Dalton glanced quickly at his phone—180 spins. And a good spread on table bias. He continued to receive small gains, and now amassed ten thousand over the house. Chump change for most people. Enough for a month’s rent. But he was there more for the validation than the money. That his system worked. That he was smarter than the median American. It wasn’t magic, it couldn’t predict the future, all it could do was change a one in thirty-seven odds into maybe a one in thirty-three. Payout on a single number was 1:35. He only needed a slight edge; he didn’t feel the need to win them all.

For once, Dalton could play it cool. The heavy-set man placed big bets on the first third. His big finger tapped his stack of chips. “I feel good about this.”

Dalton’s system alerted him to the first third. He placed his own bet with the man. Making it look like he was joining the madness of the crowds. Another patron joined them, putting $5,0000 down on the 1-2-4-5 corner.

The ball spun and rolled its metallic melody across the wheel.

Dalton gulped.

The ball seated in the five. More winning!

“A’right!” Hooted the heavy-set man. Dalton saw he was sloppily dressed and missing a tooth.

The other gambler took their winnings. “I’m good for now. C-ya fellas,” and left.

Dalton and the large man nodded back and kept on gambling. More bettors came and went, but with each departing patron, the Asian woman moved one person closer to Dalton. To compensate, Dalton moved a space closer to the heavy-set man who anchored the seat closest to the wheel.

She was dressed in black, a blouse that was cut ending well above her bust, but still v-necked. Her shoulders showed. Physically, she was not too tall, but not too short. Attractive, but approachable. A median woman. She’d never elicit a ‘what’s she doing with him,’ in the gossip circles.

The heat from the constantly opening automating sliding doors bothered Dalton as his stress level increased. He tried to concentrate on his bets.

“Hot out,” the Asian lady said.

“Yup. Still better than down South.” Dalton said, throwing a sideways look at her.

“Oh, are you from there?” She asked.

“Yeah, I went to grad school back East—” he cut the conversation off by exaggerating his focus on the table and making bets. Maybe he had let out too much information about himself. Dalton tried to observe her without making it obvious he was doing so, but subtle social acts were impossible for him, especially while trying to make money.

Nothing about her said ‘Chinese Spy,’ but that’s exactly what a spy would look like, he thought. So average that no one would notice!

They placed more bets. Now the table had dwindled to four people. Dalton was next to the heavy shabby man, who gave off a waft of summer sweat mixed with Nevada sand. Next to him, a tanned retiree nursed her dwindling stack of chips. Then the presumptive-Chinese-spy.

The silver ball rolled again.

Before any small-talk engaged, a server stepped up and asked, “Can I get anyone a drink?”

Dalton looked at the server and asked for water. The heavy-set-sloppy man did the same.

“I’ll take a whiskey.” The Asian lady said. “And can I have one of those giant ice balls in it?”

A few more rolls and the retired lady seemed to notice his successes. The man next to him did too and bet with him. The Asian lady peppered him with small-talk. “So, what did you do for grad school?”

“Just something mundane.”

“I’m in a humble field myself.” The Asian woman said in a tone that was friendly. Not trying to hit on him, but clearly interested in more than gambling.

Dalton sweated. Not enough to be seen in his pits, but just to collect in the undershirt. He looked around the aisles for the server. God, I hope this place splurges for ice.” He thought.

“Here, let me change places, so you and this nice man can talk.” The retiree said, shed two-fisted her remaining chips and moved over.

Dalton’s eyes went wide. No Grandma! He lamented. But the ladies swapped positions.

As he leaned over to place more bets, the Asian lady came over and bumped into his thigh. Dalton checked to make sure his phone was still secure.

Drinks came back and instead Dalton took the water that was handed to him, passed it over to the heavy-set man, then took the second one from the serving tray. Then he passed $50 to the server, which wasn’t much, but was more than he gave the homeless man.

