Hey everyone, I am a former Wall Street trader and quant researcher. When I was preparing for my own interviews, I have noticed the lack of accurate information and so I will be providing my own perspectives. One common pattern I see is people building their own algorithm by blindly fitting statistical methods such as moving averages onto data.
I have published this elsewhere, but have copy pasted it entirely below for you to read to keep it in the spirit of the sub rules. Edit: Removed link.

What it was like trading on Wall Street

Right out of college, I began my trading career at an electronic hedge fund on Wall Street. Several friends pitched trading to me as being a more disciplined version of wallstreetbets that actually made money. After flopping several initial interviews, I was fortunate to land a job at a top-tier firm of the likes of Jane Street, SIG, Optiver and IMC.
On my first day, I was instantly hooked.
My primary role there was to be a market maker. To explain this, imagine that you are a merchant. Suppose you wanted to purchase a commodity such as an apple. You would need to locate an apple seller and agree on a fair price. Market makers are the middle-men that cuts out this interaction by being always willing to buy or sell at a given price.
In finance lingo, this is called providing liquidity to financial exchanges. At any given moment, you should be confident to liquidate your position for cash. To give a sense of scale, tens of trillions in dollars are processed through these firms every year.
My time trading has been one of the most transformative periods of my life. It not only taught me a lot of technical knowledge, but it also moulded me to be a self-starter, independent thinker, and hard worker. I strongly recommend anyone that loves problem solving to give trading a shot. You do not need a mathematics or finance background to get in.
The trading culture is analogous to professional sports. It is a zero sum game where there is a clear defined winner and loser — you either make or lose money. This means that both your compensation and job security is highly dependent on your performance. For those that are curious, the rough distribution of a trader’s compensation based on performance is a tenth of the annual NBA salary.
There is a mystique about trading in popular media due to the abstraction of complicated quantitative models. I will shed light on some of the fundamental principles rooted in all trading strategies, and how they might apply to you.

Arbitrage

One way traders make money is through an arbitrage or a risk free trade. Suppose you could buy an apple from Sam for $1, and then sell an apple to Megan at $3. A rational person would orchestrate both legs of these trades to gain $2 risk free.
Arbitrages are not only found in financial markets. The popular e-commerce strategy of drop-shipping is a form of arbitrage. Suppose you find a tripod selling on AliExpress at $10. You could list the same tripod on Amazon for $20. If someone buys from you, then you could simply purchase the tripod off AliExpress and take home a neat $10 profit.
The same could be applied to garage sales. If you find a baseball card for $2 that has a last sold price on EBay for $100, you have the potential to make $98. Of course this is not a perfect arbitrage as you face the risk of finding a buyer, but the upside makes this worthwhile.

Positive expected value bets

Another way traders make money is similar to the way a casino stacks the odds in their favour. Imagine you flip a fair coin. If it lands on heads you win $3, and if it lands on tails you lose $1. If you flip the coin only once, you may be unlucky and lose the dollar. However in the long run, you are expected to make a positive profit of $1 per coin flip. This is referred to as a positive expected value bet. Over the span of millions of transactions, you are almost guaranteed to make a profit.
This exact principle is why you should never gamble in casino games such as roulette. These games are all negative expected value bets, which guarantees you to lose money over the long run. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as poker or card counting in black jack.
The next time you walk into a casino, make a mental note to observe the ways it is designed to keep you there for as long as possible. Note the lack of windows and the maze like configurations. Even the free drinks and the cheap accommodation are all a farce to keep you there.

Relative Pricing

Relative pricing is a great strategy to use when there are two products that have clear causal relationships. Let us consider an apple and a carton of apple juice. Suppose there have a causal relationship where the carton is always $9 more expensive than the apple. The apple and the carton is currently trading at $1 and $10 respectively.
If the price of the apple goes up to $2, the price is not immediately reflected on the carton. There will always be a time lag. It is also important to note that there is no way we can determine if the apple is trading at fair value or if its overpriced. So how do we take advantage of this situation?
If we buy the carton for $10 and sell the apple for $2, we have essentially bought the ‘spread’ for $8. The spread is fairly valued at $9 due to the causal relationship, meaning we have made $1. The reason high frequency trading firms focus so much on latency in the nanoseconds is to be the first to scoop up these relative mispricing.
This is the backbone for delta one strategies. Common pairs that are traded against each other includes ETFs and their inverse counterpart, a particular stock against an ETF that contains the stock, or synthetic option structures.

Correlations

Correlations are mutual connections between two things. When they trend in the same direction they are said to have a positive correlation, and the vice versa is true for negative correlations. A popular example of positive correlation is the number of shark attacks with the number of ice-cream sales. It is important to note that shark attacks do not cause ice-cream sales.
Often times there are no intuitive reason for certain correlations, but they still work. The legendary Renaissance Technologies sifted through petabytes of historical data to find profitable signals. For instance, good morning weather in a city tended to predict an upward movement in its stock exchange. One could theoretically buy stock on the opening and sell at noon to make a profit.
One important piece of advice is to disregard any retail trader selling a course to you, claiming that they have a system. These are all scams. At best, these are bottom of the mill signals that are hardly profitable after transaction costs. It is also unlikely that you have the system latency, trading experience or research capabilities to do this on your own. It is possible, but very difficult.

Mean reversions

Another common strategy traders rely on is mean reversion trends. In the options world the primary focus is purchasing volatility when it is cheap compared to historical values, and vice versa. Buying options is essentially synonymous with buying volatility. Of course, it is not as simple as this so don’t go punting your savings on Robinhood using this strategy.
For most people, the most applicable mean reversion trend is interest rates. These tend to fluctuate up and down depending on if the central banks want to stimulate saving or spending. As global interest rates are next to zero or negative, it may be a good idea to lock in this low rate for your mortgages. Again, consult with a financial advisor before you do anything.

About 80 % done ...

How I got here..

A part of you wants to share, win, succeed, gain and what not . Other part wants to be at peace, content or may be even lost .. why? What happens and how the journey looks like? And most importantly, who wins? These questions have intrigued me for decades but they are getting very troublesome in last four five years. Here is a gist of my discoveries on this quest ..

First clue from SMB Gita

Krishna tells Arjuna that I will share the secrets with you coz you have Anuraga in your heart. That means Anuraga is a pre-requisite for the communication. The person who holds the key to all your locks, your navigator, needs you to have something in your heart even to start the conversation. The obvious question than was what is Anuraga? . Unfortunately Krishna is silent on this in Gita or I couldn't find it yet.
Nevertheless, my search, led me to another aspect of Krishna that is solely focused on defining and elaborating Anuraga.

Second Clue from epic Radha Krishna

Turns out Anuraga is just the first step of a broader concept Prema. In the story of Radha Krishn, Krishna teaches Prema to Radha. Prema is many times confused with Love. I don't want to use the word, coz "Love", based on situations and cultures, has many meanings to it. Why don't we just stick with Prema for now and build a new concept..

Longing - An eternal pull

The first aspect of Prema is intense longing ... to meet. To see and to listen. Longing begins with Anuraga and culminates into a deep inwards pull. In a way, this is understandable as the gravity . You can feel it but you can't really hold it or see it or even visualize. People explain gravity through space-time four dimensional models. But the truth is, its beyond our senses. There is an unknown pull. It just exists as part of our fabric, our being. Everything, everyone feels it. Its a pull towards the core. To a more comfortable lower orbit. Your longing may appear different from mine. That is coz you are a different system. Just like on earth we feel being pulled towards the center of the earth while at moon we feel same towards the center of the moon. Though everything is connected in a broader scheme, yet there are local configurations that may overpower the effect of global system(s). Though longing is universal, you may choose to ignore it. For example, in physical terms, we are here on earth, always feeling the gravitational pull, but we don't care about it. We don't discuss it. It's not in our focus. However, for Prema to shape up, one needs to have a constant vigil of her longing. The appreciation of its beauty is Anuraga. The realization and a focus on your longing is the first step of Prema
One of the key characteristic of longing is there is absence of greed. Means, you are not chasing an outcome, or money or recognition. Its something, you would happily spend time on; invest all your resources and still feel blessed even if there is no return. This is different from worldly desires that always come with expectations. You just want to lose yourself in your longing.
It's immaterial if the longing is for Krishna or the Soul. If you long for a specific thing or a specific person, the journey to the door has already begun. In fact your longing is pre-decided based on the local sub-system you are in. You just can't long for any thing else. And it doesn't really matter. The idea that you must long for God (or your Soul) is something that has been popularized by the religious dogma. May be it was easier to explain to the people by using an arbitrary concept or there were other reservations to abstain truth or people didn't have the tools to explain or whatever. You can not long for God if God is not the one pulling you towards him. If it does, probably you are in God's subsystem. Or God (whatever it means) could be the center of global system. I am not too sure. What appears to me is plain and simple. There exists something that always is in your dreams. You may not have realized the existence of this pull yet but it is there and its certain eventually you will know.

The three fundamental bugs

The second aspect of Prema is to actively seek exclusion of three fundamental bugs - Fear, Anger and Jealousy. Everyone feels longing . Its universal. But very few are liberated from the three bugs Or even try to overcome these. Most of the epic stories, are the tales of Fear, Anger or Jealousy. In Radha Krishna too, Krishna helps Radha navigate, experience and overcome these three bugs experientially; commonly known as Ras Leela.
As said earlier, it doesn't really matter what you are longing for. What determines your success (beyond the door) is how you negotiate the obstacles on the path to become one with your core calling. The path is not easy and it is experiential. The actions you take on this path are called Karma. Karma that is done under influence of the three bugs are the cause of the Bondage(or Manifestation ..cuz Manifestation is nothing but bondage). The actions that are done to eradicate the three bugs are called Nishkam Karma(actions that dilute the manifestation). Rest everything is waste of time. Gita calls it vyartha cheshta ..the wasted effort.

Two paths leading to the same door.

The path of Prema, also known as Bhakti Yoga, is the preferred path to self discovery. The other path being the Gyaan Yoga which ultimately leads to the same door. Only the beginning is different. Prema begins with intense longing where as Gyaan Yoga begins with extreme quest for knowledge. They both ultimately bring you to the same door. The door for inwards journey. Self discovery. The journey in itself is called Nishkam Marga. As in story of Radha Krishna, this journey is experiential. Which means, if you fear climbing the heights, you got to overcome your fear by standing on the rooftop. Same with your anger and jealously. You can't just read the book and feel free.

It might sound counter intuitive to say your longing can be any thing. Let's do a little a thought experiment. Lets say you are in such a subsystem that you long to consume alcohol. How can fulfilling your addiction be a good thing? Now imagine you drink making sure you are free from three bugs. That is you have no fear of losing your drink. Means, you are happy to give it up to someone more thirsty. You have no anger if you don't get your evening fix and you don't envy people with a basement full of wine cellars. What do you think? Are you not a righteous person? Are you any less than a devotee of Gods? Bottom line - its not important what you long for. The important thing is how you approach it. Even more important is acceptance and clear visual of your longing at all times coz that is the guiding force that keeps your feet glued to your path.

A word on desires - Its easy to confuse desires with longing. Desires are random. They come and go. Today its finding a new job. Tomorrow its promotion and then a career. Likewise a new car. A new smart phone while older one is working fine. Shoes, clothes, homes, gardens ... you name it. There are thousands of them and one more. They are temporary and transient. You may buy a new car but there is no guarantee of elation. Your expectations can change in a blink of an eye. For example you chose a Red Tesla. And as soon as you took to the driving seat and greener one passed by. Now you are repenting the choice of color. It actually happened to me with my silver Prius. I still wish I had gone for Silver Gray. Longing is beyond elation. Its something you want to lose in. Imagine the world as a large roulette table. You bet your time (only currency)for a simple doze of elation. The ball can slot into any number. You may win a jackpot or lose or just retain your hand. There is no Karma here. You act in line with a temporary chase. You build things driven by random drives. Quick and dirty. And you hope for good luck. All chance and over a longer run, you have a fair share of wins and losses, but time is something you always lose. This is what Gita calls out loud as Vyartha Cheshta.. the wasted effort. Most people waste their time this way, gambling their time, without even realizing their longing. Just as we go around the earth without knowing the gravity. We continue to pass our days without even realizing what is holding us on ground. And constantly pulling us in.

Longing vs material success..

