Game Theory (5 page)

Two days before Summer's birthday she came into the front room. I was sitting in Dad's big leather recliner chair, reading a maths book. She harrumphed and I peered at her over the pages.

‘Come to tell me you've changed your mind, Summer?' I said. ‘That I am now officially invited to your eighteenth as the guest of honour?'

‘Get real, Jamie,' she said. ‘You'd hate it.'

She was right, but I would have liked to have been asked, anyway. There's nothing worse than being denied the opportunity to decline on your own terms.

‘So to what do I owe the pleasure?' I said.

‘I need your advice.'

I was surprised. I was more than surprised. I was stunned. Summerlee hadn't asked my advice for years. Actually, I don't think she had
ever
asked my advice. Normally our only interaction was me smiling at her and her grimacing like I was something unpleasant she had just stepped in.

‘Sure.'

‘I'm buying tickets for the lotto on my birthday. It's a rollover jackpot and I'll be eighteen, so I thought what the hell. So what are good lotto numbers to get? I thought you might know, being the hot-shit mathematician and all.'

‘Are you serious?'

‘Do I look like I'm joking?'

She didn't. Summerlee never looked like she was joking, not anymore. It was one aspect of her tragedy.

‘It's random, Summer,' I said. To my credit I did not sigh. At least I think I didn't. ‘There are no “good” numbers to get. Do what everyone else does. Birthdays, favourite numbers, whatever. Your odds are the same whatever you choose. Better still, get the computer to do it for you. What are they called? Lucky picks?'

She shifted her weight, cocked her hip, put one hand on it and gazed at me through impossibly long and dark eyelashes. They were impossible because they were fake. Contempt oozed from every pore. She made as if to leave and I suspected that would be it as far as sibling communication was concerned for the foreseeable future.

‘I can tell you what numbers
not
to choose, though,' I added. That stopped her.

‘Whaddya mean?'

I settled back into my chair. There weren't many occasions when she was keen to hear what I said – hell, there weren't
any
occasions – and I was enjoying myself.

‘Game theory,' I said after a suitable pause. ‘What other people do must affect what you do.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Let's say the jackpot is fifty million and your numbers come up. Fantastic. But then you have to share that money with whoever else has come up with the same numbers.'

‘Yeah. So?'

‘So let's say there are fifty winners in total. That leaves you with one mill as your share. Not bad, but not as good as fifty. Nothing like as good.'

She twirled her hand, encouraging me to get to the point.

‘So what some people do,' I continued, ‘is choose numbers that no one else in their right minds would choose, numbers that are outrageously unlikely to come up, even though statistics tell us that every combination is as likely as any other.'

‘Fuck's sake, Jamie. Get to the point.'

‘So they choose something like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. They work on the principle that if those numbers come up, then they won't have to share the jackpot with anyone, because who would think of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6? Instead of a measly one mill, they snag the whole pot.' Summerlee raised her extravagant eyebrows.

‘What dumb fuck would choose those numbers? There's no chance of them coming up.'

‘Wrong. They have exactly the same chance of coming up as 10, 13, 27, 28, 39 and 41. Or any other combination. It's all about not sharing what you win.'

‘And so that's a good idea, is it?'

‘No. It's a really bad idea,' I said. ‘It's a spectacularly bad idea.'

She did the hand-twirling bit again.

‘At any given time there are probably a couple of hundred people in the country who choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 precisely because they think no one else will choose them. I tellya. I would love it if those numbers
did
come up because those greedy bastards would only get a quarter of a million, rather than the fifty mill they'd be expecting. Can you imagine how pissed off they'd be?'

‘So what're you saying? Don't choose 1 to 6?'

‘That's exactly what I'm saying.'

‘Well, thanks for nothing, Jamie, 'cos I wasn't going to choose them anyway. You'd have to be a dumb fuck.'

‘Yeah, but at least you now know
why
you'd be a dumb fuck.'

‘For someone who's supposed to be so smart, you really are a dick, you know?'

‘I aim to please.'

