Gamblers tenancy
I started with cats.
Luck Be A Landlordis about meeting ever escalating rent demands by playing a slot machine.
Those symbols bounce off each other in zany but logical ways: bees pollinate flowers, comedians amplify monkeys.
It was overwhelming, at first.
There was joy there, though, in wringing rent out of the chaos.
It also lets you just keep going, so I did.
I expunged the chaos.
A sprinkling of golden arrows quadrupled the value of anything they pointed to.
My machine boasted a shadow of the variety it used to, but it was still colourful.
Out went the rubies and the emeralds, once rare treasures now nothing but flab.
Amethyst scaling soon rendered the diamonds into chaff.
Out they went, too.
I started seeing silly numbers, my screen kaching-ing into mesmerising chains of four digits after every spin.
I threw in a couple more dames, fired my star geologist and just… sat back.
It was liberating, hypnotising, and pointless.
Id won my wrestle with the machine, and become what I set out to destroy.