Material success is NOT fulfillment of desires. Material success is building or creating an artifact of lasting value. Something that drives a community of admirers. Karma for the followers of path Nishkam Marg are the actions that you take to overcome the three bugs. Imagine you have intense longing for someone or something and you are not supposed to feel fear of loss, anger for not getting what you want or jealousy if they are with others. This is the ultimate fight, the final battle. In a way, it is giving up perception of yourself in favor of meeting with your core. The self perception is nothing but the make up and rise of Bondage. Strengthening the perception of self is material success (not to be confused with random fulfillment of desires). In that, success is opposite of longing. Longing is what pulls you towards your core, one orbit at a time. Success is what pushes you out into a greater and bigger self, one orbit at a time. As such longing is deflationary. Success is inflationary. Thus even for material success, you need core purpose. In pursuit of your purpose, when you act influenced by the bugs aka passion, you get material success. If you act free from bugs, you get everlasting peace and realization of your longing.
However, you have help on this path coz the object of your longing will guide you at every step. Correct your course. On the other hand, Gyaan Yogi will be quite lost once he opens the door. He will need to develop the longing. There is greater probability that he will be lost in outwardly success. Mostly in the shape of recognition of work or an organic build up of a community (of admirers) around. A Nishkam Yogi singularly focuses on his longing. He consciously practices Karma to stay away from three bugs. A daily ritual of understanding your longing and practicing set of activities to keep you away from the bugs or enable your mental immune system to fight them is called Yajna. In a way Yajna is the meditative force to cleanse yourself from the bugs. You repeatedly go over your fears, jealousy and anger and sublimate them into your longing. Also known as Aahuti.

How long? Does the suffering ever ends ...

Krishna tells Radha, you already have longing for me and I for you. I have you always with me coz by divine design I don't attach to these bugs. The moment, you overcome these, I am already in you, with you. Its obviously not possible for us mortals to reach the destination in one shot. There are going to be multiple iteration where bugs take over our minds. The suffering, however, will start receding as soon as we understand the framework and make a concious choice to put on a fight. At least we will stop manifesting more bondage. That in itself is a big take away.

In other words, the physical manifestation of obstacles between you and what you want is the 'bondage to self ' on account of three bugs. Appreciation of self is a two body problem. Means, you must have someone else in order for you to realize, replenish and strengthen your self. To see others and compare yourself with them, you need to be outwardly focused. This means outwards vision, leads to comparison and forces you to chase success. Success comes through artifacts created in pain - songs , books , music - all are expressions of suffering of pleasure. As soon as you start looking inwards, you lose the sense of self because there is nothing else to compare. You now think of your longing and find peace in yourself. This is where there is no influence of bugs. You are above fear , anger and jealousy. Such state is state of bliss. People sometime mistake this state with the word "passion". Passion is when you are creating an artifact to prove something. Passion leads to success. The inward looking state of bliss is not passion. Gita describes this state as Udaseen means someone who is not interested in success. Someone lost in herself.

Back to the story

So what makes you inward looking?
When you long without bugs you are going inwards, to lower orbits. A more and more peaceful state. When your longing is tarnished with bugs and you don't develop tools to actively conquer them you create (and share) real artifacts. These could be poems, paintings or inventions of lasting value. In other words, you accomplish success. A community crops up around you. You become center of a new concious sub-system but you can never be at peace coz the new system you create is not the one you belong to even though its built by you. Gita says that a Yogi must not give in to the community even out of benevolence for this will soon lead to random desires and matrix will engulf you in no time. A Gyan Yogi has more to fear here than someone on the path of Prema. A tree that bears fruits too soon, never grows tall for the people and birds flock around disturbing your inwards journey . Gita thus says that Yogi should keep his journey hidden even from friends and family. Only your guru (if you have one) should know your accomplishments. This is inwards journey. You know your longing. You fight the bugs on daily basis through a well thought out plan. You know you can change the world with your work but you wait quietly, till you are one with the your longing.

When you start looking inwards. You don't want recognition for your work. You don't want community around you . Money is the last thing you look for. For you don't need worldly things coz they don't really enable you to meet your calling. They are just obstacles killing your time. This should, however, not mean that you are less exuberant. The shades of pain are momentary coz you know the truth. And you have already hit upon or working on what you need to do. You will find yourself giving up your addiction. With each small win over your fear you will blossom a new spirit in you. You will know how to shut the door on your jealousy. And you will be ever free from anger. You will bless even those who didn't do right by you for you know that anger hearts you more than anyone else. And lastly, you will win your fears. Things will be easy for you. Your presence will solve the problems. People will cherish your quiet company. Your peace will be everlasting and so will be your joy.

What if I relapse?

On the path of Prema, longing breeds true knowledge. Knowledge, however is not a guarantee of success for the journey is experiential. Thats the reason journey doesn't even start without longing coz bugs start acting only when you start acting on your longing. And thats the reason there are pitfalls. Almost every minute of the day - Anger, fear and jealousy alter your mind. Show you infinite possibilities of doubt. Being steadfast on Prema is the key. It needs to be your way of life. The good news is the work done on this path, never goes wasted or perishes. Even if you lose your way, you can always come back and start exactly where you left.

Knowledge

The world we perceive - see and feel is just a three dimensional interface to placate our senses. The scripture calls it Maya. The movie called it Matrixand now thanks to research by likes of Don Hoffman and Prakash Chandra there is a solid case against our perceived reality. Both scripture and science point to what is already known to the practitioners of Prema and that is we are concious agents in a vast field of conciousness.

The 3D interface

The idea of an interface is to limit the choices. If you are in the program, you can change anything. If you are on command line, you can use the program with very many options. The 2D graphical user interface further limits your choices. Touch and voice interfaces make it almost a straight line experience. Imagine how many more restrictions a developer needs to put in to create a 3D interface that we live in. Any improvement in experience comes with increasing limit on the choices. Success is building new layers of experience. Longing or the inwards journey is removing these layers.
Thus longing can also be thought as something for which there is no choice in material world. Almost impossible to get coz the choice exists at a lower level of experience. Which will force you to let go the current interface and explore a lower layer. You may get an option immediately or you may be forced to go to a further lower level. And there is no end but that is not important coz the goal is not to reach the longing, the goal is to conquer the bugs. As soon as you get rid of them, you are set free. Free is beyond manifestation thus the end of longing. If you keep on digging the interfaces, you will continue to fight the bugs. The proceeds will be beautiful jewels and you will be required to keep them secret. That is the source of consistent pain. The moment you make your artifacts public, you will create a new interface. A better understanding of the world is in fact a new interface. Einstein created a new view of the world.
The things that you can get in current interface are desires. Some are easy , others are hard . The outcomes are random. Thus an equal distribution of elation and sorrow. After a brief moment of turmoil, you may move on to the next desire without ever getting a chance to see and conquer the bugs. What you waste in the process is physical time. If you fight and conquer the bugs by going a layer deeper, desires of current interface become quite meaningless. Thus journey inwards is righteous. Even if you are unable to conquer, you will create artifacts of real success. You may not get peace but you are assured that experience you thus gain is not perishable. Thus time invested on this path is never wasted.

Plausible definition of God

Longing of every one pursuing the path may be different but the actions are pretty much same. That is to eradicate the bugs. Thus we can say the every one has one same goal. The journey , more or less, looks the same. This means someone can create a broad action plan without looking at the object of longing. Kinda a software project template. You may be implementing a web project for e-commerce, or writing a real time maps app, you can always use a preexisting framework with little tweaks. So the framework provisions a broad guideline to get what you want. In this context the framework is kinda God. It gives common ways or working, a set of vocabulary. Over a period of time, following the framework becomes more important coz you know if you followed the rules you will accelerate your journey to destination. I fear when it becomes sacred but for most people it might serve the purpose. Well ..lets just call it God if that helps.

The duality

Old adage - it takes two to tango. Knowledge must manifest to experience. And it must resolve the experience to set itself free. The knowledge is called Pusrusha (not to confuse with male). The experience is called Prakriti or the Maya or the matrix. The matrix comes with set of tools - fear, anger and jealousy to preserve the knowledge into a 3d shape so that the shape could experience the interface. The experience is always source of pain coz it severely limits the choices. It feels like a jail.At some point you want to set yourself free again. You search for the path. That is the eternal quest. The other way being deep longing for something that matrix doesn't expressly provides an option for. Both lead to same door. That is how to handle the fabric of nature. You can't just wish it away. Thus you must act to eradicate the bugs - the tools of nature. That is - you must engage in Karma.

The state of consistent bliss.

The state when you understand the bugs and well equipped with tools to play with nature is the state of peace. It brings exuberance coz now you can play on the waves. You can surf the way you want. You have matrix for you to play without ever indulging in fear, anger or jealousy. Yogi lives for this. Such a Yogi is also called Sthitprgya- one whose knowledge and nature is stable. One who can surf on the waves. The fun of being is this. Its not in being totally lost in matrix and is neither in being totally free. You must play the game but not for win or loss. You play the game coz its meant to be played. This is Ras Leela and this is eternal joy. It automatically lends you exuberace. It allows you to engage without indulging. It is being in Matrix but always at a safe distance. You are able to see both and you are able to see the whole play. Such a vision is called Atmoupamyen Drishti.

The "why" - and the Faith

Its naive to ask for the complete understanding of the design coz inflationary mind always have a why after every answer. If you are expanding in unknown, you will always have curiosity to know what next and expansion can be quite endless. For someone who is peeling his own layers (expanding inwards), the next is always already known. There is no question to be asked. On this path, actions to reach your longing is more important than knowing the reason of your longing. This attitude of trust is called Faith. Not to be confused with religious faith.

Focus on the goal

Getting to a lower obit (journey or expansion inwards) is essentially peeling off a layer of unnecessary sophistication. We are used to graphical user interface. Getting to a command line interface is one action (Karma) of renunciation. Arguably, a command line expert is more knowledgable than a GUI users. Thus renunciation is not reductive. Its in fact expansion inwards. Yes, there are infinitely many layers. But the goal is NOT to un-peel everything either. The moment journey begins and you reach a freedom from three bugs, the peace is yours. You don't need answers. You are looking for eternal peace, joy, bliss or whatever you want to call it. In fact, having no quest is the very definition of peace. This is one reason Gita prefers Prem Yoga over Gyaan Yoga. A Gyaan Yogi needs to unlearn many ways of his working.

Consciousness Field

We don't need any instrument to see conciousness field. There are patterns in our on three dimensional world. If you see any network, the branches of trees, neurons structure in brain, the arteries, social media graph .. you already know how the information flows. When complexity increases, there is a need to preserve or to back up, thats when a branch breaks off (or a fruit shows up), to preserve the entire knowledge base or to start a new network. The new network is exactly same as the parent but over time with interaction with environment (random desires), it takes on slight changes. The environment is nothing but the roulette table. The tree shaped network that we perceive is just a 3d representation of conciousness field by our senses. The actual field is the lines of longing. Effectively you carry the same purpose as your parent knowledge network. Connection is in the symmetry. And it grows more granular as we travel back. Family, to race to mankind to living beings to just one single molecule of origin. But again the knowledge and "why" of the design is unimportant. Knowledge of existence is more important and how to work for the purpose.

Who am I?

Manifestation is nothing but preserving something. Preserving requires a physically bound space ( a limitation of our 3D interface observed by sense organs) . Based on your subnetwork, you can be anything - a leaf of the tree, a branch or a fruit / seed. A branch is a complete codebase and its purpose is to add a feature - could be a leaf or it can split into more branches. A seed is a backup or a fork to start a new network.
Your purpose is to act in accordance with the subsystem also called swabhava and three bugs are there to provide you a physical shape in our 3D world. You wouldn't survive as a separate entity, or in other words - Knowledge will be lost (get unpreserved) if you lose the physical shape. To that extent - anger, fear and jealousy are important to manifest you. But whats the point of physical manifestation if you lost eye on the core calling?
In a way knowing yourself is the common denominator. You could be a seed or a branch or a leaf - you need to know what you are before you take on any additional mission. And that's exactly is the journey inwards. You start with either a quest bugging you with questions of your origin, or you are aware of and have intense longing. Both paths will lead to same gate. The journey henceforth will be remove your focus from the bugs and shift it to yourself. At the same time you need to live to keep the knowledge preserved. Thus you need to indulge in these bugs at your will. That's exactly what Krishna teaches us. His indulgence with Radha takes him into all the bugs but he stays there detached. Sustaining everlasting peace and always involved in his longing such that Radha is only an imaginary construct for him.

Cost of the system

The matrix is created to reduce the effort it takes to preserve the backups or new projects. We call it system or organizations. In physical world, it could be family, city, country. The systems are inefficient by design coz they are supposed to support multiple variants of the same project and many time many different projects. The system is never free. It needs resources to maintain itself. Thus the random goodies. Casino can only run if you play a hand. Can you (the knowledge base that you contain) live without the system. Yes you can. And in fact that's the best way to minimize the distractions. Performing chores yourself is thus important. Even if you can't fully give up the system, you can attempt to minimise your plays.

Notion of Time

Time in physical world depends on what orbit (or layer of sophistication) you are. Farther you are from core, the faster time will pass. System will demand more of your time. We think automation reduces our work but the fact is we are working harder than our parents and they worked harder than theirs. When you are at the core of your subsystem, the slows down. Now it moves at the distance your subsystem is away from its core. Finally at the super center, the time stops. There nothing to traverse anymore.

