Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  –Hit.

  She received a 6. She raised her finger, then tapped the table again.

  –Hit.

  With a flutter of Ashley’s hand, her next card came—6.

  So, 3-6-6-6. She had seen it before, but now it was on her side of the table.

  The same card appeared three times in a row—that was the wailing of the iron wall as she pried it open.

  Balot stayed. Ashley turned over his hole card as if lifting an impossibly heavy weight. The ace of spades. Ashley’s guardian deity had appeared. But it was too late. With the 8, he had nineteen. Balot won.

  “Congratulations,” said the dealer with a smile. Before retrieving the cards, he handed out her winnings.

  But neither his smile nor the winnings impressed her.

  Her honed senses focused upon one point among the swirling numbers.

  Now or never. So Balot thought, and so Oeufcoque thought.

  –Next hand, please.

  She turned over her left hand, and with her right, she grabbed it from her palm and gently placed it upon the table.

  Until both her hands were back on the table, Ashley didn’t move a muscle.

  The crowd of onlookers gasped. The golden million-dollar chip was in play.

  “Balot…” said the Doctor. He wasn’t calling for her. It was just a whisper, pregnant with surprise and anticipation.

  Bell’s eyes were steady upon her.

  Balot tapped the table. Ashley’s eyes flicked over to the golden chip, and his hands casually slid the cards from the shoe.

  His upcard, a jack. Balot’s cards, A-4. All of them spades.

  The cards were his sword swing, and Balot attacked them head on.

  –Hit.

  A card came. The seven of clubs. Her ace, once worth eleven points, was now worth one.

  –Hit.

  Balot tapped the table without hesitating, as if keeping in beat. Ashley didn’t slow either. The card came. The 7 of clubs. Nineteen.

  Balot took a deep, slow breath, then announced her stay. Ashley turned over his hole card.

  It was a 2. The red card showed on top of the shoe. Ashley removed it without a word. His eyes held on Balot. Balot looked only at the cards.

  The next card came. A king. Of clubs.

  “Balot, you did it…”

  The words came rushing out of the Doctor’s mouth, but he quickly composed himself. The game was only beginning.

  Without turning to him, Balot nodded and, careful not to disturb her inner rhythm, moved her gaze to Ashley.

  As he swept away the cards, his mouth curled into a frown. He looked back at her with a joke in his eyes. He started to say something but was cut off.

  “Did you see that?” Bell said. Her voice was cold, but a reserved smile was on her face. “Women can endure much more than men. No matter what you might say about this girl, she knows what it means to endure, more than you can even imagine.”

  “And here I was, thinking we were on the same side, Bell.”

  With a stunned expression, Ashley reached for the box at the edge of the table.

  Waving her hand as if she were clearing away the smoke from a cigarette, Bell said, “If the match were to end that easily, it wouldn’t be interesting.”

  Ashley shrugged. He lifted the box of golden chips into his hands and said, “There’s still plenty left.”

  He offered the box to Balot as if the weight of it pulled down on his arm.

  For a moment, she wanted to say that she wasn’t after all the chips, but she stopped herself and reached for the box. She wasn’t after the chips themselves. She didn’t want the shell or the white. She kept her mouth shut and repeated to herself the Doctor’s words: Go for the golden yolk.

  Her bare fingers grabbed a chip. One with the OctoberCorp emblem stamped on it—one tightly packed with the rotten insides of certain man’s egg.

  She squeezed the chip in the palm of her left hand and placed it atop her gloves. Then she pushed the box aside with an almost foolish reverence. She watched Ashley begin the shuffle as she stashed the chip between the two gloves.

  As Balot’s senses followed Oeufcoque’s work and Ashley’s shuffle, Bell Wing placed a hand upon her shoulder.

  “I have a little soliloquy to mutter to myself. I don’t want to get in your way.” This was Bell’s way of talking to Balot without causing the girl to turn around. “There’s just one thing I want you to remember. One thing I taught to you. Even if unnecessarily. Something I couldn’t help but say.”

