The Silver Wheel Game 1: The Fall

Round Six: Roulette

If Charlie tried to reflect back on the past two weeks, it was a blur.

A blur of head injuries, impossible odds, explosions of inspiration, unfathomable coincidences, surprise surgeries, genetic mutation, at least three errant lightning strikes, near endless travel, thankless rescues, overzealous drug use, chases, romances (and one very uncomfortable orgy), unlikely reveals, quickly-forged friendships, natural disasters, a terrorist attack, lawsuits, award ceremonies, gala invitations, misplaced luggage, wrong numbers, poorly-addressed packages, long-lost relations, uncovered forgeries, and more trips to the police than he could reasonably count. He had lived a thousand lifetimes in fourteen days, and looking at himself now, he almost didn't recognize himself.

On top of gambling for perfunctory or curious things (like dreams, childhoods, legs, REM patterns, eyelids, ZIP codes, heartbeats, etc) he had also gambled for things that actually mattered. For example, he now had an encyclopedic knowledge of exactly 300 subjects. He knew how to play every instrument and speak 431 of the world's 6,500 spoken languages fluently. His memory was flawless (which did not, in fact, make the weeks any less of a blur; they were simply blurry weeks). He was so good-looking that when it was impossible for him to physically change any further, society's concept of beauty was warped until it was basically his reflection. His health was perfect, his senses were honed to indescribably fine points, and he was obscenely wealthy.

But more important than any of that, he was in Marie Walker's good graces.

Because even as an apex of his species, that woman scared the hell out of him.

"It took a bit of searching but we were able to find a reality with a dead earth that's close-ish to our relative position in space, and a waaaay faster speed of light. So we're finally able to start strip mining it for our very first Walker-brand Dyson sphere. This motherfucker will make me the only energy producer in this reality worth giving a damn about, and there'll be enough left over for our -- drumroll please -- deep space program!"

Before, he had never been privy to the actual depths of Walker Horizons. He was too low on the ladder even as the CO of Engineering. There were layers upon layers upon layers to uncover about Marie Walker and her ambitions, and every time he thought she had passed genius into the realm of insanity, she found a way to dig deeper.

This was one of those moments, when he realized what her plan was.

"You're using an alternate reality as an intergalactic subway system," he said.

"Ding ding ding! Bingo! Should put you in charge of marketing. Wormholes next to earth? Scary. Wormholes next to a dead earth in some other reality? The EU and China won't ride my ass about that. And with a faster speed of light we can set up the other end of this wormhole way faster. Twenty years from now, we'll be sending people to an alternate reality, throwing them to Andromeda via space tube, pulling them back to this reality, and they'll be screwing blue aliens before breakfast."

She was eating a chunk of cooked flesh only slightly less pink than her lipstick. He didn't bother asking what animal it was from, it could be anything at a place like this. The kind of establishment where you needed at least ten figures to even know it existed, and eleven to comfortably buy anything. It was also the kind of place that didn't have a menu, which offended his chronic need to be orderly and logical about all things. It had annoyed him so much, in fact, he hadn't bothered ordering anything. He was just watching her eat.

"But fuck me," She said in a way that only half-suggested she didn't mean it. He was Eros incarnate, after all. "You know how long it takes to find those realities?"

"No."

"Ages. We've got nine supercomputers running 24/7 and it took them three years to find this one, and even then it's only like a 70% match. There are too many variables. Too many realities to shuffle through. It's impossible. It's fucking impossible. A turtle could get a shoe pregnant before we find what we're looking for."