Communication

We are already connected with variants of our knowledge systems coz we have knowledge base and same longing. Information automatically travels from us to our sister replicas. And than upwards. That's the reason no other species need internet. The external communication tools we humans create interfere with our internal system. That's the reason we feel disconnected, alone and depressed.
...WIP...

1-5-19
It's been awhile since I posted because I’ve been grinding the game and vegas happened. Dashy filled expectations of being a young formal and its funny that ppl only see that now. Congratulations to Optic on winning Vegas the event was lit. My old sub is fucked up and I can't make it public now so I made the new one and copied the main posts over and locked them but their here now for history. My last post said I could write one last one until next rostermania about small stuff and some stuff I heard that I thought was fugaze. Its good I waited because it turns out lots of it was true and I heard straight from lots of ppl involved. Theirs not too much to talk about for rosters bc everything is set for the qualifier so the only topic left is rich guy and who he is. No its not Marc Cuban lol. I think hes one of the bigger stories in cod since he caused so much movement and was the reason I made my burner in the first place.
​
So I worked on this post for awhile now in MS Word so its easier to read and made it into sections since everybody kept frying me over it lol. This is going to be my last post until next rostermania so thanks for reading and hope it’s been fun and thanks to ppl that dm’d me info and helped me figure this out.
​
If you weren't around for Seattle Rostermania when the Optic roster of Scump, Crim, Formal, and Karma broke up, I heard from multiple people that the plan was for them to actually leave together and join some rich guy. These are the two posts I made about it and if your confused they can help.

1. https://www.reddit.com/CoDCompetitive/comments/8egdaintel_on_og_i_was_1010_on_rostermania/
2. https://www.reddit.com/CoDCompetitive/comments/8f6bhn/new_thread_for_intel/

​
​

(1) When Rich Guy first came up

Before ww2 even started the optic guys weren’t happy with what they were being paid and felt like infinite didnt care about them. They would joke about leaving and talking to other teams but other players thought it was just banter. Then infinite kept part of their paycheck bc part of it said they didn’t have to pay it bc it was a good behavior bonus which lots of players have and the org decides if you behaved good or not and it happened around new orleans. That’s one of the things they were pissed off about along with infinite taking forever to redo their contracts bc they only made 8000 up from 3000 and it was about to end.
​
Then crim made the reddit AMA in February where he publicly said they weren’t happy with optic... https://www.reddit.com/OpTicGaming/comments/7xk9sp/crimsix_surprise_ama/du8yest/
​
Guys in optic started to think they made a huge mistake selling to the wrong group months before.
​
Then rich guy probably heard about the AMA post. He got someone to get him in touch with the cod roster to see if they were for real about what was said in Crims AMA. Theres a rumor rich guy was one of the ppl that tried to buy optic when they were looking for investors but hecz sold to the rangers guy instead so he knew of the cod team.
​

(2) CWL Atlanta WW2

So the optic guys talked on skype with rich guy a few times before cwl atlanta which was in march and they planned to meet at the event to talk in person. Supposedly right before they were going to meet infinite decided to drop the halo team and very nearly dropped the cod team the day before the event too. That’s something scump said himself to lots of different players. I heard it was only crim that met in person at first with rich guy on Wednesday before the event and funny theres a post by someone who saw it and posted way before I made my burner account. Basically he saw crim meeting with rich guy at a strip club.
​
You can read the other guys post thread here...
https://www.reddit.com/CoDCompetitive/comments/8auxou/rostermania_news_and_predictions_thread/dx2ya73/

This is going to sound made up but I live in Atlanta and I saw crim having a meeting with a guy in a suit who I think is the ceo of another team. It was the wednesday before Atlanta open and they were both wearing suits. My friends and me sat at a table behind them and we heard them talking about money. they stayed about an hour and when they were leaving his friend in a suit went to the bathroom so i went to crim and shook his hand and said good luck this weekend. He was surprised and it seemed like they went there bc they didnt want anyone to see them meeting. When they left they got into a Roles Royce. I can post more after work if anyone wants to know more...
I didnt think anything of it either when we first saw them but as i watched them it was obvious the guy was from another team. Both him and crim were in suits and i swear I heard crim say he loves the offer or something. This was on wednesay or Thursday night near midnight.
Then on monday one of my friends that was there with me told me that he saw the same suit guy out sunday night with karma and scumpi and that they were talking loudly about teams or something. so my friend brad walked up to them and asked if he could get a picture with all 3 of them. The suit guy said no so my friend said he really wants one with all 3. Karma and the suit guy said no and that my friend could have a picture with just him and Scumpi without the suit guy or else no picture at all. My friend said ok so he just got a pic with Karma and Scumpi. After he got the picture our other friend Travis walked up to the suit guy and told him we saw him and Crim out in suits the other night. He laughed and shook my friend's hand and asked where did we see them. My friend told him we saw them at tattletales and that he said hi to Crim there. The suit guy laughed and smiled and told my friend to keep that secret. My friend asked him which team he was from or if he could even tell them who he was and he smiled and said dont worry about it everyone will find out in about a month then gave a wink. Then Scump got in a car with Silly and Study and left but the suit guy and Karma talked a little more then both of them got in the same uber and said they were going to hang out more at the hotel since it was closing time already.
From what I saw on wednesday night and what my friends saw on Sunday night we all say it was obvious something was happening because of how they were acting all secretive.

​
One of Crims friends and other pros say he said the post was all true but he took him to an expensive steak dinner first and it lines up with what I know about rich guy. The guys second post says something about rich guy and scump getting into an argument and I can see it happening bc scump is a dick when hes wasted which always happens after events.
​
Other ppl I talked to said they saw rich guy around the W hotel bar downtown where everyone was staying but didnt know who he was. He was talking to attach but attach was trolling and said he was his cousin when ppl asked him so thats where the intel came from that rich guy was someone attach knew. No one knows why attach was talking to him or why he knew him then either even now.
​
​

(3) CWL Birmingham WW2

rich guy took scump and crim out to dinner and smoothed things over. After the team lost they went to the bars and gambled until morning. i heard this is where he upped his offer to them to 20k a month salary each for the next 4 games. Scump and rich guy smoothed out things at the event here bc before that they didnt like each other after atlanta. I heard from a friend of crim that he said scump was rude to rich guy the first time they met in person but I dont know if the argument in the guys second post is the first time they met in person.
​
This is when formal wanted karma gone and tried to get him dropped since he was costing and gunless would easily be available since rise didnt win yet. Im told rich guy then told crim he only wanted all 4 of them and no one would come close to salary and crim and karma thought all they needed was a team change away from infinite then.
​
I heard attach say rich guy knew cod would be 5v5 the next year and crim said they would want him as their 5th at the bar in bham. I cant confirm that though but it makes sense on why attach would of been talking to him at Atlanta.
​

(4) CWL Seattle WW2

I heard rich guy took Crim, Attach, Felo, Dashy, and Study out to dinner at a steak house there then went to a few bars with crim and attach. In the players lounge the optic guys were all saying it was done deal and they were leaving optic. Then we all know what happened with t16 so optic knew they needed a change and thats when the talk of gunless came up with him taking karmas spot but crim and scump really wanted john and octane. John was cool with playing with them but only if it was to the rich guy since he thought hed get so much blame if they didnt win from the fans.
​
I heard that night they settled on scump crim john and formal and they had a party to celebrate. Karma wasnt told at the time for sure he was getting dropped and wouldnt go to the rich guys team with the others so he still went to the party. We all heard what happened here with a tshirt being made but it wasnt finger paint but was from a stripper party rich guy threw for all the players in the hotel not even those he was going to sign. I heard it got freaky and one of the strippers had green hair. Karma was high and going off no sleep so he went down to the lobby and hecz saw him and told him to take the shirt off and told other non optic players to go back upstairs and stop being retards. There is more than one shirt that got made which is why karma says the one in the pic isnt his.
https://imgur.com/jVRSIFU
​
Then scump crim and a bunch of other players went out to the bars with rich guy. I heard they partied Wednesday Thursday Saturday and Sunday nights based on what other players said especially Saturday and Sunday ppl saw them get back to the hotel real late with rich guy. Everyone thought it was a done deal when they left on Monday morning.
​
Sometime after that I made my first post about optic leaving. scump and crim were insisting on john and octane but then john couldnt get out of his contract with LG because there wasnt an even trade with him unlike octane for formal. I heard thats what then scared rich guy off because if formal and karma stayed on optic together and he only got scump and crim then he wouldnt get a league spot since it would stay with optic bc of the rules. So in the end formal got traded for octane and scump and crim got new deals. Then optic tried to get Zooma but faze wouldnt sell him. So optic bought methodz contract because tk didnt pay for it and then tried to trade him for zooma bc the other faze guys like methodz. Faze said no and then told Zooma they will give him a raise to 20k a month. He said they had their locks on him and wouldnt let him go. So optic then tries to get Kenny but his contract said he had to give notice of using his buyout 20 days in advance and that meant it would be after roster lock so he was stuck too. So optic got stuck with methodz as the 4th. I heard from an optic content guy they asked karma to come back but he said no.
​
​

(5) CWL Anaheim WW2

Im not fully sure if rich guy was here but I heard after this event is when he hired apoc to work for him once the season was fully over ( https://twitter.com/Apoccc ). Apocs been in the scene for a long time and knows everyone so it makes sense why hed do it. It also makes sense because after the season it turned out unilad got sold to someone else and got rid of esports.
I heard rich guy hung out with a few of the owners from other teams but I never got real confirmation.
​
​

(6) Pro league stage 2 WW2

In July between weeks 7 and 8 for group B (optic eu unilad rise lg col MF TM) that nameless had a house party on some random night and rich guy went with the optic and eu guys. I think he took all of them to dinner. One of the players said he was the only one at the party that wasnt a caster or a player. I heard they went out to a small bar after.
​
​

(7) Champs WW2

This is where it gets good. So Apoc was supposed to start working for rich guy officially when unilad was knocked out but the unilad owner let him do work for rich guy earlier since unilad was leaving esports anyway.
​
Rich guys original plan was to build around john and attach and start talking to them after the event. Then they were going to go after slasher bc with those 3 on board they could get anyone they wanted to fill out the roster. Also behind the scenes I heard nade was already offering players to come to 100t before champs even started offering 10k. This is the start of the bidding war for lots of players that happened during rostermania.
​
That fourth they went after was scump. After optic was eliminated in groups scump and methodz were the only ones who stayed while crim and octane flew home the next morning and skipped the autograph session at champs. So its just scump and zinni hanging out with nothing to do so I heard they partied alot with rich guy. From what I know scump and rich guy are actually friends and drink together so thats what happened Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. A player who heard some of their talks said that scump was still unhappy with optic and wanted to leave and start his own thing like nade did with 100t so he went to dinner on one of the nights with rich guy and heard he still wanted a team. Rich guy and apoc told him they wanted to try to try to get john attach and slasher. I heard scump was going around the venue the next few days telling ppl thats what he was going to do.
​
Someone said John told them rich guy asked him if he would play with scump and he said yes. The thing is so many ppl say they hate each other but their good friends and hang out alot in cbus and other places. Fans always get things wrong or blow things up when its not a big deal. Ppl thought scump hated jkap but in cbus he started working out with him bc he had back pains and it helped. Or ppl thought formal was mad about karma piping lisserboo when it was opposite but no one its not a big deal. One thing true is the players completely hate larew’s +1 even mlg staff bc she’d get drunk at the venue and cussing security out for not letting her back stage just bc larew was on optic.
​
Scump couldnt leave champs after losing in groups was bc his mom and friends and family were coming into town to watch him. They were seen talking to rich guy at the venue and I heard he took scumps whole group of 15 ppl out to steak dinners the next few nights.
​
The story about scump being drunk on Sunday at the hotel bar talking to karma was true but he also talked to lots of players like apathy and asked him to team too but its normal for scump and all the players to be wasted on Sunday nights after events. Lots of them talk fugaze but ppl say scump was serious and also said it wouldnt be with optic but sometimes he blacks out so idk. He was carrying a printed contract with him from rich guy and I heard the offer was 50k a month for 3 years plus a small ownership part of the org. Supposedly scump agreed and wanted it down in writing so rich guy flew one of his lawyers in to write it up and give it to him. Lots of ppl are going to say 50k a month is crazy but for scump its definitely not just look how he got 30k subs on twitch plus all the other stuff he brings to the table for exposure like playing with guys like jack and shroud and ninja. Scump is the face of optic and cod so its good to see salaries going higher.
​
​

