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But gambling with one’s coworkers and friends is a delicate balance of playing either casually or competitively. All the more on a naval ship, or the Duck, where tempers flare and blaze at the slightest provocation. All the worse if they’re betting their own wages. Little wonder why gambling had been severely frowned upon, if not outright banned throughout the history of soldiering.
The use of gummies instead of ducats seems to have alleviated this, however. Even if everyone looks deadly serious as Holt deals everyone in, and holds the chip marking her as the small blind. Anteing up the necessary bet as the big blind, you check your cards.
Ace of Spades and a Three of Hearts. It has potential…
>>You spend time with Gully…
“Paid by the word,” your fellow pilot mutters as she squints at the borrowed novel. “No, I can definitely believe that.”
You don’t look up from your sketch of the disassembled Polaroid. In a spare notebook, you painstakingly render out the composite parts that make up Gully’s camera, as well as a set of diagrams as how they all fit into each other. She isn’t letting you put anything together yet, but has allowed you to touch to get a better view of things.
“It was a different time,” you mutter, replacing a mirror for a gear. Each individual tooth is noted, rendered out first as a crude sketch, then a more refined design. It’s not nearly as precise as machinery or wax impressions, but it’ll get the job done. “His stuff was published in serials, and they had to pad everything out a fair bit.”
Gully hums in response. “What got you interested?”
Book club doesn’t stop even after the apocalypse. “<span class="mu-i">David’s Dailies</span> used to have two hours where they’d perform audio dramas over the radio. What started off as background noise for the chop shop turned into a side hobby.”
Her face scrunches up in a frown. “I find that hard to believe given their…current programing.”
The skepticism isn’t unwarranted. Ten years ago, a salvage team had discovered a bunker near the ruins of Orlando, two hundred meters down. After lowering a diving bell, they discovered a desiccated corpse, as well as his avid collection of musical records. “The Mummy’s Music” was the shorthand name that had been attributed to that particular haul of late 20th century music.
And ever since then, the program took…not a turn for the worse. The music’s got more good than bad, but at the risk of sounding like an elitist prick or geriatric like Larkin, it just isn’t the same as the radio dramas.
“I guess you had to have been there,” you say wistfully. “They once put on a copy of Orson Welles’s <span class="mu-i">War of the Worlds</span>.”
Thankfully, there hadn't been any panic during that broadcast, unlike it's original debut.
There’s something on the tip of her tongue, and a flash of recognition in her eyes, but she politely asks, “So no one’s doing radio dramas anymore?”
(cont.)