Chapter 3
The day after we returned home, one of the first things I did was to type a Letter of Resignation addressed to the software company where I worked. Later that day, I went in to work and cleaned out my office cubicle and desk. After saying goodbye to my coworkers, at least those I was friends with, I delivered my resignation to my boss.
He was upset with me for not giving the traditional two-week notice. I let him know that I would have given him more notice, but I had no intention of putting up with him complaining about the unfairness of my being away from work for a week and then quitting when I returned. Once the company’s HR department finished processing my termination paperwork, I returned home to Alicia. She wanted me to take her to her mom’s house, so she could pick up some clothing and a few additional items.
Tuesday afternoon, Alicia said, “Jeb, how long will it be until you receive granddad’s estate?”
“I’m not sure, Alicia. According to Sam, it could take a couple of months, or possibly more than a year. Why do you want to know?”
“Well, I would like for us to get a larger place to live. There are also a number of amenities that would be nice for us to have, and then there is the cost of our wedding and honeymoon. All of that will take a good bit of money.
“Granddad recommended keeping a low profile regarding how you gain your wealth. If we get married in two weeks, then I will become Alicia Connor. Until then, I’m Alicia Creswell, and Alicia Creswell can win a great deal of money between now and the time we get married. Especially, if we delay the wedding for a couple of weeks. Then, once we marry ... Alicia Creswell will disappear and no one will connect her lottery winnings with Alicia Connor.”
“Are you telling me that people will forget a beautiful, single woman winning a great deal of money; regardless of what name she is using? I’m thinking that if we use the Time Scope to determine the winning lottery numbers, every time you collect your winnings your photo will end up in the newspapers. People will remember you; especially if you win the Lottery more than once.”
“Yes, that could happen. However, what if I apply my makeup in a way that makes me seem dowdy and I wear dresses that hide my figure. I think that I can make myself look unappealing and uninteresting.
“I can create several personas and alternate between them. Heavy garish makeup, some gum, and a revealing slutty dress would make me look like a stripper or call girl. A heavy application of makeup in the wrong color scheme, unkempt hair, and a plain everyday outfit makes me an unsophisticated, downtrodden housewife who doesn’t care about her appearance. The right makeup properly applied, a nice hairstyle, and a power suit would make me a sophisticated businesswoman. I doubt people will link photos of the everyday me with the photos they see in the media.”
“I find it hard to believe people would not see your natural beauty, Alicia. However ... if you want to try it, we need to find out the current predicted jackpot totals for Powerball and MegaMillions, which are the ones that normally have the highest jackpots. We can each do it at least once, but we will really need to consider whether it is wise to do it twice.”
After checking her computer, Alicia says, “Jeb, according to the Lottery’s website, the next Power Ball drawing is Wednesday and the jackpot is estimated at about two hundred and thirty-five million. The MegaMillions drawing is on Friday and its jackpot is estimated at over hundred and eighty-five million.”
“Okay, Alicia, let me setup a spreadsheet, so we can estimate what the cash payout is after income taxes. We don’t have to pay State Income Tax, so while I’m setting up the spreadsheet’s formulas, you can check on the maximum Federal Tax Rate for last year.”
“Why, Jeb? The website said they would withhold twenty-five percent of the money and give it to the IRS.”
“True. But at tax time, Uncle Sugar will want the rest of the taxes due him, and I suspect that’s going to be a good bit more than twenty-five percent.”
Several minutes later, Alicia says, “It was forty point two percent, Jeb.”
I finished creating the formulas and said, “Okay, assuming this year’s tax rate is also forty point two percent and assuming that we take the cash payout on both lotteries, we should get a total of around a hundred and fifty-six million after taxes, if ours are the only winning tickets.”
“Are you sure of that, Jeb? It doesn’t sound right to me for us to win almost four hundred and twenty million and only get one hundred and fifty-six million.”
“I know what you mean, Alicia. However, the published jackpot amount is what we would receive if we took the deferred payment option instead of the cash payment option. The cash payment option is about sixty percent of the deferred payment amount. The deferred payment plan’s amount is based on the Lottery’s income from people buying lottery tickets being invested for twenty years. The interest and dividends accrued in twenty years is why the deferred payment option is so much higher than the cash option. Then we lose forty percent of the cash payment amount to Uncle Sugar for Federal Income Tax. The overall result is, our after-tax winnings are about thirty-six percent of the deferred payment amount.
“Still, our total winnings after taxes should meet all of our financial needs for at least the next five to ten years. I say let’s do it for once escrow closes we won’t need to use the Time Scope to win money.
“We can take a quick trip into Redmond and buy the first ticket. I don’t think we should buy the winning tickets locally or in the same city for that would draw attention to our area and to us. What do you say?”
