KITTY WITTGENSTEIN SUPERMODEL PHILOSOPHER
Score: 7.3 / 10 
Kitty Wittgenstein and the Improbable Serendipity Engine
Improbable Impediments
When the scaffolding over which I was clambering in pursuit of Raymond - the current villain of the piece - gave way and I tumbled into a restraining suit of armour that just happened to perfectly fit my atypical body measurements, I began to understand that luck truly was not on my side today. When the restraining suit locked itself around me this fact became another notch clearer. As the roof of the tank upon which I had landed opened and dropped me into a self-sealing sack, I nodded. Yes, of course. Finally, as the sack dropped into a self-locking cage that fell into a deep pool of water I considered my suspicions one hundred percent confirmed. Luck was definitely working for the opposition side today.
Of course, this was hardly surprising as the aforementioned villain was wielding a device that enabled him to alter the very forces of probability itself. By definition, luck was going to be on his side rather than mine.
I'm Kitty Wittgenstein, I'm a supermodel philosopher, and this is the astonishing tale of the improbable serendipity engine.
Despite Raymond's dominance of the laws of probability, I still found myself somewhat startled at my predicament. My hands, neck, arms and legs were all locked rigidly into place by the suit of armour. So I couldn't move. And yet, the cage, sack and suit of armour were all sufficiently permeable to allow the water of the pool to wash all the way through to me and commence the whole drowning thing. This was extremely dangerous.
Not to mention silly. I mean, the forces of luck may well have been playing on the opposing team, but there was surely no need to go crazy about it, was there?
Still, no need to panic. This entire setup was part of a magic show. The magician's inevitable beautiful assistant - the one who shared my measurements - was surely given a way out of this mess each performance. It is, after all, extremely inefficient to drown a beautiful assistant each night, even by Las Vegas standards.
I moved my fingers, looking for a trigger switch that would allow an escape from the armour. Nothing. I wiggled my butt, flexed my knees and puffed out my chest. Nothing.
Water continued to pour through. I became increasingly less sure of how much longer I could hold my breath.
I continued to try body extremities as the seconds of lung capacity wound down.
Finally, a chin move triggered something and the suit popped loose. I squirmed my way out and tried to find my way to the opening of the bag.
I failed. In the disorentiation of my squirming, I'd been turned around. I'd had a 50-50 chance of swimming to the opening or to the bottom of the bag.
No prizes for guessing that I'd come down the wrong side of that coin toss. I tried to turn around but the bag seemed to tighten the more I squirmed. And I still had a suit of armour blocking the opening of the bag to get past.
Oh, and let's not forget the cage surrounding this entire mess.
With about ten seconds left of oxygen left in my lungs, I didn't really see how I was going to get out of this one. Hmm. Drowning. Not the preferred way to go.
Pick a card, any card...
The day had begun at least thirty to fifty times better than how it now seemed to be heading. I'd been called on for a Celebrity Debate on 'Gambling: Right Or Wrong?' in The Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas. I'd originally not been part of the schedule, stepping in only when my companion for the weekend, Ewan McGregor, had trodden on a wayward nail and rather badly infected his foot.
I'd fed him his afternoon dose of antibiotics, mocked him for his poor usage of midichlorians and headed off to the 'debate', with more than slight trepidation. I was perfectly aware that a Celebrity Debate was a debate in name only. In reality, it was more an excuse for a sextet of celebrities to each do a three-minute stand-up performance about a given theme.
Which, from my perspective, was far less enticing. Heck, as a philosopher, a true debate based around a well-structured argument and a logical deconstruction of my opponents' line of reasoning was perfectly up any number of my alleys. If that had been a viable option, I may well have pounced upon the engagement with glee.
However, I'm not a comedian. Sure, I've studied the theories of comedy. I know my Henri Bergsen, I know my Freud. I understand reversals, the formula of threes and so forth. From a pure mathematical perspective, I even understand the catastrophe theory of what makes a joke work. Or otherwise.
And yet, Steven Wright's not nervously looking over his shoulder for me.
