come_sailaway | We're wide awake now, our eyes are wide open. We're running this world, we keeping it turning

Last time she won chips from the casino, Ava had boredly tossed them overboard. But the game itself is probably entertaining enough, she wouldn't mind figuring out how to play. It's less humiliating than attempting dancing or karaoke. She hopes.

Ava passes right through the chair before sitting upon it, elbows firmly on the table. "That's my favorite sort of economy. A non-existent one."

"My least favorite." He shuffles again, dealing the cards out with a practiced flourish, "How does one rise to the top if there's nothing to aspire to?"

He fans the house cards out between them, eyes flicking them over before dealing to both him and her, "That's an unfortunately good hand for the house I'm afraid."

"Do you know how to play?"

"Why should there be a top to aspire to?" Ava questions. "That illusion of superiority only leaves others suffering at the bottom."

Ava wrinkles her nose, studying the spread and trying to determine what makes it good. Then compares it to her own cards that she scoops up off the table.

"Yeah, sure," she lies, maybe she can figure it out as they go. She doesn't really want to burden him with having to teach her.

"What's your alternative?" his voice honestly curious. He was the one at the bottom for so long that now that he's on the top he'd like to block that from his memory forever. He got his, that's all that matters.

His own cards are not very good, but the fortunate part of being a robot is that he doesn't have any facial expressions to give that away, other than his eyes that flick from his cards to her. "'Sure' is not exactly a ringing endorsement of confidence."

"I do like what the French did with their greedy leeches on society..." Ava suggests vaguely.

She tries arranging the cards in her hand into a more logical pattern. "Well, I know how to play Go Fish and Solitaire," she admits.

"I meant post that. Once the heads roll, what would you prefer the structure for society to be? Someone would still need to decide what needs to be done and they'd likely become power hungry and start the whole cycle again. I'd be interested to know how one would prevent that." Not that he expects a stranger he met ten seconds ago to have all the answers, but he is actually contemplating how that would even work. Everyone he knows is a power-mad, selfish asshole, even the so called 'good guys'. So.. wouldn't it just become the same thing again?

He laughs, soft and lyrical. "It's a good deal more complicated than that." He gestures to the three cards on the table, "These are the community cards, we use these to make the best set of cards from our individual hands. You have two cards now, but theoretically, if there was anything to wager for, we would bet before revealing a fourth community card, and then a fifth. So eventually we would each have seven cards to try and make the best set of cards from. Whoever has the best hand, wins the entire pot of bets. The strategy is attempting to predict what the other player has."

"I lived out in the woods for a reason," Ava sighs, misses that sense of isolation and peace. "Whenever there are resources, even plenty to go around, there's always someone that wants to hoard far more than their share, which causes just enough scarcity for everyone else to turn on each other for the scraps... sadly there's no real cure for greed other than..." Ava swipes her hand across her neck. "Humanity is rotten to the core. There is no system that eventually won't end up exploited and corrupted."

She's not a very optimistic sort.

But she listens to the explanation well enough. She tends to pick up on things quickly. "Mm, so it's the combination of all the cards that determines their overall value? Is it by points, or certain patterns?"

"Well clearly the solution is to eliminate humanity entirely." He's not entirely opposed to that, but it's not an exactly popular viewpoint. "I'm not sure how that helps those who don't want to die to be part of the solution."

Perhaps a small soft spot showing for being against wholesale genocide, but she's certainly not wrong about most humans being rotten, greedy monsters. Most people actually, he's not human and while he doesn't consider himself to be rotten, he's definitely greedy.

"Correct. And you're looking for patterns based on card value. Even though we have seven cards to make our hands, your hand size is the best five cards of them. You want matching suits or numeric value, or five cards sequentially. The best hand would be a ten, jack, queen, king and ace all of the same suit. The suits being the symbols: hearts, clubs, spades or diamonds."

He deals them both another card, not increasing his luck at all, "Prior to this we'd make bets or one of us would concede. And at this point I likely should have."

"I believe that's the conclusion Ultron came to," Ava gives a bit of a huff, mostly because the comparison just reminds her of Stark's general existence. "I can't say I support extremism either, destroying everything because it's not perfect is a rather harsh stance. But. It is easier to complain. That's my stupid human flaw. My solution is I go off where nobody can bother me, while everyone else takes advantage of each other since they all enjoy it so much."

Ava continues to nod along, can make reasonable enough assumptions of what sorts of combinations would be more valuable than others. Such as the two 7s in her hand would probably lose to two 8s, but three of anything else would beat that. And she's mathematically inclined enough to have a vague idea of the odds of that happening. And aware enough of the fact his computing ability far exceeds hers. Or is that just a robot stereotype?

