her—ebbing and flowing. Then she felt a sensation—her whole body being lifted. Her hand moved up to the slot naturally, automatically. She threw coins down the slot in quick succession, leaving just the slightest of gaps, until the wave was at its crest before pressing the button with perfect timing.

  “Flawless…”

  She heard Oeufcoque’s voice. Balot came to her senses. The roar of the machines returned.

  She squirmed when she heard the piercing sound of the siren. She wondered if she had done something wrong. Voices pressed in on her from all around. She realized that she was now surrounded by a huddle of people.

  Amazed, Balot looked around at the throng. Everyone was voicing their astonishment.

  For a moment Balot thought that she was about to be hauled away by the police, but she was wrong.

  The very next moment, an incredible clanging of metal assaulted her, and she looked down at her hands.

  She’d never seen so many coins before in her life. At first she wondered how she was possibly going to fit such a large quantity in her pockets, but as the coins kept coming, it wasn’t long before she abandoned that idea as impossible. That was how many coins there were.

  Envious voices were heard all about. A casino attendant pushed his way through the crowds.

  Balot’s face was still startled when she looked at him, and he smiled at her, flourishing a basket. “Shall I store your coins for you, madamoiselle?”

  Balot nodded, wondering if he was about to cart all her coins away.

  But she had a strong feeling that the coins weren’t really hers to begin with.

  As he was scooping her coins into the basket, Balot’s left hand flew up to her ear again.

  “Give him a tip. One dollar ought to be enough.” Hearing Oeufcoque’s words, Balot scrabbled around for a one-dollar bill and took it from her pocket.

  The attendant turned to her with the basket full of coins in his hands. He saw the proffered note and received it graciously. Then he took Balot over to the counter, where he exchanged the full basket—so heavy that it was like carrying around a set of bowling balls—with a considerably lighter roll of hundred-dollar coins.

  Balot took the hundred-dollar coins along with the basket. She counted them to discover that there were precisely sixty of them. For a moment she couldn’t even work out how much money that was.

  Basket in hand, Balot walked back toward the slot machines. Feeling the wave, as she did before. Then she sat down at another machine where she sensed that the wave was settling down. This time it was a five-dollar coin machine. She had only three of these in her pocket. She sat there waiting carefully before placing the first one of these in the machine.

  She slotted it in gently. The wheel spun and settled, and she was nowhere near winning. She stuck the next coin in.

  She let it go at precisely the moment she felt the wave rising. She lost again. But as a result, she sensed clearly that the wave still had farther to go. Balot breathed in, then out.

  She waited for the wave to rise, coin held firmly in her hand
.

  Then her hand moved. Before she knew it, the coin had been released, the button pressed.

  –What…?

  Balot snarced Oeufcoque, surprised.

  “It’s not a good idea to win too much at this stage. You’ll be marked out.” Such was Oeufcoque’s answer. He had caused her to let go of the coin early.

  The wheels in the machine spun around and stopped.

  There was no siren. Instead, about twenty five-dollar pieces clattered out of the bottom of the machine. Balot was confident that if she’d been allowed to get the timing absolutely right, she would have won at least ten times that.

  “Remember that out of all the chips in the casino, we just need the four that we’ve come for. We could win hundreds of other chips along the way, or not, it really doesn’t matter in the end—either we get the four we’re after, or we fail. For now, best play it safe and make sure we don’t draw the casino’s attention unnecessarily.”

  –I thought you said you’d let me have some fun…

  Balot seemed a little disappointed.

  “It might seem like fun to you, but somehow I don’t think the people around you will see it the same way. Casinos like winners—but not people who win too much.”

  Oeufcoque’s words reminded her again of the cameras overhead.

  Balot meekly collected her winnings in her basket and went to rendezvous with the Doctor.

  03

  “So, you think you’ve started to get the hang of it?” said the Doctor.

  The Doctor had nothing in his hands, so at first glance it looked like he had lost all his chips, but, “Looks like we’re just around the ten thousand mark combined,” he went on to say, surprising Balot by pulling out a handful of thousand-dollar chips from his pockets.

  –Aren’t we going to use these machines to try and get Shell’s chips?

  “Even if we were to bleed all the slot machines dry, we’d still be shy of two million. There’s no way we could reach our target. In any case, we don’t want to seem like we’re taking the casino head-on.”

  –So what are we going to do?

  “Make some money off the other punters.”

  Balot’s ears pricked up. They’d been over the plan a number of times, but only the main points and in broad strokes: what to do, when, and how to do it. The overall master plan was firmly the Doctor’s territory.

  “Well, looks like our supply train has come in. All that’s left for us to do now is mosey on down to the front lines.” The Doctor finished speaking and walked over to the other side of the slot machines.

  Once they had escaped the maze of the slot machines they arrived in a large, expansive room, big enough to fit a number of tennis courts side by side.

  A number of gaming tables were lined up in the middle of the room in an orderly fashion, and on either side were green plants decorating a cocktail bar. The bustle and clamor of the previous room had completely disappeared.

  This space was far more chic, and the atmosphere could have been described as sophisticated.

  A number of immaculately turned out dealers stood behind their tables, like actors holding the stage. Waitresses carrying trays of complementary drinks circulated briskly. Some of them wore traditional bunny outfits, and others sported outfits bearing card-inspired designs or the brand names of certain alcoholic drinks.

  “You know what a mechanic is, don’t you?” the Doctor asked under his breath, and Balot nodded in response.

