Mardock Scramble

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.