but it was jammed tight. Without pause she spun back around and went straight for the other door. Chance swivelled around in his chair again watching her.
“Strangely enough, the odds of two doors jamming are actually not the square of one another, but rather an exponential.”
Isa tried the door she had come through initially. Bile rose in her stomach when its handle would not budge either.
“Let me out of here!” she spat angrily as she tried in vain to open the door.
“Sorry,” he said a little crest fallen. “That little trick was supposed to impress you not scare you. Nonetheless I can’t let you go yet, it’s not safe.”
Isa strode back to the desk and leaned across it trying to sound menacing.
“Why the hell have you brought me here?”
He looked at the laptop screen then breathed a sigh of relief.
“Finally! I mean there was an eighty percent chance you would ask me that before it was too late, so I did not want to fiddle with it, but another two minutes and I would have had to do something myself.”
“Listen, Chance wasn’t it? If you don’t either let me go right now or at least start making some sense I am going to hurt you with that ancient stone tablet you have there.”
Chance reacted by pulling the laptop towards him and cradling it like an infant in danger.
“No! Don’t do that, this thing’s a prototype. You know, one of a kind and I’m not sure I could rebuild it. Anyway to answer your question I brought you here to keep you safe. You see I’m a mathematician or at least I was until I got into programming and ended up stuck on Teklas out of work. This little baby here I call Nexat,” he smiled and waved his hands around the laptop melodramatically. Isa’s brow creased further as her patience wore even thinner. “Anyway, um...well I have always had this love for probability, which landed me hacking and reprogramming the machines for cash. Thing is, a mathematician who can hack and program who has lots of time on his hands leads to a lot of tinkering. To cut a long story short I worked out a way to control probability...inherent probability.”
“Inherent probability? I have never heard of that.”
“That’s because I made up the term,” he grinned. “It’s the chance that things will happen to you. For example the chances the cops would follow you and not your friend when you split up were fifty fifty right. I worked out a way to predict that and also change it.”
“So you’re trying to tell me you can control everything that’s going to happen in the future,” she said incredulously.
“No. I can predict the probability of what might happen in the future and I can modify it in the present. So yes, for the most part, I can make things happen the way I want them to. Unless something is a sure thing, you can’t modify things that have one hundred percent probability.”
“Prove it,” demanded Isa.
“I already did with the doors and the lights.”
“You could have set them up, you will need to do a lot more to convince me of a claim like that.”
Chance sighed deeply and reluctantly tapped away at the laptop again. “You know, it was a sure thing you would want me to prove it to you the hard way, but I’m still annoyed you’re actually making me do it.”
“Maybe you should just let me go then,” replied Isa sarcastically.
“Ok,” said Chance ignoring the jibe. “Those two cops have been wandering around the building with their flashlights looking for you. They were about to give up, but I fiddled the odds of the lights coming on completely of their own accord, just like I did for you. They will be here in about a minute. Once they arrive at that door it’s a sure thing they will come through it and find us, I can’t change that part. When they do I’ll make one last change and we need to make a break for the door. One of the cops will pull his weapon and fire at you. He’s apparently a good shot because the chance of him hitting you is about ninety eight percent. The chance of his gun blowing up in his hand and stunning them both instead is literally billions to one, but not a sure thing. I’ll swap the two around, equilibrium stays in check and we get away.”
Isa was about to tell him he was mad when there were shouts from outside the door. It was the cops and they were threatening to break the door down. Isa looked at Chance, her eyes wide and her skin crawling.
He smiled nervously and grabbed his laptop, still open and at the ready and moved to the back door.
“Um, this will only work if you come over here with me.”
Isa stepped briskly around the desk and stood with Chance. As she reached him the cops burst through the door.
“Hold it right there!” one of them shouted.
“Sorry no can do,” replied Chance as he hit the enter key on his laptop then grabbed the door and flung it open.
“Stop or I’ll shoot!” replied the lead cop pulling his weapon. Isa stood frozen for a second, but Chance grabbed her firmly and dragged her out the door behind him. The cop pulled the trigger, there was a crackling noise and then a loud bang as his weapon malfunctioned and exploded in his hand. The shockwave propelled Isa through the doorway and hard against Chance’s back. Both cops were knocked out by the blast. In the same grimly fascinated way that passer’s by look at a fatal car accident Isa spun back around and looked back into the room.
She was awakened from her daze by a gentle hand on her arm.
“Come on we need to get going. Don’t worry about them they’ll be fine, although awfully pissed off.”
Isa let Chance lead them through several more corridors and rooms until they finally reached the street again. Chance kept them going at a brisk pace back towards the rabbit warren of slums, brothels and pubs that Isa had originally been trying to get to. Occasionally Chance would tap at a few keys, presumably changing the odds on something crucial.
When they finally reached the crowds again Chance slowed down and smiled.
“We are safe now, at least for the moment. Come on, I know a pretty quiet bar close to here where we can get a beer, or something stronger if you like.”
“Ok,” replied Isa still dumbfounded.
They reached the small bar, went inside and sat down in a corner away from the street. Her mind now having had a little more time to digest things Isa perked up. She ordered a vodka, she needed more than beer. Chance sat opposite, his laptop open in front of him, as though he was anticipating her question.
