Monte Carlo, Alpha Centauri

The Gamma-Ray Casino Resort on Monte Carlo, Alpha Centauri, Milky Way— was the current favorite in an ever-evolving list of preferred gambling clubs which belonged to Mr. Hue and Harold Tincture (whom Hue often quaintly referred to as “Tint”). This was largely because it was one of the few in that corner of the galaxy that had not yet permanently banned them; this particular planet was not yet familiar with Hue and Tint’s infamous reputations. The number and repetition of times the boys had won Roulette the last few hours would change that shortly.

The Gamma-Ray Casino Resort was vivacious: it had large chandeliers that hung from the tall ceilings; the whole of the building was bathed in electric purple light, and the music felt much the same. It buzzed in one’s head the way alcohol did on a late midsummer evening. Mr. Hue’s head was buzzing, too.

Hue was sitting at the table, whilst Tint had gone to get yet another round of drinks for the both of them.

Hue watched the table with his chin resting on his hands; his eyes whirred, calculations running through his head faster than the Roulette wheel spun on the bright green table. His “focusing” expression was broken suddenly by a wide grin that spread across his face. The wheel had not yet stopped spinning.

“What’re you smiling about?” another player asked him, sounding terribly irritated. Hue couldn’t say he blamed him (the man had lost the keys to his brand new Zephyr spaceship two turns ago).

Hue shrugged, feigning ambivalence. “Oh, nothin.’”

He got a scowl in response. “What kinda android did you say you were again?”

Mr. Hue was a Histogram-based Universal Expectation android. He was manufactured by the Simon Hero-of-Alexandria Robotics Company, to specialize in maths and probability. The engineers who built him expected great success for him— he was a prototype, and if he worked, they would build another one thousand just like him: to be assistants to meteorologists, doctors, mathematicians— even sports coaches. But this idea fell through quite rapidly and quite ungracefully when they discovered Hue’s incredible disinterest in the tests he was given. He was no good at predicting the weather. He hated solving equations. He wasn't interested in sports. What he was interested in was games— specifically, gambling games.

In the late hours of the evening when all of the testing had finished for the day, and the engineers had all gone to sleep (even the most prone to insomnia)— Hue would sneak out through the mechanical doors of the lab and run out into the clubs and casinos of the city. The laboratory was on the outskirts of the colony, rural and isolated; but the city was bustling. It was lively, and it gave much to Hue’s CPU to work with. He was kicked out of his first club the first night he snuck out.

He was awfully good at gambling, and that was what got him into trouble: in the beginning, Hue had merely been a disappointment to the government; a failed project. Now, he was a nuisance. He was promptly decommissioned– which is a nice way of saying that a warrant was put out for his arrest and subsequent dismantling. Hue was not very keen on this idea, and so had made a grand escape in a dingy little rocket ship, to the rest of the galaxy. And damn everyone else, he would continue gambling and continue winning, because that was what was fun, and fun was all that mattered in all the universe.

“I was a waiter,” Hue told the player, humbly.

“Why’s your boyfriend the one getting drinks, then?”

“I’m retired.” Hue closed his eyes, a serene smile on his face. He heard the wheel come to a stop, the marbles fall to their final resting places, and another player across from him make a pained sound. Then, he heard Harold Tincture.

Tint was not standing anywhere remotely close to him. He was, indeed, standing by the bar, and ordering two more drinks. However, he was also watching the game play out from a distance— close enough that he could see the players’ expressions, but far away enough to not draw suspicion. He was speaking to Hue through an earpiece.

“Time to wrap it up, man.”

Hue, though also possessing an earpiece to speak to Tint— could not answer him without revealing to the other players that he had help. He opened his eyes and took in a breath.

“They won’t quit after that," said Tint. "Not until they’ve won at least something back. But that’s not gonna happen, is it?”

Hue pursed his lips to avoid a smile.

