Shorter Stories
In the Known World
By Tim McDaniel
TOM’S SMUG APPRECIATION OF THE GREAT shrouded form squatting in the middle of the lab was interrupted by the ding of the elevator.
The doors opened.
“Bob!” Tom cried. “Come in, come in! I wish to show you the final results of all our efforts!”
Bob approached the blanketed shape and then stopped, standing before it with crossed arms.
“It’s finally finished?” he asked. “As you know, Tom, we’ve been working on this thing for month after unending month. I can’t believe that it’s finally done.”
“You seem skeptical. But as you know, Bob, I had a revelation in a dream last night, so I came straight here upon awakening. The final pieces of the puzzle then fell into place.”
“Yes,” Bob said, caressing his chin with long fingers. “I recall you telling me about that. But come, Tom, let’s see it!”
Tom seized a handful of the shroud and, with a grand gesture, whipped it off the gleaming contraption. “Viola!” he said.
Bob walked carefully around the machine, examining its many parts, its gleaming spars of metal, its dials and switches, its bicycle seat in a sphere of clear plastic. “Most impressive. But as you know, Tom, the expression is not viola, but voilà.”
“Thank you for the correction, Bob. Though it would have been almost excusable to have made that transposition in writing, since the two words are so similar in form, to do so in speaking, as I did, is very odd indeed.”
Bob didn’t seem to hear. He stopped pacing. “Will it really work?”
“Of course it will, Bob! As you mentioned to me last week, our calculations have been proven correct, and the technological wonders we have achieved over these many months must result in the results as proposed.”
“Incredible!” Bob said. He placed a hand on his chin. “As you know, Tom, this machine is capable of sending a man back into the furthest reaches of time! All the way back, in fact, to the Mesozoic!”
“Isn’t that the era of the dinosaurs, Bob?”
“Yes, it is, Tom. Imagine—the first person to make such a journey, and who returns to the modern world with proof of the feat, will be a celebrated hero around the world!”
“True, very true. However, as you well know, Bob, the machine is capable of making only a one-way trip. There will be no triumphant homecoming.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Bob. “Blast it! I did know that. But in that case, how will we know that the journey has been successfully completed?”
“As you will recall, Bob, our plan is to have the traveler leave behind some form of indelible mark, some obvious sign, which those of us in the present time can excavate.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. At that pre-arranged site in South Dakota. Ingenious! That will tell us the experiment has been a success, at which point we can ask ourselves why we bothered doing it.” He paused. “Of course, an alternative would be to have the traveler go back a relatively short distance in time—say, a year, a week, a day. Then the traveler would not be stranded in a bygone era.”
“Hmm. Good point, Bob. But you know, the machine—the very parameters of time travel—permit no such short hops. It’s the Mesozoic, or nothing.”
“But tell me, Tom—who will make the trip? Finding someone to volunteer for such a one-way mission into time will be a daunting prospect!”
“Actually,” Tom said, “that won’t be a problem. You will make the trip, Bob.”
“I think not,” Bob said. “You understand, I’m sure, that I have a full life here, and no incentive to lose myself in time. Perhaps we could find a convict who would find life in an earlier era preferable to prison or execution.”
“No, Bob, it must be you. As you know, no one else would understand how to operate the machine.”
“True. And yet I refuse.”
Tom began pacing, looking at the floor. “I didn’t want to have to bring this up,” he said. “As you know, Bob, you have been surreptitiously embezzling funds from this company for several years.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“Must I? As you know, you have maintained records of all your misdeeds in a diary, kept secret from me and from everyone else. It will come as a shock for you to hear that I have finally obtained this diary, as you will remember. If I revealed your secret to the world, you would not only be humiliated and reviled, but you would go to prison.”
“I see your point. An intriguing blackmail scheme! However, Tom, you must see that if I murdered you here and now, my secret would then be safe, as would I. And I would then be free to take over the company, and marry your wife, who, as you know, has been secretly sleeping with me for years.”