  The Doctor had told her all about mechanics—card sharps. Everything from their modi operandi to their motivations—why they risked everything to cheat at cards. Some did it for the sheer thrill, others saw it as a shortcut to fame and riches. In other cases—particularly for those who grew up as dealers in the territories where casinos were illegal—cheating was just par for the course, an act as natural and obvious as eating and drinking.

  “Let’s see if we can hook ourselves a couple,” said the Doctor. “If we targeted the casino right at the outset then we’d be out on our heels before we knew it. So our next maneuver should be one that benefits us the most while benefiting the casino at the same time, and certainly not causing them any loss. That’s how we’ll dig our trench, so as to provide us with a solid foundation from which we can launch an all-out offensive later…”

  –But would we be thrown out even if we didn’t actually cheat?

  “Well, look at it this way. If we tried to turn ten dollars into a million in the space of an hour, we’d be asked to leave long before we got there. Even if our ambitions were more modest—a thousand into a hundred thousand, say—we’d get away with it to a point, but you can be sure the casino would sniff us out before too long and stop us from going much further. What we need to do is turn a hundred into a thousand, then a thousand into ten thousand, gradually, without attracting any untoward attention. The real battle starts only once we’ve built up a proper war chest.”

  Balot understood exactly what the Doctor was saying. But she had a question.

  –How do we know which ones are the mechanics?

  “I found us our marks while you were playing on the slot machines back there.”

  –How do you know, though?

  “It’s like I told you. Our next maneuver should be one that benefits us the most while benefiting the casino at the same time.” The Doctor looked up at the ceiling with a triumphant air, flashing her the thumbs-up. Amid the hustle and bustle of the casino, Balot gleaned his meaning all too well. “Mechanics are seen by the casino as the ultimate pest. Anyone who looks in the least bit suspicious is noted, and the best dealers are immediately put on the case to sniff them out and catch them in the act. Alternatively, the dealers themselves might be in on the act, and the casinos are well aware of this possibility, so they have measures in place to detect this too. The dealers have to share reports of any suspicious activities every half hour, and there are pit bosses and floor managers taking records in the background, floating behind any and every dealer that has the potential to come in direct contact with the customers. Mama sees everything, is the idea.”

  Balot realized why the Doctor had been grinning in the general direction of his PDA. He’d been eavesdropping on the conversations of the most suspicious people and what games they were playing.

  “Now then, my pretty little niece, let Uncle show you just what a dab hand he is at the gaming table.” The Doctor was suddenly speaking in a loud voice, humming away, conspicuously checking out the different games in progress. He looked every bit the cocky country squire, here in the big city determined to prove to the world that he was no bumpkin, and probably ready to lose the shirt off his back to feed his gambling habit. Truth be told, he played the act so convincingly that Balot was a little embarrassed to be seen with him.

  All the while Balot was playing the part of a girl who had no interest in the actual games but rather was overwhelmed by the glamour and the sophistication of her surroundings. This was her assigned role—and again she felt more or less this way in reality too.

  “Right, let’s try this spot here. Looks like there might be some nice pokers rolling around,” the Doctor boomed, arriving at a table that was in between games.

  –Pokers?

  The Doctor indicated to Balot to sit down, and she did.

  The Doctor had an extremely self-satisfied look on his face. “Yeah, pokers for prodding each other with. That’s the sort of game poker is.” So saying, he laid his chips on the table.

  The dealer looked at Balot. “Is the young lady with you, sir?” he asked. He was a young man, whose blond hair went well with his clear blue eyes.

  “Indeed. Though once she’s at the table beside me, she’s as good as a rival,” the Doctor said, and then nodded without delay. “You have a go too, young lady. You’ve played in your game room at home, right? If you don’t spend your pocket money here you’ll only squander it on clothes anyway—why not use it for something a bit more thrilling for a change?”

  –How many chips wi
ll I need, Uncle?

  As she spoke, Balot grabbed a handful of hundred-dollar coins from her basket. The dealer and the other punters at the table were momentarily taken aback. Those must be quite some clothes for her to squander that much money on them…

  In reality, all the clothes she had ever bought in her life up to this point—with the money that she had struggled so hard to earn—could have easily been bought twice over with less than the amount she was now holding in one hand.

  –Is this enough? Balot asked. The dealer seemed troubled for half a second as he watched Balot speak through the device on her neck, without moving her lips, but then he nodded.

  The dealer exchanged the coins for chips and gratefully accepted the tip that the Doctor thrust out.

  Then the dealer made a broad gesture for the floor manager—to show that he had received this tip legitimately—and placed it in the middle of the table on the designated spot for tips, for all to see. Balot had thought he might put the chip away in his pocket, but then she realized that all his pockets were neatly sewn up. This joint ran a tight ship. Indeed, it seemed a point of pride for the dealer to conspicuously show off how upright and cleanhanded he was. Back straight, he looked at the customers around the table.

  There were four other punters at the table besides Balot and the Doctor. One wore a cowboy hat and was chomping on a cigar, and to his right was a quiet-looking man dressed in an unobtrusive business suit.

  These two sat to the right of Balot and the Doctor. To Balot’s left was an elderly gentleman with neat, close-cropped hair, and to his left a middle-aged man with a potbelly.

  According to the Doctor, one of these four was a mechanic.

  “Oh, by the way, do you mind if we use sign language?” the Doctor asked the dealer. The dealer looked a little worried and shook his head. Negative.

  “But she’s disabled; her larynx doesn’t work. Surely you can see that just by looking at her? I’m not asking you to overlook it if she mispronounces something, I’m just asking if it’s okay for me to interpret and speak on her behalf if anything goes wrong with her machine.”