by Jeff Noon
‘Let me explain.’ Jazir smiled.
Game 43
Bone Day. Pippy old Dotchester, game 43. Rabid natives, making wild honey to the televert, with slippy brains as the chimes came floating, a fog of numbers. A smoke of dominoes, forever changing their leopardness. On wings of breath, the blurbflies, dreaming in download. Singing the streets, alive with libido.
Mating on the wing, biting to propagate.
Play to win! Play to win!
And all over the city that sticky, wet Friday, three hours from clampdown, surrounded by burgerwrap and porno-stain, there was only one big, happy horde of punter-bone. One big mass of gamble, creeping towards nine o’clock, clacking its tiny chance. Garage slab, gravestone, wedding bed. Watching the dots pulsate.
As the players sacrificed some dumb animals to the pagan gods of chance. And so many adverts now clogged up the streets, it was like living in blurb soup.
Mr Million had deemed it so. Play to win! Play to win!
A pair of flies, banging against a window in Rusholme. The Golden Samosa, upstairs flat. Focus. Inside…
Daisy with her tiny handful of no luck. Yeah, no luck. She hadn’t bought this week. Her first time ever of not playing. Her assignments were suffering, leaving much to be desired. ‘Much to be desired,’ Max Hackle had written.
No thanks, said Daisy. She returned to her work. This was her real life; numbers, probabilities and why life was a game with no winners. If the other players would only realize this, there would be no more money wasted, no more killings. Just to satisfy herself, she did a quick calculation of exactly how much money could be saved, if nobody played at all.
OK, fine words, fine numbers, but why then did she have the television on, and why couldn’t she stop turning to see the outcome?
To gloat, her answer would be, if Jazir was there.
And that was another reason for her going bone-free; she hadn’t seen her friend since last Saturday’s dance. That Joe Crocus and his pathetic hangers-on, that Black Math crowd; they were all madmen, obsessed with trifles. Daisy wasn’t obsessed, she wasn’t. Just another little look at the television, that’s all.
Tommy Tumbler was stirring the city into a frenzy and Jazir still wasn’t here. She was missing him. Despite his stupid hat and glasses, and his garlic and his stolen kiss, she was missing him.
For Jazir, take another blurbflight down from Rusholme, along the Wilmslow Road for a mile or two, until reaching West Didsbury. Float over the cemetery. You’re very near home, little blurbfly, but don’t get excited; it’s not the Hive of Chances you’re aiming for, your shift isn’t over yet. Instead, turn right. Barlow Moor Road, that’s the one. See the house, the third one along, with the upstairs light, the faint flickering light. OK, that’s your target. Fly to the window. Focus. Inside…
Candlelight and cathode glow. Four various men, playing their various games around a television set. The set is in the middle of the room, at the centre of a series of geometrical shapes on the floor. One man is cross-legged in front of it, his black skin dancing with dots of chance. Is that a domibone he holds against the screen? A second man, taller, older, is pacing around the television carrying a large black book. He appears to be mumbling. Could he be chanting, maybe? The third man is sitting at a computer screen, on which Cookie Luck is also dancing, along the Burgernet. His fingers move like a swarm over the keyboard. Does he have green hair? He does. The last man is working at another computer. He has a hat (a trilby?) and a pair of glasses (cKs?) This guy isn’t working the keyboard, he’s just gazing at the screen. Is he dancing, slowly, gently, in tune with Miss Cookie Luck?
There’s your Jazir, and Daisy was still missing him.
