Author: Robert Gilchrist

It only takes a millisecond to get caught.

The match is about to start. There’s a line of people two dozen deep behind me. I type away on the screen in front of me as perturbed patrons bark at me to hurry up.

“COME ON!” on drunk louse screams. “After kickoff the odds change!” More grumbling. I wave absently at him as I focus.

This kind of thing used to be easier. When I was a kid, you could make a bet right from your phone on nearly any game. But that was four market crashes and countless point shaving scandals (most involving athletes in said games) ago. Now the Truth Teller AI monitors all bets being made from designated kiosks – you so much as breathe on it wrong and it’ll flag you as a cheater.

My headache pounds as I enter my parlay. The odds are long, but something in my gut tells me it’s right. It has to be. If not, Boss Aldrich will kill me.

It came to me in a dream, weirdly enough. Guess I’ve been listening to one too many mind-pods about the I.F.L. championship. When the boss overheard me talking about it, he gave me a paychip with one million credits on it.

“Can’t lose, right?” he growled. I think I peed a little weighing the implications. I mean, he’s paying for mom’s hospice care. Killing me would be bad, but her on the street…

Calm. Focus. Don’t give the Truth Teller anything to flag.

I finalize the bet and hit submit. I then put my feet on the yellow footprints in front of the machine and look into the camera.

This headache. It isn’t stopping. Pounding away like an electric shock in my temple.

“My GOD, take LONGER,” the drunkard mumbles loudly for everyone to hear. Some people murmur their assent.

I want to snap back – to tell them all to zip it, that if they were so desperate to throw their money away they should have gotten here earlier – but I can’t look away from the lens. It needs to confirm that my bet is legit.

The flashing light of the screen is tough on my migraine – has to be a migraine, I’ve never felt this terrible just from a headache. Nausea sweeps over me.

In between the strobing effect, my eyes ping-ponging between dilation and constriction, I see something. A doctor leaning over me, needle in hand.

“When the procedure’s over, you’ll think you came up with the bet yourself.”

Crap. Their “pharmacological secret sauce” didn’t take.

LIAR. LIAR. LIAR. The screen screams my guilt.

I try to run, but the sportsbook’s security is on me before I have both feet off the footprints. As they pummel me away, securing my wrists behind me with electro-gauntlets, my real memories rush back.

Boss Aldrich summoning me to his office. Telling me about the inside track he had on aspects of the championship. Being whisked to a private operating room – the doctor ready to start, the nurse reminding me of my mother. Electric shocks and injections to rewrite the “first draft” of the memory of the bet.

The courts’ll send me away for a long time – can’t screw with capitalism’s death march. Boss Aldrich’ll probably have me killed before I can grow a five o’clock shadow – a million creds isn’t nothing.

“God DAMMIT!” screams the drunk as he takes his place in front of one of the dozens of screens, “These odds are SHIT!”

Buddy, you’re telling me.