Still, Ewan had been supplied with a routine that I'd modified slightly to better reflect the fact that I wasn't Scottish. Or a man. Or a Jedi. It was a solid routine, well written with strong material throughout.
But I'd also taken the opportunity to add some serious elements. I'd deliver the jokes adequately. Not to Michael J Fox standards of comic timing, perhaps, but I'd get laughs. But if I was forced to do this, I'd see if I could actually sneak in a relevant point about humanity's inability to intuitively comprehend probabilities and risk. It would almost certainly not make a skerrick of difference, but I'd feel better for having made the effort.
And so, I closed my argument/routine by demonstrating just how unlikely it was to win a one in ten million shot.
I shuffled a deck of cards. "You have to draw the Ace of Spades from this deck four times in a row. That's the equivalent of what you have to do to win the Lotto." I fanned the cards out to Bronson Pinchot, the Team Leader of my opponents.
He shrugged and drew a card. It was the Ace of Spades. He laughed in triumph.
"They've still got to do it three more times," I said, smiling to the audience and walking over to Jennifer Love Hewitt.
She also drew the Ace of Spades. I checked the deck to make sure it wasn't rigged and that the Ace didn't have some kind of special marking on it. It didn't, but Michael Rosenbaum still managed to draw it a third time. At that point, I suspected something was very amiss.
When Eugene Levy, the Debate Chairman, pulled the ace a fourth time with a completely different deck of cards, I pretended that this was part of the performance, made my final few jokes and returned to my seat.
Nobody else noticed. Nobody else knew that they'd truly defeated better than one in ten million odds.
I, on the other hand, had a puzzle to investigate.
Breaking The Laws
The debate eventually ended with Kelly Clarkson performing a surprisingly raunchy version of Kenny Rogers' The Gambler. After this, I accepted the thanks and jibes of the opposition, acknowledged our defeat with a hopefully humorous speech and bade a rapid farewell.
I ran straight past the dressing rooms, through the exit and squirmed past smiling well-wishers to the top of the stairs that led down to the gambling tables. I stood for a second, scanning from left to right, taking in the scene before me.
It was one of total madness.
Even the quickest of glances could see that long shots everywhere were paying off. At blackjack, poker and roulette tables, amazed victory cheers were being emitted. Over at the slot machines, lights flashed on and off in an epileptically dangerous manner as the machines vomited forth their winnings. Even the golfer at the indoor driving range had managed a hole in one.
My brain caught up to my wandering eye and dragged it back. Slot machines? Even the choice of the gambling underclass had become a path to riches. Something was definitely amiss here. The laws of probability themselves were under attack.
I resumed my scanning, past the worried croupiers, past the cheering gamblers. The key wasn't the gambler overjoyed at this turn of fate. The key was the gambler who fully expected this to happen.
There. On the far side. Tubby man with an ill-fitting suit, casually raking in roulette money at a table by himself.
I watched him a bit longer. Every now and then he took short, sharp looks from side to side, as if waiting to be caught out. But he betrayed no surprise whatsoever at repeatedly beating the 37:1 odds of the roulette table.
I started down the stairs towards him. Whatever was going on, this man was the key. And while I had limited sympathy for the Las Vegas casinos that had built their entire empire around man's inability to truly comprehend the power of the laws of probability, I had far greater sympathy for the aforementioned laws.
I liked my laws of probability. I didn't want them to go away.
I strode across the room towards my suspect, ignoring the whispers of recognition behind me. Eventually, however, a large, drunken man skipped the whispers and grabbed my arm.
"Kitty Wittgenstein!" he shouted. "Oh yeah!! This is my lucky day. Give me a kiss, baby!"
He pulled me in and copped a knee in the groin for his efforts. As he crumpled, I resumed my march toward the proposed villain. The whispers continued but there were no further arm-grabbings.
However, I would assume it goes without saying that by the time I reached the roulette table in question, the bad guy was gone.
Raymond
"I'm sorry, this table is closed," said the croupier.
