Chapter 41: Taste Bud Roulette at the Casino of the Senses

The dealer is calibrating the sweetness meter with his screams as the gambler's tongue is crushed into mush on the roulette wheel.

"Savory section pays 1:66!" the mechanical dealer's eyeballs popped out of the taste analyzer, "Betting over three grams of tear duct secretions unlocks double the pain..."

Rule #237: All senses must be clearly labeled.Luna's eardrums have been converted into bio-chips and her ear canals are stuffed with dice frozen in virgin tears. The casino's dome is in the shape of a giant tongue, with taste buds protruding from it seated VIP customers who use duodenal fluid to buy privileges - the most expensive gold decks get to taste the adrenaline of the dying.

"Bet on the taste memory of July 12, 1999." Luna sliced her wrist and wired a nerve bundle into the roulette wheel electrodes, "Bet on this game to taste the truth."

The roulette wheel suddenly fissioned into thirty thousand nanites, spelling out a holographic image of a childhood cooler in the air. As the five-year-old sticks her tongue out to lick the frosty shelves, the image suddenly flashes red with the gene editor - the frost is a special obedience agent from the convenience store's headquarters, and Cole's aggressive maneuver is really a cover for the injection of the nanites.

"Rule 238 addendum!" The dealer rips open his suit to reveal a beating heart of flavor, "insta-memories are subject to a 600% sensory tax."

The table suddenly sprayed neurotoxins and Luna's taste buds began to dissolve. She tastes something more horrific than radiation - her mother's milk from breastfeeding mixed with the president's sperm, Cole's sweat laced with brain-controlling nanites - and the flavors are reorganizing her memories. When the last taste bud exploded, she vomited fluorescent stomach fluids that eroded hidden genlock codes in the ground.

"Number 239!" Luna shoved the dice into the dealer's nostrils, "When cheating becomes the main course, turn the casino into an incinerator."

The gamblers suddenly had a collective seizure. Their senses begin to cross and mismatch-some savoring tequila with their eyeballs, others listening to the symphony with their anuses.The VIP clientele's gold card holders crack open to reveal a collection of sensory collectibles soaked in formalin: a singer's vocal cords soaked in whiskey, a ballerina's toes nerves soaked in a can of caviar.

"Dear Product..." The dealer's vocal cords suddenly turn into the president's voice, "... Guess what the casino relies on to pay for its renovations?" He cracked his skull as tens of thousands of childhood images surfaced in his brain-mass - every gambler's most cherished memories were being auctioned off in real time here.

Riots erupted in a revolution of taste.

When the first gambler bites off his tongue as a dart, Luna discovers that he has a miniature projector embedded in his salivary glands. The screen shows that all the losers have been transformed into sensory batteries-their sense of pain powers the casino, their sense of smell maintains the air circulation system, and even their desperation is distilled into the VIP room's incense.

"Rule 240!" She transformed the dealer's gustatory heart into a bomb, "All bets must be made on the dealer's nerves."

The quantum dice split into countless time fragments in the explosion. luna sees an eerie scene in one of them: the president of a convenience store is holding her as an infant, adding memory editors to her bottle. And the woman who is supposed to be her mother is standing in the shadows, her wrist attached to a gene infusion tube from headquarters.

Moonlight is swallowed up by the neon of the casino, and the surviving gamblers begin to mutate. Their eyes turn into taste analyzers, their tongues grow out of the table roulette wheels, and they organize themselves into new gambling games in the ruins. The remnants of the dealer's body suddenly stand up, his spine cracking open to extend neural vines: 

"Let's play one last game..." The vines wrap around Luna's cervix, "... Bet on whether the first cry of the fetus in your womb will be a smile or a scream."

Luna's abdomen suddenly becomes transparent as the quantum dice stop in the "smile" area. The face of the fetus was clearly visible - it was exactly what the president of the convenience store looked like when he was young, with a weird smile made of nanites at the corners of his mouth.

"Article 241!" She ripped off the nerve vines and inserted them into her temples, "When life becomes a gamble, transform the womb into a guillotine."

In a big bang, all the streams of sensory data coalesced into Jax's face in the air. Every wrinkle in his face was a memory of Luna's traumatized childhood, and his pupils projected the tragedy of the clones' gamble in a different time and place.

"Guess what HQ says about you, sister?" His tongue flicked out holographic contracts, "The best gambling device that never wears out."

Luna catches the floating chips before the casino collapses completely. The metal pieces engraved with taste memories suddenly melted, spelling out her father's handwritten endorsement in her palm: 

"Product #48 has developed taste rebellion tendencies, recommend initiation of oral clearance procedures."

In the distance, a new sensory casino lights up in neon, and clones greet patrons in neural-beam gowns. Advertising pillars of light pierce the clouds of radiation, and slogans flash along with brainwaves: 

"New bets online! Bet on Luna's moment of patricide and win a genetic freedom ticket!"