Nymphomation

Play to Win





Game 40


It was Domino Day in lucky old Manchester, and the natives were making love to the television, all glazen-eyed and drunken as the opening credits came into view. A tumbling ballet of dominoes, forever changing their spots. Dig that tumbling! Even the air was excited, loaded with messages, buzzing out loud. Blurbflies, singing the streets alive with adverts. Play to win! Play to win! And all over the city that wet Friday evening, three hours from midnight and surrounded by the rain, hordes of punters were clacking their little bones on coffee tables and bar tops, computer desks and kitchen counters, watching the dots pulsate in tune as the theme song started up.



It’s domino time! Domino time! Dom, dom, dom, dom, domino time!—Blurbflies



In offices and hospitals, bedsits and penthouses; all-night shopping malls and non-stop garages; in restaurants, cinemas and whorehouses; in cars and taxis, and even on the trains and buses; anywhere there was a private TV or a radio or a public screen, all the gamblers were stroking their hard- earned domino bones, hoping that Lady Luck would come up dancing, just for them.



Why not chance a throw?

You might as well have a go!

With your lucky little domino! —Blurbflies



Chaos fever 1999 style, running high. Bringing the city to stillness that night, and every Friday night, as the players steeled their hearts, took a collective breath, honed their bones, rubbed their lucky charms, chanted prayers to the gods of circumstance, sold their souls to the joker. As the blurbflies glittered through the rain, dive-bombing the people with sweet whispers.





Play to win


Somewhere in all this stilled commotion, in each of their chosen locations, the various people who would later form the Dark Fractal Society were preparing their dominoes for the outcome. Maverick gamblers who would one day try to kill the game. One such player; a tousled, ragged blonde called Daisy Love.

Sure, an embarrassing name, and how she hated her parents for the privilege, but take a look. A sparkle-eyed eighteen-year- old. A first-year student of mathematics at the University of Manchester, studying Game Theory under the esteemed Professor Max Hackle. With a first-term report full of Hackle’s wonder at her grasp of the probabilities of losing, you would expect Daisy to be among that tiny bunch of killjoys who preferred not to play.

But no; here she was, glued to the black-and-white portable in her bedsit in Rusholme Village, clinging tightly to a single domino. Trying her best to ignore the scents of Lamb Rogan Josh and Chicken Tandoori, drifting up from the curry house downstairs. The Golden Samosa’s neon sign painted her window with an afterglow of colour, rippled by rain and the wing-flap of blurbs.

Daisy could ration herself to a single onion bhaji or a lonely poppadom, or even a foolhardy golden samosa, but a raging, full- on Rogan Josh with Pilau Technicoloured Rice? Leave it out. Way beyond her means. A Chef’s Special Chicken Tikka? Forget it. Daisy was on a scholarship; a small chunk of money from the university itself, because she was so good at the numbers. Just because Professor Hackle rated her. This weekly treat of an only bone was Daisy’s one wicked pleasure. A tiny handful of luck. Listen:



A little fun is hardly a sin,

You might as well play to win.

Dom, dom, dom, dom, domino time!

Domino time! Domino time! —Blurbflies



Who could resist such urgings? And even as the theme song played out, there came a knock upon Daisy’s door. Inevitably, it was Jazir Malik, first-born son of the Golden Samosa, from way down below in the curry pit. Trilby-hatted and sunglassy, he brought with him a stolen take-out of a one-meatball Beef Madras, a greasy piece of naan bread, some few sticky grains of plain boiled rice. Daisy knew that Jaz had the hot and spicies for her, but she was keeping him at bay, while gorging herself on his stolen curries. It wasn’t that she found him unattractive: in fact, Jaz Malik was heavenly gorgeous, once the hat and glasses came off. Skin the colour of twilight, a smile shining like a garlic slice of the moon. It wasn’t that he was too young, because Daisy felt herself younger than him, in many ways. And it wasn’t even that Daisy knew that Saeed, Jaz’s head chef of a father, would not be too pleased with his first-born consorting with a lily-white girl.

‘Here’s your dinner, love,’ said Jaz, his voice a complex mix of northern drawl and Asian lilt.

‘Cheers, Jaz.’ Daisy dug, straight off into the food.

‘Sorry I’m late. My father was grilling me about school. And he wants me waiting-on tonight. Hope I haven’t missed anything, love. Cookie hasn’t come on yet?’

‘No, it’s just beginning. Sit down. And stop calling me love.’