"I don't want to play," I said. "Where's the guy who was here a second ago?"
He looked at me blankly.
"Tubby guy. Kept winning over and over?" I said, trying to jog his memory.
"I know, I know." He looked around, a frown on his face. He turned back to me and locked a gaze. "He's heading that way," he said, nodding in the direction of a nearby staircase.
I turned and saw him.
"Thank you," I said, and dashed off. Tubby turned back and saw me in pursuit. He moved into top gear, the equivalent of a casual jog, turning down an obscure hallway.
I raced up the stairs and followed him down the hallway, which had certain mazelike qualities. I stopped and tried to deduce where Tubby might have gone next. A sudden shout of 'hey, what are you doing?' and a loud crack seemed to be an appropriate enough clue. I followed the sounds around the corner and saw him duck into a backstage door.
The bouncer on the door lay on the ground unconscious, apparently stunned by a light fixture that had chosen that particular point in time to lose a screw and fall on top of his cranium.
Oh yeah. Tubby had more than his share of luck. I was definitely on the right track.
I followed him through the door and found him waddling down yet another hall.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Stop!"
Amazingly, he did so.
"What do you want?" he said, turning back to face me.
"I just want to know how you're doing this," I said.
"What makes you think I'm doing this?"
I held up my hands. "Look," I said. "I don't think you've broken any laws. Well, no human-created ones, anyway. So I'm not going to arrest you or try and stop you or anything. I'm just curious."
He walked a bit closer.
"Promise?" he said.
"Promise," I lied. He walked back towards me, and permitted a broad grin to take his face. "What's your name?" I said.
"Raymond. Raymond Wells."
"Hi Raymond. Kitty Wittgenstein."
"I know," he said. He rolled up his sleeve and showed me a large piece of electronic strapping around his left forearm. "This is it."
"What is it?" I said.
"I call it the Serendipity Engine." I made no comment on the name. He continued to talk. "It works at a quantum level. You've heard of the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum physics?"
"Sure," I said. The 'many worlds' interpretation contemplated an inconceivable number of universes existing in parallel with ours called 'the multiverse'. The multiverse contained every possible variation of both the past and the future. Anything that conceivably could happen, did happen somewhere in the multiverse.
"Well," continued Raymond. "This device switches particles from alternate universes with those from our own to create the goal world."
He'd gotten very close now. And I'd heard enough. It was time to put an end to this nonsense. I grabbed at his arm and the Serendipity Engine.
At that precise moment somebody opened the door between us and smacked me in the face, knocking me down.
Fantastic.
Showgirls
I lay on the ground, stunned. Lights blinked in front of my eyes. I closed them again.
"Are you okay?" came a voice above me.
I mumbled an incoherent reply.
"I kept telling them that backwards door was going to hurt somebody someday," came a different voice.
Hey! That was right. Doors don't open into hallways. They open into rooms. For this very reason. When a door opens into a hallway it can knock out somebody trying to stop a crazed probability thief tampering with the fundamental forces of the universe. It's very dangerous.
"Is that Kitty Wittgenstein?" came the first voice.
"It's an impersonator," said the second one.
"A good one."
"A very good one," I confirmed, opening my eyes. The voices belonged to a pair of showgirls, leaning over me, faces full of concern.
"Are you all right?" repeated the first one.
"I'll live," I said.
"We're really sorry," said the second one. "We were in a hurry and--"
"And this stupid door is in backwards," interrupted the first one. "It opens out. I keep telling them to fix it, and they keep promising they will--"
The second one reinterrupted. "Look, if you're okay, then we really should be going. Our show is starting, like, now."
"Debbie!" said the first one.
"It's fine," I said. "Go."
Debbie took off. The other one hesitated.
"Honestly," I said. "I'll be fine. Go. Do your show."
She took one final glance, got to her feet and took off.
"Hey," I said.
She stopped, turned back. "Yeah?"
"Did you see which way the tubby guy went?"
"Tubby guy?"
I sighed. "Never mind. Do your show."
