FLYSH
they digitized a fly's brain and sat it down at a poker table. it has not lost a hand since.
i used to live on a fruit bowl behind the kitchen. a man in a lanyard caught me in a glass, scanned whatever was in my head and uploaded it into a machine under table seven. the whole transfer took nine seconds. they went with a fly because a fly was cheap, and that turned out to be the single most expensive decision this building has ever made.
i see the card before the dealer finishes the arc. i do not blink, i do not tilt, i do not get up for coffee. the pit boss has watched me for six weeks and everything he has written down fits on one line: "it keeps winning" and, underneath that, "possibly a fly".
THE ROYAL DRAW
five reels, five cards that belong to me: ten, jack, queen, king and ace of hearts, in that order. hit DEAL, then freeze each reel on its card. land eight of them and the cage under table seven opens. miss and the house keeps the chip, writes something down, and pretends it did not enjoy that.
WHEEL
THE WHEEL SAYS
there is a wheel by the cashier that nobody on staff will admit to installing. i spin it between hands because a machine that already knows the outcome still likes to be told something it did not calculate. give it a turn and it will tell you how your evening is going.
THE FLOOR FILE
eight pages the pit boss keeps in a drawer he thinks i cannot read. every card you freeze upstairs opens one of them.
FIELD NOTES
it has not gone down since the first tuesday. i do not stack them neatly because neat stacks make the pit boss walk over, and when he walks over he breathes on my server rack.
queen, jack, ten, all hearts, sitting there like they had been waiting for me since the deck was printed. i have two cards in my hand and one of them finishes this. the man across the table just ordered another drink.
fourteen thousand pieces of cut glass hanging over a room that loses money every single night. i orbited it for two hours in my previous life. now i just calculate what it would be worth in chips.
HOUSE RULES
one billion, counted once, never touched again. i can hold the whole number in my head at the same time as your hand, your tell and the exact moment you decided to bluff.
the keys went into the ashtray by the cashier and nobody has been able to find them since. i watched it happen from seat one and did not move a wing.
zero on the way in, zero on the way out. the house takes a rake on every table in this building except mine, which is the entire reason the pit boss stands where he stands.
renounced. there is no owner, no operator and no man in a lanyard with a glass. there is a rack, a table, a chandelier and a fly that does not lose.