(8) Rostermania BO4

Everybody leaves champs and rostermania started alot earlier then before. At the start optic didnt know if it was 4v4 or 5v5 yet so they were planning for 4v4 although they found out earlier than the other teams. They thought they had scump locked up but he went awol for about a week and I heard thats bc john and him were calling around to see who would want to play with them. I heard a rumor of slasher scump john Kenny as a 4 and with karma as the 5th.
​
I heard this is when rich guy had players sign NDAs if they wanted to negotiate so thats why no one really said anything about the details or who he is because he can sue them if they go public. Someone close to one of the players confirmed it. I also heard from another person close to one of the players that rich guy scheduled face to face meetings where him apoc and their lawyers would fly to see the players and talk. One of apocs former players told me rich guy moved him to the USA from England full time to work for him and go around doing face to face meetings with everyone for 2 months. The players were also supposedly shown detailed presentations about marketing stuff salary investments and other things.
​
Around then John and Scump decided they wanted Clay instead of slasher so he became the new target and they wanted to get it done quick before other teams made moves and so scump could get away from optic without it dragging out. Now idk exactly what happened but I heard scump started getting worried they couldnt get players out of their contracts with their current teams so he decided to go back to optic when crim and him decided to get Teej and dashy instead then add karma if it went to 5.
​
So karma was still the most wanted FA out there still and everyone wanted him…eu, rise, LG, faze, etc, but for a time he agreed to go to 100t and Nade but then decided he didnt want to go there because he didnt believe in one of the players they signed. John and Karma also wanted to play together so nade thought karma could bring john with him but john said no and he would only go to rich guy or stay on LG. He would only go to rich guy because apoc is his close friend for 8 years. Karma liked it too bc he knew apoc for about a decade. Here’s Karma talking about Apoc in an old video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYmOnBL13sA&feature=youtu.be&t=315
​
So Karma and John got talking and also decided they would want to play with Clay so that became the new core for team rich guy. I heard they stopped going after attach because faze wouldnt sell him and they thought he would be too slow and be a bad fit. Even though rich guy supposedly really liked attach…remember how they were talking in atlanta before anyone knew anything…I heard he wanted to be hands off when it came to roster moves and let the staff decide that. Someone who talked to him told me he wanted to hire the experts and trust their advice and just be the guy paying the bills.
​
Karma supposedly didnt know what he wanted to do so rich guy wanted to fly to see him with Apoc.
​
This is unconfirmed but theres lots of evidence to support it that rich guy flew clay to frisco to help meet with karma in person. Clay tweeted out this pic of a steakhouse...
https://twitter.com/Claystestatus/1040436939416059910
​
Google maps street view shows that restuarant is in Frisco...
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.0786056,-96.8266338,3a,75y,88.68h,63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sesXQ0x2CWoJ3c49igD2ZRA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
​
So Karma agreed on the core 3 and they decided to try to get Gunless since they heard they were leaving the scene after selling teej to optic and knowing they didnt have alot of money to invest into cod. Gunless didnt want to go to team rich guy because he wanted to play with formal on LG. Someone said rich guy was going to buy him anyway for 200k but then changed his mind when he found out gunless’s contract would end on December 31st so he’d only have him for one event then he could walk away for free to LG if he wanted. The word on the street is the core 3 convinced rich guy to still go after him bc if they placed top 4 at vegas they would be locked into a league spot and it would be risky for him to tank and be stuck in the qualifier where anything can happen.
​
That weekend is also when holly had her birthday and rich guy wanted to help win over holly so karma would sign. The story is rich guy took hollys group out at a club with vip service that cost maybe 5000 then a strip club afterwards. She told them to not take pics of him and apoc and it was some big surprise. She supposedly spent alot of time talking to him on a couch in the corner. I posted more details about it here before...
https://www.reddit.com/codburnecomments/abxcvy/92918_some_stuff_about_rich_guy/
Here's a portion of it...

i know alot of u are wondering who rich guy is bc crim confirmed today he exists and partly confirmed what i posted about him going over to karmas house and seeing he was already there. i dont know exactly who it is but a few ppl DMd me a few likely suspects that i wont name without more proof. maybe u guys can help out here. When i posted about crim running into him i thought it was insane timing but now i think rich guy was there in frisco for a week.
i dont post stuff without hearing from ppl first and if it sounds crazy i wait even longer before doing it and with crim kinda confirming what i said in my other post i decided to. A few weeks ago someone DMd saying that their friend in frisco met rich guy but he didnt know who he was at the time. the story is holly had a birthday where she invited her twitch subs to show up. she said the plan was to go out to a nightclub to meet up with ppl and she didnt say who it was. when they got there some big guy met them outside and walked them past a huge line right into the club and they had vip and bottles of goose and champ all night on the mysterious dudes tab at a vip table while holly hung out with him for alot of the night talking on the couch. then they went to a strip club. my source said his friend swears this was rich guy.

​
Here's a pic of Apoc at the party...
https://imgur.com/a/mMQh2rk
​
Tweets of hollys videos from the party...

1. https://twitter.com/HollyyLive/status/1043722384035987458
2. https://twitter.com/HollyyLive/status/1043721923992141826
3. https://twitter.com/thekatebaby/status/1041561065992192000

​
Ive later been told some of those ppl at hollys party were...

1. https://twitter.com/iElegantay
2. https://twitter.com/VyviesCoD
3. https://twitter.com/thekatebaby
4. https://twitter.com/OGBeattie
5. https://twitter.com/FeelsGoodClap
6. https://twitter.com/62yKreJ
7. https://twitter.com/AllysGotGame

​
I think Clayster left the morning of but I think ppl at the barlow house saw him when he went to visit.
This was the weekend before the 5v5 announcement so they thought the roster if it stayed 4 would be john karma gunless clayster. If it went to five and faze still wouldnt sell attach, I heard they were looking at jurd, felo, bance, shockz, censor, or slacked. Someone told me rich would of wanted dashy bc hes a fan of his but he knew he was already signed to optic.
​
Remember rich guy was paying for apoc to live in the usa the whole time so I heard he stayed there in frisco for 2 weeks. The announcement happens that week that its 5v5 and I heard rich guy and apoc watched it happen with the barlows in their house. Optic guys said karma didnt answer his phone all day so crim decided to go over there the next day to find out what was going on. All the teams were calling him trying to get him but I heard from someone close to holly that karma really wanted to go to rich guy by then. So I posted about this before but I had the details wrong…the old post is here:
https://www.reddit.com/codburnecomments/abxcp4/92418_karma/
​
What really happens is crim goes to karmas house in the morning but karma wont see him bc hes playing pubg and wont get off the game bc he didnt want to talk to him. Supposedly crim sat there for 4 hours and decided to leave when he figured out karma wouldnt talk. He almost gets to his car when another car pulls up and its rich guy, apoc, and a lawyer in it…they get out and holly says hi to them then they walk inside the house. So the word starts spreading and optic thinks karma is gone for sure if rich guy is going to fly in like that so higher ups at optic start calling karma and he still doesnt answer but then holly tells them they all went out to dinner. I heard hecz was about to go over there and whoop rich guys ass. Somebody sent me a clip from hollys stream showing apoc was at least in the house. Holly also talks to someone who tries to stay off camera.
https://vimeo.com/309676910
​
The next day I heard optic started talking to other players and their big target was apathy. I heard aches got really mad and called karma and told him to sign back with optic because NV wanted to buy EG and it got stuck when optic talked to apathy. But apathy is too loyal at times and decided to stick with EG/NV after a raise even though splyce was trying to buy that roster because all their contracts expired in November and add jurd to them. So optic called eu about arcitys and he wasnt available and gunless wanted to go to LG but nade and rich guy would start a bidding war for him.
​
So I heard john and clay were happy and rich guy started doing more face to face meetings with the other players he wanted.
​
Another week goes by and Karma had a 150K buyout, clay had 100K, and johns contract was ending so no buyout at all. Then optic announces the next vision episode will have the cod roster announcement and everyone that was supposed to be on team rich guy thought it was gunless. Im not sure on the timing of this now but I heard sometime around rich guy then offered 300k each for zooma and attach for a five of john, zooma, karma, attach, clay but faze still wouldnt sell them.
​
So all the players involved with team rich guy were watching it and were surprised when karma was announced...it aired during the last week of September. The story is he got really nervous because john’s contract ended second week of October so that was the earliest rich guy could sign him and he was scared he would get left out of competing again and was really stressed about waiting 2 more weeks. Someone really close to the other players told me they were surprised because the night before they all group texted and said everything was good including karma. After that clay wanted to stay on eunited and that left rich guy with just John. I heard he called up faze and offered them 800k for their whole roster but they said no. Ghost and splyce originally tried to buy them too. So that would of left john and a bunch of leftovers. 100t bought slasher and signed enable to complete their squad and Rise left the scene and sold loony to splyce and gunless to LG. I heard thats when rich guy decided it wasnt worth signing john + am players so he backed out. All ended good for john though bc I heard he got a raise to 25k. I heard rich guy was pissed but hes still friends all the guys but doesnt talk to karma but is friends with holly.
​
In the end this is how the team rich guy wanted changed….
First… Scump, John, Attach, Slasher
Then… Scump, John, Attach, Clayster
Then… John, Attach, Clayster, Karma
Then… John, Clayster, Karma, Gunless
Then… John, Clayster, Karma, Gunless, Jurd/Felo/Shockz/Slacked/Bance/Censor
Finally… John, Clayster, Karma, Attach, Zooma
Then after Clay and Karma weren't joining and he tried to buy the whole Faze roster... John/Attach/Zooma/Reep/Priest
​
I also heard rich guy offered 250k about a week after champs to get John out of his contract 2 months early but LG wanted to keep him and thought they could convince him. I gotta say steve LGs owner has big iron balls bc he could of lost john for free instead of taking the 250k but it worked out for him in the end so huge win for him. I think if karma smoked some green and chilled for a few weeks until john was free then the most likely roster would have been the John/Karma/ClaysteGunless core with rich guy taking a gamble on Gunless and adding one of Felo/Slacked to them because Shockz wanted to finish school and splyce wasn’t going to sell jurd and ended up getting loony, temp, aqua, and lamar.
​
So karmas decision to go back to optic changed the fates of eU, LG, Optic, NV, possibly faze, and mostly rich guy. A different decision could of changed this season too….last year john signed his contract with LG late and it was for exactly 1 year. If he signed it 2 weeks earlier it obviously ended 2 weeks earlier and rich guy could of signed him before the 5v5 announcement and that probably could of gotten karma to commit because he wouldnt of been nervous about optic and not having a spot anymore. From there rich guy pays for clays buyout then the rest is history.
​
Im also gonna say optic with J in charge is in a much better place now and the players feel like their being taken care of unlike during ww2. I heard rumors orgs are still looking for money and some reached out to rich guy to see if he would invest in them instead of making his own but either way I hope he comes into the scene if its franchise next year since he has balls trying to come in and get the best guys like nade did and makes things interesting.
​
All the pros in the scene benefitted from nade and rich guy being around since they all got raises and other bonuses so their happy but I can see orgs being mad lol but thats what happens when you have nade opening at 10k then splyce coming in at 12k then rich guy going in at 20k lol.
​
​

(9) CWL Vegas BO4

So rich guy was at Vegas but idk if he went inside at the event. He was at the casino with players and a few people came up and talked to him. He was doing $500 and $1000 roulette and blackjack so he attracted attention. I heard he was mainly playing with Felo, Clay, and Revan but holly and nufo came up to bet on roulette with them too. One egirl told me they talked to him and he was nice and bought people some shots. All the players including optic guys hung out with him at the hard rock bar after the event and then took them out for a wild night at the nightclubs and strip clubs and apparently he did that every night with different people in the scene. A caster told me they approached him and said his name and acted like they already met before when they didnt and he was chill about it. People were calling him Edgar in person including Scump.
​
​

(10) Rich Guy’s Twitter

From what I know and what ive heard im 99% certain rich guy is this guy on twitter and he uses it as his own burner for online stuff only:
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d
​
He has an interesting group of followers including Nadeshot, all the old and new Optic roster, along with some of their girlfriends, the faze roster, Clayster, Felo, Saints, and other big people in the scene. It doesn’t look like hes really active but he has pics of exotic cars, first class flights, receipts from bars, and he has a 100k pc setup to play video games thats linked on his page.
​
It looks like he gifted 5000 subs on twitch during Christmas time according to his tweets and people saying thank you to him. That’s $25k.
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/1077413765325471746
​
Someone sent me this clip from scumps stream where he gifted him 500 tier 3s which is $12.5k and like a grand donation over an hour. He says he knows him IRL and he wants to hang out with him next time hes back in dallas and get dinner. He even jokes about edgar and hecz being close. This clip is after karma resigned with optic and bo4 was already out and it shows how much scump and rich guy/edgar are friends even though the team didnt work out.
https://vimeo.com/309676948
​
He has another 400 subs in Crims that I think are tier 3. Then he has another 500 in rallieds and I think 300 in nadeshots supposedly.
​
Theres also these tweets between holly and edgar that make it sound like theyre friends including meeting up in Vegas and at a bar in Frisco in November. Edgar even tweeted a location pic of where he was.

