Plutocracy

Stage 5- A Game Between Close Friends

The dim yellow light illuminated the scene.

Around a scarred wooden table the twelve men sat, each one with several plastic discs piled in front of themselves. Six of them had black hair, yellow eyes, and wore hardhats and orange vests. The other six had dark brown hair and green eyes, with jeans and leather jackets. All twelve wore sunglasses despite the low light in the room.

"Gentlemen, you know the rules. Losing team forfeits one month of their paychecks to the winning team," one of the men wearing hard-hats said, a stern look on his face. He began shuffling a deck of cards and looking around a table.

"No cheating of any kind will be permitted, and if a team is caught cheating, they will instantly lose two months of their paychecks, as opposed to the one for a defeat. Is this clear?"

All the men nodded with sober looks on their faces.

"Good."

The man dealt out five cards to each of the men and kept the remaining cards next to him. A quick smile overcame all of the men with hardhats at once when they picked up their hands, which the opposing team found just a little more than odd.

What the Technicians didn't know was that the Engineers opposite them weren't exactly human anymore. They'd offered up their brains to the Eggheads to run hive-mind experiments on, and the operation was successful. They could all clearly hear each other's thoughts, feel the cards on each other's hands, and share the happiness of a good hand.

The Technicians had an entirely different method of cheating.

Unknown to the Engineers, the Technicians had installed cameras in the helmets of each of their opponents, and had placed tiny screens in their sunglasses. This allowed them to know just as much about their opponent's hands as they did.

So in effectivity, everyone at the table knew what was in the Engineer's hands.

A shiver of fear overcame the Technicians; one of the engineers had the making of a flush. Four hearts with a queen of spades. One of the Technicians smiled and put his hand down on the table.

"Fold."

"You can't do that," the Engineer with the almost-flush said, looking angry. The other Engineers mimicked his expression perfectly.

"Looks like you've got a pretty good hand. Fold," another Technician said, laying down his cards.

"Come on! Ante up, at least!" one of the Engineers said, even more annoyed than before, and replicating the expressions of his teammates flawlessly.

"We don't play with ante and you know it, Mike," a third Technician replied before putting down his cards. "Fold."

In that manner the other three technicians all folded, putting their cards down and giving exactly zero points to the Engineers.

"You guys have to work on your poker faces," one of the technicians said, smiling and shuffling the deck of cards.

"Can it, Ray."

"Suit yourself, Mike."

The cards were dealt again, and none of the Engineers had anything above a pair of threes. The Technicians, however, had three aces in one of their hands. The look of sadness and disappointment on the engineers was so obvious that someone without the ability to see could've known they had a bad hand.

One of the Technicians pushed a few black chips forward, and a look of shock came over the Engineer's faces.

They looked at each other and seemed to the Technicians to communicate without speaking.