  Balot, still focused on the shuffle, nodded.

  –To aspire to womanhood.

  “Yes. It’s simple. All you have to do is be a woman, and you’ll be all right. Be the person you should be, you’ll be all right. If not, you won’t be able to talk with the cards. And if you can’t talk with the cards, you can’t beat this man. You don’t want to lose, do you?”

  –No, I don’t.

  “Good. You have a pretty face.”

  –Thank you, Bell.

  Balot touched Bell’s hand. It was a kind hand. And it was a stern hand. It gently moved away from her and settled on the back of her chair. Both Bell and the Doctor placed their hands on her chair, watching over her.

  Facing down the three of them, Ashley frowned. Over the sound of the cutting cards, he growled, “I should have asked someone else to come be my witness.”

  05

  “There’s something I’m having trouble believing,” Ashley said, casually shuffling the cards. “You seem to be trying to understand luck. And what’s even harder to believe is I think you may already understand it. What I’ve wagered my entire life to understand. All while you haven’t yet been at this table for a single hour.”

  –I’m learning from you.

  Her answer was candid. Balot felt gratitude for the man before her.

  –I feel like I’m learning a lot at this table. Thank you.

  Ashley scowled, resentful of hearing those words from a fifteen-year-old kid. But then, his dour expression was tinged with a bit of affinity for the girl as he said, “Are you trying to learn the secret of my shuffle? Is that your aim?”

  Balot’s vague expression seemed to say Maybe I am.

  “Well, it’s impossible. I wouldn’t even know how to teach it if I wanted to. I have no way of nurturing a successor. It’s a problem, really.” Ashley shook his head, and from his expression, he seemed to be genuinely wrestling with the problem.

  –I think I know.

  “You do?”

  –Not your shuffle itself. How no one else can understand it.

  “I see. Yes… Have you ever thought about luck?”

  –I think it’s bad. I’ve thought that often.

  “Life is like that sometimes. But have you ever thought about how luck controls us?”

  –I’ve thought that I was at fault.

  “Well, people can think that way sometimes.”

  –I never think about the times I wasn’t at fault.

  “Yeah. You’re modest. Well, kids can end up thinking that way when they don’t have any decent adults around them… Now—and I’m talking about practicality—have you ever thought more deeply about luck?”

  –You mean, can I win against you?

  “Yes.”

  –And the secret of your shuffle?

  “Exactly.”

  He spoke like a kindly teacher explaining multiplication tables to his elementary class. Like he was presenting it as a new concept to kids who knew nothing of arithmetic other than adding and subtracting.

  “For example, you speak in words, don’t you?”

  Balot tilted her head. Of course she did.

  “So, what makes words?”

  –Mouths…and pencils?

  “Yes. And computer keyboards, and voice recorders, and sign language, and so on. But how were the words themselves made? What caused the words to be created?”

  –God did.

  Ashley paused his shuffle to say, “No, but you’re not
far off.”

  He conversed skillfully, as if that were the true role of a dealer. At the same time, Balot sensed Oeufcoque draw out the yolk from the million-dollar chip. As she participated in Ashley’s conversation, she was careful not to lose the tension and rhythm of the game.

  “Let me tell you a story. Some time ago, a large amount of research was conducted in an attempt to teach computers to speak like humans. The laws governing language were programmed in, and when people talked to them, the computers would respond with computer answers. But it didn’t go very well. If the words spoken to the computer were even a little wrong, all kinds of problems would result. Even though they taught the computers human language, the human side was flawed. To solve the problem, they introduced all sorts of new laws into the computer, but it was all of no use.”

  –Why did people want computers to learn how to talk?

  “Haven’t you ever tried to use a computer without the benefit of language recognition? If computers malfunctioned after every little email, what would happen? Isn’t your own voice thanks to a computer?”

  –So how did they teach the computers?