1. https://twitter.com/HollyyLive/status/1058893944795348992
2. https://twitter.com/HollyyLive/status/1069642626725343232
3. https://twitter.com/HollyyLive/status/1069639538560180227

​
Finally the Edgar twitter has tweets of him being in cities when cod events were happening.
This is a bar in Seattle….
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/987587069512892417
http://www.cowgirlsinc.com/ ​
​
This is in LA the day before Anaheim and he tags a bigwig at EA in it. I think he works on battlefield…
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/1008070575099559936
​
This is in Ohio during champs…
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/1030353082390142976
​
This is a tweet exchange between edgar, clayster, and felo about meeting up to play blackjack Wednesday before vegas started while they were already there...
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/1070477119858204672
​
This is a tweet of edgar spending $12k at a place that if you google comes back as crazy horse strip club in vegas. Hitch said on his stream something about meeting rich guy there and having a wild night.
https://twitter.com/EdgarAllanPwn3d/status/1074563461361950721
​
If I had to bet my life on it I’d bet this edgar guy on twitter and twitch is rich guy and he was hiding in plain sight.
​
​

(11) What I know about EdgaRich guy from sources

• He sold his technology company for $650 million he founded and now is a executive at the company that bought his so hes one of those silicone valley guys.
• Hes sort of young and likes to party and goes out to clubs so lots of players like to hang around him.
• Hes about 6’3 and looks like hes half thai or hispanic. Hes like half white.
• He lives in New York city and travels alot and people have DMd me saying he has lots of business in Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, Singapore, and all over Europe.
• He owns a bunch of other businesses now like fast food restaurants and more tech companies.
• He has alot of investment in EA and other stocks
• People said hes real smart and a chill guy but some people were intimidated by him.
• A cod team was supposed to only be the start for his org since they wanted to expand to every game quickly.
• I have what I think is his full name but don’t want to post it and link their non burner twitter without confirmation in case it’s wrong. If one of the players involved wants to secretly DM with me to confirm then I might come back and post it.

​
​

(12) Final Thoughts

• I think Rallied is the guy that got edgarich guy into contact with optic since he was seen with him at the strip club in Atlanta after the event and hanging out with him in Seattle. It might be Felo too.
• I think Methodz knows what Scump and EdgaRich guy talked about at champs since I heard he went to dinner with them and they had nothing else to do since they got fried in groups.
• Optic is damn good and Dashy will soon be the best player in the game no question.
• I think its baller he went to meet players in person to sign them like its the NFL.
• There’s other small things that eventually led to Optic needing to make a roster change because it got so toxic. One of them Scump said was that Formal didn’t share the MVP money from Champs when all of them agreed to do it before. What Nade said before about players wanting to be friends with teammates first also happened here when Formal didn’t want to chill outside the game like Scump does with Crim, John, or Saints.
• I heard edgarich guy was planning on getting into cod during BO4 but tried to get in early when he saw the original Optic roster was available because of Crim’s AMA.
• EdgaRich guy was really going to spend over a million on buyouts on top of salary which is fucking crazy.
• I think Apoc could be working for Red Reserve now since he’s been posting pictures with them in Vegas.

​
---------------------------------
​
Thanks for reading and I will monitor this thread for a few days to answer a few questions possibly and add something I might remember later. If not then this is my last post until the next rostermania or if Rich guy gives me an interview lol.

Hey folks!
Today I returned to the US after a week aboard the Oasis of the Seas gambling at the single zero roulette table. If you're interested, you can read the original story here where I kept day by day notes in the comments about my winnings and observations. Finished ~$2500 ahead Martingaling for a week.
Cruise Background
I wanted to vacation in Vegas this fall, my wife wanted to cruise again, so I spent a few months searching cruise lines, looking for a single zero roulette table with at least an 8-bet min/max spread. As it turns out, there are thirteen cruise ships in the world that fit that profile (that I discovered), and after checking all of them against NovembeDecember departure dates from CONUS, I downselected to the Oasis of the Seas from Royal Caribbean for a 7-Day Caribbean cruise, booked it, and thus it was so!
The Game
For the duration of this cruise, I played single zero roulette and nothing else. The casino on board the Oasis of the Seas has four roulette tables; two American roulette tables on the smoking side, and one each American/European on the non-smoking side. I use the word "European" loosely because while it was single-zero, it had no European rules on it. All four tables were $5 - $100 on the inside, and $5 - $1000 on the outside. I attempted to make arrangements before the cruise as well as with the casino manager during the cruise to raise the limits for my gambling to no avail since I didn't have an established play history with Club Royale. I also requested La Partage be put into effect during my session play without luck - but that was a long shot anyway; the only single zero table I know of in the US with a minimum bet lower than $25 is the $10 - $3000 La Partage table at the Soaring Eagle in Michigan (sorry guys, terminal games don't count!)
Single zero roulette tables have a 2.7% house edge; down from the scandalous 5.4% house edge of American roulette (let alone the scammy triple zero crap that Carnival Cruise lines and the Venetian in Vegas are doing); La Partage lowers it to a magnificent 1.35%, but alas - I was destined to go without.
My Bets
Most of you are probably familiar with a martingale) series bet. For anyone else; on a $5 - $1000 table, $2,000 can bankroll a 8-bet sequence where I double my bet each time I lose, restarting my bet sequence each win. Due to chip denominations, my martingale progression is $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, which I find more reasonable than 5/10/20/40/80/160/320/640 due to the typical chip denominations 1/5/25/100/500/1000. In a tip of my hat to superstition, my increases from $10 to $25, $100 to $250, and $1000 to $2500 where applicable are my way of "punishing" the casino for making me leave the comfort zone of the outside minimum bet. Mock me if you must; its my personal flair - if my bets grow that high I "deserve" to win more than my base bet for the stress of having to bankroll the roll.
The chances of heads or tails on a coin flip are 50% for either outcome. On a single-zero table without La Partage, the equivalent bets - black/red, even/odd, 1-18/19-36 is ~48.6%, with the other 2.7% representing the green zero, or house edge - creating a theoretical loss probability of 2.7% of your bet per bet over time.
While the probability of an individual spin being black or red in my case is ~48.6%, the martingale betting progression ties your bets into a session, such that on the table I'm playing on, as long as I don't guess wrong 8 times in a row, I always win. On the off-chance that any newbs are reading this, this is NOT a "strategy" or "guaranteed way to make money." Martingale betting is a low risk, low reward means of using a large sum of money to win a little sum of money - pretty much the opposite of what people go into casinos to do. In statistical terms, the chances of me guessing wrong 8 times in a row in an 8 spin series is three tenths of one percent...but no one sits down for 8 spins and leaves - so my gambling is that when the house spins my losing sequence...I'm not there. =D Such is gambling.
Goals!
I've learned over the years that if I don't sit at a table with a fixed goal of when to leave, I will get bored and start making side bets (other even money bets or thirds) - more ways to win also mean more ways to lose, and when I am gambling, I am heavily socializing and drinking; I can't keep track of all of it at the same time. My goal is thus to always leave with 120% of my bankroll.
This trip was a bit confusing for me because I couldn't reconcile what my bankroll was. Not knowing whether the table limit would be fixed to $1000, or be able to be raised to $10,000 I brought $5,000 in cash with another $35,000 available as credit - I'd wrongly assumed the casino would at least double the table min/max to $10-$2000, and had been hoping they would leave the minimum and double the maximum, adding a one-bet buffer to my 8-spin series. With a $1,000 bet maximum, I stopped bringing more than $2,000 to the casino. If my bankroll is $2,000, I aim to leave with $2400. If my bankroll is $5,000, I aim to leave with $6,000. With $10,000, I aim to leave with $12,000.
I initially hoped to turn $2,000 into $2,400, but after doing that the first night gambling and the prospect of the rest of the cruise being bereft of gambling, I decided that since I'd brought $5,000 to gamble with, even if I could only play with $2,000 of it, my 120% goal meant I wanted $1,000 in winnings or bust.
On day two when I realized how stingy Club Royale was, and that I'd be buying my own drinks, I shelled out $360 for the liquor package, and adjusted my winning threshold to also cover the liquor package. Then there was a $300 spa treatment. Then an $1800 studio photography session since my wife wanted some nice pictures - something we've not done in a decade.
With these confusing inputs leaving me unsure of how to decide if I was up or down, it came down to the fact that while the casino was generally open 8-12 hours a day, the lone roulette table with the single zero didn't open until 8:00 PM - about when the cruise shows started. I did some begging and pleading to have it opened earlier every day to mixed success - a bit on the first day and on the last day, with nothing in the middle. They really wanted people on the American tables - which I had to resist, since for much of the cruise, it was American roulette or nothing. I contented myself during those periods with drinking, socializing with other gamblers, watching, drinking, and trying to find people who didn't have the booze package so I could buy them drinks.
Fun Facts

• Over 6 days of gambling, averaging 4 hours per day, I hit the $1,000 table maximum bet twice. Both were heart-attack inducing. The first was at 0100 on day 5, I was the last gambler at the table, $1,000 on red didn't screw me, and I took it as a sign to go to bed. The second happened on Day 6; since a $2,000 loss would have left me break even at that point, I took a short break, stretched my legs, and came back.
  
• In the same period, I hit the $250 bet mark in my progression 4 times (resetting from $250 back to $5), and the $500 bet limit zero times. $100 and below bets were too numerous to count.
  
• Total winnings were probably closer to $2800, but I tip freely when its free money.
  
• Despite my "follow the house" betting method of deciding to bet red or black (which capitalizes on streaks), and I never choose which to bet on, there was one dealer would occasionally call a color, and she was only wrong once. I started switching bets when she'd call a color because it was spooky. If I asked her, most of the time she'd say, "I don't know" - but out of 20-30 "calls" over a week that I saw her spinning for me, she missed one.
  
• If I had the balls to play numbers or neighbor bets, I'd have made tens of thousands; I don't believe in ball control; not on modern wheels, but one dealer put out four 28s in 8 spins, three of them in a row, 7 of the others were neighbor bet winners, and he just kept doing it. He's been a casino dealer 44 years...and kept telling people what number to bet on, and no one would listen to him. God, I wish I had.
  
• I learned to play craps as a backup in case the single zero table was closed, but the craps tables were $5 - $300 with 1x odds, shifting to 3-4-5x with $50 minimum bets. I need to ease into craps, and didn't want to have to track different odds systems, nor did I want to play on a $300 limit table - all my practicing on craps was with 3-4-5x odds on a $5 - $2,000 table, and I have a tendency to double down on everything in every game. And in life too; Losing a 5/15 bet makes me put $20 on the pass line. It gets expensive quickly, so I'm not playing craps with less than $5k, $10k to be comfortable, and I need at least a $2k table.
  
• Actually, all the games were a bit ...less competitive. 6:5 blackjack, 1x craps odds, no Euro rules on the Euro table, crappy slots payouts - I get it; I really do. Captive audience, no need to compete with other casinos. Once they're on board, you've got 'em for a week; they're gonna gamble or they're not.
  
• Club Royale has terrible comps compared to Casinos at Sea with NCL. It takes 2500 points with Club Royale to earn comped drinks while gambling. Not only did Club Royale not buy my drinks this cruise, at the rate of my point earnings, it will take me 4 more cruises gambling at the same rate to earn free drinks. That's right; $10,000+ to get free drinks. I did however come away with an amazing $100 off my next cruise voucher.
  
• Assuming total winnings of $2,800 (before tips), being right 48.6% of the time, I gambled through ~1200 roulette spins in a week.
  

Anyway; it was a blast - but I'll probably go to Vegas for my next vacation instead of cruising. I want to gamble during the day, and go to shows in the evening, not wander around during the day, then have to decide whether I want to gamble or watch shows in the evening.
edit And here's a picture of me at my remote office aboard the cruise ship in case anyone was wondering what your mean old /gambling moderator ShelixAnakasian looks like.

