The Wagers by Sean Michaels

Author:Sean Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2019-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

They would also have been grateful for our empirical certainty on a number of issues that they were unable to advance beyond a rhetorical frame:

1) that the more unlikely an event you hope to influence, the more Luck is required;

2) that although Luck can act across long distances, its results improve with proximity; and

3) that certain categories1 of events require more Luck than others.

Experiments have also established that Luck’s probabilistic influence deteriorates with use. This dwindling – or “winnowing away” – of power can only be slowed by limiting the Luck’s exposure to other objects, people and probabilistic events. This is most often accomplished through the use of mirrored surfaces and containers.

Unfortunately there are other areas where scientific rigour has been unable to improve upon knowledge passed down through generations, its origins long lost. While it is unclear how Luck “chooses” which events it acts upon, we do know this “choice” can be influenced by human will. We do not know how, why, or whether Healey’s famous analogy – comparing the bond between Luck and humans to the one between ferrous metals and magnetic fields – correctly applies. But even here, persistent inquiry has reaped unexpected dividends: not only is Luck’s influence verifiably modulated by variables like physical proximity and mental concentration, but also, we know now, by its current ownership (see Khan, this volume).

Findings like these, sudden and bewildering, underline the potential before us. In a field where the most fundamental principles seem like acts of magic, much of this magic has yet to be uncovered. Furthermore – and crucially – much of this work can now be pursued at home or in an ordinary laboratory. No need to wait for antediluvian eye-witness accounts or unfurled papyrus scrolls. All that science requires is its method – hypotheses tested and re-tested. Alongside the delectable conjectures of Molleson’s Camelot theory, or Gélinas’s newly ascendant ideas concerning Luck and ambergris, there is room for patient, humble experimentation.

Whether Luck was ever grown or forged, whether there was one great mine or one thousand, or whether this substance still feels like something brought from another world (Narnia or Tlön, Philip Pullman’s dreams of Dust), what matters most is that it is here before us still. Everything we know about it is a testament to our predecessors’ collective curiosity – but also, I hope, a motivation for the work that’s yet to come.

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