Mardock Scramble

Balot was a little surprised that the Doctor took her question seriously.

“We could ask the DA to conduct an official investigation, but once Shell works out what we’re up to it’ll be too easy for him to palm his chips off somewhere else. And if Shell warns OctoberCorp, we’ll be letting the big fish get away. We need to move carefully. Let’s see if we can be granted special search privileges—but no…” The Doctor muttered to himself in this vein for a while.

Then, all of a sudden, “Hmm. I think the best thing for starters is to head on in as if we’re ordinary punters.” He grinned at Balot. It was somewhat disconcerting—almost as if he were raring to go, looking forward to the prospect.

“Balot… I’m going to ask Oeufcoque too. I think he will agree with my decision, but—”

–Yes? What?

“Have you ever played at a casino before?”

–No. I’ve been inside them with men, but I always just stood next to the man as he played.

“Do you know the rules to poker and roulette? What about blackjack or baccarat?”

–Um… I know the rules to snap?

“Lesson number two, then,” said the Doctor. “As soon as Apprentice Private Investigator Ms. Rune-Balot learns how to brew a proper cup of coffee, it’ll be time for her to move on to her next object of study, methinks. How about it, young lady?”

–Can I ask you something?

“What is it?”

–Do you like gambling, Doctor?

The Doctor flexed his fingers. He tried to wear a solemn expression, but he couldn’t prevent a wide smile from breaking out across his face.

“Let me see. Gambling is the ultimate thrill—a game of intellect, but also aesthetics. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Balot was not convinced.

Chapter 7

ROTOR

01

Balot was close to tears.

As a result, she didn’t even notice that Oeufcoque had woken up and that his capsule was open.

Such was the intensity of the Doctor’s training program. On gambling.

The basics she learned from the legal eCasinos, and she was introduced to all sorts of games.

The eCasinos had their own individual variations on the rules, and Balot learned about the various discrepancies. Everything was reinforced further through a number of practice hands with the Doctor. Blackjack, baccarat, poker, high-ball, low-ball, high-low split. On top of that, she also learned the ins and outs of wheel of fortune, roulette, and the slot machines.

So far so good. But this was where the Doctor’s lecture really started.

“Right.” The Doctor started writing on a blank form, gleefully scribbling down some formulae and drawing up a table. “Let’s talk game theory. As we have seen, with a finite game it’s possible to express everything in normal- form. For a finite zero-sum game, we represent everything in normal-form and then work out what sort of strategy the other players are likely to employ—this would seem the logical way to approach things. So, let’s examine the logical criteria and try and work out where the game’s equilibrium lies.”

Creases appeared above Balot’s eyebrows, and she nodded. The Doctor was trying to teach her something. How to win at gambling. The problem was that she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Still, she listened as best she could.

“So, let’s express this normal-form game as a payoff matrix. We assign the numbers 1 to n to your various strategies, and on the other side we do the same for my strategies. This way we can clearly demonstrate through the matrix how your decision influences my payoff, and vice versa. Logically, each player should take the action that maximizes his potential payoff. In other words, you can think about all sorts of possible moves, but in the end the matrix will reveal your optimal strategy. This is what we call equilibrium analysis.”

As the Doctor spoke he wrote down a list of letters of the alphabet. Letters with numbers beside them. The plus and minus symbols were fine, easy enough to follow. But then all sorts of other symbols started appearing, and Balot soon lost track of what they meant, or whether the letters meant anything or whether they were code for something else…

“But what happens when the players have the opportunity to cooperate? Let’s take a look at so-called cooperative games. The theory is simple. The player’s obvious strategy will be to choose one of a number of finite moves, taking into consideration the logical move that the other player is likely to make so that they can optimize their mutual payoff.”

Balot was starting to feel that the Doctor was becoming ever-so-slightly ostentatious in his display of knowledge. But she kept at it, listening as intently as she could.

“So, if we take a subset from our payoff matrix and apply this procedure to it then we can see that the outcome is going to be different when collusion is involved—that’s what a cooperative game means. It’s a so-called special function: you pass the variable n to the collaborator, and that special function is then fixed on a unique value.”

Balot watched the swarm of symbols as they emerged from the Doctor’s hand, and wondered how much of this it would ever be possible for her to learn. She hoped that she would at least be able to understand something of his final conclusion when he did arrive at it, but at the moment she didn’t even know how to look out for that.

As this was going on, Oeufcoque was inside his capsule, waiting for the liquid to evaporate. Once it had, he turned back into his customary shape of a golden mouse and struggled his way out of the capsule.

He landed on the bed and turned part of his fur inside out to make a pair of his usual pants. Then he pottered off toward the sound of conversation.

Sheets of paper covered in numerical formulae were littered about the floor, and Oeufcoque stepped over these, looking at the numbers as he passed them. Before long he arrived at the scene of the crime and the source of the paper.

Oeufcoque sniffed the air, as if something were burning, and sighed deeply. He passed under the Doctor, who was in the middle of another animated explanation, and hopped onto the table via the chair.

“What are you hoping to achieve by throwing a whole load of economic theory at a fifteen-year-old girl, Doctor?” said Oeufcoque. The Doctor and Balot raised their heads simultaneously. “This might be your field of expertise, Doc, but try not to lord it over the girl too much—you’ll give her an inferiority complex. And Balot—you don’t have to put up with this, you know. Don’t be a martyr. What are you trying to do—experience the prisoner’s dilemma with your own body?”

Having rebuked them both, Oeufcoque sat down on top of the sheets of paper that covered the tabletop.

“Greetings, Oeufcoque. You’re awake earlier than I expected. The latest technology from Paradise seems to have come on a bit since we were last there.”