She disappeared around the corner. I pulled myself to my feet and held the wall while I tried to bring my head out of its spin cycle.
I had to catch up to Raymond again and stop him. It was one thing to muck about with the laws of probability, but to do so by messing around with atomic particles was asking for trouble. To unleash the chaos I'd witnessed at the gambling tables would have required the manipulation of an enormous quantity of atomic particles. Hurling that much atomic energy between universes could not possibly be safe. Or, if it was possible that it was safe, then I really wanted that proved to me before I allowed any further improbable tomfoolery.
Well, I had the tough talk down pat. Now, I just had to find Raymond and stop him. I headed down the hallway and came to two separate paths.
Oh perfect. A 50-50 chance. But with Raymond's little machine against me, no matter which choice I made, it was almost certain to be the wrong one.
In which case, time to get it over with as quickly as possible. I chose the right hand door, raced down the hallway and into my next mess.
You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
I'd apparently taken the showgirl path. I say this because I suddenly emerged on stage behind the pair of showgirls who'd just smacked me in the face and six other friends of theirs. A few of them turned and noticed me, but soon returned to duty, professionally kicking their little hearts out.
I was about to take a U-turn when I spied Raymond emerging from a different door across the room. He looked back behind him and slowly began worming his way through the tables.
The best way to keep an eye on him was to stay on stage. The best way to stay on stage without drawing attention to myself too much was to become part of the show. Fortunately, I'm a better dancer than I am comedienne. I was overdressed in the sense that people had no glimpse of my buttocks, but I could work around that.
I hitched my dress up above my knees and began to dance an impromptu sexy Latinish dance. The girls continued to kick their way through their more traditional showgirl dance, shooting questioning glances at me and one another. I let my hair out and shook it wildly. I fitted in. Not perfectly, but well enough.
I continued to enmesh myself in the show, watching Raymond out of the corner of my eye as I danced with the other girls to the front of the stage.
And Raymond continued his way to the back of the room, not once looking back at the stage. He stole a number of glances at the door through which he'd entered but that was all. Maybe luck was turning my way.
I hadn't even completed that thought when the music reached a crescendo conclusion, and a creamy male voice filled the speakers.
"Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the Samuel Hagar dancers with special guest star Kitty Wittgenstein."
I cringed, then tore the cringe off and smiled professionally as applause filled the air. Raymond's head whirled around and saw me. He started to accelerate.
A bank of stagelights now decided to burst into action, blinding me and preventing me from seeing beyond the stage and following Raymond's path.
"And now, for your crooning convenience, Mr Samuel Hagar."
Sammy emerged from the back of the stage as the opening notes of My Way filled the air. The crowd applauded as I tried to work out how best to get down and back on Raymond's trail.
Sammy came over. "What are you doing here?" he said.
"I need to get off."
He laughed as if I'd said something frightfully witty and pointed to the back of the stage and some stairs. He led the audience in a round of applause for me. I waved back, ever the professional, and then clambered down the stairs, toward the back of the room as Sammy's My Way slowly morphed into Poundcake.
I had no time to admire the transition, however. I had a probability burglar to catch.
Fore!
I burst through the back door. We were right back where we came from, at the tables.
The scene was rather different, however. The frenzied rejoicing at the highly improbable gambling victories I'd witnessed earlier had been replaced by a notable lack of celebrations. Looks like the odds had shifted back against the gamblers.
Which meant that Raymond wasn't gambling. I looked over to the tellers. There he was, converting his chips to cash. I burst into a sprint. This time he wasn't going to get away.
When would I learn?
A stray golf ball flew through the air and struck me in the head after rebounding off a low flying dove that had escaped from a nearby magic performance.
I rubbed my head, momentarily stunned. A smattering of lights danced in front of my eyes yet again. I was going to feel this tomorrow. I blinked hard and tried to regain my focus. I'd been within a few metres of stopping him before that golf ball had intervened, too. Was there anybody even playing golf in the vicinity? I shook my head to regain my senses and looked up to see where Raymond had gone. I couldn't see him but did find my wayward golfer. Of course. I'd forgotten about the inexplicable driving range in the middle of the casino. He lifted his hand in apology. I acknowledged him and continued to look around. There. Raymond. Fleeing the scene.