I didn't try to stop her when she made to go this time. But she stopped at the door, anyway.

‘What were those other numbers you said?'

‘Which?'

‘When you were telling me not to pick the dumb fuck numbers. 10, 13, whatever.'

‘It was just an example.'

‘Yeah, but they sounded good. Write 'em down for me, willya?'

I sighed. This time I sighed. But I took a piece of paper anyway and wrote them down: 10, 13, 27, 28, 39, 41. Was that it? I couldn't remember, but it didn't make any difference. I gave her the paper and she slipped it into her jeans' pocket.

‘Good luck,' I said, but she left without replying.

CHAPTER 5

Gutless invited me round to his place on the Saturday of Summerlee's birthday.
I had nothing else to do. He wanted to show me a new video game he'd bought. Gamers never say ‘computer games'. They say ‘video games'. It must be cool to be retro in the world of hardcore gamers. To be honest, I'm not the slightest bit interested in computer games. I tried to be. Throughout the early years of high school, you didn't really have a social life in the playground unless you were. But I never got into them. They were okay to while away a few hours, but then I got bored. I found it difficult to understand how someone like Gutless could spend days,
weeks
on the damn things with virtually no breaks. He told me there were others worse than him. He knew someone in Canada (Gutless knows lots of people around the world. Well, he knows them in a
virtual
sense) who wouldn't even leave his computer to take a piss. He had his mother collect all these bottles and he would piss in them and leave them around his bedroom, just so he didn't
have to walk down the corridor and be away from his screen. And the really great thing was that his mother
would
collect the bottles and empty them for him. And bring them back, presumably, so he could start it all over again. I asked Gutless what his friend did when he needed a shit, but Gutless didn't know. Just as well. I don't think I
wanted
to know.

Gutless invited me to stay for dinner and that was fine by me. His mum was a good cook and, being well aware of her son's waistline, dished up huge quantities. We ate in Gutless's bedroom, of course, on the grounds that time around a dinner table, eating with the family, was time wasted when you could be blowing things up. I didn't mind that too much, even though Gutless's bedroom smelled of mouldy pizza, festering underwear and old farts. I didn't mind because his dad was a bit of a dick and would try to get my opinions on politics and current affairs. Gutless didn't expect anything from me and I was cool with that.

‘Don't you ever make your bed, Gutless?' I asked, looking around the darkened wasteland. He never opened his curtains but even in the murk I could make out rumpled bedclothes, an assortment of dirty dishes and a small collection of Coke cans scattered on the carpet.

‘What's the point? I'm sleeping in it later on.'

‘Fair enough.' At least he stopped gaming to sleep. Did he dream about crosshairs and exploding heads?

I tried to find a place on the bed to stretch out while Gutless booted up his computer. I shifted a dinner plate from where a
pillow might have rested if it hadn't fallen onto the floor. Something brown and congealed was smeared on the plate. God knows what it had been, but there were tinges of green around the edges. I wondered how long it had laid there. We might have been talking weeks. Life was thriving in Gutless's bedroom. It just wasn't the kind of life I'd be happy sharing
my
pit with.

The big G himself plopped down in his computer chair and stuck on his headphones, leaving one ear exposed, the better, I imagined, to gather my responses to his gaming wisdom. That was fine by me. I didn't normally listen to him anyway, but just grunted at regular intervals. What I'd do is watch the huge flatscreen TV that he had permanently turned on in the corner of his room. That is one thing about Gutless. He doesn't stint when it comes to electronic gadgetry. He has more stuff than an average JB Hi-Fi store. State-of-the-art computer gear, five-hundred-dollar earphones, a gaming mouse he proudly told me cost nearly three hundred bucks, as well as console machines, TVs and other things that wouldn't have looked out of place in NASA headquarters. Well, assuming NASA had no problems with dinner plates that were growing their own bacterial cultures and bedding that hadn't been washed in living memory.