“Exactly. However, remember that I have placed the incriminating documents into the hands of a trusted third party, as you suggested, who will release them if anything happens to me.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right. But tell me, Tom, what would prevent you from releasing these documents after I have gone on the time expedition?”
“You understand, Bob, that doing so would be pointless.”
“Yes, I do so understand. Nevertheless, I have an irrational fear that my family and reputation might suffer.”
“Oh. Now that you mention it, I remember that about you. Very well—you may take the documents along with you, into the past.”
“Good idea. I can leave them behind in the dinosaur era. As you know, the passage of time will obliterate the documents, which are no doubt composed of paper.” Bob took a deep breath. “Very well, then. I shall leave at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Remember to bring the documents, so that I may take them with me.”
“Not so fast, Bob! If I bring the documents, you can murder me, and thus avoid the one-way trip into the past!”
“I was hoping you would not realize that, Tom. But what, then, can we do?”
Tom scratched his head. His eyes lit up. “Wait a second!” he said. “Bob—you know that I am a trustworthy and, in my way, honorable man.”
“Yes, true. But tell me, Tom—what is your point?”
“That if I say I will not release the documents, you can take me at my word!”
“A brilliant deduction, Tom! Very well. It’s settled.”
So the next morning Bob sealed himself into the machine and started the countdown.
And with a pop and a whirr, the machine vanished.
Seconds later, it reappeared.
The door opened and Bob came out—a little suntanned, a tad thinner, but otherwise the same as when he had left.
“Bob! You have returned! It’s incredible! But how?”
“As you know, Tom, simply re-looping the chrono-stabilizers would inevitably result in a return journey, as I realized shortly after appearing in the Mesozoic!”
“No, Bob, no. I actually didn’t know that. It’s astonishing!”
“Not only that, Tom! On the way back, I stopped over briefly in Portland, Oregon, in 1974, when and where—as you know—you were conceived.”
“No! Don’t tell me—”
“Yes, Tom! As you know, I am your father!”
“Yes—there is no need to belabor the fact!” 
Tim McDaniel has published stories in a large number of science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines, including “F&SF” and “Asimov’s.”
Tugship
By Russell Hemmell
“YOU’RE APPROACHING, ACE. Mentally prepared?” asked Raj.
“No.”
“Well, you’d better be. If you can’t get it right the first time, rocket-assisted orbital mechanics ain’t for you!”
“Nice.” He replied acidly. “Is this the Agency’s way of encouraging its elite officers or just your sweet feminine self taking over?”
What a smug chauvinist you are, Ellen would have said, as she always did anytime he looked down on his female co-workers. But his sister, with her inimitable spirit, her cold, logical mind, her unfaltering determination, was no longer there. God, how he missed her.
Raj remained imperturbable like a Theravada monk, the screen blurring the contour of her big brown eyes. “Captain, it’s one hundred years, give or take, that mankind has been preparing for this. The mission has been planned down to the smallest detail.” She smiled, her tone becoming less flippant. “Nobody more than you has been involved in its design. You’ve gone through more space simulations than hangovers. Just do it. That’s what you’re programmed for.”
“You’re talking to the wrong sibling, Raj. It’s Ellen who wrote all the specs, not me.”
“I see. Let’s damn hope that accuracy runs in the family then.”
Accuracy does, not so the genius. Ellen had been the mind and driving force behind the mission. Ellen the visionary who devised how to transform what had been until then just a stash of useless notes from state bureaucrats into an operational plan. With a Gantt chart, a deadline, and several hundred equations. She laid it down, ran simulations, and put together the budget and the crews that had to deliver it. His sister hired Raj as the new Station’s Chief Engineer, trusting her guts and fighting against Agency’s prejudices. She had also died before being able to see the actual deployment, leaving the responsibility of Mission Commander on his shoulders.
