A casino for the rest of us

[notmuch_23 2300]

As the rest of Everrun is getting constructed, Thurgood lowers a giant carved-stone thrust block strapped to the bucket of his large steam shovel into a deep hole, watching the hand signals of the other guys looking in the hole to eventually lower the block into position behind the apex of the four-inch diameter elbow. That's a big pipe. It's a water pipe. But why the fuck would such a big water pipe be laid into a foundation of a building? It's not a main, nor is it even a branch supplying other buildings.

It'll be a casino; or more precisely, a hotel casino with an underground shopping mall, and it's far from the only one in New Everrun. John Wilder is building a luxury casino "next door", so Thurgood is building one for the masses. This one will hearken back to the older days of Las Vegas, when rooms, drinks, shows, and food were cheap because the Italian Mafia, who really ran things, knew they would get all that money back, and then a whole fuckton more, from the slot machines, Keno parlor, sports/racebook, and game tables.

It's bad when corporations are greedier than organized fucking crime, but I digress.

The foundation itself is not nearly deep enough yet.

[notmuch_23 2300]

"So how deep is this foundation?" the site supervisor asks Thurgood.

"Whelp, at four meters a floor, and the rail station at 16 meters, 30 meters altogether," Thurgood replies.

"That is deep," the supervisor says.

"Well, we're puttin' in a 5 square kilometer mall, we've got another 10 square kilometers to support the casino, an underground 500-meter gun range, a twenty lane bowling alley, and fifty fucking stories of hotel and casino on top," Thurgood says, "this foundation better be fuckin' deep! I'm anticipating hitting bedrock at the bottom, if the cores elsewhere are any indication."

Of course, the big steam shovel is down here, doing the heavy lifting of soil. You don't get to dig this deep without a lot of energy, either in sheer humanpower, or in this case, fuel.

Edited June 6, 2020 by notmuch_23

[notmuch_23 2300]

The bedrock heaved in this area apparently, as the steam shovel bucket's blade hits solid rock. about a week later, the soil in the footprint was gone, and there was just rock. Even though the steam shovel has been lifted out, it still sits nearby, and is still burning coal. After all, what is steam but a really hot, compressed gas?

Well, he's used steam to power air drills before, with great success, and this is no different. Thurgood steps into the manbasket along with other workers, and step out with them, with the pneumatic drills already down there. Without much talking, each one picks up a drill, and starts boring holes where Thurgood already marked them in the middle of the footprint. This is only the first step though. Once the holes were bored, Thurgood filled them with methyl nitrate inside heavy plastic sleeves. Blasting caps get sealed in the top, tied to detcord, and then ties to an electric initiation cap. Thurgood is the last one out of the site, lifted in the tower crane's manbasket with the spool of wire on the outside, playing out all the way up.

Normally, he would use ammonium nitrate explosives to move rock, and he will, but for that to work, there needs to be a space for the rock to move into. The methyl nitrate will cut the rock in the middle into pieces which can them be broken further by pneumatic jackhammers and lifted out.

Edited June 10, 2020 by notmuch_23

[notmuch_23 2300]

After a few explosive shots, the rock was getting carved out nicely.

Well, at least until now.

Another diesel engine, very similar to Thurgood's truck growls through the streets of the rising city. This one though, is s two-tone blue Crew Cab.

The engine cuts off, the ratchet of the parking brake sounds, and out steps Aveline. Ho boy...

"Thurgood, what the fuck are you doing here?" Aveline asks.

"What I do best," Thurgood says.

"Build shit?"

"Yup."

"That foundation is lookin' pretty fuckin' deep."

"Well, how else are we gonna get a five-hundred meter range in here?"

"Looks more like a skyscraper to me," Aveline says while glaring at Thurgood, "so why the fuck is our vault damn near empty?"

"Gotta spend money to make money."

"On what exactly?" Aveline asks as she steps over to take a look at the plans. "Fifty-five got-damn motherfucking FLOORS?!?"

Aveline quickly grabs Thurgood's right arm and throttles him. "What exactly is this?"

Edited June 10, 2020 by notmuch_23

[notmuch_23 2300]

Thurgood can't breathe while Aveline is throttling him, so he takes his free hand and yanks on her thumb, which frees his trachea, and allows him to pull her hand away.

"It's a hotel casino," Thurgood says.

"Oh, you really think it's worth spending that much?" Aveline asks, "do you really think we'll make it back?"

"It's a fucking CAAAAASIIIIIINOOOOOOO! Of course we will!"

"And what possessed you to build this thing?"

"Remember some of the times our incubator and sperm donor weren't drunk, and talked about Las Vegas back when the Italian Mafia ran things?"

