What was once the double-six was now the five-one. He picked up the bone, not believing what he had seen. In his hand, after about two seconds, it changed again, this time to the three-one. Every two seconds brought another change. He looked up, to see that all the others were staring at him, gauging his reactions. Susan had the broad smile of someone sharing a secret.
‘Isn’t it good!’ squealed Georgie. ‘Good, good, good!’
Jimmy looked down at the other dominoes; they were all pulsing and changing at regular two-second intervals.
‘Intrigued, Jimmy?’ asked Malthorpe.
‘Puzzled.’
‘It’s quite simple. Max, here, invented them. We call them randominoes. Very clever; a random number generator in each piece. The dots are best thought of as rather large pixels. They light up according to the numbers generated.’
‘You expect me to play with these?’
‘Play to win!’ shouted Georgie. ‘Play to win!’
‘It adds an edge, shall we say,’ said Hackle.
‘Having played dominoes for so long together,’ added Susan, ‘we became bored with each other’s strategies.’
‘Would you like to try your hand?’ asked Max.
‘I don’t see how…’
‘Play! You’ll soon pick it up.’
The first game was a disaster for Jimmy. Every time he tried to play a certain number, it had already changed as he moved it. The others were doing better, in some way able to predict, if not the exact number, then a close neighbour to it. As soon as a bone was played, it stopped changing. If mismatched, and removed, it started changing again.
‘Contact transmitters,’ explained Susan. ‘They register the touch of another domino.’
Jimmy nodded his head vaguely, trying to concentrate.
Six games they played in all. Jimmy lost every time. Max, Susan and Malthorpe won one apiece. Strangest of all, Georgie Blank-Blank won three of them. In some way he was connected to the randomness, as though his naive, mismatched brain was closer in spirit to these crazy, nebulous dominoes.
Jimmy had his first real inkling as to why they kept this simple soul close to their hearts.
Over the next few months, Jimmy was gradually introduced to the real purpose of the house; they were continuing with Miss Sayer’s work, to bring mathematics alive. To this end they had formed themselves into a group called the Number Gumbo. Jimmy was given various of their pamphlets and magazines to study, and long dinners often ended with even longer conversations, in which they would discuss the finer points of the latest research. Always they played the randominoes, always Jimmy lost, and almost always Georgie won the prizes.
Becoming involved in mathematics again was very much like coming home for Jimmy. A purpose, a direction. Also, they had found a position for him in Susan’s bank. A lowly post, but still more lucrative than mending pipes. It was at this bank that he met Marigold Green. His courting of this homely secretary was in sharp contrast to the fevered atmosphere of Hackle’s house. Their first awkward sex coincided with the group introducing him to the far randier concepts of nymphomation.
Jimmy went along with a Black Math ritual, even if his reason told him not to believe a word of it. Lights out, candles lit, incense, tuneless music, diagrams on the floor, chanting, strange equations that never quite came true, not in this world anyway. All five of them touched together the dominoes given them by Miss Sayer: double-six, five-zero, two-zero, double-zero, five-four. Thus it was that James Love was initiated.
He could justify his involvement by calling it the wages he paid for being accepted, at last. A lover, a job, new friends, money, intellectual pursuits, mathematics. A time to grow young, he called it. No more politics, no more bitterness. And the crazy mazes they were making, only on paper, only in the computer’s innards, or the graph of the brain. Abstract games of no real consequence, very much like his love for Marigold, his love for his job, his love of the group; empty forms he could cling to without consequence.
Two months after his initiation, James Love won his first victory at randominoes. There followed possibly the two most exciting years of his life. He was promoted at the bank, enabling him to put down a deposit on a house in Droylsden. He was made a special consultant on the Number Gumbo magazine, supplying a much-needed distance to the more extravagant claims put forward. For a short period in early 1978 he had a semi-vigorous affair with Susan Prentice, or rather, had the affair conducted upon his body. They kept it hidden from Malthorpe, but Jimmy was sure the guy knew anyway, and always had the feeling that he could never love Susan like Paul could. Jimmy just wasn’t violent enough, never had been. Those marks on her throat for instance; he could never do that to her. Subsequently, later in 1978, James Love married Marigold Green, to return himself to normal, to try for a child, to try for love. Maximus Hackle was the best man; the confetti was shredded equations.