Mardock Scramble

memories…

–It doesn’t suck them out, exactly…

Oeufcoque chuckled grimly.

–According to our sources, he’s preoccupied with this transaction he’s trying to set up. This really is our chance right now.

–Transaction? You mean his marriage?

–Exactly. Or rather the de facto promotion that he gets by marrying into the family of the house he works for. If we can pull the rug from under his feet then we may be able to bring his bosses down too—they’re the real target, after all.

Bring them down and send them to hell—that was what Oeufcoque wanted to say, but he just managed to restrain himself.

It would have been easy enough to simply batter the enemy into submission, after all. They had the means right in front of them. But it was more complicated than that, however thrilling the prospect was of seeing the enemy squirm.

To be burnt out. It meant something. To know. It wasn’t so much the question of good versus evil that concerned Oeufcoque and the Doctor—it was the question of innocence and experience. What you could learn from seeing the world, with all its wonders and horrors reflected back at you. Could Balot learn, could she respond? If not then Oeufcoque wouldn’t have gone out of his way to help her as he did.

Balot sat there silently, waiting for her moment. The point tally was rising steadily. She was winning at a rate of over 60 percent of the hands, and this winning streak showed no sign of abating. The nines in the pile of cards had all been used up, and the number of cards worth seven or below had been depleted massively. The ratio of tens to other cards changed massively, and then suddenly there was a run of aces, appearing like a sudden gold rush and then disappearing again, a flash in the pan.

The cards were plunging toward an inevitable equilibrium. Balot maintained her calm breathing, but inside her heart was pounding.

Then there was a succession of small cards—the calm before the squall. The moment had arrived.

–This is it. Time to go all-in.

Balot took her cue from Oeufcoque and placed her hands on the pile that she had been keeping safe. One of the three piles she had created from her bankroll. Her troops that she had held in reserve, ready to be deployed in the moment of certain victory.

It wasn’t a huge pile in physical terms, as the individual chips were all of high denominations. But when the dealer clocked just how much was now at stake, his hand that had been resting on the card shoe jolted as if he had been struck by lightning.

–Might as well use them up…

Balot spoke to the Doctor, but it was the dealer she was watching.

“Very good. I accept your challenge, O niece of mine!” The Doctor responded as if he were calling a raise in poker and piled his chips onto the table to follow suit.

And then there was half a million dollars’ worth of chips in front of Balot, with the Doctor not too far behind, with a stake of roughly three hundred thousand dollars.

Passersby couldn’t help but stop in their tracks when they saw the extraordinary sums that were now at stake. They whispered among themselves. The dealer somehow managed to drag his hand back to the card shoe and force out a smile for the benefit of Balot and the Doctor.

The atmosphere around the table had certainly taken a strange turn.

The cards arrived. An 8. That was to say, the majority of the cards now on the table were eights.

The Doctor had an 8 and an 8, a total of sixteen. Balot had an 8 and a 7, total fifteen.

The dealer’s upcard was also an 8.

“Stay,” said the Doctor.

–Stay.

The dealer gulped and turned over his hidden card.

It was a 7. He drew again: 8. Then the red marker appeared.

The red card that represented absolute, perfect victory for Balot and the Doctor.

The dealer froze, while the spectators seemed to boil over with excitement.

Some of them understood the significance of the sequence of cards that had just passed. The magic of sevens and eights. When the remaining cards were a couple of sevens and at least four eights, the dealer was doomed by the rules to lose, no matter what.

All the players had to do in this situation was stay. Whether the dealer had fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, he’d have to draw and would end up busting.

Such was the power of percentages. The rules that had been so meticulously crafted to give the house its edge; this was the one moment when they were turned upside down, guaranteeing the house certain defeat. It was a gun fired at point-blank range: absolute.

–Hmm, I don’t seem to be able to use the chips up. They just keep on growing.

Balot was so casual as to seem offhand. The Doctor smiled at her. “Well, then, we’ll just have to ask for a nice big special container to fit everything in.”

The Doctor spoke as if he were ordering a particularly rare vintage wine, and the crowd responded accordingly. The whole floor—up until a few moments ago so serene and tranquil—was now buzzing.

Amid the noise the dealer located another radio to speak to an attendant. To ask him to comply with the Doctor’s request. To bring out the casino’s greatest treasure.

Eventually the attendant emerged from the other side of the floor, carrying a scarlet box.

He placed it down on the table and opened it, reverentially, for Balot to behold. No sooner had he lifted the lid than a golden light spilled out into the room. The light from twelve golden chips.

“Now, choose whichever one you like,” the Doctor said in an encouraging tone.

Balot knew exactly what she was doing. Gingerly, she reached out and took one of the chips that had the OctoberCorp company emblem etched onto it. The crowd bubbled up again.

“Oh, and leave the box on the table, will you? We may need a few more of those chips before long.”

The Doctor’s words caused yet another stir in the crowd. A match with million-dollar chips at stake! Normally such a thing was unheard of outside the special Shows.

Far from worrying about his catastrophic loss, the dealer seemed to be getting angrier and angrier. He started shuffling again, with a vengeance. Fully intent on taking back what he had just lost.

As he shuffled, Oeufcoque was surreptitiously dissecting the contents of the chip. He caused part of the glove to turn, gently fixing Balot’s hand so that it made a fist shape, with the chip packed away safely in her grip out of view.

Miniature laser cutters appeared inside her fist, moving about inside the space of a few millimeters to scan the contents of the chip, extracting its contents.

–Got it. This is where Shell’s memories are stored.

Oeufcoque extracted the contents of the chip carefully, cutting them out with absolute precision, taking care not to damage any of the contents. He then transferred the contents into a little pocket in the gloves he made specially for the purpose that moment. The pocket was sewn up behind the memory chip, and the hole left in the original was filled up with identical material so that no one would ever have been able to guess that it had been tampered with. The whole process was done in absolute silence.

To take the yolk without touching the white or the shell. This was what it was all about. The whole operation took slightly less than five minutes.

Balot’s right hand was released, and she slowly opened her hand that held the chip.

–One down, three to go.

The words floated up inside Balot’s left hand, and she squeezed back in return.

At that moment, Balot was assailed by a sensation she hadn’t experienced before.

Oeufcoque’s writing was always inside her glove, never on the outside. The letters themselves were inside