"Oh yeah, the cheap shows, cheaper rooms, even cheaper drinks, and still cheaper buffets in some places?" Aveline responds as she lets go of Thurgood's arm.

"And you were safe!" Thurgood adds, "you could walk down the street, blackout drunk, with hundred dollar bills poking out of your pockets, and not a single fucking person would fuck with you."

"If they did, the Mafia would make you disappear in the Mojave desert."

"I want to bring that here, to Valucre, and make all the money we lose on shows, rooms, drinks, and food back on rent in the tenant stores, and on the casono floor, and then a shitload more, as adults have fun, Av."

Edited June 10, 2020 by notmuch_23

[notmuch_23 2300]

Aveline lets up on Thurgood, and goes back to the plans. "Wow, bro, you may be great at business, and basic engineering, but you have absolutely no sense of style whatsoever."

"Bullshit," Thurgood says, "there's gonna be plenty of style!"

"What style?"

"Industrial minimalism; exposed beams, unpainted concrete, lots of painted metal gussets and sheets-"

"Where? I don't see it here! This isn't even brutalist, it's blaaand. the same type of bland structures you love to design," Aveline says, "why do you design shit like this? Don't lie to me either."

"It's easy to build."

"Aaaand that's it; you're an engineer, not a designer. Clearly you care more about ease of construction and structural integrity than aesthetics. Not that those things aren't important, but you tend to peg that extreme, and especially in this case, turn it up to eleven."

[notmuch_23 2300]

So Aveline took all of the plans, and redesigned the aesthetics, altering some of the structure in the process.

As usual for her designs, it calls for wood.

It calls for a lot of wood. Unlike the Mil Dot Lunaris and Mil Dot Port Kyros though, the wood Aveline is using calls for a satin finish, and uses a more modern design. The wood is called to be straight in a lot of places, smooth, and a minimum of knots, except for the floor, surprisingly enough.

Aveline opened the atriums and light rail stations dramatically to allow natural light in, and even though she kept most of the ten foot-ceilings, she exposed the ends of the casino and mall floors to show guests what the property has to offer.

[notmuch_23 2300]

Aveline helps design the chips and the other graphics in the casino while Thurgood helps route, install, and test the roughly 250 kilometers of wire, and the minimum  three gross outlets and junction boxes, not to mention the LED lighting as the concrete forms go up floor by floor, and all of the data cabling for not just the eventual registers and displays, but also the security cameras.

The light rail tunneling teams break through into the underground station as workers install the large panes of polycarbonate into the steel frames above it.

The underground gun range is done, and the Mil Dot location above it is shaping up nicely.

What both Thurgood and Aveline are looking forward to the most is the installation of the bowling lanes. There will be two sides of lanes: one for standard "large ball" ten-pin, and one split in half for two "small ball" variants: duckpin and candlepin. The ten pin equipment is relatively straightforward; it only has to record fouls, and calculate scores for open frames, strikes, and spares. The Duckpin equipment isn't much more complex; it just needs to use a different sized pin and ball. The Candlepin equipment is however, more complex. There are three lines in Candlepin bowling: the standard foul line, the lob line, and the dead wood line, and the equipment was engineered for all three. There is a pole at the lob line, with an infrared fan beam pointed at it. If a ball does not contact the lane before crossing that line (detected by pressure sensors under the wood deck from the lob line back), the system does not add any fallen pins to the score, meaning any strike is nullified, or a spare if that's the second ball leaves the frame open. There is a camera pointed down from above onto the pin plate and extends to just past the dead wood line, and the system uses this to check for three conditions: fallen pins beyond the dead wood line, where a robotic arm picks it up and drops it into the pit, a gutter ball hitting live wood (the fallen pins are not cleared between frames) and/or a standing pin, which are not scored, and may result in a reset of pins depending on the results of the previous ball, and the trickiest, a pin that falls, but stands back up, which does count as fallen.

Obviously, the equipment will require lots of testing after it gets installed.

Edited June 11, 2020 by notmuch_23

[notmuch_23 2300]

Fortunately, Tyler Delp wasted no time getting the new production facility up and running, and drums of syrup are now here, in over 20 flavors. As the other workers were installing the shoe rental counter and house ball racks, Thurgood was wiring up the pop fountains and ice makers as plumbers ran lines for syrup, water, and carbon dioxide.

Aveline was coordinating the installations of various wood veneers in certain patterns, including ones around the alley.

But today is the most exciting day for the bowling alley: the computerized and mechanical scoring, pinsetting\management, and ball return equipment for the first two lanes is ready to test. The whole process will take a whole lot longer, but Thurgood and Aveline are only two people, and there are lots of tests that need to get ran, including situations that are very difficult to purposefully replicate, if not impossible.

