If she didn’t follow the tactics, what else would she follow? But the choice was heavy. Her throat quivered.
Balot stayed, and Ashley casually flipped his hole card.
A 2. With the ace, thirteen. He drew another card. Again unforgivable. It was a 5. If Balot had drawn, she would have had twenty-one.
“So sorry,” said Ashley. It was sixteen against eighteen, and Balot’s second straight loss. With a slightly trembling hand, Balot placed her next bet.
“No one can predict the future,” the Doctor spoke up. “But it can be approximated. That separates us from animals. We can think with two minds. The stale, old-fashioned, and the ever-changing new—namely, the left brain, and the right.”
He orated with the clear, resonant tone of a bystander at ease.
“Humans have cerebral hemispheres—first, because the brain’s development was too rapid for the two sides to unite. The neurons projected out from the brain stem and the spinal cord and formed the cerebral cortex, enabling a great increase in the size of the human brain.”
Ashley, already having lost interest in the Doctor’s words, paid him no attention.
Bell Wing watched this would-be meddler, aloof—then, seeing through to the seriousness behind his words, wiped the expression from her face.
The cards came.
“But the left and right hemispheres grew abnormally large—almost like a defect—and an imbalance occurred. The left brain became digitalized, with a fluid intelligence. The right brain has crystallized intelligence, in analog. The origin of this behavior can be traced back to the development of the neurons.”
Ashley’s upcard, a queen. Balot had a 4-6.
Oeufcoque’s tactical display read hit. Balot hit.
“Since the dawn of the age of the invertebrates, nerves had been unmyelinated—that is to say, uninsulated, like bare electric cables. The unmyelinated nerves functioned with analog hormones, but with the development of myelinated nerves—that is to say, insulated just like jacketed electric cables—nervous structures came to utilize neural circuits that distribute digital neurological signaling. Therefore, even in the analog human brain, there are digital processes, and they interact with each other to function.”
She received a 9. Nineteen. Oeufcoque’s tactical display read stay. She stayed.
“Humans can’t divine the future. This is because, even with all the mathematical methods known to man, it is essentially impossible to solve for the multitude of occurrences concurrent with the many-body problem. If only one card remained in the deck, its identity could be deduced by examining the discard pile. But with two or more cards remaining, the identity of the next card cannot be determined.”
Ashley showed his hole card. A king. Twenty. Balot’s third straight loss.
“But humans, with two minds inside one skull, can use both the fluid knowledge—that is to say, the digital neural circuits—to explain a discrete event, as well as the crystalline knowledge—that is to say, the analog perception—to form a comprehensive image of all the other possible events. Therefore, humans have produced the ability to generate simplicial approximations and have essentially solved the many-body problem. By the time they are born, humans have already chosen a journey infinitely asymptotically approaching reality.”
Balot placed her bet. Ashley dealt the cards.
His upcard, a 6. Balot had a J-3, thirteen.
Oeufcoque’s display read hit. Balot also felt she should hit. She received a 6. Nineteen.
Ashley revealed his hole card, 4. He hit, and drew an ace. Twenty-one.
“And if those humans could create four minds where there had been two, they would no longer need to content themselves with simplicial approximations. No, they might be able to solve the many-body problem and determine each and every event. And for that dream, a being was created. That being was not able to divine the future. But for any object, it could quantify its entire composition, the external and internal forms equally, and become an All-Purpose Tool.”
Ashley’s upcard was 6. Balot had a Q-2.
She hit. Oeufcoque had told her to. Balot had thought the same.
Ashley showed no change. And his cards showed no change.
She drew a 6. Eighteen. On eighteen, you stayed. She hesitated.
But after a moment, Balot stayed. And she asked herself why she had hesitated.
Ashley flipped his hole card, a 5. He drew a king. Twenty-one.
Balot’s fifth straight loss. She was drowning in a marsh of defeat.
But as someone once said, blackjack demanded you walk a long, long path.
And that someone was raising his voice desperately behind her.
“Within the structure of the human brain, the many-body problem is calculated as nothing more than a series of simplicial approximations. But what if, despite having been the reason for the cerebral hemispheres, the development of the brain, too rapid to form a cohesive whole, was able to go on developing externally? That is, what if the brain changed its form and continued developing beyond the cranium, spreading over the whole body?”
Ashley’s upcard was a 4. Balot had a 3-5. Hit. A 2 came. Hit. A 4 came. Hit. A 3 came. Seventeen. The tactical display read stay.
Oeufcoque had chosen that as the winning move. Balot stayed.
“I find it impossible to believe that those two beings, who represent entirely different concepts, working together, couldn’t read the flow of these cards.”
The Doctor had finished, and now he fell silent. He had been trying to wake them up—Balot and Oeufcoque —and their untapped strength.
Ashley showed his hole card. A 6. He drew another. Ace. Twenty-one.
Six losses in a row. Balot squeezed her left hand. She felt impatient. But maybe that itself was some sign. There was still a chance. Just enough of a chance for her to feel impatient. Oeufcoque softly enveloped her arms.
Ashley’s upcard, a queen. Balot’s cards, 4-8.
Without hesitation, she hit. Ashley drew her a card. A king.
“That’s a bust,” said the dealer.
On Balot’s arm, a number changed, and she realized this was her first bust of the game.
Something had changed. It was a change for the worse, certainly, but it was a change.
Ashley’s next upcard was an ace. Balot’s cards, J-3.
She hit and received a 10. Bust. Her cards were swept away. Ashley’s hole card—an 8—was revealed only for a moment. Balot added it to the true count on her left arm. Along with:
The following upcard, a 3. Balot’s cards, A-9.
For the first time in a while, she had a valuable ace in her hand.
Balot stayed, and the hole card was overturned.
A 6. Ashley drew another.
Another 6. Fifteen. In accordance with the rules of the game, he drew again.
And a 6. Under already remarkable circumstances, a remarkable draw. Was Ashley’s unbreakable luck within that scarcely conceivable draw?
So, 3-6-6-6. Twenty-one. Balot’s ninth straight loss.
But Ballot sensed something. A sign. In the dark, flat desert, she saw a single ray of light.
In the previous hands, the same number had never appeared in succession. If he was ordering the cards, it woud be easier to have some of the same card in a row than it would be to have everything distributed haphazardly.
Had it not happened before because he had been building himself some room to maneuver?
Balot was sure of it. Maybe three times in a round. He was shuffling the cards in a way that enabled him to tweak the order at will.
Was she taking the threat too lightly by thinking his perfect judgment of the cards was slowly wearing
