Blast from the Past # 3: The Dice Men

The Dice Men

When Malcolm Smith opened his eyes and glanced at the LED readout on his alarm clock radio, he was suddenly struck by the thought, "It's a great day to be alive." He wasn't usually given to such random and, as far as he could tell, unwarranted emotional responses, but he couldn't deny the fact that Life just seemed to taste so much better today than it normally did at 4:45 a.m. on a Wednesday.

As he rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of underwear, he experienced a second, equally-unprecedented reaction: "Boy, do I feel lucky today!" This he had to say out-loud, which he did, just to prove to himself how ridiculous it sounded. Malcolm knew that if there was one thing he wasn't, it was lucky! He was, and knew that he was, the type of person you always find yourself feeling sorry for when you hear that his car was stolen on the same day that he'd been fired from his job, and you can't help but wonder, "What did he ever do to deserve such an incredible run of bad luck?" Malcolm had asked that very question, many times, of himself. But he knew that the answer was, "Nothing." And that had always struck him as small consolation.

So he couldn't really explain his uncharacteristic optimism, but neither could he shake it off. And even as he showered and thought about the miserable workload that lurked within his cubicle at the Mengelson Insurance Corporation, and remembered the chewing out that he'd suffered at Samuels' hands the day before, he still felt like a man who'd been crowned Ruler of All He Surveys. It was entirely strange!

After towelling off and glancing at the morning paper, Malcolm quickly got into suit and tie and gathered up his briefcase. He knew that the only way he was going to keep this job was to put in some extra effort. For eight weeks, he'd been into work well before 7:00 a.m., and usually worked until at least 8:00 each night. It wasn't what he would've hoped for, but because of some computer foulup he'd been offered a different position than the one he'd posted for, and so it was all he could do to hold down the job, even working twelve or thirteen hours a day. Just a typical turn of events in the life of Malcolm Smith, as he'd grown accustomed to thinking.

As he locked his apartment door behind him, he could hear the first sounds of morning escaping from his neighbours' homes. Mr. Abernathy was greeting the morning with his usual coughing fit, and cute Miss Cuthbert could clearly be heard singing in the shower. And from old Mrs. Salkind's one-room apartment... a baby crying?

"Now that," thought Malcolm as he waited for the elevator, "is darned unusual." Mrs. Salkind was, after all, a sixty-nine year old widow, and hardly the sort you'd expect to be caring for a baby. "Must be a grandchild," he decided. Just then, the elevator wait light went out and all four elevator doors swished open in unison. Each car was empty. Malcolm hesitated, partly out of indecision and surprise, but also because he wanted to savour the moment of such rare luck. "What's that saying about buses," he asked himself, "how you can wait for half an hour for one, and then have three arrive all at once. Of course, I'd only been waiting here for less than a minute. Maybe I will have some luck today, after all!" He finally boarded the elevator closest to him, and rode non-stop to the ground floor.

As he drove the three miles to his office, Malcolm received definite smiles from not one but four passing motorists. And he was almost certain that he'd been the target of a friendly wave from the arm of a beautiful brunette in a convertible. That particular peculiarity had nearly caused him to rearend the Mazda in front of him, but he'd managed to brake in time. "It's almost as though, overnight, the city had been transformed from a snarling, viciously rabid Doberman, into a loving and well-mannered Collie," he conjectured, and then laughed at his own giddiness.

At Mengelson Insurance Corporation, he unlocked the front door and made his way to the cubicle that was still piled high with his work. Looking at the paper on his desk, he thought, "Yeah, well, I guess it would've been a little much to expect THAT to have changed overnight!" He opened his briefcase, and filed several cases that he'd worked on at home the night before. There, among his business papers, was his newspaper. "That's funny," he thought, "I don't remember packing that this morning. Oh well, never look a gift horse in the mouth, they always say," and he tossed the newspaper onto a relatively-clear corner of his desk.

By the time most of his co-workers had arrived, Malcolm had organized his desk and made a small dent in the pile. He'd made such good progress, in fact, that he decided to take a break much earlier than usual. He suddenly remembered the newspaper, and picked it up again. "Now here's a true test for this newfound luck," he chuckled to himself. "Let's see if I managed to win something for a change in last night's Lottery draw." Flipping through the Entertainment section until he came to the lottery numbers, he pulled out his wallet and examined his ticket. He'd religiously purchased one ticket per draw for nine years now, and had never won more than a free ticket in all that time. Malcolm checked first the "windfall" winners, which would have entitled him to another ticket. No match. He moved up through ten dollars, a hundred dollars, a thousand, and up by powers of ten to one million. He wasn't the least bit surprised to discover that he'd not won any of them. "Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!" Then he recalled that last night's draw had featured a special super-Jackpot, celebrating the lottery's tenth anniversary by giving away ten million dollars. Glancing at the winning number for that prize, he was hit by sudden recognition. With shaking fingers, he placed his ticket beside the box on the newspaper page, and compared each digit in turn. It was a perfect match! A cry that was more like a whimper escaped him.

Mike Silcox, who occupied the cubicle next to Malcolm's, heard the sound and strolled around the cubicle divider to peer at Malcolm. "What's the matter, Smith," he asked with his usual sneer, "did the old man finally sack you?"

"Look... look at this, would you?" Malcolm was having a hard time keeping his voice even, but he needed a second opinion. "What do you see?"

Silcox, noticably disinterested at first, quickly let out a long whistle as he realized what he was looking at. "Holy Christ, Smith, you've just won ten million bucks!! Uh, way to go... old buddy," the last part was obviously added as an afterthought.