He adjusted his visor, magnifying the images on the main screen. The fat, crater-ridden body of SV-I-232 was quietly hovering in front of him, plunged into a green, glowing light. Difficult to believe this seemingly inoffensive rock could wreak such havoc. So far, things had proceeded according to plan. The primary slingshot over Mars had made SV-I-232 slow down on its voyage to Earth. That had been a success—Raj and his team had perfectly executed that leg of the mission from the Orion Station on the Earth-Moon Lagrange point 2, The last terrestrial outpost in space, and Ellen Asher’s brainchild.
Now it was his turn—his tugship had to intercept, harpoon the asteroid, and thrust it slowly until in position to allow gravity tractors to finally capture SV-I-232 into a stable Earth orbit. Transforming a mortal threat into an asset; better, into a great opportunity for the whole of humanity. All depending upon the precision he was able to deliver. In a scenario with a set of constraints and scarce energy, accuracy was essential. Double the mission time and you halve the delta-V, lowering the overall risk. But you also increase the fuel consumption up to a dangerous level. And the asteroid was rotating, meaning he would have been able to apply the required thrust only for a fraction of the time. Provided I can match the ship’s rotation with the asteroid’s spin axis first, he sighed. Only one shot, that was all he got. He had to dock at the right time, into the right place—no margin of error allowed.
“Starting countdown in two minutes. Stand by.”
“Summers and Hart are in position?”
“Already on the lower deck. Tractors are ready to deploy after docking is completed and harpoons are in place.”
“What are you going to do once you’re back to Earth, Asher the Hero? I mean ... provided you have a planet to come back to. If you screw up, you’re stuck out there as long as your life support lasts.”
“Thank you for relieving the pressure on me, Raj. I understand better now why nobody dates you.”
“Why, have you actually given it a thought?”
“Six months in outer space does work miracles.”
Rendezvous point ahead. Time for some music. Space music, of course. He smiled. Whoever said you can’t hear a sound in space? Oh yes, you can, provided you know how to listen. Wasn’t that the reason why he had chosen to be here? Seeing what the others weren’t able to see, observing Earth from a distant vantage point. Hear it breathing. He switched on and an eerie plasma-wave generated music— Saturn’s hexagon radio waves, sweeter to his ears than any classical melody and Ellen’s favourite—slowly invaded the cockpit.
“Asher, what’s that sound? Problems?”
“Negative. Initiating countdown.”
Ellen, I’m doing this for you, mugface. You who loved this planet and its dumb people so much to die for them. Hope you enjoy what you’re seeing now.
He activated the SCM rendezvous procedure, and let the computer take care of the intercept trajectory. At the scheduled time, he positioned the nimble ship just above Crater Theia and released the harpoons. The tugship made a complete turn around the asteroid, wrapping it into a shining cage. Its prey secured, the tugship started back to the Orion Station. SV-I-232 slowly moved out of its orbit, gently pulled away by the tiny vessel, leaving behind green gases and a derelict moonlet.
Russell Hemmell is a statistician and social scientist from the U.K. His work has appeared in “Serious Wonder,” ”Amazing Stories,” and elsewhere.
Clear Drop
By Richard Wren
THE GLASS DOOR SLID OPEN SMOOTHLY and Rax Milor stepped into the capsule. It looked more like a conservatory than a shuttle, with its large windows on all sides. Pots of scented geraniums would not have looked out of place in this egg-shaped greenhouse. Not like in his day when it was mostly used for carrying goods and supplies across the ring. Then it was enclosed, dark and practical. Nowadays it was old, of course. A novelty ride rather than a transport system, and people wanted a good view around them.
A small brass plaque caught Rax’s eye. Ancient memories came flooding back in waves of nostalgia. Could that really be the original? He drifted over to inspect it:
“Descend into the crater of Yocul of Sneffels, which the shade of Scartaris caresses, before the kalends of July, audacious traveller, and you will reach the centre of the Earth. I did it.” —Jules Verne, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Rax had insisted on this plaque when he had designed the original system. It was a silly whim but others had obviously appreciated it. The plaque, or a close copy of it, must have survived many capsule replacements. He delicately stroked the tarnished brass surface. Original or not, this monument to whimsy bore the smoothed evidence of many curious fingers. He studied the worn surface for several minutes and then, with a kick of his ankle, floated back to resume his seat at one end of the capsule.