Ms. Asian Lady clinked her ice sphere against the glass. “I love these giant ice-cubes.” She said, “It’s almost like…”

Dalton did not notice the incongruence between the ‘cube’ and the ‘sphere.’ What she said next made him freeze.

“... Like a giant ice moon out in the solar system.”

A chip fell out of Dalton’s hands. He left the bets sit odd on thirty-six, an unlikely number. That was too weird, he thought. Too on the nose.

“Y’all hear about that mission to Jupiter? Landing on that ice moon.” She took a sip. “I’d love to meet someone involved in that project.” She said, sounding genuine.

Holy Shit. She’s a Chinese spy for sure. Dalton thought. He said and gave the woman a full glance. “Uh—yeah. I’ve s-seen that on the, uh, news.”“Fascinating right? That they could land something on Europa. I’d love to know more about the project.“

The sultry night had now aged like french fries in a doggie bag—never to be crisp again; it could only be soggy and not worth the calories. It was time to go.

“Well, I’m almost done,” the heavy-set man said. It came out like ‘dun’ between the man’s cigar still on his lips. Dalton’s steady gain of chips had not escaped that man’s attention, nor that Dalton’s first bet on the top middle seemed to be his most confident.

Dalton nodded back. Time to split, then made a two more bets as chaff to confuse the casino’s radar. Give a little back, so it wasn’t too far up. He took his attention away from the Asian woman and placed a few thousand on a split between 15 and 18, and ten thousand on 31. The heavy-set man put his remaining money on the same numbers.

Dalton narrowed his eyes as he shot a quick glance at the man. What’s he trying to pull? He thought. He continued to tap on the board until deciding that he didn’t want to attract any more attention. “Yeah, this is my last round also… part’na.”

One other person at the table, the retired grandma, threw down the last of her chips on 31 as well. “I want to see one more.”

Dalton held his breath, but left his mouth open before backing off. The audacity of these plebes. But he composed himself and sent his gaze back to the suspected spy. She made eye contact, smiled, but Dalton broke it off immediately. I need to leave.

The dealer spun the wheel and launched the ball. Dalton couldn’t wait to hear the plunk. The sound of his exit bell: the dink, dink, thunk, of a settled ball.

“No more bets,” the dealer said.

Only a few more orbits. Dalton was desperately hoping that none of his selected numbers hit on this last roll. He wanted to leave before the roll resolved, but he couldn’t. He had to know how the outcome. You can’t leave the bet on the table, but he didn’t want to win. The chances are astronomically low; he tried to calm himself down.

The ball’s speed lessened as it traveled over the high-gloss wheel.

It fell, hit a fret, bounced at an odd angle and went over into the center of the board and rolled almost across a quarter of the wheel.

It rolled back down towards 31 and 18.

Dalton bit his lip. Miss! He almost shouted.

With a small bounce and a ding, the ball settled.

“Thirty-one.”

Shouts erupted from the other betters. Even the stone-faced dealer was excited for them.

“Hot-dawg!” the heavy man said.

“I won!” shouted the older woman. Both the winners tipped the dealer well.

At first, Dalton was furious that the other two had won so big off of his system of analysis. He snatched his chips and walked towards the cashier. $350,000. He was way above beating the house. That could buy a cheap car clean-up—no lease.“Allright! Shall we visit the bar? First round on me.” The Asian woman said.

“No thanks,” Dalton said. He suppressed the happy joy of a greedy man hitting his numbers and aimed at the cashier. He kept looking back to see where the Asian lady was, but he couldn’t locate her. She split during the last roll. Odd, maybe I was just stereotyping.

He checked his time on his phone: 1 AM. Time to leave. Below the time, there were dozens of notifications from his bias system. He cleared those out, but saw another notification. The bubble showed the familiar icon from GitHub. It was from this afternoon, not long after he left.

Huh? He thought, trying to remember the afternoon. He walked another step, then froze. The spurious code to generate that fraudulent data had been pushed. It sat waiting to be picked up the next time someone rebuilt the AI. Had he actually pressed the button or merely imagined he did?