“If you can change what will happen to you, then why are you on Teklas and not rigging the lottery or something?” she asked, still trying to determine if Chance was somehow trying to scam her.
“That’s also complicated,” he replied shyly.
“Try me,” she insisted. He looked at his laptop screen and creased his brow, his face was disappointed.
“You know I really thought that saving you from the cops would have improved the odds more that you would believe what I’m about to tell you.”
“Sometimes you just have to trust your luck,” she replied impatiently.
“Fine. Once I worked out the power of what I had discovered I put a lot of thought on how best to use it to my advantage. I was just about to set things in motion to get off this rock. Then you walked into that internet cafe to rent a pokie from Jous,” he said timidly, not looking directly at her. “As soon as I laid eyes on you I knew I wanted to meet you. It’s silly I know, but even though I have the power to manipulate anyone or anything in my favour, I was too scared to talk to you.”
“So you manufactured this?” she asked accusingly.
“Oh no,” he replied hastily. “Your friend Tara caused you’re your problems tonight. Like everything else in the universe probability is in constant equilibrium. When you take from one side you need to give back to the other. That’s why its never good to hack the machines, you are just asking for bad luck.”
“How did you know I would need help then?”
“Because I have been watching you,’ he admitted then when Isa’s brow creased again he quickly added, “But only recently.
At first I wasn’t. For about six weeks straight I sat at the cafe every day waiting for you to come in to see Jous. I never once during that time looked at or touched any of the odds that related to you or my chances with you. I was just hoping you would notice me of your own accord. Then one day you turned up with stitches on your face. I found out later that it was Jous who did that to you. I was so angry with him that I changed a few odds around so that his regular chicken curry gave him severe gastro for a week.”
Isa smiled at that and let out a brief giggle.
“I remember that, I thought it was just Karma,” she said.
“Close, it was me. Anyway after that I did start checking on you. I was worried something bad might happen. From that point on I have been kind of looking out for you. Didn’t you notice that for the last six months you always manage to avoid the cops?”
“But why?”
“I am about to become the most powerful man in the entire universe and I wanted someone to share it with. Someone who wants to share it with me willingly. Someone beautiful, like you.”
It was Isa’s turn to blush and shift nervously in her seat. She was very flattered by the romantic concept, but it all seemed too surreal to her. She had to get some space and have some time to think. She decided it was time to ditch Chance and find Tara again.
“After all the excitement tonight I really need to pee, excuse me for a minute or two.”
Isa slipped out from behind the table and headed for the ladies room.
Chance sat tensely in front of his laptop as he scrolled through various number streams. It was close to an even chance that Isa would come back. His fingers hovered tantalisingly close to the keys yet he resisted the urge to tamper with fate. He really wanted her to fall for him or her own volition. Instead he forcibly crossed his fingers. Something he had not had to do for a very long time.
#
Isa walked directly to the back of the bathroom where there was a small window that opened out into the street. It would be tight, but with her slight figure she could squeeze out. She pushed it open, then hesitated. She wondered if it would be that bad to at least get to know the guy before she ran away. He was offering her a way off Teklas and a better life. Isa shook her head as though snapping out of a dream. She had always prided herself on being independent and self sufficient. The thought of never really knowing if what she was doing or feeling was of her own free will was too much to ignore. With some effort she squeezed out the window.
#
Back in the bar Chance’s shoulders slumped. He sighed and tapped at a few keys. He guessed some things just had to happen the hard way.
#
No sooner had Isa’s feet touched the footpath outside the bar when she felt a searing pain in the back of her neck. She remained conscious just long enough to realise that it was a cop’s stun weapon.
#
When Isa regained consciousness she found herself in a brightly lit hospital ward. In panic she sat up, but was firmly pressed back into her bed by a nearby nurse.
“Just relax miss,” chided the nurse.
“But I don’t remember how I got here,” said Isa frantically.
“You were stunned by a police officer by accident. Unfortunately he mistook you for a poker machine runner that he had been chasing. Worse still you had what we call a synaptic overload. It’s very rare, but some people react badly to the stun field. You’ll be ok, but you might find you have lost the last few weeks or even months of your memory.”
“What? No!” replied Isa desperately trying to focus her mind and remember something, anything. The last thing she could remember was losing her job long with her friend Tara at Interstellar.
“I’ll give you something to relax you,” said the nurse gently noting Isa’s distress.
Very soon Isa started to relax and felt sleepy. The nurse left to tend other patients and for the first time Isa noticed a guy sitting on the other side of the room next to the bed of another patient, who appeared to be fast asleep.
“Wow,” she thought to herself. “What are the chances I’d end up in hospital and wake up with such an attractive looking guy not five feet from me?”
He looked up from an ancient looking laptop that he was working on and smiled at her.
“Hi,” she said smiling back. The guy stood up and walked over to her and nervously put his hand out. She shook it clumsily, feeling quite groggy.
“Hi my names Chance,” he said as he sat in a chair next to her and opened the laptop again.
“I’m Isa,” she replied, “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he smiled.
“Just my luck, I meet a nice guy and I’m about to fall asleep.”
“Don’t worry I’ll be here every day visiting my brother Jous. He’s had some severe food poisoning and had to get this stomach pumped.”
END
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