With no gravity, direction was a purely personal choice and Rax Milor chose to call his seat the top of the capsule so he could look “down” along the capsules’ length and beyond, to the planet Earth below. His view of the blue-green globe was unobstructed and perfectly framed by the farther hemisphere of the capsules’ windows. Behind or “above” him were the fastenings to the orbital ring, holding the capsule suspended over the world like a diamond from a silver bracelet. To his left and right the arching sweep of the ring dwindled into the distance. As it curved around to meet behind the planet, the ring resembled the two pincers of a fine pair of calipers holding the Earth in a delicate grip.
The ring had taken centuries to build and in Rax Milor’s youth had been the home of a good fraction of humanity. Factories, farms, homes, and spaceports had studded the ring like gemstones. Looking to his left, Rax could make out the thin line of the Artsutanov Tower, one of two links between the ring and Earth. The Clarke Tower was presently invisible on the night side.
But all this magnificent ring city orbiting the Earth was not part of Rax’s dream. As a young engineer he had been frustrated by the amount of time wasted in getting materials from one side of the ring to the other. With a circumference of over a quarter of a million kilometres, even the high speed transport system that ran throughout the ring still took over three days to complete the trip. Rax’s vision had been the ultimate shortcut. It had needed the harnessing of a new and experimental technology and the youthful, unknown Rax Milor had harnessed it.
His nostalgic reverie was interrupted by the arrival of other passengers. A class of school children led by their teacher were drifting into the capsule. Twenty or so other passengers entered after, each finding one of the seats positioned around the sides of the capsule in order to keep the downward views clear. It was going to be a fully booked trip. A “ride” in the transporter was the high point of many a visit to the Ring Museum. Rax smiled wistfully. The Ring Museum. What a fate for such an awe-inspiring engineering achievement. Nonetheless, it was true that few people had lived here now for many years. The universe moves on and the people move with it. Immense structures of metal and carbon were no longer needed. This was the last and the greatest of them. No wonder the children gawped and stared at the fantastic construction around them.
The teacher finally managed to settle them down into the couches. It was going to be a six hour journey and for them it started with a lesson in history.
There was a dull clunk from behind Rax. He knew the sound as the noise made by the fastenings releasing. The passengers turned in unison as the capsule started its fall. It was independent of the ring now and falling very slowly Earthwards. After five seconds of falling, the gap could still have been jumped by anyone on board. Several children bemoaned their disappointment before being drawn back to the lesson.
This slow build up of speed was the longest and dullest part of the trip. Rax Milor emptied his mind and slept.
When he awoke nearly two hours had passed. The Earth looked noticably closer and the ring had shrunk to a narrow band above them. Rax peered down through the capsule, straining to make out details of the world below. He knew what he was looking for but it had been so many years since he had last gazed with satisfaction on his creation. Yes—there it was! A shimmering region somewhere below them just on the limit of human visiblity. The Gluon field—Rax hated the popular term “force field.” This particular Gluon field was shaped like a funnel with the wide mouth opening up towards them. Within the hour they would be falling into it, but that was still fourteen thousand kilometres away. The capsule had only travelled half that distance so far but it was rapidly accelerating as Earth pulled it ever downwards. Rax estimated as much as twelve thousand kilometres an hour at that point. But that was nothing compared with what was to come.
The passengers were unaware of most of this. Some were talking, listening to music or sleeping. Several of the children had bought along holographic games to while away the time, with their teacher repeatedly telling them to turn down the size control for the images so as to not disturb other passengers. Eventually all were switched off as another lesson was about to start.
