777

[WP] The lottery is a system secretly put in place so the government can find and capture time travelers and psychics before they cause major problems. As someone who won the jackpot by pure chance, you’re struggling to prove that you are neither of those to the suits that showed up at your door.

*****

It didn't take a genius to know that you weren't going to win the lottery. People explained it in dozens of ways. You were more likely to get struck by lightning twice and stuff like that, but people still played.

For some of them it was a belief in luck, for others it was desperation. For me? My Mom had played and she always told me that she was spending a couple bucks to spend an afternoon imagining the future she could have with all the money.

My work commute was over an hour long with traffic in the evenings, and buying tickets had gotten me through a lot of them.

Even then, the same dreams started getting stale over time. You can only imagine your dream house so many times before it starts being a routine to think about it. I knew the chandelier I wanted, and that wasn't taking my mind off the traffic anymore.

That's why three months ago I'd gone back to moderately interesting podcasts as my time killer. It was something better than staring off into the abyss and listening to Seacrest introduce the next song in the top 40.

Honestly, I should have been paying closer attention to the cars around me in traffic. If I had been I might have noticed the fact that I was clearly being followed by the black sedan behind me much earlier. Instead, I only figured it out on the fourth lane change, once I was pulling onto the off-ramp from my exit.

"Fuck," I hissed to myself. Erica had already been on my ass today at work and I didn't need some whackjob with road rage on my way home. Had I cut him off or something? I could head home but depending on how crazy the guy (girl?) was I would be stuck with them. No, it was better to end up in a public location.

I pulled over just off the highway, at the gas station I'd bought lottery tickets at when I used to buy them on the way to work and stopped in the spot right in front of the building.

The black sedan pulled into an empty spot beside me, a handicapped spot, then turned off.

I took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. I expected them to match me but instead, they waited behind tinted windows. I stood between the two vehicles for a moment. Had I been paranoid? Maybe my imagination was running off again. Guess I could grab a drink as long as I was here.

The bag was over my head before I was even properly turned around. I hadn't heard them get out of the car, and despite it being in public, nobody helped.

---

I woke up slumped in a chair but not tied to it, in a well-lit room. Across from me, a woman was on a couch, sitting there and watching me. She was leaning toward me, elbows resting on her knees and an e-cigarette held between her teeth. I shut my eyes and opened them again. My head hurt. It felt so bright even though it didn't look like it.

"Morning sunshine," the woman greeted after a second.

Why did my mouth taste like pennies?

"You've been a real pain in my ass, ya know that?" she continued.

I didn't know what she was on about but words were hard and some mental wires were still clearly disconnected from my mouth.

"You musta' thought you were so clever," she pulled the e-cig out of her mouth, "waitin' all that time to pick up yer reward. Thought we'd only try to catch ya on day one."

"Wha-" was as close as I could get to English.

"Ya know, I'm a patient woman Mr. Griffith, comes with the position, ya know." She stopped for a moment to take a long drag from the e-cig before sneering at it, "but I've spent enough time at this shithole point in history and so I'm takin' things off schedule."

"I-" my tongue felt heavy, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure thing," the woman answered before standing up and starting to pace around to the back of the couch she'd been sitting on, "ya know I'm trying to figure out how ya' did it because you've been weird about it."

I opened my mouth to speak but she continued faster than I could figure out my sore jaw.

"See time travelers are easy because the hard part o' that method is gettin' or buildin' one of those things. So once they're in the 21st, they get sloppy."

"Time travelers?" I managed to ask.

"Psychics are harder because they see ya comin'. Which tells me you weren't a psychic. "

"Hm?"

"So," the woman finished rounding the couch and crouched down in front of me, her ruby red lips turned to a frown. "How'd ya do it?"

"Do what?"

"Griffith," she clicked her tongue, "I got ya anyway. No need to be shy," she put a single hand on my knee and I realized how numb my legs were, "just talk about it and I can get y-"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The woman rolled her eyes. "The lottery Griffith," she sighed, "course I'm talkin' about the lottery. Ya fuckin' won and-"

"What?" I asked in a way too normal tone for someone who just found out that they had won the lottery. In my defense, I was 90% sure I was coming back from getting drugged.

"What do ya mean," she stood up for the one step it took her to get back to the couch, "what?"

"I won?" I asked.

"How'd ya do it?"

"What I-" it took a second. Did she think I cheated? Was that why she mentioned time travelers? Hell, I hadn't even known that I'd won and-

"You ain't tellin' me it was luck, are ya?" she asked.

I nodded.

"That ain't an excuse?" she asked.

I tried to shake my head but that was somehow harder.

"Well," she hissed air through her teeth, "yer fucked."

"What?"

"It's the honest truth that it was luck?"

I nodded again.

"Yeah I can't help you with that kid," she shook her head, "damn."

"What do you-"

"I gotta bring you in," she said, "and they're not gonna like that answer."

"But I just got lucky," I pointed out.

"You got too lucky," she corrected. "If there is a one in 100 chance and you try 100 times, what's the chance you win?"

"Uh-" I paused I knew it was lower than 100 but I didn't know the math on it.

"Lower than ya think," she explained, "luck don't have memory. We-" she motioned between us, "do. S'why people are so damn bad at understanding luck. Most random chance systems people interact with use double confirmation, pseudorandom chance, or pity to help our dumb monkey brains."

What was she getting at?

"Even casinos have a pity, because, if they didn't, nobody would play because there could be days or months without a big win-" she crossed her legs. "Now let's say there was a chance in 1 in 302 million, and 302 million people played.

"Someone would win?" I suggested.

"No, because people might guess the same number and then," she motioned out to the air, "nobody wins. More people guess numbers starting with 19 than any other combination because of birthdays, so-" she leaned in toward me again, "nobody wins unless they game the system."

"Time travelers?" I asked.

"Drugs must be wearin' off cause yer sharp," she tapped her foot several times, "but how did you win?"

"Luck," I answered.

"Yup," she signed, "time travelers and psychics are a problem but-" she clicked her tongue again and reached behind her, I saw the gun in the holster. I tried to get up, but my legs were still numb to everything, including panic.

"- someone that lucky would be a disaster."

*****

THE END