I avoided the centre of the bed. I couldn't see clearly and I sure as hell didn't want to look, but I reckoned the odds were good that I'd be lying in some stain or other. Then I'd start to wonder where the stain came from and it's a short step from that to asking if I could take a hot shower. So I lay along the edge where
I could see the TV over Gutless's right shoulder. There was some desperately sad game show on. The sound was turned down, but that didn't matter to me. Those kinds of shows are much better when they are muted.

‘Dude,' he said. ‘You have got to check out the size of the maps on this video game. They're at least half as big again as
Insurgency Max
, or
District 19, The Revenge
. We are talking fucking huge. Shit-hot graphics, as you'd expect, and up-to-date weapons shit. Based on some of the latest developed in the States. Hey, some of these guns aren't even used in the actual military yet. Plus, a bigger range of vehicles. Look, I've messed around with that capture-the-flag shit, but the real good stuff is in the death matches. Now, I know what you're going to say . . .'

I was glad he knew, because I had no idea. On the TV screen some guy with impossibly white teeth and exceptionally bad hair was charming the hell out of an old woman with brown teeth and equally bad hair. She looked like just being in the game show host's presence was a validation of her existence.
Take me now, Lord, at the pinnacle of my happiness
. I hate television, but it can be entertaining. Especially when the sound is muted.

‘. . . it all depends on the quality of your team. Shit, man. I got myself into this team of complete fucking noobs last night. I made this head shot and they're all like, whoa, that was fucking great, man, and I'm like, yeah, it would be to you bunch of dicks 'cos you have no fucking idea what you're doin' . . .'

I let his voice drone on. It's better that way. Sometimes I fall
asleep for fifteen minutes or so and Gutless never notices. I wake up and he's still talking. I'm like that dinner plate. I could be there in three weeks and going green around the edges and he probably still wouldn't notice. I love Gutless. If he didn't exist I'd have to invent him.

The game show ended and there was a news report. Some blonde chick only about four years older than me was staring at the cameras and looking all serious. She was probably talking about the latest crisis in the Middle East and giving the impression she'd been studying this shit for years and was some kind of expert. Seriously. About twenty. I know a number of twenty year olds. They couldn't find their own arseholes with a torch, let alone the Middle East on a world map.

Watching the news with the sound off is much better than listening to it. I like to work out when the fun human-interest stories come on. The face of the presenter normally changes from this-is-serious-shit-so-I've-got-a-serious-expression-on to a broad smile. Occasionally, I get it wrong. She smiles and then a picture comes up in the background of people dying in some third-world country. What can I say? I've got to play some kind of game while Gutless is occupied with his.

I almost didn't notice the lotto numbers on the bottom of the screen. But it must have been the mathematician in me, picking up on patterns. They seemed familiar, which was weird. Just as I was
really
paying attention, the numbers disappeared and I didn't catch the last three. Something came up instead about
oil futures, whatever they are. I tried to put it out of my mind. It always seems to happen with lotto numbers. When they come up, they appear an obvious winning combination. 12, 18, 37, 38, 39, 45.
Of course. What else could they be?
But I couldn't rid myself of a nagging thought.

‘Gutless?' I said, interrupting him in full flow.

‘What?'

‘Are you on the internet?'

‘Duh, dude. It's an online game.'

‘Okay. Could you check the lotto numbers for me, please?' I could have used my phone but it's pre-paid and I was low on credit.

Gutless took his eyes away from the screen and gave me an incredulous look.

‘I'm in the middle of a death match, man. Can't it wait?'

‘I guess,' I said. ‘How long?'

‘Well, shit . . .' His screen exploded with flashes of light and the sound of panicked voices dribbled from one headphone earpiece. Gutless turned back to his computer and the barrel of a machine gun loomed up in the screen's foreground. I waited while he did whatever needed to be done. This appeared to involve crawling through a realistic swamp, bursts of gunfire, considerable swearing and even more smoke. At one stage, the machine gun dipped out of sight and a hand grenade appeared briefly. A flash of light and an explosion followed. It was incredibly loud and I was getting only half the sound effects. God knows how
Gutless's ears were dealing with the strain, but I reckoned he'd be stone deaf by the age of thirty.