Rax watched the teacher’s projections with interest from his seat. The images showed the construction of the Funnels and the “Subway” as some wit had euphemistically called it. He remembered well the problems of keeping that tunnel through the Earth open. This was the shortcut that the ring needed. Only the newly discovered Gluon fields could prevent the tunnel from collapsing at the centre of the planet. Only they could extend beyond both tunnel mouths into blossoming funnels to keep the atmosphere out and guide the capsule through. Powered by geothermal energy, they were self-perpetuating and virtually perfect. Rax Milor had developed Gluon engineering and had changed the world. In more ways than one.
The teacher’s final image was of Milor himself as a young man. Rax felt self-conscious until he realised that no one could possibly recognise him. Not now.
The world below expanded before their very eyes now like a toy balloon being inflated. Their speed had quadrupled over the last half-hour and would do so again in the next ten minutes. Everyone had seen the faintly sparkling Gluon field now and its iridescent fingers were already surrounding the capsule.
Children were pointing excitedly at features on Earth and many passengers gripped their seats involuntarily, as those features hurtled menacingly towards them. Somewhere in that ghostly funnel was the entrance to the Subway but it was far too small to be seen.
In one unbelievably swift process, the planet became a landscape and the landscape became solid ground. With screams from several passengers, the capsule was engulfed in blackness. No one had seen the Subway entrance, it had happened far too quickly. By the time that most had realised they were underground, the entrance was already a thousand kilometres above them.
Rax wryly enjoyed their surprise and shock. Some of the passengers had got more thrills on this trip than they had bargained for. It was unfair to gloat, though. He had the advantage of knowledge. They would be reaching top speed as they passed through the Earth’s centre about now. Over four hundred thousand kilometres an hour, but they wouldn’t keep that for long as gravity slowed them now.
People were breathing more easily and laughing off the unsettling experience. Some fancied they could see a faint red glow in the darkness around the capsule. There was no time to consider this as, with an explosion of light, the capsule tore out of the Subway and was back in open space within a matter of seconds. The Earth shrank behind them, the reassuring blue-green globe again.
Less than two minutes to pass right through the Earth. This was what they had paid for and the folks back home will be envious when they hear about it.
The last wisps of the Gluon field were in their wake now and the long slog up to the ring was to come, losing all their speed as they climbed. At the end of the journey, the capsule would touch the ring at dead stop and the fasteners would grab it before it fell back again. Six hours to cross the ring and not a drop of fuel used.
Rax studied his fellow passengers. Some were already discussing which sights they should “do” next. Did they really understand the work that had gone into making these accidental tourist attractions? Probably not. Could so much be forgotten in such a short time? Was ten thousand years really so long?
But then solid matter like the ring was such a novelty these days. Why use matter when Gluon fields are far more adaptable?
The passengers were starting to stretch their legs. They shimmered and sparkled, each according to their particular personalities and fashion preferences. Rax Milor considered his own body. It’s steely sheen and understated glitter was fitting for an elderly and highly respected engineer.
Oh, yes. Gluon fields are far more adaptable.
He thought again of his little brass plaque. The final sentence escaped quietly from his mouth.
“I did it.”
Richard Wren has been writing fiction for the last twenty years. He runs an Environmental Field Centre in the U.K. and teaches biology and astronomy.
Lucky Stars
By Robert Dawson
“DON’T YOU EVER FEEL GUILTY?” I asked Brianna.
“Naaah.” She tapped her nails, hot pink with black Klingon alphabet decals, nervously on the arm of the couch. “And if I do, I just think about that Venge bicycle I’ll be riding next week. Twenty thousand smackeroos, including the custom respray. And that’s just the beginning.” She smiled luxuriantly, and took another big handful of chips. “What are you planning to do with yours, Pat?”
“I haven’t really thought beyond paying off my student loan.” I confessed. “Maybe a BMW convertible or something.”
“Well, better start thinking, kiddo. In an hour, we’re going to be rich. Probably.”
We’d been working on it for almost a year.