She gave up her work, gave in to the television, the dance to see which numbers won. Sure, just for research you understand, to see if one of the more unusual combinations came up. But that just made her think about that girl, that lucky/unlucky girl who had given her the half-bone last weekend. Daisy hadn’t seen her since then, and she couldn’t stop thinking…
Another blurb! Quickly! Take us to a district called Gorton, West Manchester. Once thriving, then dead, now a half-alive wasteland studded with all-night burgerbars catering to the all-night cinema complexes. A few old-style public houses here and there, buttressed, and a dingy row of shops, catering to the drunks. Find the last TV shop in that row, zoom in…
A young kid sitting on the shoulders of a big bear of a man, both of them staring at a lonely, barely alive TV screen. Beggars, therefore. Both of them fixated upon the bones in their hands. There are no other beggars around, so the child must actually be happier on the giant’s shoulders. The blurb descends to buzz around the young girl’s head. ‘Get off me, you nasty fly!’ she mutters at the bug and bats it away, not daring for a second to miss the last seconds of Cookie Luck’s dance.
There’s your Celia, and Daisy was still thinking about her as nine o’clock chimed…
A two! Another two!
…to a standstill.
The double-two. The way the cookie lovingly crumbles, once in a million games. Game over. Manchester cries. Shock and despair. ‘Somebody, somewhere,’ called out Tommy Tumbler from the city’s screens, ‘just won themselves a day in the House of Chances!’
But none of our chosen players, alas.
Daisy smiled and congratulated herself on not having played that week. Of course, there was always the feeling of ‘dominoid’: what the punters called the feeling that you might well have won, if only you’d played. Especially when a double comes up…
PLAY THE RULES
10a.
Not all of the dominoes are equal. Some bring greater prizes than others.
10b.
Any winning domino whose pips add up to a lucky seven—the one-and-six, the two-and-five, the three-and-four—allow the winner to claim an extra million lovelies on top of the normal prize.
10c.
The double-one domino allows the winner a pair of seats at the next live staging of the domino game.
10d.
The double-two allows the winner a day within the domino’s headquarters, where they might witness the fair and scrupulous preparation of the next week’s game.
10e.
The double-three allows the winner to wear with pride a genuine Lady Luck costume, fully functioning with dancing dots, custom-tailored to fit, whether male or female.
10f.
The double-four allows the winner to appear on television during the next domino game, close enough to stare at Cookie Luck even as she dances the numbers wild.
10g.
The double-five allows the winner actually to dance with Cookie Luck, live on television and all over the city.
10h.
The double-six of dominoes is the ultimate prize; like a court card and an ace in the game of pontoon, it allows the winner to become the new Mr Million.
10i.
The double-six is a prize beyond all reckoning. The chances of winning it should be meaner than any other combination.
10j.
The double-zero of dominoes brings the winner a prize of mystery, which shall be deemed a bad prize, the so-called Joker Bone. The nature and the exact detrimental effect of this prize shall remain secret until the actual winning.
The following Monday, Daisy reached college early. Grabbing a coffee from the refectory, she carried it carefully to the library, where she handed her student’s ID to the librarian, a certain Miss Crimson. Daisy got clearance and walked through to where a bank of computers were lying idle, only waiting for a student’s button-touch. As the Whoomphy Burger graphic played itself out, she looked over her assignment notes: ‘What are the chances of winning first prize in the AnnoDominoes, when only 75 per cent of the gamblers are playing to win? Solution to be delivered by Monday, at the very latest. (That includes you, Ms Love!)’
Monday already, and Daisy was panicking. She’d spent all Saturday night and the whole of Sunday working on it, getting nowhere, becaus
e the question raised so many further problems. It was the first time the professor had directly referred to the dominoes. But more than that, what did he mean when he said that only 75 per cent of the gamblers were playing to win? Surely all the gamblers were playing to win? And how could the actual number of players affect the outcome? Weren’t the dominoes a game of chance alone? Wasn’t ‘Play to win’ just a blurbfly’s mating slogan, designed to increase the takings?
So many questions. Like, what exactly did Professor Hackle know?
OK, only the university’s computer could find it out, maybe.
Daisy opened up a window, into which she pulled the library’s database and asked for the ‘Mathematics Dept: Documents’. On a keyword searcher she typed in ‘play to win’. Pressed on the button.
