500 x 50: Short Stories for a Fast World

The World as a Die

There was a specific moment when Lionel decided he could do anything. When he figured out that, in ninety-nine percent of situations across ninety-nine percent of days, people made up what they did as they went along. Then, they pretended it made sense.

Most everyone has no real long-term plan. How could they? The world does not deign to take people's plans into account. Instead, the world rolls dice and forces people to accept the outcome.

So now, Lionel rolled dice, too.

"Shooter steps up!"

The 40-something Hispanic man standing across from Lionel, dressed in the Cherry's standard black-and-red dealer's uniform, signaled for Lionel to throw the dice. Two additional dealers flanked the Hispanic man. Here in the Cherry, a quiet casino where Lionel planned to quietly lose all his money, the dealers always outnumbered the players.

Lionel held the dice in his hand. He did not shake them one last time. He did not blow on them for luck. He knew there was no such thing.

There was only random chance, and acceptance thereof.

Lionel tossed the dice toward the surface of the craps table, covered in green felt, esoteric lines, and plastic chips representing dollars.

"Shooter throws!"

The translucent dice seemed to glow from the inside as they bounced down the table. Lionel began calculating the odds that the casino dice would roll in this exact manner, catching and internalizing the light from the dim casino bulbs. He figured the odds were one hundred percent. The game was rigged, as most games were.

The game was rigged, but he played it anyway. What else was there to do?

Lionel had pressed his bet through the last six rounds. So far, he'd been rewarded for his foolishness. The only other gambler at the table, an old woman who looked not a day younger than ninety-five, shook her head everytime Lionel pressed. And she shook her head in disbelief every time Lionel won.

He won again and passed the dice to the woman. She shot, and Lionel pressed. This round, his bet did not work out. The next twelve rounds, the next fifteen rounds after that, the next twenty rounds after that, his bet did not work out. Lionel smiled.

The odds of losing that many rounds in a row were astronomical. Lionel expected the losses completely. They were what he'd come here for. He'd come to throw everything away, one dice roll at a time.

---

The moment, the one that convinced Lionel he could do anything, that the world was not a solid, spinning globe but rather a translucent, tumbling die, had come three months earlier.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Jones," said the doctor, dressed in Mercy General's standard blue-and-white uniform. "We did everything we could."

Lionel's wife had fallen. She'd been out with friends and tripped and hit her head on the sidewalk. Her brain began bleeding, and the bleeding killed her.

Which proved that the world had no interest in plans. Proved that life was just a crapshoot.