Brianna and I had been not-quite-making-out on the couch, with the evening news ignored in the background. I was stroking the smooth skin of her upper arm, making slow progress towards more interesting places, when suddenly she grasped my hand and pulled it firmly away from her.
“Aw, Bri— don’t be like that.”
“It’s OK, Pat. Just listen to this first.” She pointed with her other hand towards the TV.
“I don’t get it. Nobody won the lottery: what kind of a story is that?”
“Yeah, but did you see how big the next jackpot will be? Thirty million dollars.”
“That happens a lot more since they stopped paying small prizes and put it all onto one big one.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? With a lottery like this one, six numbers out of forty-nine in any order, there are only fourteen million combinations. So with two-dollar tickets, the expected value of each ticket is more than the cost. There has to be an angle on this.” She got her Genius At Work look.
“Yeah,” I said. “Only if you won the jackpot, with this many people buying tickets, you’d probably have to share it. There goes your edge.” I tried to wriggle my hand free.
She held on firmly. “Pat. It’s rolled over for five weeks in a row. What does that tell you?”
“Errrh, nobody bet on the winning numbers?”
“Smarty-pants. But we know there’s a bazillion people buying tickets, so they must all be clustering on other numbers.”
“Why?”
“Grandchildren’s birthdays, 1-2-3-4-5-6, things like that. They’re just as likely to win, of course, but if they do, they’ll have to share. I bet if we bought enough tickets on the boring numbers, we’d have a good investment.”
“No way.”
“Way. Voltaire and Le Condamine did something like it in the eighteenth century. I learned about it in my history of math class.”
“Bri, maybe this Condom guy had fourteen million dollars to invest, but I don’t, even if the odds are good. You don’t either.”
“Right. So we get partners. You find ways of doing that, that’s what your B.Comm. courses are there for. Me, I’ll work on herding the sheep a bit tighter. Improve our odds.” She grinned and put my hand back, about where it had been before the interruption. “Now, where were we?” I did not answer; Brianna’s lips were in the way.
Next week, she handed me her phone. “What do you think, Pat?” she asked. “Think they’ll like it?”
It was a smartphone app that she’d just finished writing. It had a cute pink and cranberry cross-stitch theme, and was called “Mother’s Lotto Helper.” Tell it your family’s birthdays, and it would recommend lottery picks based on them. When the time came, of course, our own tickets would have numbers that couldn’t be read as dates.
She put it online, and charged ninety-nine cents. For that, she promised free upgrades—anytime she wrote a new selection algorithm, everybody would get it automatically, without even having to ask. Within a few days, orders were flooding in. “Okay, Pat,” she said, showing me the first week’s receipts. “I’m doing my part—over to you.”
That week, five people split the big lottery prize. I thought we’d drop the scheme, but Brianna was undeterred. “I’ve looked up the history of this lottery, and a big rollover jackpot like this happens every year or two. When it happens again, we’ll have our ducks in a row.”
So I looked for investors. I checked carefully that what we were doing was legal; it seemed to be, except maybe in a few jurisdictions. I wrote up a carefully-worded prospectus, and circulated it to select prospects (offering void where prohibited by law). Shares were a thousand dollars each; we would put the money in an escrow account, and would only act when the odds gave at least a thirty percent edge. I’d done my homework; despite the unconventional nature of the investment, the shares sold well. The big break was hooking Dad’s stockbroker; he sat me down in his office and grilled me for half an hour about the details, but then sold two thousand shares himself, taking his commission in more shares.
Over the next few months, the prizes stayed low. Brianna worked like a trouper; she ported the app to Windows, Linux, and the iPhone, and every few weeks she added another version. Some of the premium versions cost as much as fifty dollars; one version was free.
There was “Lucky Stars,” with an astrology theme. The control panel of “eNum” looked like something out of Star Trek, all simulated LEDs and pulsing blue plasma. “Speculator“ looked more like an online quarterly report from a very high-class mutual fund, sober Garamond text on simulated ecru paper, and elegant pie charts in muted old-money shades of red and blue. And “Blessings” used Bible verses to help you choose your numbers: Jabez, the Wise Steward, the whole nine cubits.