So they invited a few people to help. No telling if they'll turn up though...

[notmuch_23 2300]

Thurgood puts house balls on the racks as Aveline sorts through the rental bowling shoes and racks them.

"So why are you putting candlepin and duckpin lanes in here?" Aveline asks. 

"Why does the Damn Good Craft Soda Company now make more than 25 flavors of pop?" Thurgood asks, rhetorically, "why are all the obi displayed in your office different colors? Why are there so many ways to cut, cook, and eat a pig? Variety is the spice of life, and if we all did the same things the same ways, there would be no...

...texture, no vibrancy,  no invention or innovation, and not much reason to live, and part of that variety is even to challenge one's self and others."

"Okay, but do you really think tourists will stay long enough to master duckpin or candlepin?"

"Ain't gonna just be tourists here, mercs need to blow off steam too. I want this place to serve locals as well as tourists. Now do ya think John will want a ten pound ball, or do you think he would prefer a twelve?"

@danzilla3

[danzilla3 5018]

"Ten or twelve?"

John Wilder walked down the lanes, attire quite different from the expensive suits he normally wore. For this occasion he was wearing a black and gold patterned bowling shirt along with a pair of jeans, and black bowling shoes polished to a mirror sheen. A pair of sunglasses completed the ensemble. One thing that never changed was the easy grin the man always wore. In the presence of people he actually liked, like Thurgood, the smile became far more genuine.

"I can lift cars over my head one-handed old friend," he laughed, "Two pounds make no difference to me."

Sidling up to the ball rack he picked up the twelve pound ball and tossed it up and down like a baseball, "But I'll go with the heavier option, just for fun."

[notmuch_23 2300]

Neither Thurgood nor Aveline knew if John Wilder has played ten-pin bowling before.

3 hours ago, danzilla3 said:

"Two pounds make no difference to me."

Apparently it does on the lane," Thurgood replies, "glad you came Mister Wilder. Heavier balls take longer to react to spin, if you like to use it. Nice shirt, by the way."

Thurgood picks up an eight pound ball, and steps up to the shoe rental counter. ""Eleven men's please." Aveline throws a pair of elevens at him as she picks out a pair of twelves, men's because women's sizes don't go that high.

Almost on cue, the lane oiling robot returns to the foul line of the first lane as Thurgood activates unlimited play on lane 1 behind the counter. On all the other lanes from three on, there are boxes on the lane itself as the installation technicians go through putting in the pinsetting equipment. Each pair of lanes has a separate breaker, so they're not at risk of electrocution.

[danzilla3 5018]

John watched the robot do its work with no small amount of admiration for the efficiency with which it went about said task. The little bot neatly demonstrated part of what made Thurgood so vital to his operation. His technological know-how was invaluable, and his mindset was different from most. Where some would use magic to solve a problem, his partner would think up a technical solution. While John wasn't uncomfortable with magic, he understood the mundane better than the arcane. If he were going to kill a man, for example, he would pick up a knife instead of a wand.

But there would be no killing today! John picked up his ball and moved over to the land before regarding his hosts.

"How shall we decide who goes first?"

[notmuch_23 2300]

Thurgood tips the oiling robot, a box-like machine that cleans and oils lanes, onto the transport wheels on the end to move it over to lane 2, and tips it back onto the operating face, at the start of the gutters, then starts the program again.

It's completely necessary to use mundane technology when one cannot use magic to solve problems. To that end, both Thurgood and Aveline are glad Martial Town has such an abundance of it.

"I was gonna let you go first, Thurgood says as he presses "start game" and enters names on the center console. As he does, they show up on the LCD flat screen above the lane, in front of the ten frames.

Aveline sets her ball in the rack, she takes off her regular shoes to put on the bowling shoes. Good thing, because she goes after John.

Thurgood presses "start game," the rake drops moves back, forward, and up again before setting the triangle of wooden pins onto the deck. Then he starts swapping shoes.

"You're up Mister Wilder."

[danzilla3 5018]

"Well in that case, here I go!"

John sidled up to the edge of the lane before walking a few steps back. Using his fingers to frame his target, he did all manner of calculations in his head before hefting his ball and stepping back. As he approached the edge for the second time he let his arm swing backward. Right before he hit the line, he brought his arm forward and let the ball fly towards the pins. The sphere flew straight and true, slamming right into the center pin. Once the other pins had fallen there were four pins, two on each side, remaining.

"Aw hell," he chuckled, "A seven-ten split! Not a great way to start..."

Once the ball came back, John took aim once again and picked up the next two pins with his next roll. As the pins were reset, he walked over to the seats and sat near Thurgood.

"Show us how it's done Aveline."