  “They shuffled the words.”

  –They shuffled them?

  “They gathered up twenty years of newspapers and fed all of the articles into the computer. Millions and millions of words entered sentence by sentence. From that, they instructed the computers to determine which words had the highest probability of following each word. The words most likely to follow ‘Hi’ were ‘how are you doing?’ And so on.”

  –So it’s based on probabilities.

  “Yes, the probability of occurrence. That’s how computers understand words. And there are no flaws. No matter what word they encounter, they learn from it, and they learn how to use it. That’s how language recognition software finally became robust enough for the commercial market.”

  –You’re saying we speak by chance?

  Ashley grinned like a man atop a mountain welcoming another climber to the summit.

  “The fact that we even exist is by chance. Don’t you think that’s a miracle? Chance is the most essential thing given by God to man. And humans, we strange creatures, find our own foundation within that chance. It’s inevitability.”

  –What do you mean, inevitability?

  “These cards, for example—the number of cards in this deck is determined, right?”

  –Right.

  “But sometimes it increases and decreases, right?”

  –Right.

  As Balot answered, she realized it was a self-implication of cheating. She looked at him with a surprised expression.

  “But the cards are the cards. A never-before-seen upcard won’t just suddenly appear. There’s no ‘B’ card after the ace. It’s only a game because you know what cards are in the stack. Just like our words, the order of the cards comes about by chance. But when it settles into shape, an inevitability is created. Without chance, there would be nothing.”

  Balot nodded. She noticed that Ashley’s artful shuffle was nearing its finale. And his speech was too.

  “Dam up a river, and the water will overflow. Split it into tributaries and the volume of water in the main branch will lessen. And without any rain, it will dry up. Inevitably. Luck is like the flow of a river. The issue isn’t whether or not the flow really exists. The question is, will the river keep flowing? We all live inside the flow of the river. And if there are those who drown in the river, some of them will drag down the swimmers so that they alone float. But what the river has to teach us is that once you become a part of the flow, you become the river itself.”

  The last words perfectly coincided with the readying of the deck. Ashley placed the red card in front of the stack and looked at Balot. Fondness glimmered in his gaze.

  Balot took the red card and, in a declaration of respect to the dealer and his finely crafted stack of cards, inserted it squarely into the center of the deck. The cards were already full of her influence, just as the words exchanged between two friends differed from the words others used to talk to them.

  Ashley cut the cards. It happened in an instant. And within that instant, the dizzying swirl of numbers underneath Balot’s arms had already begun to respond. The order and probabilities of the cards were nearly squeezed onto a single point. It was as Bell said. Balot’s only chance was to strive to be who she should be.

  She placed her chips—the amount required to draw out her moment of victory.

  The cards came. Ashley’s upcard, a queen.

  Balot’s cards, A-5. Balot hit: 7.

  Again she hit: 6. Nineteen. She stayed.

  Ashley kept up his smooth rhythm like the game was a conversation and their cards the words. They understood each other completely, and he had no need to pause.

  Ashley’s hole card was a 6. With the queen, he had sixteen.

  He drew another card and found a 2. But that was it. Balot won.

  Ashley counted out her winnings and placed them beside her pot.

  She took half of the chips and added them to her bet.

  –Next hand.

  The next hand, Balot received a J-9 and stayed.

  Ashley’s upcard was a king, his hole card an 8. Balot won.

  In the next hand, Balot had a 9-4, drawing an 8. Ashley’s upcard was a 10 and his hole card, a king. Balot won.

  Neither Balot nor Ashley made any comment about Balot’s sudden winning streak.

  Beneath Balot’s arms, Oeufcoque crunched the numbers and adapted his display. His powers of calculation were now a part of her. And Balot’s senses passed through to Oeufcoque. Hit or stay. Split or double down. They reached the same decisions simultaneously, and each time the answer came from place. A place they had constructed over all the previous games, a wave just big enough to win on. She was entranced, but it was natural to her now, and she wouldn’t have known it unless she looked back. Balot did what she had to. That was the answer. And yet, it wasn’t enough.

