Gambling Odds Part B: a story in two halves by: GF Willmetts.
Something we’ve kept out of the public eye is knowing that there are alien sentients watching us out there. Not because they’re scared of the human reaction but the fact that we’re in quarantine. What public wants to be shown a cake but not allowed to take a bite or have a look? We’ve begging to be in space beyond the Solar System and they don’t think we’re ready. We managed to intercept their space-buoy’s messages, even if it took decades to translate what they thought of us.
Thing is, what they describe us as being gamblers of low odds is true for many of the population. People are taught to be lucky. Quite why that would exclude us is harder to say. It isn’t as though many people die bungee jumping if the ropes are secure. They’re assessment was a lot more extensive than that Hitchhiker book. They just didn’t think we had advanced enough to join their union unless they thought we might want to leave a few years later. The UN crash and rebuild was a spectacular demonstration of that. Even so, that meant we have had to have had visitors rather than someone just looking at our broadcast. Those UAPs were patrolling not to watch and keep us in but to keep alien visitors out. There must be sentients who gamble. We might be off-limits but not entirely. Surely someone would want to visit, even if out of curiosity, defying the rules. The fact they highlighted gambling must mean we weren’t the only gamblers, so we built up our reputation in the media to see who would come to see how good we are and have something at long odds.
We didn’t think they would be the type to play bingo, roulette or one-armed bandits but we needed for them to gamble on games that needed some thought. Poker seemed a good option. Skill and luck.
Thing was, it needed to be an honest game. If it came out we cheated or played a con, that would be on our stellar record and nobody knew how their higher-ups would react to that and change the space-buoy warnings or up their vessels flying our skies.
People think that our quarantine was all about being so far technology-wise behind the advanced societies. Contamination works both ways. We were also seen as reckless and prone to war. Both true and would you want people like us as neighbours who might want to covet your planet and come as settlers and slowly wipe you out. That was how the USA and Australia was won. As indeed parts of Africa and India although slavery and subjectification spared much of their populations. They were great believers in history repeating ourselves and our fiction, although not necessarily backing it up, seemed like a fantasy compared to what happened. You would think that we had got past that and, even if we hadn’t, do they think we would have done it against such advance species out there?
I doubt if we would be able to detect any UAP coming in so we would have to lay the bait and hope someone would come down to take part. Our luck paid off. We didn’t get one alien but two. They were humanoid and superficially human enough for the media not to care. Their collateral for chips was also a small motor. We had wondered if they were going to bring their own currency. That would have given us a chance to examine alien metal compounds but this looked even better although they expected themselves to win against the lowly primitive species who bet on low odds.
We declared we would be playing lowball poker where the lowest card combinations draw decides who stays in. They thought humans like to bet on low odds and, well, they sort of got that mixed up, thinking our players would never get it right. That alone gave our players the edge and we slowly whet their ante down as they played our mindset of low odds but high bets.
It looked like they were here for the game and then left when their motor ante was ours. It was only then that we discovered that the motor they left was faulty. In effect, they had cheated. However, our scientists looked it over and found the only fault was a few free wires and soon sorted it out. They just didn’t understand their own tech and thought they were giving us a dud or at least not something that would get them in trouble with their people.
Finding that it could shield any spaceship it powered it. We took it up for a test flight, zooming past another spaceship, realising that it was our hapless alien gamblers. They had lost in more ways than one. What could we bet if they’d come back?
See Gambling Odds Part A if you missed it.
© GF Willmetts 2024
All rights reserved
Ask before borrowing