Hey folks!
Today I returned to the US after a week aboard the Oasis of the Seas gambling at the single zero roulette table. If you're interested, you can read the original story here where I kept day by day notes in the comments about my winnings and observations. Finished ~$2500 ahead Martingaling for a week.
I called out 14 crew members that I thought were exceptional; 11 of them in the casino - the crew were amazing everywhere. The ship itself is probably due a refit. Elevator buttons broken, chairs broken, everything looking a little run down and scuffed. I won't dig into the ports because everyone in here probably knows their way around the Caribbean by now. =D
Cruise Background
I wanted to vacation in Vegas this fall, my wife wanted to cruise again, so I spent a few months searching cruise lines, looking for a single zero roulette table with at least an 8-bet min/max spread. As it turns out, there are thirteen cruise ships in the world that fit that profile (that I discovered), and after checking all of them against NovembeDecember departure dates from CONUS, I downselected to the Oasis of the Seas from Royal Caribbean for a 7-Day Caribbean cruise, booked it, and thus it was so!
The Game
For the duration of this cruise, I played single zero roulette and nothing else. The casino on board the Oasis of the Seas has four roulette tables; two American roulette tables on the smoking side, and one each American/European on the non-smoking side. I use the word "European" loosely because while it was single-zero, it had no European rules on it. All four tables were $5 - $100 on the inside, and $5 - $1000 on the outside. I attempted to make arrangements before the cruise as well as with the casino manager during the cruise to raise the limits for my gambling to no avail since I didn't have an established play history with Club Royale. I also requested La Partage be put into effect during my session play without luck - but that was a long shot anyway; the only single zero table I know of in the US with a minimum bet lower than $25 is the $10 - $3000 La Partage table at the Soaring Eagle in Michigan (sorry guys, terminal games don't count!)
Single zero roulette tables have a 2.7% house edge; down from the scandalous 5.4% house edge of American roulette (let alone the scammy triple zero crap that Carnival Cruise lines and the Venetian in Vegas are doing); La Partage lowers it to a magnificent 1.35%, but alas - I was destined to go without.
My Bets
Most of you are probably familiar with a martingale) series bet. For anyone else; on a $5 - $1000 table, $2,000 can bankroll a 8-bet sequence where I double my bet each time I lose, restarting my bet sequence each win. Due to chip denominations, my martingale progression is $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, which I find more reasonable than 5/10/20/40/80/160/320/640 due to the typical chip denominations 1/5/25/100/500/1000. In a tip of my hat to superstition, my increases from $10 to $25, $100 to $250, and $1000 to $2500 where applicable are my way of "punishing" the casino for making me leave the comfort zone of the outside minimum bet. Mock me if you must; its my personal flair - if my bets grow that high I "deserve" to win more than my base bet for the stress of having to bankroll the roll.
The chances of heads or tails on a coin flip are 50% for either outcome. On a single-zero table without La Partage, the equivalent bets - black/red, even/odd, 1-18/19-36 is ~48.6%, with the other 2.7% representing the green zero, or house edge - creating a theoretical loss probability of 2.7% of your bet per bet over time.
While the probability of an individual spin being black or red in my case is ~48.6%, the martingale betting progression ties your bets into a session, such that on the table I'm playing on, as long as I don't guess wrong 8 times in a row, I always win. On the off-chance that any newbs are reading this, this is NOT a "strategy" or "guaranteed way to make money." Martingale betting is a low risk, low reward means of using a large sum of money to win a little sum of money - pretty much the opposite of what people go into casinos to do. In statistical terms, the chances of me guessing wrong 8 times in a row in an 8 spin series is three tenths of one percent...but no one sits down for 8 spins and leaves - so my gambling is that when the house spins my losing sequence...I'm not there. =D Such is gambling.
Goals!
I've learned over the years that if I don't sit at a table with a fixed goal of when to leave, I will get bored and start making side bets (other even money bets or thirds) - more ways to win also mean more ways to lose, and when I am gambling, I am heavily socializing and drinking; I can't keep track of all of it at the same time. My goal is thus to always leave with 120% of my bankroll.
This trip was a bit confusing for me because I couldn't reconcile what my bankroll was. Not knowing whether the table limit would be fixed to $1000, or be able to be raised to $10,000 I brought $5,000 in cash with another $35,000 available as credit - I'd wrongly assumed the casino would at least double the table min/max to $10-$2000, and had been hoping they would leave the minimum and double the maximum, adding a one-bet buffer to my 8-spin series. With a $1,000 bet maximum, I stopped bringing more than $2,000 to the casino. If my bankroll is $2,000, I aim to leave with $2400. If my bankroll is $5,000, I aim to leave with $6,000. With $10,000, I aim to leave with $12,000.
I initially hoped to turn $2,000 into $2,400, but after doing that the first night gambling and the prospect of the rest of the cruise being bereft of gambling, I decided that since I'd brought $5,000 to gamble with, even if I could only play with $2,000 of it, my 120% goal meant I wanted $1,000 in winnings or bust.
On day two when I realized how stingy Club Royale was, and that I'd be buying my own drinks, I shelled out $360 for the liquor package, and adjusted my winning threshold to also cover the liquor package. Then there was a $300 spa treatment. Then an $1800 studio photography session since my wife wanted some nice pictures - something we've not done in a decade.
With these confusing inputs leaving me unsure of how to decide if I was up or down, it came down to the fact that while the casino was generally open 8-12 hours a day, the lone roulette table with the single zero didn't open until 8:00 PM - about when the cruise shows started. I did some begging and pleading to have it opened earlier every day to mixed success - a bit on the first day and on the last day, with nothing in the middle. They really wanted people on the American tables - which I had to resist, since for much of the cruise, it was American roulette or nothing. I contented myself during those periods with drinking, socializing with other gamblers, watching, drinking, and trying to find people who didn't have the booze package so I could buy them drinks.
Fun Facts

• Over 6 days of gambling, averaging 4 hours per day, I hit the $1,000 table maximum bet twice. Both were heart-attack inducing. The first was at 0100 on day 5, I was the last gambler at the table, $1,000 on red didn't screw me, and I took it as a sign to go to bed. The second happened on Day 6; since a $2,000 loss would have left me break even at that point, I took a short break, stretched my legs, and came back.
  
• In the same period, I hit the $250 bet mark in my progression 4 times (resetting from $250 back to $5), and the $500 bet limit zero times. $100 and below bets were too numerous to count.
  
• Total winnings were probably closer to $2800, but I tip freely when its free money.
  
• Despite my "follow the house" betting method of deciding to bet red or black (which capitalizes on streaks), and I never choose which to bet on, there was one dealer would occasionally call a color, and she was only wrong once. I started switching bets when she'd call a color because it was spooky. If I asked her, most of the time she'd say, "I don't know" - but out of 20-30 "calls" over a week that I saw her spinning for me, she missed one.
  
• If I had the balls to play numbers or neighbor bets, I'd have made tens of thousands; I don't believe in ball control; not on modern wheels, but one dealer put out four 28s in 8 spins, three of them in a row, 7 of the others were neighbor bet winners, and he just kept doing it. He's been a casino dealer 44 years...and kept telling people what number to bet on, and no one would listen to him. God, I wish I had.
  
• I learned to play craps as a backup in case the single zero table was closed, but the craps tables were $5 - $300 with 1x odds, shifting to 3-4-5x with $50 minimum bets. I need to ease into craps, and didn't want to have to track different odds systems, nor did I want to play on a $300 limit table - all my practicing on craps was with 3-4-5x odds on a $5 - $2,000 table, and I have a tendency to double down on everything in every game. And in life too; Losing a 5/15 bet makes me put $20 on the pass line. It gets expensive quickly, so I'm not playing craps with less than $5k, $10k to be comfortable, and I need at least a $2k table.
  
• Actually, all the games were a bit ...less competitive. 6:5 blackjack, 1x craps odds, no Euro rules on the Euro table, crappy slots payouts - I get it; I really do. Captive audience, no need to compete with other casinos. Once they're on board, you've got 'em for a week; they're gonna gamble or they're not.
  
• Club Royale has terrible comps compared to Casinos at Sea with NCL. It takes 2500 points with Club Royale to earn comped drinks while gambling. Not only did Club Royale not buy my drinks this cruise, at the rate of my point earnings, it will take me 4 more cruises gambling at the same rate to earn free drinks. That's right; $10,000+ to get free drinks. I did however come away with an amazing $100 off my next cruise voucher.
  
• Assuming total winnings of $2,800 (before tips), being right 48.6% of the time, I gambled through ~1200 roulette spins in a week.
  

Anyway; it was a blast - but I'll probably go to Vegas for my next vacation instead of cruising. I want to gamble during the day, and go to shows in the evening, not wander around during the day, then have to decide whether I want to gamble or watch shows in the evening.
And here's a picture of me at my remote office aboard the cruise ship in case anyone was wondering what your mean old /gambling moderator ShelixAnakasian looks like.

