Daisy was in the backseat. ‘Jimmy!’ Hearing her mother calling out, suddenly. Last words.
‘Shit!’ Her father calling…
The world exploding. The words going wrong, all so very wrong.
Mummy had gone through the windscreen, taken away by the god of bad chances. A big, bad truck banging into their world, banging their heads. A shower of glass falling over baby Daisy and her father. The Daisy and the father that had survived and the pain hidden behind the numbers.
Falling… falling… still falling…
Her father, reluctantly, took over her education. A learning curve of fire. By the age of six, that surviving baby could fully iterate a global function. Couldn’t speak a single word of English, of course; totally dumbfounded by the crash. Her mind filled with glass and blood and the truck in front. But Daisy was a goddess, a goddess of equations. The bang on the head must have released something fine, a continuous unravelling of the world into its probable causes and the numbers thereof. Something fine, something stilted, something cursed and cold. No friends, but top of her class and always the winner in the various games of chance: ludo, snakes and ladders, dominoes. Except against her father.
She wanted to win; more than anything, Daisy wanted to win, for once, against her father. Those stupid fucking bones…
Remembering…
The young Daisy works out the new chances and challenges her father to a domino match the next day. Her father grins to see her tight smile, sober for a while. ‘That’s my girl. Choose your bones. Choose wisely.’ Daisy chooses her pieces, and her father the same, and then they play. Daisy leads with the double-six; her father answers with the six-and-a-five. Daisy slots in a five- and-blank, her father comes back with the dangerous double- blank. Daisy replies with a blank-and-a-one.
And so the game continues, until most of the bones are extinguished. But all the time Daisy is working out the new mathematics of the game, playing to win this time. Play to fucking win! Until she has only a lonely pair of bones left, and her father a full four.
She bangs down her second-to-last domino, a five-and-a- four, knowing her father can’t possibly have a matching bone. She cries out in delight.
‘Domino!’
Her first word ever spoken, since her mother had died. Domino, meaning master. Meaning she has finally mastered her father.
Except… ‘Well spoken, my child,’ says her father. ‘But it’s not over yet.’ He plays a four-and-a-blank bone, causing Daisy to knock the table and make a gasp. She hadn’t worked out that possibility. The chances against him having that confounded lucky number, too much to bear. And having to watch her father play all of his bones out, only watch in despair, and bang her knocking hand on the table, again and again.
‘Daddy Domino!’ screams her father, laughing out loud.
But Daisy had found her voice again.
Play to win
A building called the House of Chances. A hologram sculpture floating above the forecourt, a tumbling domino, suspended in air, forever changing its spots, dancing, dancing… This is where they make the bones. You want to pay a visit? You want to talk to Mister Million? Go ahead. Make a wish. Why not try?
Security blurbs orbit the building, beaming on you for acceptance. Play to win! Play to win!
OK. Flash your passport, pray the blurbs acknowledge it.
Accepted. Through the satellites.
A pair of big dominoes for a door, forever changing. Show the door your invitation, if you have one. The door might just give you the nod.
Let the door swing open.
Into a vast, empty hall, lined with flowers, wafted with perfume and muzak. Find the desk, if you can, amid all the hidden lights that shine down in dots of roving colours. With the lobby- blurbs that fly in a bombing squad…
‘Play to win!’
Give your name to the receptionist, the one with the gun strapped to her waist. Tell her you’ve got an appointment with Mister Million. Show her your pass, let her check it against the computer’s diary. Tremble as she does so.
OK. Ascend the elevator to the top floor. But first, the lift attendant asks for your day’s credit. Do you have one?
You do! Excellent! Give it to him.
Ascend and play to win.
Step out. Face the guard, the one with the electroknife. Allow him to take a nick out of your forearm. He checks your blood against a DNA database. Your very own double helix, spiralling on a screen.
Genetically cleared, walk towards the operations room. Another guard at the door. There’s a password. It changes every five seconds. If you hesitate or guess, the guards take you away.
Only by doing all of this will you get to see Mister Million. The bones, the bones, forever changing. They say he has 168 faces.