Randomize

“It would cost more than our winnings to start a company,” she mused. “So you would have to be an anonymous angel investor.”

He laughed. “My God! Earlier when I said you were bold—that was an understatement. You’re borderline insane.”

She pressed on. “Our new company will make quantum random-number generators. Our product will just be a box that makes a stream of truly random numbers via quantum properties and outputs them at a steady rate. No configuration. No operating system. Just a serial port.”

Rutledge raised his finger and opened his mouth, then stopped. He thought for a moment, then finally spoke. “Every casino would want those boxes. And they’d want hundreds of them. One for every video poker machine, every slot machine, and so on. It’s an excellent business model with a huge addressable market.”

“Thank you.”

“I might fund a start-up with that in mind. But not with you. You’re still going to jail.”

“No, it’ll be with me.” She thought things through as she spoke—time was of the essence. Once the police arrived, it was all over. “With us, I mean. My husband and I.”

“You literally just tried to rob me.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. So we’ve established I have a certain moral flexibility.”

“Why would I care about—”

She stood and paced. “We sell the boxes at a loss. Whatever it takes to get everyone buying them and beat any competition that crops up.” Her voice sped up. “Yes. That should get all the major casinos on board. And of course the boxes would be tamperproof. No, not just tamperproof. Literally sealed so no one can modify them.”

The phone on Rutledge’s desk buzzed. He pressed a button. “Yes?”

“Sir, LVPD are here,” came a voice through the speaker. “They say you called them?”

“Yes, send them up.” He terminated the call and looked back to Sumi. “Feel free to keep ranting.”

She knew from earlier that the elevator ride took about ninety seconds. She had that long remaining. She slapped both hands down on his desk. “At a prearranged time, a couple of years from now, all of the randomizer units will simultaneously fail. Because we’ll program them to do that from the start.”

He frowned. Was that a spark of interest? “Define ‘fail.’”

“They’ll all output a steady stream of zeroes. Most gambling machines using them will crash because their software doesn’t account for getting the same ‘random’ number every time. At the very least, they would shut down. Other systems might even remain online, giving the same result every use. That’s even worse—especially if it happens to be a player-win. Every casino in town would be in utter chaos.”

He looked to the ceiling, realization dawning. “Except the Babylon.”

“Right! Not the Babylon.” She pointed at him. “Because you already have a different system in place. You can just say you never bothered to upgrade. Lucky you. Then what happens, Mr. Rutledge? What happens when the Babylon is the only casino in Vegas with functioning machines?”

“We get all the customers. Every last one.” He downed his scotch and spun his chair to face the cityscape. “And our competitors lose hundreds of millions of dollars.”

She crept around his desk. “It would take them time to retrofit all their machines,” she said. “They couldn’t go back to the old non-quantum randomizers. By then everyone will have quantum computers to crack pseudorandom-number generators. They’d have to set up a central quantum computer randomizer like you have.”

He pinched his chin. “The spike in demand for those systems would slow everyone down even more. We’d probably have a week, maybe two, of exclusive control over the entire machine-gaming market. Hmm.”

She stood beside him and looked out over the unwitting town. “Of course, well before that day, my husband and I will have arranged for new identities, and you will have paid us a large sum of money. Say, ten million dollars? A tiny fraction of what you’ll gain.”

He remained quiet.

“This is an opportunity, Mr. Rutledge. It comes with great risk but has the potential for a huge reward. I think you’re a gambler at heart. What do you say?”

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Two policemen walked through the reception area and into the office. One was young and wiry, while the other was at least twenty years older. The older officer, obviously the one in charge, said, “We got a call saying you needed us?”

Rutledge rotated his chair to face them.

He looked to Sumi, then back to the police. “Mrs. Singh here has just won over seven hundred thousand dollars. She’s new to the country. Can you please see to her protection when she returns to her hotel tonight?”

“Sure thing,” said the officer. “Congratulations, ma’am.”

Sumi breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Officer. Mr. Rutledge, if it’s still available, I’ll take that drink now. Double gin and tonic with a heavy squeeze of lime?”

He smiled and headed to the wet bar. “It would be my pleasure.”

A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR OF THE FORWARD COLLECTION