"Are you just saying that to give me a false sense of confidence?" Ava teases.

"I'm afraid I don't know what Ultron is." He thinks about what she says for a moment before replying, it's rare that people know their flaws, let alone admit them. Especially to a stranger. "We all do what we must in order to survive. And it's probably the prudent plan to leave and let those who wish to kill each other do so without you. Eventually they'll succeed and then the problem solves itself. Not a neat and tidy solution as the havoc they bring will likely be far reaching but... it's certainly not a bad plan."

Sometimes he wonders if he shouldn't do the same. Just leave and let Talon and the remains of Overwatch and Null Sector battle it out to the end. The only thing stopping him is eventually one side would nuke the planet and kill everyone anyway. There's no real winning in the end, just small term gains for now.

"You give me far too much credit. My flaw is that if I was winning I would be unbearably smug about it." he's more than aware of that facet of himself - and has done literally nothing to deal with it.

"Egotistical billionaire's AI that went rogue and tried to create a meteor out of a country," Ava summarizes, with a bit of resigned boredom that comes with being from a world where that sort of thing happens every other year or so.

At his approval of her plan Ava hums a bit sadly, recalling Clarke's accusations. Of her simply giving up, sitting by to watch everyone else die. But she's so tired of constantly struggling. Things were supposed to get better for her, she had finally found a way forward... "Not much you can do to get away from here, though," Ava is sure somebody not her can figure it out, perhaps, but she's given up on stringing herself along with false hopes. They're here and she's doing what she can to be okay with that.

"Ah, I figured with your face," Ava waves her hand in front of her own. "You don't have to worry about your expressions giving you away. I have a mask a bit like it. Nice to hide behind. Depersonalizing." She scrutinizes the house hand again, trying to figure out if there's much that can go in her favor to come ahead. "So does the house ever fold? Or are we just forced to lose to that?"

He stares at her in silence for slightly longer than is polite, trying to judge if that was targeted at him; being an egotistical billionaire. While he's not an AI, he is a robot, and to certain humans there's not much of a difference to any sentient non-organic life. But then she just continues on in a way that leads him to think there's apparently other billionaire narcissists in her world. Who knew he has competition in places he didn't know existed?

"Well being trapped here is a new obstacle I haven't quite figured out how to circumvent. Unless we all take over the ship. Or maybe drown ourselves at the same time and overload it trying to bring us all back." he shrugs, he's not sure yet how to approach that. And right now he'd rather not think about it.

"In my world, my kind aren't allowed to gamble, partially for that reason. Even though I own the main casino in Monte Carlo. I own it and can't play at any of the tables," there's a bitter tone to his voice as he says that. But even though gambling is illegal for him, he's definitely good at it and knows everything about it. Obviously a law abiding citizen.

"The house doesn't get to play, what I meant when I said it was unfortunate the cards were so good, was that you want the good cards to be in your hand, not on the board." He sets his cards face up on the table. "Because the community pool is so good we each need much better cards to compete."

He slides four of the cards in the house community pool forward, "This set of four is almost a straight. Eight, nine, ten, and Jack. If you have either a seven or a queen, you'll beat me. You'd have a straight. I have a Jack and an eight which makes a two pair."

Ava doesn't have the best gauge of polite and simply stares back, unbothered. The only comparison is the destroy all life sentiment, really. And okay a bit of the face.

"At first I thought perhaps this was a simulation of sorts, and exploiting some glitch in the programming would... be worth an approach. But I'm more certain now that this is all magic. Which I don't know shit about," Ava thumbs at the edge of a card. She's not going to pretend to have a solution for any of that.

"Your world sounds as awful as the rest of them I've heard about." No matter how different all the details are, that's the one constant. How badly they've all been taken advantage of by society. Further reinforcing her opinion that society sucks. "I'm not suggesting you find one of those lawmakers and wear them as a flesh suit to get around such pesky bans, but..." Ava smiles playfully, comfortable enough with the company to dip into her darker sense of humor.

Her entire understanding of how this game is being played turns right on its head as he explains the purpose of the face up cards as ones they aren't competing against. "Oh!" she exclaims, dropping her cards onto the table. "Then I win. I have two sevens. So this keeps going until one of us hypothetically would have all the other's money?"

"Magic." He makes a small huffing sound, because that just isn't a thing where he comes from. Technology is so far advanced that's there's barely any difference and it all seems magical, but it's just advanced tech. "I can't say I know anything about that either. And honestly I'm not sure I want to."

