Nymphomation(2)

‘Why? It’s your name, isn’t it?’

‘You want some of this?’ Daisy shoved a forkful of beef under Jaz’s nose.

‘I’m stuffed. Had me a Jeezburger at the Whoomphy bar, earlier. Now shut up, please. Let’s watch.’

It was a ritual between them, this Friday-night viewing of the AnnoDomino show. Daisy and Jaz, watching the monitor. A sweep of the camera playing over the faces in the studio crowd; a sea of greed, screaming loud.

Play to win! Play to win!

Bumptious Tommy Tumbler came dancing into view, beaming his polished smile and in a vibrant suit of purple dots on orange. ‘Hello punters!’ he chanted. ‘All the way from the House of Chances!’ And the studio audience, and most of the city too, chanted back to him, ‘Hello, Tommy Tumbler! Good chances!’

‘Hello, Tommy Tumbler!’ shouted Jaz at the screen. ‘Oh please won’t you let Cookie Luck deliver me a winning bone this week? Oh pretty please!’

Daisy Love kept her chanting to herself, as usual. ‘So your dad’s playing up again, Jaz, about you going on to university?’

Jaz was almost seventeen, just a crazy kid really, in his final year at the well-heeled Didsbury High. Studying Maths and Physics, and good with it – tender meat for higher education.

‘My dad’s too damn proud,’ he replied, eyes stuck tight to the glitz of Tommy Tumbler. ‘You’re lucky not having one.’

Daisy looked at him, shocked. Jazir knew full well that she was an orphan, that her mum and dad were dead. That was the reason she was so poor; none of the usual luxuries: no loan from the parents, no birthday car, no carting of the laundry home.

‘But you know I think learning sucks,’ he continued, regardless. ‘I just want to be in business, that’s all. Away from my father’s clutches. I just want to sell some bad-arse gadgets on the filthy streets. It’s all about chance, isn’t it? Life and death; how we live and how we die, it’s all about chance. Shit, Daisy! You try your best at playing to win, only to find yourself playing to lose.’

‘Maybe I could help you, Jaz. With your exams—’

‘Will you leave off, love. The game’s about to start.’

‘OK punters!’ cried Tommy Tumbler. ‘Clack those bones together! Here she comes, the Queen of All Fortune! Lady Cookie Luck!’





Play to win


The whole city went wild with the gambling fever, as the screen fluttered into darkness. Pulses of music. Circles of light, starting to shine. An undulating darkness, littered with stars. Revealing the dancing queen of randomness. Cookie Luck’s skintight and black catsuit was snug-fit to the country’s dreams, an Emma Peel of forever and a long shot. Skintight black, constellated with an ever-changing fractal of white dots, like deep, deep stars, where all the good life lay waiting.

This is what the punters were playing for; the good life above the dour grime of Manchester. Lady Cookie Luck was a walking, talking, dancing, stalking, living, loving domino. A doll of numbers. And every Friday night, at precisely nine o’clock, after a whole week of changing, the dominatrix would dance herself into a climax. The dots on her body would settle, at last, into a winning pattern.

This is how it worked.

Each Lucky Domino cost a single puny unit. Any number of the bones could be bought during a week. In that time, your chosen bones would be forever rearranging their silvery pips, due to some deep, hidden, random mechanism. And all the punters would spend the week watching the bones dance, their eyes chock-full of dots. The I Ching, the rosary beads, the tarot cards, the horoscopes; all in the trash can. The AnnoDominoes replaced them all. And as Cookie’s costume at long last became Friday-night stilled, at the very same time, your lucky bones would solidify into a tight pattern. If any one of your dominoes even halfway coincided with the dancer’s fractal, then you were the winner of that week’s bumper collection: 100 punies for a half-cast; 10 million lovelies for a complete matching.

An undisclosed number of people won the 100; only one person won the 10 million. Just as long as Lady Luck favoured your chances.

Millions of lovelies, all for the cost of a single puny.

PLAY THE RULES

1a. The makers of the game will be the AnnoDomino Company of Manchester, England. Mister Million will be the Manager of Chances.

1b. The players of the game will be the populace of Manchester, England.

2a. AnnoDomino will implement the game in Manchester for a trial period of twelve months, fifty-one games all told; after which, if the Government so deems, the company will be allowed to introduce the dominoes to the whole of the United Kingdom.

2b. The populace of Manchester will be allowed to play the game for twelve months, during which time AnnoDomino will be allowed to measure the response.