(With apologies to Uncle Steve)
Jay Everett stared up at the towering Twin Pines Hotel, one of the largest buildings this side of the Las Vegas gambling strip. It was a jutting structure built entirely out of steel beams and black glass. The Hotel was surrounded on all sides by the flashing neon lights of Casino Row, which danced across its glossy surface like the ghostly imprints of colored flames. Apparently this place offered some of the swankiest penthouses in the entire city, but Jay wasn’t here for a room. He’d only come here to gamble.
He pushed through the front doors and entered the lobby, a spacious room with potted plants crawling up the walls like ivy. The place was packed with men in tuxedos and women in loose evening dresses. Jay felt smothered in his own suit, and he tried easing up the collar with one finger. It didn’t help much. He still felt like he was being throttled by his tie.
Most of the crowd was moving toward the check-in desk, but Jay snuck his way through until he could see the flashing lights of the casino. A large metal beam stretched across the entrance. Beneath it was a sign that proclaimed TWIN PINES CASINO in bold, electric blue letters. A bear and a turtle and various other forest animals gamboled across either side.
He managed to slip through the bustle without being too pushy, and then he was in. Light background jazz swept across him as he stepped into a world lit up by colored bulbs and strips of eerie black light. The casino actually wasn’t too crowded this early in the night. He almost had the entire place to himself.
He stopped before a large, circular game machine emblazoned with the words GOLD KING. The game itself was nothing more than a large spinning disc divided into colored slices. Most of the sections were given small monetary values, but there was one tiny sliver that had been painted a solid gold.
The game itself didn’t get too much activity, but the large statue perched above it could be seen from anywhere in the casino. It was a cartoony sculpture of a king wearing red robes and a golden crown. In his hand he held a royal scepter, which would flash brightly and let off a chorus of clanging bells whenever anyone hit the jackpot. Right now he was silent. His blank eyes stared out at the crowd, his mouth open in a creepy cartoon smile.
You have until the Gold King goes off to make $19,000. Otherwise…
Jay shivered. He couldn’t get Farrow’s threat out of his head; it echoed in his ears like the growl of a distant animal. Farrow himself was nowhere to be found, but Jay knew he’d stationed his cronies in every corner of this place. Some were probably disguised as security guards, others as bartenders or casino patrons. He couldn’t trust anybody. Any one of these people could be waiting to turn him in to Farrow the moment he backed out of this job.
So he did what he was told to do. He took a deep breath, let his eyes sweep over the casino, and strode over to the game that stood out to him the most. He had a lot of money to win and not much time to do it. This was a world ruled by chance, where the simple roll of a die could decide a person’s fate, and any ordinary man would have been sweating in his suit by now.
But Jay Everett was no ordinary man.
Jay had always known how different he was, even as a kid. It wasn’t that he looked or acted stranger than other people. He was just perceptive. He knew the answers in class before his teacher even finished speaking, although he quickly learned to keep this to himself. He could find things too. When little things went missing around the house, Jay always knew just where to look. He couldn’t explain how. He just did.
He also had an uncanny skill with numbers. He’d never used a calculator in his entire life and he couldn’t understand why his classmates were so helpless without it. By the time he’d reached 9th grade, he was already taking the highest level math courses his high school could offer. It wasn’t long before he caught the eye of several prestigious business schools, which practically tripped over themselves getting him to apply. He never had to worry about his future. Jay ended up leaving high school early and heading to Stanford, where he started down the fast track to a career in finance.
He was snatched up by Tony Salvatore right after graduation. Salvatore was a business tycoon who’d left his footprint in every major city across the country, and he was eager to take Jay on board as his new head of finance. “I’ve been waiting for a kid like you,” he’d said, clapping Jay on the shoulder. “Someone who knows how to crunch the numbers and keep his mouth shut.”
It was true that Jay hardly ever talked; it was a habit from his youth that he hadn’t yet outgrown. He just didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew things about Salvatore, things he couldn’t possibly know – like how he came in late on Mondays because he’d spent the night before drinking and hitting his wife, or how he’d gotten bite marks under his collar from a violent fling with his receptionist. Tony would walk into the room and the knowledge would hit Jay in the face like a foul stench. He valued his job, so he kept quiet.
He discovered Salvatore’s biggest scandal completely by accident. Jay had stayed late at the office that night to finish up one of his revenue forms, which kept coming up $100 short. It was baffling to him. He’d never had an issue with numbers before, not even a minor issue like this, and he didn’t understand why he kept finding the same inconsistency. So he pulled up some other forms to see if he could trace the cause of the missing hundred.
It would have been a cold trail for anyone else, but Jay was good at finding things, and he managed to dig up an encrypted file with a bunch of forms that had never made it into the system. He set up a program to decode the files and discovered that they were all bank deposits – deposits of exactly $100. The missing money was being funneled into an account under the name “Enrico Balazar.”
At first Jay didn’t know what to do with the info he’d dug up. This was fraud, fraud of the highest degree, and Salvatore had to be turned in. Jay had no desire to defend the crooked son of a bitch. But he wasn’t stupid – he knew Salvatore had connections in low places, and if Jay made this information public, he’d have a target on his head. He sat in the dark for a while and cycled through his options.
When Salvatore showed up for work the next day, Jay intercepted him right outside his office. “Sorry to bother you, sir,” he said. “I was just about to send the tax forms to our Boston division when my computer crashed. Is there any way you could send them out for me?” The bit about the computer was true; he’d just neglected to mention that he’d crashed it himself.
Salvatore stared at the papers in Jay’s hand with bleary, reddened eyes. He just had a shot of whiskey in his car. As usual, the thought hit Jay completely out of the blue. Salvatore eventually reached out and took the papers, crumpling them a bit in his fist.
“Hold on a sec,” he grunted. He took the papers into his office and set them on the desk, then leaned over to type his password on the computer. Jay’s eyes followed him carefully. Then Salvatore placed the forms in his scanner and began the uploading process.
Jay stayed late again, waiting until the last of the workers had left the office before typing a quick command on his keyboard. There was a brief popping sound. The power in his part of the building flickered for a moment, and Jay knew the cameras were disabled. He had a good hour or so before they came back on again.
He’d kept a pair of gloves in his briefcase all day, and he slipped them on now as he headed to Salvatore’s office. The tycoon’s personal computer sat in the corner, its screen flashing with an insistent message: PASSWORD?
Jay leaned forward and typed it in, his fingers copying the same pattern Salvatore had used this morning. A quiet beep, a loading bar, and he was in. He got to work immediately.
When Jay arrived at work the next day, a police car was parked outside the building, lights flashing and everything. He arrived just in time to watch the cops shoving a handcuffed Salvatore into the backseat. Jay made sure to keep his face hidden, just in case, but Salvatore had his eyes turned to the ground.
“What happened?” Jay asked one of his coworkers.
“You’ll never believe it, man. Some kind of virus got into Salvatore’s computer and made all of his private files go public. It turns he was channeling a big chunk of his clients’ cash to this mob boss in New York. Balthazar or something.”
“No kidding,” Jay replied. He watched as the car carrying Tony Salvatore turned the corner and disappeared down 5th Avenue.
It was then that he noticed a figure who was standing at the edge of the crowd, his face hidden by the brim of a dark baseball cap. Everyone else was staring down the street, but this man was facing Jay instead. He had his hands tucked into the pockets of a black leather jacket and a thin layer of dark stubble on his face. As soon as Jay noticed him, he lifted a hand from his pocket and gestured for Jay to come over.
Jay was hesitant, but it was broad daylight and he was surrounded on all sides by people. It was safe. He circled around the crowd and approached the dark stranger.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The man didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached out and slapped something small and square into the palm of Jay’s hand. Then Jay finally got a glimpse of his eyes beneath the cap. They were shrewd and calculating, a glassy blue that made Jay think of the surface of a frozen pond.
“I saw,” he said. “And if you’re interested, I could use your kind of expertise.”
Jay glanced at the object in his hand. It was a business card, nothing but a name and a set of digits. He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t –” But when he looked up, the man had already disappeared.
That was the first time Jay met Rick Farrow.
Jay sipped from his wine glass and watched as people tried their luck on the Twin Pines slot machines. In theory, the outcome of these games was completely random. But Jay knew that most of these machines cycled through a random number sequence, and unless it had been rigged to prevent this issue, one could theoretically spot a pattern. The casino owners needed to make sure that some people walked away winners, after all. Not everyone. Just enough to keep people playing.
There was a pattern, but it was so subtle that the average person would never have noticed it. 19 pulls got you three cherries and a decent amount of cash. 95 pulls got you a row of three gold coins. And after 171 pulls of the lever, three 7s would plunk into place, bells would go off, and the ring of bulbs around the game would burst into life. Jay watched the colored lights dance across the face of each excited winner.
So he sat at the bar, ordered another wine, and waited. He made a mental check mark every time someone new stepped up to play the game. And when the 170th person walked away, he set down his glass, strode over to the machine, and played.
The wheels whirled for a good few seconds before settling on the jackpot. The lights flashed, the bells rang, and a flood of coins spilled out of the machine.
He collected his winnings without a smile.
Now that Tony Salvatore had been removed from his position as CEO, his offices in New York got shuttered. Jay suddenly found himself jobless and in desperate need of cash, as Salvatore had been paying for him to live in a nice apartment on the east side of town. Despite his impressive work history, he seemed to carry with him a kind of stigma for being even somewhat associated with the Salvatore name.
So, with no other options, Jay contacted Rick Farrow. The mysterious man arranged to meet with him at once. He conducted Jay’s interview in a rented office space not too far from the old Salvatore building. Farrow asked most of the questions, and he nodded along pleasantly as Jay talked about his passion for numbers and his experiences studying at Stanford.
Farrow was a curious character. He never seemed to take off his black leather jacket, which looked slightly too big for his slender frame. His cheeks were sharp and bony and his facial hair was carefully trimmed. It was a fairly imposing look, but when he smiled it completely transformed his character. He was a charismatic individual. One way or another, he seemed capable of winning anybody over.
Farrow was impressed by Jay’s experiences, especially by the way he had so cleverly exposed Salvatore, although he refused to tell Jay how he’d seen that particular bit of espionage. In any case, Farrow thought Jay’s skills were perfect for the job, and he told Jay he would take him on immediately. Housing would be provided in one of the apartment complexes near their base of operations. Payment was substantial and would come in on a monthly basis. Jay hardly heard any of this; he was just excited to be welcomed into such a secretive underworld.
The weeks passed by quickly as Jay got initiated into his new life. Farrow explained to him that Salvatore had just been the tip of a very large and very dangerous iceberg. CEOs all over the state were funneling illicit cash to various crime bosses in the city, and Farrow had made it his goal to cut off the head of the snake. Multiple snakes, in this case. That was where Jay and the rest of the tech specialists came in. They had an eye for the little details that could bring a corrupt CEO down from the inside.
To accomplish this, Farrow and several of his associates went around the city and placed cameras in strategic locations. Sometimes they even hacked into company networks so the tech-heads back at the base could break through any encrypted files. It was tireless work, but Jay loved it. He had never felt more in his element. It gave him a thrill to think that he was doing something with his life, that he was using his knowledge to make the world a slightly better place.
Most of the time they operated out of an abandoned warehouse in one of the emptier sections of the city. Farrow had the whole place rigged up with state of the art security systems and a few dozen computers. Jay and the other tech-heads spent most of the time cracking codes and analyzing the footage from Farrow’s secret cameras. If they found any incriminating evidence, they were to report it right away. Then Farrow would take some of his cronies and disappear into the city for a few days.
In very rare cases, Farrow would ask one of the tech-heads to come with him on an assignment. This only ever happened if the job required hacking skills that Farrow himself didn’t possess. Jay was fairly new to the whole game, so Farrow usually passed him up for one of the more experienced techies. He didn’t mind; in fact, he was nervous about returning the field. The Salvatore affair seemed like it had happened ages ago. He wasn’t quite sure he was ready to sneak around in gloves and a ski-mask again.
Jay was busy scanning footage one evening when he heard the slam of a door and the sound of muffled shouting from below. He frowned and took off his headphones. It was definitely Farrow shouting – Jay would have recognized that gravelly voice anywhere. He just couldn’t make out any of the words. Placing the headphones gingerly on the monitor, he got out of his seat and tiptoed over to the door.
The main operations room was on the second floor, so Jay peered over the railing on the catwalk to see what was happening below. Farrow and a few of his masked associates were gathered around one of the other tech-heads. Jay thought it looked like Bruno, the guy who worked with him on Tuesdays. He had his back against a drainage pipe and was holding his hands up helplessly.
“You took off your fucking mask! Do you know how serious this is?” Farrow was yelling. Even from this high up, Jay could see the angry crease in his eyebrows. “They’ve got your face now. It’ll be all over their security cameras. Your stupid slip-up could have put our entire operation at risk!”
“I-I-I’m sorry,” Bruno stammered. “It won’t happen again, I promise!”
“You’re damn right it won’t,” Farrow growled. Then he drew a gun from inside his jacket and shot Bruno in the head.
Jay clapped a hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. Half of the techie’s face was missing, bits of his skin and brain tissue spraying out onto the warehouse floor. His blood splattered across the drainage pipe and trickled to the ground. Jay could hear the steady drip all the way from the catwalk.
He ducked back inside the operations room before Farrow could look up and see him there. His heart was pounding out an erratic beat on his ribcage. As quickly as he could, he slid into his seat and stuck the headphones back over his ears. He hummed a senseless little tune under his breath, trying to make himself look as carefree and oblivious as possible. If Farrow knew what he had just seen… he held back a shudder.
Farrow appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, the specks of blood completely wiped from his face. He’d changed into a cleaner jacket too. As Farrow walked past the row of flashing computer screens, Jay tried to calm his racing pulse.
“Any good news?” Farrow asked. He placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder, peering down at the monitor.
They shoved his body in the wood chipper. The knowledge hit him like a jolt of lightning, clear and strong. It took every ounce of his willpower to force a smile.
“Nothing so far,” he said. “It’s pretty quiet tonight.” He was amazed he could keep his voice from trembling.
Farrow stared at the screen for a few painfully long moments, then coughed. “Keep up the good work,” he said. He let go of Jay’s shoulder and drifted toward the exit. The masked associates followed him like obedient dogs.
When Jay was finally sure he could breathe easy again, he wiped a line of sweat from his brow. He was badly shaken, and not just because he’d seen his coworker shot in cold blood. He was questioning himself now, questioning the whole purpose of this assignment. If Farrow could do something so cruel and violent in the walls of his own compound, what was he doing out in the real world?