How does one counter magic?

And then he actually laughs, genuinely dropping his confident façade for a moment, "Believe me I've more than thought about it. Fantasized about doing just that. Unfortunately I think that might be the final act that gets me arrested and thrown in a trash compactor."

But it's still amusing. Oh he likes you Ava.

"Exactly. We'd deal new hands and a new community pool and start betting again until one of us walks out of here broke." He sounds pleased, she's a fast learner. "I've done this slightly out of order for ease of learning, we would get our two cards first before the pool is revealed, which is technically called the flop, and you would need to bet or fold before those are flipped over. It's a game of chancing the odds that the cards you have will be worthwhile. Generally if your starting hand has a two it's best to fold."

He collects the cards and shuffles them again. There's other things like ante, burning cards and calling bets, but that's a bit much for a first game with only two people and no real stakes.

"It's not complicated once you've played a few times, it mostly does boil down to knowing the odds of certain hands and a fair bit of luck." And because he likes her now, "The reason people lose everything is because they want to win so bad that they're careless. It's better to fold and lose a small amount then to keep going because emotionally you want to win against someone else and potentially lose even more. But... It's of course not as fun to do everything rationally."

And this is coming from a robot.

Magic is absolute nonsense that she doesn't want to deal with, she's glad they're in agreement.

She huffs unhappily about him getting tossed into a trash compactor, but it's honestly not surprising. She can imagine knowing how disposable you are can build up plenty of resentment. "There's a place called the Raft, where they'd love to toss my kind if they could ever get their hands back on me. But," she passes her hand through the table. She's not so easy to catch. Still, it's why she prefers to live so off the grid, with so little to her name, make it that much easier to pick up and run when she needs to. Ava might be a bit off, but she likes to think of herself as practical.

And as he describes the ultimate goal as stripping the other players of their wealth and leaving them broke, Ava thinks she begins to understand the allure of the casino business for him. Perhaps the ability to own things rather than be owned, to humiliate the humans that come to play at the tables he can't. In the end, still ultimately winning. Or maybe it's her own projection and she doesn't understand him at all.

She listens attentively as he describes different aspects of the game, the small hints of strategy. "Mn, right. Sunken fallacy is a rather dangerous trap to fall into in any circumstance. When you've put in so much, it is hard to let go, realize that you've already long lost..." Ava sighs. She learned that lesson a very hard way.

"Well, do you want stakes? To make it a bit more fun?"

"That is a handy skill to have. How are you doing that actually?" He's used to people being able to become invisible or setting up teleporters, but phasing through physical objects is a new one for him.

She's exactly right, he owns a casino even though he can't gamble, and a rum distillery producing alcohol he physically can't drink. But humans can - and he will part them from their money in any way possible. Especially in a way that gets him ahead. He's not going to lose to his own casino, and he'll never be drunk. They will though, and perhaps a little worse off for it.

Even petty revenge is revenge.

"I do enjoy having winning be meaningful... Do you have anything in mind beyond pieces of plastic? I didn't arrive with anything on me worth gambling away."

"Me and the laws of physics are in disagreement," Ava explains wistfully. "I don't bother getting into too much detail, because effectively it's exactly what it appears to be, and nobody wants to hear the overuse of the word quantum. Some things are liquid, and some are solid, and me..." Ava is elusive. Changeable, unpredictable. "Unstable."

She supports it, Ava often has dreams of running an NFT scam and crashing the value. Money is meaningless, but she particularly hates crypto. A neat enough concept on its own, but...

"Ah. I'm not sure meaningful, nor even tangible. I was going to suggest the loser must sing karaoke. And the winner picks the song," she grins.

"I see." He does in a way, she seems to be phasing in and out as necessary. But 'unstable' does add an element of unintentionality to it. "Are you able to do that at will or is it simply... happening?"

He's seen that before, test cases that didn't go to plan, scientists who flew too close to the sun. And while it seemed to work out in the end there's always the chance it won't. Some experiments ended with unimaginable pain and suffering.

"Well that is horrific and definitely worth trying to win at all costs. Unfortunately.. well I suppose fortunately in this case, I actually cannot sing. My voice module doesn't do that." And it's lucky he wasn't attacked by the karaoke machine on the first day because the machine would not have liked that answer.

"I'm currently in more control of it than it of me," she informs him, with the heavy implication that it's not always the case. It's better now than it's been in a long time though, far less painful. But there's still the lingering fear. She has no way to really monitor her condition here. No idea how much time she has before she starts rapidly deteriorating again.

