Image CC-BY-NC-SA by Modern Nomad

John leaned against the cold vinyl drapes as the images flickered across his vision.  The scar running up the side of his head itched–five years and he still had to remind himself not to touch it when it itched.  Touching was tampering, and that led to pain–images of hellfire and brimstone, discordant noise, the smell of rotting feces, pure lightning pain running through his body.  But it always itched when he was watching the weekly Powerball.  Five years watching the weekly Powerball, waiting for his bad luck to run out.

In his dreams he imagined tiny waveforms swimming about, generating his ticket from subconscious impulses, communicating wirelessly through his gaolor uplink.  He wondered if they told him what to think; he hoped being able to wonder meant they didn’t.  But he wondered all the same. 

The balls popped like corn kernels, one after another.  Forty numbers, twelve colors, seven balls.  People called the week by the major colors, the new astrology.  Man wasn’t ruled by planets–man was ruled by chance right here, man’s chance.  John had taken a chance once, a couple bad turns.  That’s all it took.

He dreamed the numbers all turning red.  Coming out pure and simple, one through seven.  That was his.  That’s what he thought to the little gizmo in his head every time the screen came on.  Just as likely as anything else, but ordered–John liked order.  The girls he’d killed–they hadn’t liked order.  Now he was restrained to fifty feet, but that was order, too.  When the Powerball wasn’t on, he paced it, iterating combinations.

And when he won, he’d buy his pardon, get the voices out of his head, and see about setting more order to the world.