A Precarious Game
Perry sat quietly on a bench, seemingly enjoying the buzzing park on a beautiful afternoon. On the inside, he was fighting for his life in the highest stakes poker game. He had signed up of his own volition, without realizing there was a catch. A catch which could cost him absolutely everything.
The world of cybernetic implants was still relatively new. The science was growing, and the neurological implants were the first to take hold. The belief was cybernetics augmentations for other applications and body parts would be on the way soon enough. The wealthy were the first ones getting in on the ground floor. Speeding up one’s cognitive functioning and connecting the mind to the world for many people seemed a terrifying idea. It wasn’t terrifying enough to stop those who loved being on the forefront of new tech. As a wealthy entrepreneur who ran a very successful company in this very field of cybernetics, Perry was one of the first to get the implant after all the testing had been completed. With the success of the company, the ability to resolve things quickly with the implant, and delegation to his responsible and capable workforce, he found himself with a lot of time on his hands.
He’d begun to take regular long leisurely walks in the large popular city park. It was a great way to stay active and enjoy nature, and because he was connected he could always be reached. He essentially had virtually all the same tools he used in his office available in his mind. He had been doing this for months, but slowly become a bit disillusioned. It was partly due to his realization that he had the ability to be doing more with his mind while he was out and about. The implant had unlocked his brain’s ability to do so much more at once. The further he stretched it, the more he was able to do at the same time. Walking and observing the nature around him as well as working on somewhat complex projects in his mind soon had become a bit mundane. The capacity to add more continued to grow. This was expected, but still a somewhat overwhelming sensation to actually experience. He wanted to travel abroad, but due to the newness of the implants, he was advised to stay nearby for at least a year. He agreed it was a good idea at the time, though as he began to increase his capacity with no issues, he wished adventuring abroad was something he could really begin to try. However in light of his early adoption status, he knew it would not be good for business if he began breaking the agreements put in place for health safety just because he was the company’s founder.
He began reading books, or watching movies. Anything to feel like he was less bored and more productive. It was an amazing feeling. It was like having four screens in front of him at the same time and being able to zero in on and focus on all four things fully at the same time. There was no dip in the ability to focus on the world around him or any of the things he was working on. His production was through the roof, and he still had capacity for more. Unlike the past where people thought they were being productive while doing multiple tasks at once, or thinking they could focus on the world around them as well as their phones, Perry was actually fully aware of his surroundings and cognitively just as engaged by the media he consumed as if he was only doing that one thing. The added capacity led to the idea of playing games.
At first it was simple games he introduced. It quickly became more engrossing games with sprawling worlds and narratives. It wasn’t quite enough though. He wanted something more adventurous. He was engaging the real world, working at an incredible rate, and enjoying leisurely hobbies all at once. He wanted to incorporate some higher stakes activity. So he began looking for online poker games. He started slow. Just a little something to see what would happen if he added something like this to what he was already doing. He chuckled at the absurdity of what was happening. Just a man enjoying a sub in the park to the outside world, but internally he was not only focused on the sandwich, he was bird watching and notating what he was observing, working on his highly successful company, working to launch a new one, watching a movie, reading a book, and playing poker. It was small potatoes, but it was for money. He was also winning. Soon enough the stakes felt very low. So he found himself looking for higher stakes tables. This was Perry’s greatest mistake, and, unbeknownst to him, perhaps the first point where he had over extended his newfound mental capacities.
He had searched out a very high stakes game, and found a newer high stakes game. It was very exclusive simply based on the buy in. There was also the fact that this was a game specifically for people with implants. The game allowed for numerous options beyond just currency as ways to wager, which he noticed but didn’t think anything of as the exclusivity sucked him in. He only was planning on playing a few hands of poker and most likely try to move on to something else. He didn’t have a compulsion or penchant for gambling, he just was curious to see what he could load his brain with, and where the load capacity was at. At least that was how he made himself feel better about seeking the thrill and risking a lot of money. After a few prompts, he had created his account.
He played a few hands and was sitting pretty even. Was up for a moment, then lost a hand, but mostly over the hour he had played, the entirety of his gambles were a wash. He noticed the time and realized that he probably should settle into a focus mode and get moving as there was a board meeting that he was supposed to be attending in a couple hours that he needed to be completely prepared for and present in. He went to cash out so he could log off, and was greeted with a prompt.
Would you like to play one more game?
He did in fact want to continue, but responded that he couldn’t and needed to leave.
We have a special game that is just about to start. It is our most sought after game as it is highest stakes, and there is one seat left. Are you sure you wouldn’t want to join one more hand?
