A Crooked Game!

Finger pointing in all directions! The fall of civilization?! A re-post from Lux Umbra Dei 2023.

[This is a re-post from last year when there were far fewer subscribers. Hope it's enjoyable still! Definitely Whimsy category]

Randomly generated outcomes can be made predictable by cheaters using nefarious methods. From horse races to stock prices to elections, none are immune to covert interventions by hidden bad actors

But most can be made fairly safe from such manipulations as well. Except in the case of temporal tampering This is a Waterloo for the Grand Armée of coders, SEC regulators and derby horse testers! A case in point:

It is our weekly Friday night poker game of me (Tuffil) and my wizard pals. This night we’re at my house and as the host, by our custom, I get to be the dealer. I've hatched a scheme!

After the four of us sat down at the poker table (aka my kitchen one, hauled out and repurposed) I was ready! At the first deal, I invoke Terwilliger's Temporal Stasis spell. Most of us wizards have that spell in our wizardly toolkits. The result is that everybody at the table freezes in place..even the cigar smoke rheumy old Mnomus was constantly exhaling. I pick up the deck I had just ostentatiously shuffled and did some minor adjustments (“what they don't know won't hurt them”) I reasoned. I then dismissed the Stasis and Time resumed with a rush of sound. I carefully picked up the deck they had just seen me shuffle, and dealt the cards. All the players looked at their cards. I really had to try hard to suppress a smirk seeing the disgust on their faces, especially squat and truculent Rumko's (who habitually looked like he was in a boiling rage.) Even pious Sylifex seemed troubled before he regretfully put down his hand- him I had dealt two threes while hiding the rest at the bottom of the deck! Discards were tossed new cards were dealt no ones hand improved save mine. Everyone folded and I emerged triumphant. My four aces were adequate to the task..! And so it proceeded for another two hands. I just couldn’t stop myself from invoking the Stasis and seeing their sour faces!! I ignored increasingly suspicious stares and the way they all were leaning forward, even pious Sylifex, to inspect my shuffles which I now were making elaborately thorough!

The fourth hand I arranged for myself to get a Full House kings high, but doctored the deck so as to give the others better chances at decent hands. Wouldn't do to have them quit on me and end the fun! I dismissed the Stasis and dealt. Leaning back smiling with my new hand, what a shock! How could I have goofed? I was looking at an eight, a three, a six, a two and a ten, four different suits! Best I could do would be to draw to in inside straight-and appropriately straight across the table old Mnomus was sitting, cigar smoke curling, a complacent smile on his face. The other faces were scowling, even Sylifex's.

The game played out, I got one pair, glowering Rumko and a now suspicious faced Sylifex folded and old dotard Mnomus put down his Royal Flush and raked in the pot. I looked down at the table near my dealing hand. There was a small pile of cigar ash there! Apparently the fossil knew the Stasis as well! He looked at me and blandly smiled.

“Two can play that game!” I grimly thought and once again doctored the deck in my favor and gave the geezer the same crummy cards he had given me. Turn about's fair play! To insure against any more mischief from across the table I casually laid my hand over the deck after the deal. I now quickly lifted my hand.

Impossible!, the four aces and a king I should have seen had been replaced with junk! Scowling like a thundercloud, I looked over at Mnomus. He looked congested like he had swallowed his own cigar! Sylifex was looking up at the ceiling as if he was praying to that weird deity of his. Rumko looked like a boiler about to explode!

The deck played out, Mnomus and I folded quickly, and pious Sylifex raked in the pot- the very picture of an innocent contemplative!

The last hand was a doozy. I took every precaution. After the doctoring and the deal, I kept the deck clenched in my hand even while holding the cards in the other. Everyone was looking at everyone. By now I wasn’t surprised when my hand proved worthless. Mnomus also looked resigned. Sylifex appeared surprised Naif!

Rumko, for once not scowling, grabbed the pot in his beefy mitts, showing us his straight flush- jack high. He gave us three a grim smile while nodding his apelike noggin. I looked at the card deck in my clenched hand-it was unchanged! What the…..?

Then it dawned on me, the dastardly cheater had brought his own deck as well as a Stasis spell and switched cards willy nilly!! Obviously honesty was in very short supply tonight!

Everyone was glaring at everyone else at the table. Mnomus wheezed, “Tuffil has been up to something!” Sylifex agreed, “Boniface's Salutary Confession should loosen his tongue!” The little hypocrite! That spell made its victim babble every minor misdeed in an unending flow. He quickly invoked the spell and I started to uncontrollably admit all my wrongdoings starting with stealing my sister's doll when I was four! The other wizards leaned forward in their chairs with eager interest, -the treachers!

I was just getting to the time I switched out Tabasco in the family's catsup bottle when there was a providential knock on the front door! Sylifex reluctantly dismissed the Confession to the others' disappointment and I went to see who it was. Lux from the Philosophers' Tower was standing, holding a cup. “We ran out of sugar at the Tower, could you spare some?” I grabbed a handful of old coffee grounds and dumped them in his cup, while reciting Frisp's Sugary Delight. The cup was now filled with a cup of gleaming white sugar (albeit with the slightest of tan tinges). Lux looked dubiously at it and departed. I rejoined the others.

Before sneaky little Sylifex could breathe a word, I held up my hand and then invoked the Stasis, put Rumko's smuggled card deck in Sylifex's monks robe front pocket. I then dismissed the spell and cried, “Don't let false Sylifex cozen you- Behold!" I then extracted Rumko’s deck from the robe’s front pocket, holding it up for all to see. Rumko meanwhile was patting his own pockets, Sylifex was at a loss and old Mnomus was wheezing in laughter! I diplomatically announced, “Due to certain irregularities that have come to the attention of the House, I suggest we take a break!” We all, perhaps fearing discovery of our own imperfections, trooped off to the kitchen and the refrigerator. Another typical Friday poker night with our group!

*****

Postscript: To give credit where credit is due: hats off to the late grandmaster, Jack Vance who first used the idea of a temporal Stasis spell gumming up the works among rival magicians. If memory serves he used it in one of his Rhialto stories in the Dying Earth mileu but probably at a time prior to the Cugel stories when the planet is really moribund! Ultimately the Rhialto story is about trust and its absence. It shows that trust is based on predictability and when predictability is damaged by bad actors, trust departs and societal arrangements are badly compromised. It is a sad story in a way.