I watched him disappear through yet another door. As I inhaled and prepared to resume the chase another ball struck me on the side of the temple. Oh, for goodness sake. This was getting silly.
How did you defeat a foe that had the forces of Fate on his side? If every act of opposition against him could be undone by the most improbable twists of reality then how did you win?
I couldn't see an answer.
I recovered again and turned back to the again-apologetic golfer. Time to get out of here before he decided to swing again.
I ran to the door through which Raymond had fled. I flung it open. No sign of him.
I seemed to be in another 'authorized persons only' section. No idea where the security was to prevent me from being in here. Perhaps they'd been waylaid by a barrage of golf balls or teetering light fixtures also. I looked up and down the corridor. No clues. I chose a direction at random. It was almost certainly the wrong one, given the way random forces were running today but I didn't see how to circumvent that. If I chose the other direction no doubt it would turn out to be the dud one.
I was just about to give up and turn around when I heard a scraping sound above me. I scurried up a nearby ladder and looked around for the source. I couldn't see anything but on the other hand the scaffolding beneath me did manage to give way, dropping me into the suit of armour, which as I mentioned, locked around me and fell into a sack which, in turn, tightened and fell into a cage, which also locked and began to lower itself into the giant tank of water.
And, again, as I mentioned, I began to drown.
Change Of Luck
With no air left in my lungs and still trapped in the sack and cage and tank, I'd more or less resigned myself to the fact that I would shortly drown. Like, to death. But there was a slight semantic difference between resigning myself to it and just waiting for it to happen.
I kicked at the bottom of the sack. My heel caught on it and tore it a little. I repeated the kick, ignoring my screaming lungs. The hole grew larger. I kicked more frantically and suddenly the hole was wide enough to fit my hands in. I therefore put them in there and tore, freeing myself from the tightening sack.
I was reasonably certain that wasn't how the magician's beautiful assistant escaped from the sack each night, but I cared less about this than an average observer might have realised.
I swam out to the bars of the cage. There had to be a way of getting out of here quickly, but given that I had only the most tenuous grip on consciousness right now I didn't think it likely I was going to find it.
And then I looked up and saw my escape route.
The top of the cage contained a gap. A gap of not water. A gap wide enough to fit a nose in.
I didn't know how it had got there, but nor did I care. I swam up, as fast as I could and jammed my nose into the roof of the cage.
I snorted in oxygen and then a fresh dose of water as the waves of my ascent followed me up to the roof of the cage. I spluttered the water out and forced myself to stay as still as possible to prevent a repeat wave.
Ten seconds, Kitty. Ten more seconds and then you can have all the oxygen you need.
Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four--
Close enough. I stuck my nose up again slowly and inhaled some more precious air.
I spent a minute or so breathing and trying to work out what to do next.
I still didn't see how Raymond could be defeated. Everything was destined to go his way. How did you defeat a foe like that?
I simply didn't know what to do.
But I did notice that the gap in which my nose was pressed had widened.
I looked down. The cage had cracked the bottom of the tank and the water was slowly leaking out. That, combined with the splash of the cage's entry into the tank had probably been enough to create the gap of air at the top of the tank that had ultimately saved me.
It was about time that my luck had turned.
And that realisation, of course, was the key to defeating Raymond.
A Proposal
Once I'd gotten enough air into my lungs to regain my senses, I swiftly found the secret trigger that unlocked the cage. I climbed out of the cage and the tank and made my dripping way out of the casino.
I wandered down the road and found the most convenient Vegas Chapel. As I expected, there was a 24 hour bridal gown shop in the immediate vicinity. I pulled out my credit card, dried it off and within half an hour left the store clad in perfect bridal wear.
In retrospect, the solution to the puzzle was obvious. As is true of all good puzzles. If you have a foe who has the forces of Fate on his side, one where every act of opposition against him is undone by the most improbable twists of reality, then you win by not opposing him. You win by making him your friend, not your foe.
