The Theory of Games Read Online Free

Authoritarian Man urged, “Go on,” and the Benzodiazepine said, “ go on ,” too. So I did.
    I have this problem. Sometimes I see things. Mathematical things. Sequences. Obvious things. Sometimes I say that I have the ability to see the obvious.
    You know of Leonardo Pisano?
    He was a Medieval mathematician, more commonly known as Fibonacci, and posed the problem in his 1202 treatise Liber Abaci : “How many pairs of rabbits will be produced in a year, beginning with a single pair, if in every month each pair bears a new pair which becomes productive from the second month on?”
    Do you see the answer spiraling forever outward? Look at the pattern: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233... The third number is the sum of the two previous numbers; the fourth number is the sum of the two numbers before it.
    It is in the curls that frame Katelynn’s face; each red curl is part of that sequence. That is what I see.
    Her skin was the color of twice-pasteurized milk. Each freckle was a vertex in a directed sparse weighted graph…
     
    “We’re losing him. I told you that was too much benzo!” I could hear somebody arguing with the Authoritarian Man.
    “No problem,” the Authoritarian Man replied as he began to slap my face. I retreated back to the warm bed with Kate and Bill…
     
    “Jake, don’t panic,” Kate reassured me, “you were a perfect, albeit inebriated gentleman last night. Nothing happened. Now let’s get Bill his morning pill.”
    Kate put her hand on the snoring dog, “Bill?” she said, “Rise and shine, pill time.” Bill shook himself, blinked twice, and looked at her. He stretched out to his full length of six feet and slowly dragged himself off of the bed and wandered out the door his nails clicking on the wood floor. Kate - graceful as a cat – left the bed. She was wearing one of my old dress shirts; and, it is true, there is nothing as alluring as a woman wearing one of your button down oxfords. From the kitchen I could hear her opening the refrigerator door, Bill’s tail swishing on the linoleum floor, and a loud cetacean gulp as Bill swallowed the Braunschweiger with the horse pill inside. If Kate thought the smoked liverwurst was as disgusting as I did she never mentioned it.
    That day Kate and I took the Holter monitor off Bill; I swabbed the goop that Dr. Farmer had given me to detach the electrodes, and Kate distracted Bill by holding his head, scratching him behind his ears and talking baby-talk. I packed the monitor up in the bubble-wrap provided and overnighted it back to Champaign; later a team of cardiologists would go over the data at a conference in Dallas. I wonder what they would think of the readings during the party the night before.
    We were dead broke and ecstatically happy. It was the best week of our lives. Of all our lives: Kate, Bill and me.
     
    Kate never went back to wherever it was she used to live.
    To Bill and me it seemed like she had always belonged in the little yellow house with us.
     
    With no money, no job, all the time in the world and only a few distant clouds on the western horizon, it seemed like a perfect day for the three of us to go to a ballgame. I went to the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out two authentic River Rat jerseys. I handed Kate the smaller one with ‘12’ in blue felt numbers stitched to the back.
    “You know who wore that jersey?” I asked.
    “Sorry, Jake, I don’t have a clue,” she shook her head.
    “Kate, the only clue you need is right on the back: number 12. He wore 12 his entire professional career; well, except for at the end when he was with the Giants. Dusty Baker already had number 12.” I was flabbergasted that Kate was clueless.
    “I thought the River Rats were a minor league team.”
    “Minor league is still professional baseball,” I replied. “That jersey you are holding was worn,” and here I paused for dramatic effect, “by Shawon Dunston!”
    “Who?”
    “Shawon Dunston! Number 12;