Splynx

Author: Majoki

On Splinx, you have to follow the rules if you wanna break the law.

Rule 1: Phasespace is your friend.

Rule 2: In phasespace you have no friends.

Seems simple enough until you try to skirt the laws of thermodynamics and attempt the biggest heist in quantum gambling history. And Splinx, being the mecca of quantum gambling, is the only place to pull that off.

But, Splinx. Right?

Put Schrödinger in the box with his cat, then add Heisenberg and Kolmorogov, and you’d render a pretty good picture of how Splinx works.

Quasiprobability.

That was the problem. That was the opportunity. You never knew until you left Splinx and were light years from that funky phasespaced planet if you’d won or lost. If you were dead or alive.

Or both.

That’s how Mimi Mukta convinced me to go all in with her and rob the Royal Quark. Mimi, a phasespace diva, a quasiprobability savant, a brainiac beauty, hatched a plan to exploit extra-dimensionality and beat the house. Cheat heat death of its thermodynamic due. Grab the elemental bosons by the balls and squeeze them dry. She loves to gamble.

And by gambling Mimi means calculating. As in calculating quasiprobability.

That’s how Mimi determined the seed value, the initial condition, of phasespace. That’s how she was able to quantify life and death to a place value of 42. That’s how she persuaded me to be both dead and alive. To rely on phasespace. To trust her.

Remember the rules about breaking the law on Splinx? Do you see where this is going? Hindsight being a bitch and all that?

But, Splinx. Right?

The planet where nothing can be counted on was exactly why Mimi was so sure about uncertainty. Phasespace is all about position and momentum.

The where of what when.

In phasespace you are able to be both the heads and tails of a coin toss until the energy of that system is spent. And that can be calculated. That’s why a quantum casino like the Royal Quark had the edge. Until Mimi Mukta.

She learned how to fold phasespace—even though there’s not enough energy in the universe to do that. And stodgy thermodynamics delights in reminding us that, regardless of its form, the sum total of energy in the universe has to remain constant.

That didn’t stop Mimi. She just tapped into other universes. Syphoned off dark energy from the metaverse, thereby tilting Splinx’s quasiprobability in her favor.

Only she knew the new odds, and she could use them to rob the Royal Quark blind.

I bet you’d like to know how it turned out. If Mimi beat the house. Or got nabbed. Or betrayed me.

So would I.

Remember my role in this: to be both dead and alive in phasespace. Mimi needed to create a quantum crease to bend phasespace. That was my job. To be on both sides of existence, establishing the seam where only Mimi knew how reality could be neatly folded in her favor.

You see, we weren’t so much breaking the law on Splinx as fooling it.

Just like I was fooling myself. You can’t be both dead and alive. You can’t both love and trust Mimi Mukta.

The odds in any universe with her are not in your favor.

1 Comment

  1. erickrieggmailcom

    I’ve seen other Sci Fi leave the 42 easter egg, but this is probably the only literature to reference Kolmorogov. I can’t help ironically fear there is a low probability that many readers of this story would have the deep knowledge of statistics needed to follow it

Submit a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Random Story :

The Past

365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.

The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.

Flash Fiction

"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."

Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member

Submissions

We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.

Voices of Tomorrow

Voices of Tomorrow is the official podcast of 365tomorrows, with audio versions of many of the stories published here.

If you're interested in recording stories for Voices of Tomorrow, or for any other inquiries, please contact ssmith@365tomorrows.com