"Oh, that's a shame," Ava notes, trying to imagine his voice to a tune. "I'm not particularly good at it, so I suppose we'll spare everyone the suffering. Is that something you'd even want? Do upgrades and modifications even exist?" Ava asks softly.

But that still leaves the matter of stakes. She doesn't really have much of anything, other than a giant Hello Kitty Pez dispenser. She can't imagine him wanting it. "How about... a personal secret, then? Loser has to share one."

She sounds awfully calm about that potential loss of control and he's impressed by that. He supposes he would be too, well externally anyway if anyone asked, but it does sound honestly terrifying. Losing control is one of the things that's nightmare fuel to him.

"They do, and I could, but.. I've genuinely not thought about singing. I'm not sure I'd ever need to?" Considering his soft, soothing voice he'd probably have an extremely beautiful voice. Alas.

"Oh that's clever. I suppose neither of us will know if the other is lying but... That sounds amusing. Terms accepted."

She's only so calm because she's lived through the worst of it and came out the other side mostly whole. And she knows what happens when the fear overcomes her, hoping to avoid falling into such desperation again. But it's the sort of nightmare that grasps at the edges of her consciousness every night.

Ava flexes her fingers against the tingling. "Don't think anyone really needs to. But. Maybe at birthday parties." She hasn't had one of those in a long long time. And wonders if a robot even has such a thing. He could easily be 2 years old or 200 and she wouldn't know any difference.

"Excellent. Better deal those cards," Ava is pretty sure she'd be a disaster at shuffling. Perhaps he has some tricky advanced way of stacking the deck, but she trusts him well enough when the stakes are this low.

"Ava, by the way."

He's never had a birthday party, or even celebrated his.. well, manufacture date. Which seems far less celebratory honestly.

Instead he shuffles the deck, dealing them out again with a small flourish. Luckily for her he is not currently cheating, and he's not planning on it, but he definitely could count cards and stack the deck and employ some shady dealing practices. But no reason to cheat when he's teaching someone how to play and there's zero stakes involved. He doesn't even particularly care if he wins, it's just nice to even talk to someone about anything other than the death ship they're on.

"Maximilien. It's a pleasure." He actually means it too, "It's been a rather long time since I've been able to play without fear of getting arrested."

She feels as if she wouldn't be worth cheating anyway, given he could just make up any rule he likes in order to claim a victory. And there's no real satisfaction in that. But she still watches his card dealing technique closely, because she's still been trying to figure out how anyone can handle cards so smoothly. "Can you do any card tricks?" she asks curiously while she glances at the cards in her hand.

Oh, a two, her expression falls slightly. He mentioned that it was better to fold when receiving such, but... no, she wants to see how this all plays out anyway. Her other card is a King, so maybe that balances things out. No straight that she can make with that... but at least they're both hearts? She remembers him saying that matters, but she's not certain how many you have to have to make it count. But asking might give away what she's got, so she doesn't.

"Is that one you picked, or was chosen for you?" Because it doesn't sound particularly roboty. "It's been a long time since I've been able to do much without getting arrested either, but that's the life of a fugitive I suppose," she smiles. "I really don't think there's really any laws here other than designated smoking areas."

"Perhaps." Not that he does one, but once he's set the deck down after dealing he does seem to produce a pokerchip out of nowhere and walk it across his knuckles before it disappears again. It's different than the ones currently on the table, a more golden color and thicker.

"I chose it. We weren't given names." He has a serial number instead which he's probably filed off at this point out of spite. Max is someone who spends his free time filling out captchas online just to prove he can.

"Finally a true lawless frontier and neither of us can properly enjoy it. Likely by design." He sighs, a soft sound since he doesn't actually need to breathe, "Though I suppose it's less fun to break them if they simply don't exist. Maybe. I'm unsure how I feel about that."

The cards in the center are somewhat in her favor, a seven of hearts, four of diamonds, and three of hearts. So at least she has a lot of one suit. Max glances at his own cards, which are a seven and a jack. Currently he only has one pair. Not ideal.

Oh neat, Ava leans right through the table in order to try getting a closer look, blinking in surprise at the chip disappearing. She gives a slightly confused yet delighted clap, grinning up at Max.

"It's a nice one," Ava remembers Rin telling her about how it selected its own to go by as well. "What inspired it? I was given a codename, but it's rather uninspired." And feels silly to go by here.

"Still, I make the most of it that I can," Ava knows she's lying to herself, really. But it's a lie that keeps her going. "I've been trying not to feel about it. Lot of wasted energy, feeling."

She tries to study Max's face, but there really isn't much to give away about what he's working with. "So we're able to... up the stakes as we go, right?"

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