“What they will do,” Tint reminded him, as he so often did, “is get so angry they’ll beat the copper out of you. And steal the credits,” he added.

There was one area of gambling Hue lacked skill in. That was the matter of reading people. Probability was fine and good, but problems would arise if a player was particularly good at bluffing, or had a mean poker face. That was where Tint came in. He excelled in everything Hue fell short on. Simply put: he was a people person. So it was that they developed a system, based on their perfectly balanced abilities; Hue would predict, Tint would verify— they would play, and perform so perfectly it was infuriating. It was important to note that, although this method of an earpiece was often utilized— neither Hue nor Tint ever used it to look at another player’s cards or the dealer’s. That was cheating, and that was an abhorrent thing. They were civilized men, not lowlifes.

“Well, gents, I suppose I will call it a night after all.”

“Oh, will you?”

“Yes, I think I will.”

“Hey, Hue,” Tint said over the earpiece. Hue got up from his chair, putting the credits into his pockets. Once he had walked away from the table, he said, with the air of an annoyed housewife:

“Yes, dear?”

“Stop walking this way, and— actually, no—“

Hue raised a metallic eyebrow, adjusting the earpiece. “Huh?”

He heard a crash, then, and looked up to see Tint running towards him. There were two police officers behind him.

“Forget what I said,” Tint shouted. “We gotta run.”

Hue waited until Tint had reached him to follow; as if in a relay race. They dashed across the casino floor, bumping into a couple of people (and apologizing as they did so).

“That’s a pleasant surprise,” Hue yelled to Tint, over the loud music in the main room. “I was expecting security guards. I’m kind of flattered.”

Tint laughed. “Shut up, and don’t drop the credits.”

“Aye, cap’n,” Hue said, saluting. They turned a corner, and Hue grabbed Tint by the sleeve of his jacket, noticing he was falling behind slightly.

“Halt!” called one of the officers.

“Not on your life!” screeched Hue. Tint laughed, unwillingly, as he had no breath left to do so.

They were out the door in seconds, and sprinted to their ship. It was the same dingy little rocket ship Hue had escaped from his home planet on. He couldn’t bring himself to scrap the poor thing. It had gotten him and Tint out of many a perilous encounter. And it was going to do it again.

“Come on, come on!” Hue motioned to the ship. He and Tint hopped aboard it, and Tint, swiftly, despite his fatigue, got to the controls before Hue. The door sealed shut behind them, blocking out the officers who were chasing them.

Hue and Tint offered them a respectable fifteen seconds to vacate the landing zone and therefore not be burned to a crisp. Once they had done that, the rocket ship lifted off, and it went up and out of the atmosphere.

“Well,” said Hue.

“How many credits did you drop?”

Hue put on a deeply offended expression, putting his hand to his chest for extra drama. It made a little “clunk” sound as he did so.

“Why, Tint, I am offended.”

“How many?”

“Ten, probably. Sorry.”

Tint sighed. “It’s fine.”

“I was going to say thank you for telling me to quit when you did.”

“You’re welcome. And thank you for gettin’ us our pay. I’ll try to be quicker about warning you next time.”

They counted their credits at the single tiny table in the ship that night— the same one they used for playing their card games, for mealtimes, and for talking late into the night. The size of the ship didn’t matter, at the end of the day. It was small, cramped, and poorly lit– it was easy to assume that there may have been cockroaches hiding in the walls, had they not been 4.637 lightyears from Earth. But none of that mattered, because it was theirs.

To their surprise and joy, Tint and Hue discovered they had made just enough money to buy themselves some new crisp suits and hats. They went and bought them immediately at the next planet they stopped off at, spending every last cent.

When they walked out of the store, they spotted another gambling house across the road. Hue shot Tint a look that said: “Oh, we shouldn’t, but…” Tint responded by silently raising his eyebrows, which said: “Yeah, we shouldn’t. But.”

Minds made up, they strode into the club, arm in arm.