Perry thought about it for a moment, was very close to declining but ultimately decided to give a few hands a go. He could play as he walked toward his meeting. He accepted the terms without so much as a glance and was virtually transported to a table game in an extremely elegant room, much like virtual reality. He marveled at how high class it appeared, being no stranger to places for the elite wealthy, he still was surprised at the beautiful details. He approached the table in his mind and waited as the timer counted down the remaining two minutes before the game would begin. He greeted everyone at the table in the chat box, as he started to walk through the park back toward his office.
The timer reached zero and the dealer appeared and a prompt that the game was beginning appeared. The first hand began and nothing out of the ordinary happened. This appeared no different than a typical poker game, albeit higher stakes money was being thrown around. Within a few hands Perry had quickly lost a considerable amount of money. Nothing that would be detrimental long term as most of this would be replenished with his paycheck within a week, but to someone who didn’t sit as well off, this would have been a devastating amount of money.
He knew his time was coming to an end, and was out bet in a hand he knew he was going to lose, but decided to go all in with the money he had left on the table and call a hand. He was surprised when it didn’t say he had gone all in and force him to show his hand. In fact, when it came back around to him, he had the option to call again or raise. Perry, confused at why this game didn’t work like many other poker games he’d played, simply called. The rest of the hand played out, and he lost. What concerned him was that he was dealt the next hand as he lingered to watch the rest of the game as he continued walking through the large park. He quickly folded and began the steps of logging out.
He was presented a summary of what had happened during the game. He quickly reviewed it to find out what happened on the last hand. Perry instantly was enraged as he realized what had happened. He opened a chat within invoice.
“I didn’t agree to this, this is a scam and I will be reaching out to the authorities and my lawyer.”
Can we assist with the billing issues? was the response from the chat.
Perry huffed out a chuckle. “I didn’t in any way shape or form provide shares of my company, or authorize there to be pulling additional anything once I was out of the chips on the table.”
The response came back much more confident and quickly than he had expected. There is nothing wrong that has happened, the billing invoice is correct. You signed the agreements when you sat down at the table. The terms of agreement were very clear that any and all assets, up to and including any cybernetic implants, were viable payments. Did you not review the terms?
“No one reads every little thing like that,” he angrily responded. “I would never have accepted those terms.”
But sir, you did.
“Yes,” he said, knowing he may not have a leg to stand on. He wanted to end this as he had things to get to and couldn’t afford a lengthy argument like this. “I am not relinquishing those shares. I’ll provide you the cash value to cover my lack of awareness, and we can consider the issue resolved.”
I’m afraid that’s not an option. The agreement is a binding legal contract. The shares were selected as you had bypassed the option to select your funding hierarchy. In doing so, the decision of funding was left to us, and those shares were selected.
“I don’t accept that,” he replied angrily. “I want those returned at once and I will be in contact with my lawyers.”
Your lawyers will find no other options to get those back, as this game has been vetted and is legal. The shares will go to the winner of this game, whether that is the house, or one of the other players. The only way to retain them is to win them back or work out an arrangement with the winner after the game.
Perry didn’t know what to do. His rage boiled, but so did his embarrassment. He couldn’t walk into his board room knowing he’d lost fifteen percent of the company someone in a poker game. He would be ruined. He sat down at the next available park bench, and closed out everything else his implant allowed him to focus and zero everything in on the game as he accepted joining the table again. He wished he could turn off his sight and hearing as easily as he stopped everything else in his mind so he could have absolutely no distractions, but that was not something that they had ever wanted to do for safety purposes. So there he sat on a park bench, staring off into space to the casual passerby, while starting the next hand.
The first hand after realizing his company was on the table went better than they had before. He took the hand with two pairs, and pulled back a portion of the company. One of the remaining players was eliminated, which left him with two other players and the dealer. In the moments between the hand, Perry figured out how to lay out a hierarchy so he could leverage money first, so he had a bit more rope with his own cash and could decide what liquid assets to use first should it come to that. The important piece was getting the company shares back, even if he knew it may be a fools errand trying to beat the house. He was going to try.
The next hand didn’t go as well, only having a queen high card. He lost a large chunk of what he had in his savings, and was now having to move assets into cash to keep going. His only luck was one more player losing everything they had on the table and walked away. It left him with one opponent and the dealer to go against. He was sweating profusely, as so much of his life was slipping through his fingers. He thought about walking away before he lost everything. After all, he could still walk away with most of the company, but he knew the board would take everything else away from him if this got out. If that happened, he would be ruined. No one would invest in him ever again. No, he knew he had to press on. Keeping this quiet was the only way he got out of this.
The next hand was dealt, and Perry quickly got out after realizing that there was no way he was going to succeed in the hand. It was a minimal loss, but it added to the total. The opponent however, did not fare as well. They lost everything to the house and logged off, leaving him alone with the house. He was curious if those who had lost had been sucked in the way he was and lost more than they anticipated. Most likely they were a bit more cautious than he had been. However, he had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he had to keep going.