How?Cold sweats came over him, and his hand shook. He started rushing to the door. In his mind imagined his needy cat sleeping on his keyboard, or perhaps some tremor knocked drywall from his aging apartment.

I need to fix this now. He walked like he believed it without cashing out his chips. He made a quick B-Line at the automatic door, ignoring all others around him, especially the clean-cut older man in a nice suit with a radio.

Dalton sweated more. What if they approve the code? They’d be too stupid to see the joke. He calmed himself down. None of this is fatal to the mission; the AI would have needed to re-compile the AI, and the delta transmitted to a spacecraft at Jupiter. That would require several steps to go right (or wrong). Even if his new data might endanger the mission, he could explain it away as experimental adversarial data that was only meant to be pushed to an alternate deep neural network they had on Earth. And this was just a push, his branch wasn’t merged into the production. Still, he needed to revert it.

He stopped just short of the door, as he realized he could do it on his phone. All it would take is a sign-in and revert his commit.

He pressed the icon with his index find and popped open up the application. It was logged-out after a previous software update (of course). His fingers mashed out the password, and he pressed .

WHY NOW?

He took a deep breath and cussed at the poorly sized on-screen keyboard that provided zero haptic feedback. His fat finger must have hit the wrong button. As he was typing the password, he heard someone behind him speak.

“Excuse me sir, please come with me.” The man said with a low voice.

At first, Dalton was severely annoyed. I have science to sort out man! When he turned around, there appeared to him a short, well-dressed man and two other members of casino security who were not small men.

There he was, a multi-hundo-thousandaire in chips, a well-used Players Club Casino Card, and code wouldn’t revert. Dalton didn’t even consider running. They could taze him, or even his car. All he wanted to do was log in and revert the changes. Two more minutes max!

“We just want a word with you. That’s all.” said the older and smaller man. Dalton felt the need to look at the gentleman’s gilded name badge: Carl. He might need it. Maybe he could talk his way out of here. The two goons flanking Carl didn’t have name tags.

“Okay Carl. Um, can I do something real quick on my phone?”

One goon slipped behind Dalton and easily yanked it away as Dalton’s attention was on Carl. The phone quickly passed out of sight.

“Give me that!”

“Please come with us. Don’t worry, you’ll get that back shortly.” Carl said.

There were few patrons around to even make a scene for. Perhaps if he pulled some indignant how-dare-you act, they’d let him go. But D quickly realized most of the gamblers wouldn’t even look up from their machines. Heck, a few of the clientele might even try to stop Dalton from running for a simple meal voucher or free nights’ stay at the Super 888.

“Fine.” He followed Carl with two large men standing very close to him as he walked to a back room.

The office enclosure was right off of a simple lunch area. It had a few old metal chairs and plastic tables. A yellow grime covered the edge of the door where many people had touched it over the years. It smelled of dust, sweat, and spilt soda. The opposite side of the wall had two other doors, neither of which looked like building exits.

“You got pretty lucky tonight.” Carl said.

Dalton squinted his eyes and crossed his arms. “You could say that.” Chips clinked in his pockets as he moved, but he was unperturbed. After all, he worked for a trillionaire.

Carl gave a huff and shot a quick glance at his underlings. “I’m going to make it abundantly clear for you. Don’t come back here again,” he said. The way he pronounced abundantly like ‘a-bundt-lee’ grated on Dalton’s nerves.

“I’m a scientist, I get it. You don’t have to make it ‘a-bundt-lee’ clear.” Dalton replied.

Carl was not amused. “Apparently I do.”

A small wand emerged from somewhere under the table. He quickly rapped the back of Dalton’s hand. A small electric shock jolted Dalton out of his chair.

“Ow! You two-bit—” Dalton stopped himself.

“Do not come back here. Get it?”

“Alright I’m going.” Dalton shot out indignantly. “But you can’t treat me this way. Do you know who I work for?”