But Malcolm didn't hear anything after the confirmation. He'd been standing at his desk while Silcox was comparing the numbers, but as soon as he heard the "ten million bucks" issue from Silcox's mouth, he bolted for the office door. He had to get to the Lottery headquarters and make sure before he could really, really believe this incredible event! Nothing that had happened today, none of the marvellous instances of good luck, nothing, had prepared him for this! He'd been treating the whole "lucky day" idea as a big joke, but how could he doubt any longer? And he couldn't be sure that the luck would last into tomorrow, so he intended to claim his money while the sun was still shining, and then worry later about how long his lucky streak might go on.

On the way to the local lottery headquarters, Malcolm drove in a daze. His head was swimming with the possibilities that this bit of serendipity had opened up for him. He knew, for instance, that jobs would never again be a concern of his! And he could finally get out of that apartment and move into a house!

His car plunged madly on, its driver oblivious to all around him. Malcolm missed, for example, the crowd of people gathered outside the Thompson Building, all of whom were staring at the human fly that was scaling the structure without any means of support or suction. A few blocks further, a newspaper vendor was shouting at the delivery truck that had just pulled away from the curb after dropping off a nice, neatly-bound pile of tabloids printed in Russian; but Malcolm didn't notice. He passed without a second glance the elderly couple who, completely naked, were beating senseless a teenager dressed in leather. Any of these would have given him pause on a normal day. As he guided his automobile through the city that day, however, he was like a man possessed.

Upon arriving at his destination, Malcolm thrust his car into a "No Parking" zone and raced into the lottery building. He quickly located an area labelled "Inquiries" and made a beeline for the woman seated behind a desk there.

"Please," he gasped to the woman whose nametag read Marjorie Pinkle, "I'd like to collect my winnings from last night's lottery."

"Certainly, sir," Marjorie said, "and what is the amount that you won?"

Malcolm swallowed, and said, "I think I've won the big one. The super-Jackpot for ten million!"

"Well, if you did, then that makes you the twenty-third one so far!"

Malcolm blinked at this unexpected response. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Neither do we," sighed Marjorie. "I've personally seen seven different tickets that match the winning numbers, and have heard about another fifteen. The ticket numbers are supposed to be unique, but... Well, anyway, we're investigating the possibility of forgery."

"You mean I may not have won?" Malcolm couldn't believe that his balloon could possibly have burst without so much as a whimper.

"Hmmm, well... Let's just say you may be sharing the ten million with a few other people! I don't know... it's the strangest thing I've ever seen! I'd swear that each of the tickets I looked at was legitimate, but there's just no way the computer could print more than one! Well, don't you worry, sir, we'll be sorting this out shortly. Why don't you come back yesterday?"

"Pardon me?"

"It's just that we probably won't know anything until then." Her voice betrayed just a touch of impatience.

But Malcolm couldn't let it drop. He said, "So I should come back... when?"

"As I said, sir," and she fixed him with an icy stare, "yesterday!"

Fearful that he was leaving the fate of his millions in the hands of a lunatic, but not seeing any alternative, Malcolm left the lottery headquarters. As he walked out onto the street, some of its strangeness managed to pierce his preoccupation. He almost tripped over the man in the grey business suit who lay at the bottom of the steps, sipping from a bottle of floor cleaner partially concealed by a brown paper bag, and singing snatches from various advertising jingles.

Beyond him, a young man and woman were walking down the street, laughing uproariously as they slapped each other in the face. Out on the street, Malcolm saw that a gang of punks was busy shining his car, using clean, white feminine napkins. And the bus that passed by as he walked toward his car was full of nuns who waved from every window and blew kisses to everyone they saw. The bus driver, though Malcolm couldn't see her, was Joan of Ark.

And in the city around Malcolm, lovers who'd long been dead returned to raise embarrassing questions of those they'd left behind; old men and women lay, unattended, in oversized cribs and cried and cried for their bottles; an elevator in Malcolm's building opened on Malcolm's floor to disgorge cute Miss Cuthbert, her face the loveliest, and largest, red rose ever seen by human eyes; and every paperclip in the Mendelson Insurance Corporation twisted into the shape of a heart.

And on the planet upon which Malcolm stood, countries fired off missiles that exploded halfway along their path, filling the skies with daffodills and sugar cubes; armies fought among themselves over who had to take the garbage out; oceans ran red with the blood of a million million whales; and volcanoes regularly appeared in the middle of lakes.

And on a sphere of existence that Malcolm could never have begun to imagine, in a place that Malcolm would not have even been able to recognize as such, Tyyjgjyyt lifted three of his forty-seven embillica to a half-standard position, thus implying to Dfssklkssfd: "No, no... now you've lost it completely!"

Dfssklkssfd generated just slightly more than the proper volume of bodily fluid, but Tyyjgjyyt recognized the intended reply as: "But I had it under control until right at the end!"

Flicking his anterior follicles perfectly, Tyyjgjyyt indicated: "Yes, well, that's hardly good enough, now is it?" With an irritated inclination of his sperm puddle, he continued: "We went to all the trouble of building this model for you, but you seem incapable of mastering its reality!"

Dfssklkssfd, showing his nervousness through every pore of his lower genitalia, nonetheless managed to massage his largest cancerous growth sufficiently to reply: "I'm really trying! But the complexity of the task makes it difficult!"

"Hah!" Tyyjgjyyt used only one of his nasal passages, thus showing the contempt he felt for his student. "If you can't manage this measly little one," he went on, his intestines and upper genitalia combining in beautiful communication, "then how can we possibly trust you with a real universe?"


"I cannot believe that God plays dice with the Cosmos."
- Albert Einstein