  The fifth hand ended. Balot had won them all.

  The stack of chips in her pot grew ever larger.

  At times, it supported her as she pushed through the game, and at other times, it was a burden.

  The answers reached by Balot and Oeufcoque had leveled out.

  Like her fifty-percent answers to Ashley’s carjack question.

  After the seventh hand ended in Balot’s win, Ashley suddenly interjected.

  “Do you remember our talk about the hitchhiker?”

  Balot glanced up at him and nodded.

  “There’s more to the story. Can I tell you?”

  He placed her winnings beside her pot as if to say, I’m not trying to get in the way of the game.

  Balot nodded and added a third of her winnings to the pot.

  –Yes, please tell me.

  “I don’t usually tell anyone this.”

  The cards came.

  “I had an older brother. My only brother. He was irreplaceable.”

  His upcard, a king. Balot’s cards, A-8.

  “One day, he saw a hitchhiker on the side of the road. He stopped his car and let the man in.”

  –Okay.

  She indicated a stay. Ashley turned over his hole card.

  “And he killed my brother. The murderer was never found.”

  An 8. Balot won. Ashley took in the cards.

  “He was shut in the trunk. Left under the hot sun. For hours upon hours he suffered dehydration and suffocation, and then he died. In the darkness, alone.”

  He distributed her winnings. She added them all to the pot. The cards came.

  “After my brother’s funeral, I went with my father to the place his body was discovered. I got into the trunk and had my dad close the lid. I wanted to know how my brother had felt.”

  His upcard, a 5.

  “It was awful. It was terrifying.”

  Balot’s cards, J-2.

  “I thrust out my arms into the darkness. Then came my father’s voice. Pull on the hook, there’s
a hook. I listened to him, found the hook, and opened the trunk.”

  Balot signaled hit.

  “I, in my brother’s place, escaped from the death trap.”

  A 9. She signaled stay. The hole card was turned. A 9.

  His next card, 6. Twenty-one and twenty. A narrow win.

  “If only my brother had had knowledge of the car.”

  The cards were taken and her winnings stacked.

  “Or if only someone had come by to tell him about the hook.”

  She added her winnings to the pot. The cards came.

  “Or if only he had the luck to find it on his own… If any of those three things had happened to my brother then, he wouldn’t have died.”

  His upcard, 8.

  “Which of those three a person has—that’s what separates people from other people. People without any will lose in turn.”

  Balot’s cards, 5-Q.

  “I don’t know which of those three—knowledge, someone else’s assistance, or luck—you have, but because of it, you live. And you must never forget it.”

  –I won’t.

  Balot nodded. Her finger tapped the table, requesting a card.

  It was a 6. In a display of respect for his heartfelt talk, she held the tension of the game for a moment as she silently considered his words. Then she stayed.

  Ashley revealed his hole card. A 9. With the 8, seventeen.

  It was Balot’s ninth win. Her winnings were now virtually spilling forth from her pot. But it wasn’t yet certain. It wasn’t yet a one-hundred-percent answer. She had to find her hundred-percent answer to equal that of the dealer’s.

  Winning made her far more nervous than losing had. To have a winning streak is to keep running at the same speed—or even accelerate—down a narrowing foothold.

  If she lost her balance for a second, she’d fall.

  For the first time, Balot realized that Mardock, the Stairway to Heaven, placed even more hardships on people as they climbed toward greatness than it did on those who fell.

  She added a fourth of her winnings to the pot, enduring the strain of the weight of it as she climbed one step at a time. When the cards came, the weight only became harder to tolerate, and she was struck by the desire to look away. That was her biggest temptation. Just look away, just for a second. She knew it would make her feel better. She ground her teeth together, resisting. If there was only one moment in her life when she had endured for something worthwhile, this was that moment.