Bingo! Results…
Fifty-two papers had been published containing the ‘play to win’ words. She scanned the titles, and decided that ‘The No-Win Labyrinth: A Solution to Any Such Hackle Maze’ sounded the most interesting, mainly because of the words ‘Hackle Maze’ in there. The paper was first published in 1968, in a mathematical journal called Number Gumbo: A Mathemagical Grimoire, and written by a certain Hackle, Maximus. Wasn’t that what her father had called Hackle? Maximus? So he did go to school with him. And magical mathematics? What was going on here, with her fabled professor; was he a student of the Black Math ritual? Number Gumbo? OK, so this was way back in ’68, and no doubt the professor had been a raving hippy, but still…
Out of curiosity, she studied the titles and authors of some of the other papers the search had found. Sure enough, all fifty-two of them were written by Hackle, all of them published in the Sixties and Seventies. All of them called things like Twisted Hackle Paths and Other Such Wanderings’; The Trickster Virus, its Effect upon Play’; ‘Maze Dynamics and DNA Coding, a Special Theory of Nymphomation’; ‘Sealing the Maze, the Theses Equation’; ‘Lost in the Love Labyrinth’; ‘Becoming the Maze, a Topology of Virgin Curves’; and even ‘Fourth-Dimensional Orgasms and the Casanova Effect’.
Daisy just had to try that last one.
But no matter how hard Daisy pressed to open up the file, all she got back was a ‘no access’ message. She tried at least another twenty papers, the same no-go coding each time. What? The professor was keeping his secrets tight?
Only one paper opened to her touch. It was called ‘The Bifurcation Less Travelled’, published in 1979. As the screen filled with words and numbers, Daisy felt that the paper was choosing her, rather than the other way round, especially when she read the opening lines: ‘The Hackle Maze may be navigated successfully only by choosing to be lost. The best wanderers will subsume themselves to the maze, thereby becoming the pathways.’
Digging deeper in the text she saw this: ‘To play to win a Hackle Maze, all the various wanderers must actively fall in love with the puzzle. Every player is dependent on every other.’ And then this: ‘In the lover’s labyrinth, there are no winners without losers, this is the ruling.’ Again and again she saw the strange word nymphomation, used to denote a complex mathematical procedure where numbers, rather than being added together or multiplied or whatever, were actually allowed to breed with each other, to produce new numbers, which had something to do with ‘breeding ever more pathways towards the goal’. Daisy had never heard of this procedure, never mind ‘having the courage sometimes to take the bifurcation less travelled’.
What was the professor on, way back then? Some crazy, mind-altering drugs, no doubt. He never mentioned any of this stuff in his lectures. Lost in the love labyrinth, indeed! Mind you, from a quick scan of the equations, it looked like real high-level mathematics. Beyond her horizon. The professor cultivated a shadowy figure in the university, and these lost pages hinted at further depths to the shadows.
She wanted to study this further, but the computer refused to save the file to floppy. It wouldn’t even let her print a hard copy; apparently she could only read the file on screen. Again, that feeling of being dragged in by the text. The screen seemed to be scrolling without her help, unless her hand had slipped…
A blur of numbers travelling downwards, faster than the eye, becoming one long equation, without beginning or end…to stop. Dead! On the following line: ‘Exactly 22 per cent of the wanderers must play to lose themselves, in order for the real winner to flourish. The relevant equations follow…’
Daisy Love kept her chanting to herself, as per usual, even as the new equations fell like complex rain. She didn’t want to question what had happened, not yet, just to go with it, while she could. OK, work on this; let’s say the professor isn’t just mad, let’s say he really believes in this nonsense. All we need do is reverse the ratio: 78 per cent of players had to play to win for one of them to claim first prize. But the professor’s question stated that only 75 per cent of the punters had been playing to win.
Which means that nobody at all should have won. Surely the professor was wrong.
The professor could never be wrong.
Daisy opened a new window to type up her answer. This was surely the easiest assignment in the world. ‘The chances of winning first prize in the AnnoDominoes, when only 75 per cent of the punters are playing to win, are zero.’
