Analog, Digital, Transportation. Ira Sani and New Dover continue.
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Card counting only helps if you know what cards to count.

He still manages to do surprisingly well for the first time he plays.

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"Not bad, you could get really good at this if you keep it up. Want to try again?"

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"Sure. Two chess, two of this."

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"Want to try shuffling this time?"

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"If I shuffle the cards there's a real chance I will memorize all their locations. Kind of an unfair advantage."

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"I'll know what's coming next and plan accordingly? Or how would I memorize them? Because vampires are kind of ridiculous that's how."

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"That's the magic someone did to you? It must have a really horrible downside if you wouldn't've chosen it."

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"Constant pain and thirst. Vulnerability to sunlight, though I have mitigated that. Vulnerability to something like command magic that can do affirmatives, from the one who turned me. Amplified emotions and impulses, especially negative and violent ones."

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"...Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. Can I help with the amplified negative emotions somehow?"

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"It's been sixty years, I've learned to cope. Just, being a vampire is not a walk in the park, and it's definitely something to learn to cope with, even if one ends up deciding the benefits are worth it."

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"I bet that kind of memory is useful for something. Magic, maybe, what kind of mage are you?"

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"You sure you want the answer to that one?"

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"What, will it cost me or is it some kind of alien magic that's inherently gross?"

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"I'm no kind of mage at all, apart from the vampirism curse. Most people from my homeland aren't. A small fraction of us are witches, and can do vampirism, death magic, knowledge magic, basically whatever with enough work - and the rest just... Aren't. We're still people, mind you, I've encountered the 'ahhh soulless zombie thing!' thing before."

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"Oh, huh, so you only need a chance of having magic to select for intelligence. Cool. Oh, I should've guessed that, before we understood inheritance we practically only had eleven twelfths of people doing magic. What fraction of people in your world are witches?"

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"Oh, no, the magic's hereditary. The dominant theory for why they didn't select the rest of us into extinction is that they tend to kill themselves a lot. And we think complex social structures with room for cheating and lying and so on are the selector for intelligence."

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"Maybe that's true in your world but it definitely doesn't explain essi or agerah. I don't remember anyone ever telling me caralendri are older than essi, either."

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"Yeah, humans are the only sentient species on Earth. For us dolphins, elephants, other primates close-ish on our evolutionary tree, octopi, pigs, some birds, are also considered smarter than your average animal but not people-smart. And none of them are witches as far as I know."

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"Is it possible all your humans are descended from witches and... mutated to lose their magic somehow?"

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"Well, it's not impossible. I don't have samples and a genetics lab, alas."

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"That's probably what happened. Since lots of things are social and lie without being people. Like crows and ants."

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"Who knows. Next game?"

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He shuffles and deals and they can play again.

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This time he lies outrageously - well, actually quite effectively, he's good at lying and bluffing - and tries his damnedest to keep Seli from scoring, trick him into passing up good cards or giving him a boost, and overall confuse the heck out of him.

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