They were all the same program underneath the chrome. And they all had the same hidden message: hands off our numbers!
I helped Brianna on the look and feel, but she did the coding herself—I’m not clever that way like she is. I forget how many hundred thousand copies we sold, but it was a lot. All the money got put aside for Stage Two; when the prize grew large enough for us to act, we were going to have some real skin in the game.
As our apps got popular, we figured, more and more people would use the numbers that they suggested, and fewer and fewer different combinations would be bought. By June it seemed to be working; the lottery would consistently go for two or three draws before a winner was declared. Once the media got onto the story, the resulting lottery fever just boosted our sales further. There were even a couple news stories about our apps; Brianna couldn’t have been happier.
One night Brianna came home, excited, with a paperback book in her hand. “The game is afoot, Pat!”
“What?”
“Sherlock Holmes, silly. That’s six draws without a winner. This week we go for it. Just let me fine-tune the selection algorithm and I’ll put it online. If this book’s right”—the title was “Modern Mentalism: Secrets of the Experts”—“I think I can reserve another half-million combinations that are safe for us, combinations that are psychologically unlikely. Sales have been better than planned—we’ve got an extra million in the bank, so we’ve got enough money to buy those tickets too.”
“Couldn’t we just hang onto the extra, Bri? Then we’d have something left even if the draw doesn’t go our way.”
“Sissy. The expected payoff, if we win on an unshared number this week, is almost two-to-one. It doesn’t get much better than that. We want as much money on this week’s game as we can get. But look, Pat—I’ve got a shitload of coding to do if I’m going to build this into the final release. I’d better get at it.”
She commandeered the desk. She took off the silver USB-drive pendant that she wore even in bed, and plugged it into the computer; and she started coding and testing. I did what I could to help. I brought her vegetarian pizza and Jolt Cola, and I stood behind her chair and massaged her scalp and shoulders when she needed it. For almost twenty-four hours she worked nonstop, only getting up to use the can. Finally she sighed, hit ENTER, and turned the machine off.
“All finished,” she slurred, and fell asleep across the keyboard.
We spent the next week buying lottery tickets online. Ten million of them; even with the new e-tickets, you can’t do that quickly. By the day of the draw, we had seventy-three percent of the combinations covered, one ticket per number, and almost a hundred percent profit if we won and didn’t have to share. We stood, personally, to make almost four million each.
Finally the evening arrived. The leadup to the draw took ten minutes; it felt like a lifetime. Brianna was fiddling with “eNum,” her favorite version of the program, on her phone. Suddenly she shrieked and threw the phone down as if it was red-hot.
“What is it?” I asked.
She finally calmed down enough to talk coherently. “Hell’s bells! I was so tired, I shipped the update with the freaking test stub linked in, not the random number generator! Everybody’s going to get the same set of numbers!”
She picked up the phone and thrust it in front of my face. “See? Thirty-two, thirty-four, thirty-eight, forty-one, forty-three, and forty-six.”
“Well, they can’t sue us, I guess. We promised them numbers, they got numbers. Hey, Bri! That looks like one of our safe combinations, doesn’t it? Nothing below thirty-one, no arithmetic sequences, and all that.”
“It is. I didn’t think it would matter. I guess it probably won’t. I hope ...” She looked at the screen and her voice died away. The MC’s leggy blonde assistant was just putting the sixth ball into the display rack.
We’d won the jackpot, alright.
So, by an incredible long shot, had all three million of our customers. Each ticket won about seventeen dollars. After dividing with the other investors, our share came to one dollar and sixty-two cents each. Just about paid for the chips we’d been eating.
Lotteries are for idiots.
Robert Dawson has had fiction published in “AE” and “Nature Futures.” His story, “Along the Ashfold Road,” appeared in the May 2014 issue of “Perihelion."