She printed out a copy and then wired the text file to [email protected]., and spent the rest of the morning attending a boring lecture about Random Topology, during which her mind drifted. She already knew most of the knotted stuff anyway, instinctively, and deep inside she couldn’t stop thinking about the paper she had just delivered. She was nervous, elated, thrilled, and rather too anxious that no other student should find the correct answer.
Daisy knew that Max Hackle would take the assignments home with him that evening, that it would take him at least until Wednesday to mark them. But Daisy couldn’t wait that long. She had to know if she’d got the answer right.
Lunch, finally. Daisy had brought sandwiches with her, astrocheese, because no way was she touching a Whoomphy after Benny’s had come alive, right in front of her. She ate alone, as usual, working in an exercise book. A few tables across, a crowd of students were gathered around as Joe Crocus and Benny and Dopejack held court. Further away, another crowd gathered around Nigel Zuze’s table. They all need something to believe in. Daisy ignored them. She ignored everybody. Only Max was interesting enough. Oh God, maybe she was falling in love with the old man.
Sure enough, when she checked her pigeon-hole after lunch, there was a note waiting for her.
‘Ms Love. My office, straight away. Skip lectures. Max H.’
It was almost like a love letter.
‘Now then, about this paper of yours.’
‘You’ve marked it already, sir?’
‘Well, it’s not difficult to mark, is it? What…two lines long. It’s certainly the shortest answer I’ve ever received. Apart from ‘Please sir, the dog ate my homework’, but that was ages ago. Tell me about your workings, please?’
‘Well, I…’
‘Go on.’
This was the first time Daisy had been inside this office; this large brown office of brown carpets and brown furniture. Max’s hair, still thick and brown, his jacket of brown tweed. All the books, along every brown wall, were lined in brown leather, and the titles were dizzying.
‘I’m waiting, Ms Love.’
‘I…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well I was curious, Professor.’
‘Good. I like that.’
‘About your mention of playing to win?’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Because I’d always thought the dominoes were a random game?’
‘You have decided otherwise?’
‘It was at your urging, sir.’
‘More.’
‘Well, I was curious. So I looked inside the database. I found your paper about choosing the bifurcations in Hackle Mazes. It mentioned a play-to-lose equation. I reversed it out and obtained a play-to-win.’
‘I see.’
‘It was very interesting.’
‘Hm hmm.’
‘Especially the equations about something called nymphomation.’
‘Ah yes.’
‘It was the only paper I could access. Why did you hide all your other works? Wait! I get it. This week’s assignment could only be answered with access to your papers on nymphomation and love labyrinths. To make it even harder, you hid all but one of the references. Crafty!’
‘Very good. Except it’s the other way round; my work on nymphomation is always out of bounds. It is dangerous knowledge.’
‘OK, so you let one file loose, just so your students could possibly find it.’
‘Not just any old student, Ms Love.’
‘You chose me! The computer—’
‘I mean that only you received the play-to-win question. The rest of them were given a rather simple task involving Chaotic Economics.’
‘But we could’ve compared notes?’
‘Ah, but you never do. Isn’t that right? Too jealous.’
‘But…but why? Why me?’
Professor Hackle got up slowly from his desk, walked over to the window of his office. When he finally spoke, without even looking at Daisy, his voice was quiet, almost to himself. ‘Look at them all, down there, making their way to lectures, carrying their assignments. Students! Glorious students! The city would be quite dead without the September intake.’ Finally he turned around to look directly into Daisy’s eyes. ‘Youth, Daisy! Young people! How keen they are, how eager to learn!’
It was the first time he had ever called her Daisy.
‘Hundreds of new students, every year, every one of them with a dream, a hope; a dream of learning. Oh, I know, most of them are deadbeats, but perhaps a small percentage will go on to discover something new. A new shape, a new map. A new way of counting the universe. That’s my job in life, Daisy, to nurture the best. I believe you could be such a student. Would you like to be?’