The next few hands played a bit quickly, and not in the way he wanted them to. He kept trying to bluff his way through. The dealing house was not biting. For all he knew, and suspected it to be the case, it was an artificial intelligence that he was trying to beat. He pushed out the idea that he had found himself in a deck stacked against him. It seemed a bit suspicious that he had lasted this long and that the house kept winning. It was too nefarious to fully entertain without distracting himself. Most likely the game was stacked against him, but it didn’t mean he shouldn’t trying to do all he could. He momentarily decided to open a browser in his mind and try to search for something that would help him with percentages. Something that might help him figure out how to stop hemorrhaging money.
You have ten seconds to close that application. Cheating is strictly prohibited. This is your only warning.
“Apologies, it will not happen again,” he said. “So you are monitoring things going on in my brain with my implants? Doesn’t that seem a bit illegal and invasive?”
As stated before, it’s all in the terms of service that you have agreed to.
“Of course. You have a pretty tight grip on everything happening here don’t you?”
Do you not have safeguards implemented to protect your company as much as possible?
The call out stung a bit, though he couldn’t quite tell if it was actually the snipe he took it as. He looked at his watch, only a half hour before the meeting was supposed to start. “Yes, we have protections in place,” he fired back in an annoyed tone and returned to the game.
Within a few more hands he had been depleted of all of his liquid funding. As the minutes had ticked away his panic grew, and with it came bigger risks in hopes of swaying the results. He began putting up things like his secondary home, his jet, and his valuable collection of cards which included a mint first printing of both the 1952 Yankees and a mint first print Japanese run of the Pokemon trading card game. He’d lost all the assets he had in his portfolios, his retirement was in the pile, he’d even emptied the secret offshore accounts. They were all gone. Well, not entirely gone. As long as he was still in the game, it was still technically on the table. However his assets were practically drained.
He put up his other smaller company, in a desperate hope of pulling everything back. He knew he was probably out of time, but there were only a couple more things he could leverage. It was as miserable a hand as he had played since he was the only player left. He looked at what was available still in his portfolio. He only had the remainder of his cybernetics company left. He quickly played the next hand, and nearly crumpled with the horrible hand he pulled with nothing. There was no way to bluff out of it, as he literally had nothing left. He had in the matter of a couple hours literally lost everything but the clothes on his back, and a couple hundred dollars cash he always kept on him. He couldn’t believe it. He sat there silently stunned.
Would you like to play another hand? The intrusion brought him back to the virtual room he’d lost everything in, confused by the prompt.
“What do you mean?” he asked. The venom was gone, he had no one to blame for his situation but himself. “I have put in everything. You can see I’m out of everything.”
There’s still one thing you haven’t leveraged.
He laughed. “I can assure you, I have wiped out everything I had. There is nothing else that I have.”
You are not considering the implant that you have. It is listed in your assets list, and is the only thing you didn’t wager.
“What…what does that mean?” he stuttered.
Exactly what it sounds like. We would gain control of the implant.
“You mean you’d have control of my head? You have to be joking.”
That is precisely what we mean, and it is not at all a joke.
He sat dumbfounded for yet another time on the worst afternoon of his life. “No, that can’t be true. How would that even work?… No that’s not a real thing.”
It is in fact a very real thing. Due to the nature of your connecting to the internet via implant, you have the ability to hand over controls to anyone that is set up to accept it. With this offer, you would gain some of the life back that you had, though you would become an officer of our corporation. You would also lose personal confidentiality, as we would have access to absolutely everything about you. In many ways, you would continue your life the way you were, with our input guiding you. In other ways your life as you know it would be over as you would become less a person, and more of a corporate entity. These are the highest stakes that could happen in a game so it is entirely up to you. Would you like to play another hand?
“And what’s in it for me if I win?” he asked.
It would be a one hand, winner takes all. You would get everything on the table if you win.
He knew the likelihood that he would win was next to impossible. He was more convinced than ever that they had rigged everything, but he had no way to prove it. More than that, he wasn’t entirely sure it was the absolute worst idea. At this rate he had lost everything. No one would ever take him seriously again after this whole embarrassing affair. He would never sniff close to the life he’d had before. No one would finance another business, no one would trust him with anything. He’d be lucky to get any type of job, or approval for housing again. In a very real sense, being a hijacked human drone masquerading in the life he once had didn’t sound all that much worse than what awaited him if he walked away. His mind was made up.
“I accept the terms,” he said as confidently as he could. He wasn’t sure if it was entirely convincing. But as they had always said, fortune favors the bold. “Deal the cards."