Chapter 14

“The Bluff”

by Steve Hufford

“Dad, that’s not fair. You said you had a good hand!”

Hank, looking down at his exposed hand, a pair of threes and assorted trash cards, replied,

“That’s right son, it’s not fair. But in poker, lying is called ‘bluffing’, and it’s a big part of the game.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure poker’s my game then,” said Finn.

“But the cards don’t lie, son. You can always ignore the talk and just remember the cards and the odds,” said Hank.

“Guess so.”

Such revelations aside, they had a good evening together with the cards, popcorn, and other snacks. Hank foresaw that it was only a matter of time before Finn began to turn into a teenager. Hollow leg. Growth spurt on the way! He already ate like a squash player.

And then, later that night, years passed in a moment. Finn’s dreamscape, shaped by thoughts of NASA and the lure of space, drew forth from his subconscious the full-grown form of a young man. The older Finn was intelligent, curious, dedicated to knowledge, and yet disciplined by the rigors of squash and the gym. He had his father’s compassion, his mother’s good looks, and was on the pathway towards Mars. An undergraduate engineering degree, with subsequent degrees in microbiology and artificial intelligence, had prepared Finn well as a candidate for NASA’s in-depth astronaut training.

Yet somehow he was now in a card game, playing with Dad, and other grownups. And he was winning. The cards kept coming his way. He rarely needed to bluff, and he had an unerring ability to read the other players’ tells. The tapping fingers and the forced laughs told him all he needed to know.

The game ended and devolved into a party. He was looking hard at a striking young woman, who looked back. She had beautiful red hair, wavy, yet controlled by barrettes in a style that looked European… no, more precisely, Nordic. He couldn’t say why, but he liked it. And she was tall. Almost as tall as he had become.

Then she left the party, as did he. The odd thing was the drone following her. It stayed just out of her sight, behind her peripheral vision and also above, as she walked. Finn felt some foreboding. She should know someone was spying on her. He ought to help her. The drone was up to no good, recording her actions, and transmitting them somewhere. It was creepy. He woke with a start, found he was still upstairs in bed, nine years old, and too tired to get up early.

The rest of his night passed smoothly, with dreams that left fewer images behind. By morning, all that remained was some sense of an attractive redhead, the lure of space, and lingering foreboding about a nefarious, hovering drone.

What remained with Reid was an abiding desire to get even. More than a tad annoyed at having been drugged, he felt as violated as one of Bill Cosby’s dates. He considered drugging Stacy in revenge, but Pellegrino, her beverage of choice, didn’t offer much flavor to conceal chemical tastes. Food would be the best way to get drugs into her system, yet she was always so careful about her caloric intake that he didn’t see much opportunity there. He definitely wasn’t adept enough with needles to pull off a quick injection.

No, the best way would be to have her seal her own fate. He had to trick her. And the drone was just the right tool. Reid knew what he had to do.

The big day finally arrived. Prior attempts to settle out of court hadn’t resolved anything. The land hadn’t changed hands, Neil Cavanaugh was still pressing charges against Hank, Stacy continued with her efforts to orchestrate outcomes to her financial advantage, and Reid was way too involved with all the players in the courtroom competition. The only good news was that Reid and Hank’s revenge was going to be excruciatingly humiliating for Stacy.

Having been both cuckolded and drugged, Hank had been eager to share with Reid the GAL recording of Stacy’s expressive moanings captured during her extracurricular activities with Cav. When it became clear to all in the court that Cav was likely to be awarded some recompense for his injury and his loss of past and future income, Stacy and Hank’s lawyer proposed the land deal as part of the inevitable award. But greedy Cav pushed back, against Stacy’s prior plan. He wanted a substantial cash payment in addition to the land, and Stacy herself hurriedly suggested introducing the GAL technology into the court proceedings so as to explain the actual commercial value of the proposed land deal. Just as Reid had hoped.

The bitch set herself up.

There was a little lawyerly back and forth about whether a drone demonstration was relevant to the proceedings. Judge Jolene, clearly interested in at least learning something from yet another injurious assault case, admitted the demo. The GAL 9000’s hovering, following the lawyer as he strolled the perimeter of the courtroom, with concurrent sound and image sent via Bluetooth to a large monitor quickly impressed the judge. What impressed her even more, thanks to Reid’s prior work with the drone’s memory storage, was the very loud audio clip that began the moment the demo ended.

“Cav, you dog. Ohhhh. Yesss…”

“…oh, Cav…” [murmur] “…oh…”

It went on and on, unmistakably uniting the plaintiff and one of the defendants in an extramarital affair and a brazen scheme to cheat Henry out of the land and out of any ownership interest in anything of value. Thanks to GAL 9000, the sex and the scheming were on full display.

Bang. Gavel down, case dismissed.

Rowan and her driven mom rarely gave up. The Princeton alums enjoyed proximity to her fame and mature beauty, and were exceptionally generous. And that’s how the GLA-PACS organization started and eventually succeeded, on land donated by Henry, with a squash program overseen by Reid, and even an educational curriculum for the underprivileged from greater LA – all focused on science, with mentors from the drone company right next door.

Finn, Winnifred, Rowan and her sister, Jethro, and a crowd of other youths grew to love the game. Kids and teenagers flowed through the GLA-PACS courts, honed their skills, and some found themselves on an alumni-smoothed pathway to playing at Princeton.

Best yet, the science classes were testing a new technology that could finally display the speed, grace, and athleticism of squash. With just a few adjustments, the facial recognition tracking embedded in GAL was redirected toward ball tracking. Hovering above mid-court, and moving out of the flight path as needed, the machine never lost contact with the speeding orb, giving viewers an unparalleled experience of the competition. A generation of inquisitive kids born with smartphones in their hands began to push the boundaries. Drones on the court first, and then on to other planets.

Hank and the GAL9000 guys made a bundle, and Finn was on his way to the stars.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.