“Boys, escort him out the back entrance.”

The two men came in and took him by the elbows.

They walked through a gray hallway made of cinder blocks on one side and cheap drywall over thin metal studs on another. Silver conduit descended from the ceiling at sporadic intervals into two-gang outlets, one for power and the other for data.

They walked behind Dalton and occasionally pushed him towards a set of double doors, the kind that might usually be fire exits, but had no markings on them.

Dalton opened the door, expecting to be set free. Instead, he saw a white Ford Transit van with the side door left open. He froze, sensing the problem with the situation, but the driver had expertly parked, and the van was precisely as far away as needed to present any escape from the opened double doors. Carl walked behind them with his stun wand. From the van, another big guy reached for him and dragged him in as the two behind threw Dalton into the van.

“What is the meaning of this?” Dalton asked. “I work for one of the Trillionaires. Drop me off at my car this instant!”

“Buddy. We all work for the Trillionaires.” said one goon with a smile and the door closed.

They held him down and ignored any of his questions. He sat in the middle on a sort of 2/3rds seat, the kind that had two seat belts, and allowed people to get into the back row easily. One tough guy was next to him, blocking the door, while the other two sat right behind him. Each had a hand on him. The van itself was in good shape. No holes in the upholstery nor loose plastic bits of detailing rattling on the roads. Even the air-conditioning was working on this hot Nevada night. It had already cooled down considerably.

Dalton thought about what might happen. If they didn’t kill him, he could revert his code. But what if they were going to kill me? But he pushed away that thought and assumed the mission could fail, regardless. It gave him the slightest satisfaction. They could kill him, but he would still be right. And that was what mattered… dead, but technically correct.

But did that really matter anymore? No, it didn’t. He suppressed thoughts of death no more, and Dalton went white.

A sudden hint of regret went through him. He had not even called his family for three weeks. The way he treated people transactionally, held them at arm’s length.

They drove him out of town and up a dirt road. Dalton could hear gravel pinging as they struck the bottom of the undercarriage. With little fanfare, they opened the doors and pushed him out.

For a moment, he was satisfied to be free, albeit in such a mundane location. There was nothing malicious about this area, just an old dirt road with little else.

“Get lost pal! And don’t come back to The Lucky Lady.”

Dalton forgot his previous terror, or relief at being let go. He summed up a fool’s courage and yelled out, “You can’t leave me out here! I work for an oligarch! I’m a scientist! You’re in big trouble.”

The largest of the squad, being the three in the back and the driver, whom he never got a good look at. Walked out and struck Dalton in the stomach. Dalton let out a moan and doubled over.

“I’ll give ya a nickel’s worth of free advice: No one cares how much you know, only who you can move. I’m paid to move people like you.” The muscular man got back into the van.

“Oh, and your ex-girlfriend’s real suspicious. Wanted to look at your phone and all for a minute.” The puncher said.

“Here’s another' tip: look around instead of leaving ya nose on the phone.” The other said before breaking the phone nearly in half and throwing it at Dalton.

They drove off quickly, kicking up gravel and dust on departure.

“My girlfriend?”The Asian woman! Did she push code under my account somehow? Did she clone my phone?

Dalton picked up his damaged phone. Maybe he could still revert the changes in GitHub if a small area of pixels was clear.

It was gloss-black dead.

Dalton saw the red of the van’s rear lights as it hurtled downhill, breaking repeatedly to bleed off the speed it was gaining on the downhill route. Humbled again by his present impotence, he walked downhill. At least they dropped me off at the top.

Nothing around but scrub trees and old road around.

His code was still committed, and lurked in the cloud waiting to be merged. He still had his money, but he couldn’t buy any water or cloud internet access. A trillionaire would be in the same situation. Nature doesn’t care about money, or pride.

Off in the distance, city lights were glowing, and another glow from the highway. Luckily, it was nighttime. He wouldn’t fry, not yet anyway.

And the code wouldn’t be compiled.