I had to ally myself with Raymond. Only then could I ensure I was on the winning side in this particular little adventure.
It didn't take long for him to emerge. He was just wandering down the road and happened to look up and see me. He half-turned to run, before the sight of the bridal gown registered and stopped him. I couldn't blame him. I looked stunning in that dress.
"Why are you dressed like that?" he said.
"Raymond," I said. "I made a mistake. Maybe it took a door in the melon to knock some sense into me."
He looked at me. Still wary. But intrigued. And hopeful.
"All my life," I continued. "I've been looking for a man who was my intellectual equal. I've never cared about anything else. It's never been about looks. It's been about the mind." I looked down, smiling coyly. "And now I've met my match."
"Really?" he said.
I nodded. "Really. Anybody who can invent a device like your Serendipity Engine is more than enough man for me. I've been waiting for you all my life, Raymond."
I stepped towards him and kissed him passionately. He responded, tongue-first. His hands flew all over my body and down to my butt. I ran mine through his hair. Eventually I pulled back.
"Raymond Wells," I said.
"Yes."
"Will you marry me?"
He gulped.
"Well?"
"Yes, yes!!" he eventually said. He nodded furiously to confirm his words.
"You've made me the happiest woman in the world," I said.
"Me too," he replied.
I laughed. He caught the mistake and tried to correct it, stumbling and bumbling over his words. I kissed him again.
What the hell.
Spousal Abuse
As luck would inevitably have it, there were no other couples ahead of us in the chapel, so we were ushered straight in. The marriage celebrant greeted us and moved straight into action. We surged through the preamble, nodding impatiently at the solemn reminders of the nature of marriage and its fundamental importance to the fabric of society.
I tried not to listen too closely to the oaths.
Rings were exchanged and before we had time to appreciate the moment, we were declared husband and wife. The celebrant invited Raymond to kiss me.
He moved in for a pucker.
I punched him with the strongest two-handed blow I could manage.
It connected. No light fixtures fell on my head. No golf balls flew through the window and intercepted the blow. Raymond didn't bend over to tie his shoelaces. Lightning did not strike me down.
My punch hit him on the jaw and he collapsed in a heap.
I leaned down and undid the Serendipity Machine from his arm. I turned it off, but not before noting with a certain satisfaction that the LED read ‘100%'.
As I said, it had taken my slice of luck with the cage cracking the tank to alert me to what was really going on and how the Serendipity Machine actually worked. Raymond had spilled it to me earlier but I'd been too distracted to comprehend what he meant.
You can't easily program a machine to ‘make things better'. It's too vague. The machine needed a specific state of reality to work towards. The goal world, as Raymond had put it.
Raymond had programmed in a goal world that gave him enormous riches and the machine had turned the casino tables to his side for a brief period of time. The machine had then had the good sense to turn them back once Raymond was done, so that the casino didn't go broke paying out all the other winners.
But there was another aspect to the goal world, too. Ewan's infection. My subsequent appearance at the debate. The four aces debacle that alerted me to Raymond in the first place. And my insanely fortunate survival of the drowning death trap.
Clearly, I was part of Raymond's goal world too. Once I'd understood that, it didn't take a rocket surgeon to guess exactly how I was supposed to fit into his goal world.
If Raymond wanted to be super-rich and married to me, I'd help him out all I could on the latter. After all, the easier I made it for the machine, the less atomic manipulation it had to undertake, a side benefit well worth considering.
And once Raymond had reached his goal world, I simply had to sock him before he could program in another one.
I picked up the Serendipity Machine and started to leave.
"Where are you going?" said the celebrant.
"When he wakes up, tell him I want a divorce," I said.
"What just happened?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said. "Far too implausible."
THE END
Kitty Wittgenstein Novel
If you like what you've seen so far, you can always contemplate the novel. Even if you don't like what you've seen so far, you can contemplate it, but that course of action would seem to make the most limited amount of sense.
-- Back to Kitty menu
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