Working With Phantoms

Above the Clouds

Madran set her sights on a large collection of slot machines.

"Hey, I bet we can cheat those."

"How? Prithivi can't do anything of the sort."

"Well, Dharma can."

Sheila was silent and walked over to one of the slot machines.

"Hmm... 'Dragon Escape.' Seems pretty fun. Wanna try your luck, doll?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Madran then sat down at the machine and sent Dharma into it.

"Ok, so, how do you make this work? These machines aren't retro by any means, so you can't just like force it to do all 7's."

"That's exactly what I can do. You see, once Dharma is inside of the machine, she can mess with its electricity. She can overload, underload-"

"That isn't a word."

"Whatever! It just works, ok?"

"Sure, sure, I'll take your word for it."

"So, I can control the electrical output of the machine and cause it to display and think it's displaying certain things. Watch this."

Madran then bet all of her points and started the machine, with it predictably giving a jackpot.

"Oh, wow, you're a pretty lucky girl."

"What the hell?! Seriously, have I been blessed or something?"

"Uh, what if any admins notice...?"

"Notice what?"

"Well, what if they see that a machine's acting weirdly?"

Madran, shocked that she didn't think of that, stopped for a moment.

"Well..."

"You didn't think of that, did you?"

"Nope."

"Oh, Madran..."

Sheila audibly sighed as the pair moved around the floor.

"So, you need to be a lot more careful. Like, seriously. You could get us in serious trouble."

"I can always just, like, leave the palace and stuff!"

"Yeah, but that's just as suspicious as you hacking the machines."

"Well, like, I've been loosing more than I have been winning!"

"Ok, I might brand myself as the dumbest person in the group, but yikes, you're a really bad gambler, even when you're cheating. Let me guess, you bet minimal points on ones you know you'll use, and then go all out for the ones you're going to win?"

"Yes, yes, yes, I do all of that."

"You do know how... just... incorrect that looks, right?"

"Well, it doesn't matter! We have enough points to get into VIP now."

"We do?"

"Yes. I got the 4X jackpot, and you have, like, a million-"

"Ok, well, that alone wouldn't get us in, I'm sure of it. I remember that you had somewhere around 10 thousand."

"Well, how much do you have?"

Sheila tallied her fingers for a moment as the pair carried on a normal fake conversation whilst the telepathic one continued.

"I got 90 mil."