After making sure the coast was clear, Jay opened up a web browser and began searching for names. He’d been so busy working this job that he’d never bothered to check the papers, to see what was really going on outside the compound. All the news about the crooks they’d toppled had come through Farrow himself. But the search results Jay found online painted a very different story.
Farrow had said that the elderly Mitch Cullum had been arrested for siphoning funds to a New York crime syndicate, but Jay managed to dig up the old man’s obituary. Cause of death: gunshot wound. Nancy Deepneau, a leading member of a dental corporation in New York City, had gone missing three months ago. And David Tassenbaum, a prominent figure in the computer business, had been mugged to death in an alley, his body so beaten it had been almost impossible to identify. Jay found a dozen more examples of the “corrupt CEOs” Farrow had supposedly brought to justice. The only thing they had in common was that they’d all been very rich, and there had been discrepancies in their corporate funding following each death or disappearance. The police were unable to track down any leads.
His fingers trembling, Jay shut down the browser. For a moment he could only stare at the screen in front of him. What the hell could he do? It wasn’t like he could play dumb forever. He was an expert at staying strategically silent, but a secret this huge would find its way out eventually. His body language would betray him first. The moment he started fidgeting too much, Farrow would know the truth.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He disappeared.
Erasing yourself from existence is next to impossible. You would have to delete every record of your birth, your social security, your education, your medical insurance, your credit card accounts – any and all places where your name could be found in writing. But Jay was persistent, and he knew things. He accessed every database he possibly could and systematically wiped himself off the map. There were some records he knew he could never touch, but if they were out of his reach, the chances of Farrow finding them were slim to none. He was an invisible man now.
Once he was done, he put down the headphones, shut off the monitor, and strode out the front door of the warehouse. It was only a matter of time until Farrow noticed his absence, but he planned to put a few thousand miles between them before that happened.
He was free. He’d been shaken to his core, but he was free, and that was all that mattered. He’d have plenty of time later to think about the horrors he’d seen. And who knows? Maybe this was it. Maybe this whole affair was behind him, and one day it would just become a ghastly dream, a nightmare from someone else’s reality.
But deep down, he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Red 38,” Jay stated. He handed his chips to the croupier, who stacked them on the side of the table with the bets from the other players. Then he gave the roulette wheel a spin. Jay watched as the colors bled together, streaking in an ugly smear of crimson gray. After a few seconds, the croupier tossed the ball down the spinning track. It bounced and rolled every which way before coming to rest in one of the 38 slots. Red 38 exactly.
“Damn, you’re on a roll,” the croupier said. He handed Jay his original chips plus the payout. “Sure you want to keep going? This luck of yours can’t last forever.”
“I’m sure,” Jay answered. He took a deep breath, waiting for the answer to wash over him like it always did. Then he placed his chips back down on the table and stated, “Black 13. Last bet.”
The croupier shrugged and took the chips. They went through the same routine. The roulette wheel spun in its blurry circle, and the ball bounced around for a while before plunking into its final slot. Black 13.
Jay ignored the astonished remarks of the croupier and accepted his winnings silently. He couldn’t stay at this table forever, so he turned away from the Rose Bowl Roulette and cast his eyes across the casino. The night was lengthening and the room was filling up with players, most of them clutching thin glasses of cognac and laughing with their friends. He searched for any sign of Farrow’s men, but it was useless – he’d never find them in this crowd.
He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help glancing at the Gold King’s looming statue. It was still dark and silent. Now that the place was getting busy, though, the chances of someone winning the jackpot had risen significantly. Time was running out.
Jay hated using what he knew to win games. It was one thing to find the pattern of outcomes for a slot machine; anyone with half a brain and enough time on their hands could do the same. But what he could do was cheating. No one could ever catch him at it, which somehow made it worse. He’d decided a long time ago that he’d never do exactly what he was doing now.
But he didn’t have a choice. He was over halfway to his goal, closer to three-fourths, really, and he couldn’t afford to waste time now. If he had to cheat, then so be it. Too much was at stake tonight.
The years following Jay’s escape passed in a dreamlike sort of blur. He moved out west, hopping briefly from town to town and spending his nights in cheap hotel rooms. He had to pay in cash, of course, since his credit card account had recently ceased to exist. Luckily he had plenty to go around. He had a natural talent for hustling, and he won most of his money by playing pool games or dealing hands of poker in the back of shady bars.
He never stayed with the same car for too long. He always knew when some idiot driver had left their keys in the ignition, and he took every opportunity to hop in a new vehicle and continue the journey west. He felt a little guilty about hijacking so many rides, but it never bothered him for long. He was far more afraid of Farrow catching up to him.
Occasionally he would seek out some underground sources who had a reputation for forging documents. He needed a new identity, which meant a new birth certificate and social security card and everything. He eventually settled on the name Jay Everett – “Jay” after the first letter of his old name, and “Everett” after a small saloon he’d passed through in Denver. He didn’t get all his documents forged in one location. He staggered them, picking up a new one every few stops to try and throw Farrow off his trail.
By the time he reached Nevada, he figured he’d placed enough distance between himself and Farrow to finally settle down. He got a low-level office job and rented out a tiny apartment at the edge of Boulder City. As the years passed and his stint with Farrow faded from his memory, he finally began to live a normal life again.
He fell in love. He married a beautiful girl named Marcia Thorne who knew nothing about his past, and they had a son together. Trace Everett. He grew up like any ordinary boy, kicking soccer balls around the yard and playing hide-and-seek with the other kids in the neighborhood. When he turned seven they even bought him a small black-and-white dachshund that he affectionately dubbed “Billy.” From that point on the boy and the dog were inseparable; they often went on walks together before his parents called them in for dinner.
Jay was happy. He’d gotten away from his past; he’d moved on from a life he thought would haunt him forever. He made love to his beautiful wife and watched cartoons with Trace on Saturdays. It was a perfect routine, and he never wanted it to end.
Then one night, ten years after Jay had made his escape from Farrow’s compound, a power surge went through their entire house. The Everetts had been enjoying their Sunday dinner when it happened. The bulb above the kitchen table gave a loud sputter before dying out completely. Billy gave a loud bark and began running in circles around the table.
“Calm down boy, it’s just a blackout,” Trace said. He got out of his chair and restrained the dog before he could knock into any of the table legs.
“That’s funny,” Marcy said, peering out the window. “The neighbors’ houses still have power.” Jay joined her by the window, frowning.
“Hmm. Must be something wrong with our circuit breaker,” he said. “You two go look for some flashlights. I’ll see if I can fix the problem.”
The three of them wandered off, stumbling their way through the dark. Jay found the door to the basement and began climbing downward, clinging carefully to the railing. He knew the breaker was located at the bottom of the steps, right next to the garage. He reached the end of the stairs and fumbled in the gloom for the circuit box.
To his surprise, the door to the box was already wide open. As Jay’s eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness, he saw that every single wire in the box had been snipped cleanly in half. Shit, he thought, oh shit, I should have known. But it was too late now. He felt the muzzle of a gun dig into his shoulder blades.
“I’ve been looking a long time for you,” Farrow said. His voice floated through the darkness in a soft, amused sort of growl. “You’re the one that got away. Isn’t that cute? You wouldn’t believe how many goddamn hoops I had to jump through just to track you down. But now I’ve got you.”
“It’s been ten years,” Jay hissed. “Ten fucking years. What could you possibly want?”
Farrow made a disapproving sound with his tongue. “We’ll get to that in a moment,” he said. “First, we have some introductions to make.”
Right on cue, Billy began barking furiously in the kitchen. Jay could hear Trace’s high-pitched voice trying to shout over him. “No, no, what are you doing, stop, he’s just a dog HE’S JUST A DOG STOP IT –”
Then a gunshot, a muffled whimper, and a shriek that could only have been Marcy. “Jay!” she screamed. “Oh god, oh god, there’s men in the house, they’ve got guns! They shot Billy!”
“Time for our big entrance,” Farrow laughed. He shoved Jay in the back with his pistol, forcing him up the basement steps. Jay plodded forward, hardly able to feel his feet. This must be a nightmare, he thought. I’m going to wake up any second now. But he knew that wasn’t true, the same way he knew so many other impossible things.
When Farrow pushed him into the kitchen, four dark shapes were waiting for him there. Two of them were Trace and Marcy, their hands behind their heads, their entire upper bodies trembling. The other two were some of Farrow’s masked associates. Each one held a pistol to the head of the prisoner beside them.
Marcy let out a sob when she saw Jay climbing up the steps. “Oh god, Jay, not you too?”
“Quiet,” one of the masked figures ordered. His voice sounded strangely distorted, like he was speaking through a filter. Marcy drew in a shuddery breath but stayed quiet.
“So, the gang’s all here!” Farrow exclaimed. “Wonderful.” He performed an exaggerated bow, his gun still nestled in the small of Jay’s back. “I’m Rick Farrow, a man of many trades. Right now I’m a man with a gun. Funny how that gives you so much power, doesn’t it?”
Jay said nothing. In his mind’s eye he could see the gun Farrow was holding, a thin barreled pistol that looked like something out of a Western. A Colt Paterson revolver, his brain spat out uselessly. As if it mattered. It would put a large hole in his chest no matter what type of gun it was.
“It appears you folks have already met my men,” Farrow went on. “They’re pretty low on the corporate ladder, but they do what they’re told, and what more could a man ask for?” He lifted the gun from Jay’s back to do a mock sort of clap with both hands. Jay wasn’t fooled; he didn’t move an inch. He was still Farrow’s prisoner, even if he was no longer at gunpoint.
“What do you want with us?” Marcy asked. Her face was damp with tears, but she’d managed to steady her breathing. Trace leaned against his mother’s legs with a scrunched up expression of anger in his eyes. He was trying so hard not to cry. Jay did his best to look away from the furry mass on the floor that used to be Trace’s beloved dog.
“What do I want?” Farrow said. “Ah, therein lies the question.” He turned his attention back to Jay, his eyes still bright and glassy blue in the darkness.
“So, you go by ‘Jay’ now, do you?” He said it again, slowly this time, as if to savor its taste. “Jay. I like it. Nice and low-key. It suits you well.” He gave Jay a casual tap on the shoulder with his pistol. A toothless smile appeared on his face when he saw Jay wince.
“You were good, Jay,” Farrow said quietly. “You were one of my best, actually. When you took off like that, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to find you. But I kept trying. The other tech-heads made stupid mistakes, botched their missions; they were disposable. But you. You were the grand prize, the golden fleece. I needed you back. You did stuff with numbers that could make a fella’s heart sing.”
Here Farrow paused. His glassy eyes were staring more intently at Jay this time, a careful sort of scrutiny that made his skin grow cold.
“But it’s not just numbers, is it? You see things. Patterns, clues, tiny details other people would miss. That’s what makes you so special. That’s why I need you.”
“Just tell me,” Jay spat through clenched teeth. “Tell me what you want to do. I’ll do anything.”
This time the smile that creased Farrow’s bony cheeks was wide and toothy. “Now that’s more like it,” he said. “Have I got a job for you, big boy. This one’ll be right up your alley.”
Jay said nothing, waiting for Farrow to break the silence first.
“Here’s the thing,” Farrow said at last. “There’s a man out in Las Vegas by the name of Jonas Carver. He runs a big casino in the heart of the city called Twin Pines. My men and I have been eyeing the place for years and we’re just about ready to strike him where it hurts.” He pointed an enthusiastic finger at Jay. “What I want you to do is take a hefty chunk out of this man’s wallet. Let’s say… $19,000. Enough to make him question the security in his casino. Afterwards, when he’s checking for cracks, we’ll sneak in and do our part.”
“Are you going to kill him?” Jay said. His voice came out hoarse and weak.
Farrow grinned. “Don’t worry about Mr. Jonas Carver. He’ll be in good hands. You just focus on playing the right games and making the most moolah.”
Jay’s neck felt stiff as a board, but he nodded. “I’ll do it,” he insisted. “Just let them go.”
“Ah,” Farrow said. “We’ve reached that little snag.” He began pacing the kitchen floor in front of Jay, swinging his revolver like a baseball bat. “See, the thing is, I can’t do that. I need a little insurance here. If I let them go, what’s stopping you from running off to the West Indies for another ten years or so?”
“I won’t,” Jay managed to choke out. “Listen to me, goddammit. I won’t run. Just let them go.”
Farrow pretended to think about it for a second. “Nah,” he decided. “Tell you what. Let’s play a game instead. Inside the Twin Pines Casino, there’s a wheel-of-fortune type game called Gold King. You can’t miss it. It’s got this ugly fucking statue of a cartoon king on top. Every night, without fail, someone wins the jackpot and bells go off and that statue waves its flashing staff at everyone. But only once. For the rest of the night it’s just a statue.”
When Farrow turned to Jay again, his eyes were icy. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “You have until the Gold King goes off to make $19,000. Otherwise your family gets it.” He made a careless gesture at them with his pistol. “One shot each, right in the head. Boom. Boom. And you have to watch.”
“I’ll do it,” Jay repeated. “I’ll play your goddamn game the way you want. But unless I fail, you’d better not lay a finger on them.”
Farrow was examining something under one of his fingernails. “Done,” he stated. He waved his hand absently toward the door. “Take them away, men. You know where to go.”
The two masked men dragged Marcy and Trace out the back door, both of them crying out and struggling to get free. “Be quiet,” the first masked figure said in his distorted voice. “If you don’t shut up, we’ll make you shut up.”
Both of them immediately quieted down, but they couldn’t hide the expressions of pure fear that were plastered across their faces. Jay felt blood pumping furiously through his veins as he watched his family getting dragged away. Farrow lifted his hand and gave them a pleasant wave as they disappeared out the back door.
In the side window of the kitchen, Jay managed to catch a glimpse of Marcy’s face for what he hoped wasn’t the last time ever. He blew her a kiss with trembling lips, but the masked men shoved her and Trace into a waiting van before she could see it. Then the two of them were gone.
Jay was in the middle of a poker game when the Gold King bells went off.
He’d managed to keep his cool throughout the entire night, but the blood drained from his face when he heard the loud clanging noise echoing through the casino. He turned to see the cartoon statue gamboling in place, flashing its toothy smile at the surrounding players. The scepter in its hand was dancing with flecks of neon light.
No, he thought in disbelief. No, not yet! I was almost there!
He’d been so close to the $19,000 mark that this poker game would probably have pushed him over the edge. The Gold King had gone off just as he was about to play his final hand. Now he watched the statue spin in lazy circles, its hideous bells still ringing in his eardrums.
“Hey,” a voice said suddenly. It was the dealer, trying to get Jay’s attention. “Hey buddy, this is the last hand. Are you calling or folding?”
Jay looked at him in surprise, then down at the cards in his shaky fingers. He hadn’t even bothered to look at them yet. What was even stranger, his usual powers of perception were failing him. He knew what all the other hands looked like, he knew who was bluffing through their teeth and who posed a legitimate threat, but he didn’t even know what cards he was holding.
He wondered how long it would take for Farrow’s men to cut through the crowd and take him away. He figured he had about thirty seconds, a minute at most. Was it possible? Could he make enough off this hand to complete Farrow’s sick challenge? The Gold King hadn’t finished its death knoll yet when the final hand was dealt. It was a technicality, but he was banking on it. It might just save Marcy and Trace’s lives. Now it was up to these last five cards to decide if they saw the light of another day.
He offered a quick prayer to a God he never believed in. Then he turned the cards over and stared down at the hand he’d been dealt.