Consolidation

Consolidation

Harry chewed his lip.

"I think I've got it, but run it past me again."

"Okay.  That guy--" Jake said, pointing to the long box on one of the monitors, "--is pretty damn sure that the universe is infinitely dividing.  Specifically, he's sure that every time his binary random number generator spits out one number--"

"--there's another universe where it spit out the other instead?"

"Right.  There's something to do with radioative decay in there, calibrated to exactly 50/50.  So.  He has money, and he wants to do resarch, but he hasn't got enough of it."

"So he comes to us, the biggest casino around."

"Yep.  Looks like he got the idea from a Star Trek episode--win enough times, casino can't pay, you get the entire casino instead and a steady stream of cash from then on.  Shame is, you'd normally lose well before then."

"Thus the box."

"Cool him down to where his brain doesn't change any more, have the gadget spit out twenty numbers, he wakes up only if they all match which side of the coin comes up.  Here, say, it's the fourteenth throw and it's a win for heads, Sleeping Beauty for tails."

"He didn't want to face failure?"

"Yeah.  Without change, guess he didn't feel he was making any new 'hims' who would have to die.  Each time, half of the 'hims' have been giving all their money to the other half, hoping that by the end there will be one 'him' who owns a casino for every million casinos who took all he had."

"...So, you're saying that in the universes where the gadget spit out the other number for this throw, the boss's orders to the dealer said to use the double-/headed/ coin this round instead."

"Yeah." said Jake, a faint smile playing across his face as the crowd went wild on the screen and the long box began to shine red.  "Yeah, like a guy once said, it all adds up to normality."