Page 25 of Steam

Part IV

Bets Are Off

There arecertain events you don’t plan for in life. They just happen.

People tendto leave things like that up to luck: they roll the dice, they pull the arm of the slot machine, they look at the hand they’ve been dealt, and hope that luck is on their side.

In Logan Miller’s world, there is no such thing.

There are risks and payouts, certainly. But each win or loss is the result of cold calculation. And even chance can be boiled down to numbers.

Were he smart enough, Logan thinks, perhaps he could have pulled off the type of vast calculation that would have predicted this moment as he nervously waits for a sex worker to ring the buzzer of his condo building, fingers laced together as he stares out at the stark, sparkling skyline.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Sometimes trajectories are difficult to calculate.

And he certainly didn’t see this coming. Still, he tries to trace his steps, to identify the factors that brought him here.

* * *

Logan’s lifehas always been a series of calculations—and that concept had become quite literal ten years ago when he’d been recruited to work at IGT, a gaming machine manufacturer.

Before that year, at 29, he’d never stepped foot into a casino. Why would he have? He’d lived in Apopka fucking Florida all his life. In the sweaty state, the only casinos were on Seminole reservations—and even then, they were frequented by snowbirds who were happy to gamble away their retirement money. Not by people like him.

But it was one of those “friend of a friend” situations with IGT. Someone’s friend’s brother’s girlfriend had seen his game design work and passed it on to her friend who passed it on to their friend.

Logan was in the right place at the right time armed with the right type of experience, no family to worry about, nothing in the way of him packing up his shit and relocating at a moment’s notice—and in the course of seven days he went from game design peon in Apopka Florida to a once-in-a-lifetime dream job in the Game Design and Art Department of the country’s most important creator of casino gaming machines in Reno goddamn Nevada.

Was it luck?

Absolutely not. Logan had worked hard—building up his portfolio, trusting that the work he was doing would eventually pay off.

He’d sacrificed plenty for it, too.

Risk, after all, is a part of the game.

He’d ruined more than a few good relationships for his work. The men and women he dated seemed to each reach a tipping point in their first year with Logan, eventually giving him an ultimatum: work or me.

Each time, Logan chose work.

And as he stepped off the plane for the first time in Reno, taking in the fake rock facades and pumped-in cold, crisp air of the airport, he felt validated.

IGT had been head over heels for him. He knew he’d get the job. The interview, the trip out, it was all a formality.

Since then, working for IGT had afforded him plenty of luxuries. He could live wherever he wanted in Reno, look however he wanted. There weren't many guys out there who had great jobs that also let them be as tattooed up as they wanted, but his boss had never batted an eye as he collected full sleeves, as the designs took over more of his skin, the backs of his hands, down onto his knuckles.

Tattooers called designs like that “job stoppers,” but they’d never gotten in Logan’s way.

* * *

Oliver wasanother calculated risk that paid off.

Last year, almost ten years into his tenure with the company, Logan had gotten a call from Bernard. His boss was over in the corporate hub in Vegas, and the call had come through on July 3rd, at the end of another scorching desert day.

“Logan, not going to keep you long since I know we’re all off tomorrow but I have something I want you to chew on over the long weekend,” Bernard had said.

“Yeah, sure thing,” Logan said, assuming the man had a project idea.

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