Random stories

"I’m not kidding!” Gabe said as he clicked the next enemy on the screen. “Watch!”

Tina leaned in to see the screen better. Sure enough, the glossy golden glow of a legendary drop appeared with a chirp. Gabe moved to attack another.

“What are you doing? Pick it up!” Tina smacked his shoulder. “Those shield emblems are worth almost a billion coins in this MMO. That’s a thousand real-world dollars you’re leaving on the ground, Gabe.”

“Doesn’t matter, I have a hundred of them already.” Gabe’s character finished off the next enemy and, somehow, another 1 in 128,000 drop rate emblem appeared.

“So, how are you cheating?” Tina asked.

“I’m not, at least not really,” Gabe logged out, leaving both of the items on the ground for anyone to grab. “I figured it out when I read up on how the drops work. Each monster has its droplist populate a number field from 1 to 2,147,483,647, with the rare drops taking up less spots further to the end. Then, a random number generator rolls each time you kill a creature in the game to assign a drop. I just focus on the number 2,147,483,647 right before I kill one and wammo, I always get the rarest drop.”

“Gabe, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you thinking something make any difference?”

“No clue, but it does. It works with other stuff too. If it's supposed to be random, I can kind of pick the outcome. Dice rolls, coin flips, loads of computer stuff.”

“Lottery numbers?” Tina asked with a raised eyebrow. She had logged into the game on her phone and was trying to get her character to the drops Gabe had left before they despawned.

“Haven’t tried it but yeah, probably.”

\*\*\*

“Holy shit,” Tina said. The ticket was sweaty in her hands.

“I can’t believe this folks!” the man on the screen said as the fourth ball popped into place. “The first four numbers are 01, 02, 03, and 04. Can we get 05?”

Gabe watched the TV, tilting his head as he watched the balls bounce in the cage. Another rolled into the spot. “69! I was worried for a second there,” the announcer said. “Guess we-”

Tina turned down the sound. The ticket they had bought earlier read 01 02 03 04 69. They had just won the jackpot, some 200 million.

“Gabe…” she said, not able to look away.

He shrugged, seeming to not understand the gravity of the situation. “Thought it would work.”

There was a loud knock at the door. Tina floated to the door, giddy now. She opened to reveal a tall man with a grave face and a revolver pointed at hers. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Tina said, raising her hands and dropping the ticket. The breeze from outside sent it rolling across the floor. The man stepped on it as he made his way inside.

“Wherever you are kid, I got a gun on the girl,” the man yelled into the house. “Five in the chamber, you hear it?” He spun the revolver then put it against Tina’s head.

“Please, sir, if you want the ticket we-”

He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“I’ll burn you out, kid!” he said, spinning the chamber again. He clicked it against her head again.

“Who are you?” Gabe asked from the doorway to his room. “Let her go.”

The man spun the chamber again, pointing it at Gabe this time. Another click as Tina scrambled to her phone, dead of course. “Boy, you’ve got a lot in the tank. They’ll be glad to have you.” Thin ribbons of metal began to float behind the man's head in a circle.

Gabe darted for the door and the man caught him in a chokehold. “You things aren’t so scary when you’re young. Let’s get you wrapped up.” He pulled out zip ties and began binding Gabe’s legs.

The home phone rang. Tina hadn’t noticed there even was one.

She pressed the receiver to her face. “We need help. There’s a man with a gun. He’s trying to kidnap Gabe.”

“Is there a banana in the kitchen?” A calm woman’s voice answered.

“What, no ,listen. I’m going to hang up and call the police if you don’t help us!” Tina yelled into the receiver.

The man worked silently as Gabe struggled, paying Tina no mind.

“You wanna help Gabe, help me help you,” the woman said casually. “Is there a banana in the kitchen?”

“Yes, okay, now how does that help?”

“Great, we’ll meet after in the forest of one tree. Put me on speakerphone please.” Tina debated hanging up but clicked the speaker button.

“0.0117% of naturally occurring potassium is the unstable isotope potassium-40,” the phone blared. The man did look up now. “This isotope decays with a half-life of about 1.25 billion years, 4 times 10 to the 16 seconds, and therefore the radioactivity of natural potassium is about 31 becquerel/gram, meaning that, in one gram of the element, about 31 atoms will decay every second, unless something very statistically unlikely occurs.”

Tina saw a flash of white light before the fireball erupting from the kitchen sent her flying into the yard. Her hearing slowly returned with high-pitched ringing. Gabe was shouting something from his own spot in the yard. Where the front room of the house had been was only a smoking crater. The man lay further on in the street, not moving. The ticket was still stuck to his shoe.

“Tina!” Gabe yelled. “Help me out of this!” He was struggling to roll over and away from a piece of wood burning near his bound legs.

“Gabe, did you do that?” she kicked the wood away then used her pocket knife to begin sawing the plastic.

“I think so,” he said. “The lady on the phone. I used the numbers she said. I have to know the number first, I think. Who was she?”

“Dunno, but she said we’d meet after. The forest of one tree mean anything to you?” Tina said. As she watched, the man in the road began to stand slowly, the ribbons spinning behind him were thicker now, more like knives.

“Nope,” Gabe said. Hanging from the ruins of the house was a bunch of bananas, only one blown out from the bottom. “Get behind me while we figure it out.”

Check out more of my stuff at /r/surinical

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/yx1czx/wp_you_can_manipulate_random_numbers_a_century/iwo0cwy/

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Submitted by Surinical on Wed, Nov 16, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You can manipulate random numbers. A century ago, this would have been a joke or a party trick at best. In a world where all modern technology is secured by random numbers, you are the most dangerous super-human on the planet.