“Yeah, I can’t wait, Jeb.”
“All right, let me setup a spreadsheet so we can determine the Time Scope detent settings for Rings 1 and 2. Then we can get the Time Scope and look at the dining room table. If we put the paper on the table next Thursday and Saturday, we should be able to read the results of Wednesday and Friday nights’ drawings.”
I figured out the settings for Rings 1 and 2 of the Time Scope; so I could read Thursday’s and Saturday’s paper. I then set Ring 1 to its fifth detent position and Ring 2 to its first detent position. If my calculations were correct, we should be looking about one point eight to two point eight days into the future; the exact time being dependent on the position of Ring 3.
After setting Rings 1 and 2 to the appropriate settings, I looked at the dining room table using the Time Scope. I adjusted Ring 4 to focus on the view of the table with the newspaper on it, but the paper wasn’t there.
I assumed that the setting of Rings 1 and 2 must be wrong, so I went back and double-checked my calculations. What I finally figured out was, I calculated the number of hours wrong. Yes, the drawing was less than two days from now, but in my rush, I had planned on spreading the paper on Thursday morning. I didn’t think of it, but I received the afternoon paper. I wouldn’t get the afternoon paper until almost 10 hours after I planned to spread the lottery results on the table. I should have set Ring 2 to Detent Position 2, and looked further into the future.
After resetting Ring 2’s position, I started scanning through the time range using Ring 3. I could see Alicia and me spreading the paper with the Power Ball drawing results on the table. Once our future selves finished spreading the newspaper and moved away, I moved closer and adjusted the focus using Ring 4.
The odd thing about this was, after our future selves had spread the newspapers, they turned and started walking back to the front room. I watched as they very carefully detoured around the spot where Alicia and I were currently standing. That seemed odd, until I thought about what it would feel like to walk through someone who was watching me. Especially when it would be me walking through me.
Yeah, intellectually I know that Alicia and I weren’t there, and I know we would not have walked through ourselves. However, the thought still bothered me. Maybe I will get used to it in the future. After all, every day I walk though places in my apartment where I had stood on prior days and never think anything about it. Somehow, this seemed different. Maybe it was because I was aware that my past self had been in that specific spot watching me through the Time Scope, so I avoided walking where I knew I had been standing. I will probably continue walking around myself until I get used to using the Time Scope.
Come to think of it, why did I wait to let our future selves get out of the way before I moved forward? They aren’t here with me, so I wouldn’t have bumped into or disturbed them, and they wouldn’t be there until sometime in my future.
After Alicia and I walked up to the table and I readjusted the focus control, I read the winning numbers off to Alicia. Moving over to the empty half of the table, I reset the Rings 1 and 2 for Saturday evening. Looking at the table, I adjusted Ring 3 until I could read Saturday’s newspaper. I read off the winning numbers for the MegaMillions grand prize, and Alicia wrote them down. While reading the results, I also noticed that there had been only one winning ticket in both lotteries.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t removed Thursday’s newspaper from the table, so I could have just set the Time Scope for Saturday evening and read both sets of winning numbers off to Alicia without having to reset the Time Scope. Oh well, live and learn.
It was early evening and tomorrow was Wednesday, so with the pad of paper listing the winning numbers in our hot hands, we went looking for a place to buy a winning Powerball lottery ticket. We ended up at a store in Redmond, which is in metropolitan Seattle. We then considered where we should buy the MegaMillions ticket. I felt that two winning lottery tickets in one week in one city might cause questions. If two tickets were purchased at the same store, or nearby, it was almost a certainty someone would be suspicious. So, we decided to take the time to drive down to Olympia and buy our second ticket there.
Well, as I said, live and learn. We had to submit both tickets to Washington’s Lottery Headquarters Office in Olympia. I hadn’t thought of it when we started this venture, but we also had to give them our Social Security Numbers. If Alicia or I collected on multiple winning tickets, our wins would be linked by our Social Security Numbers and multiple major wins would cause us problems. So, we decided that Alicia would collect on one ticket, and I would collect on the other.
Having to give our Social Security Numbers would cause us problems here in Washington in the future if we won another large Lottery prize. If the state Lottery offices didn’t share information, we may be able to win the lottery in other states without our repetitive wins being detected. However, if they did share information, then my thoughts of winning multiple lottery drawing without being detected just flew out of the window. I guess we could go for another win in fifteen or twenty years. That may not be suspicious. But if it was, they couldn’t prove anything.
Humm! If I were to create a random number generator that accepted unpredictable values from three or four electronic sources and used those numbers to generate Lottery ticket numbers as random numbers, there would be no way someone could prove that I selected the winning numbers using a different method.
I could say I ran my random number generator and then played the resulting numbers every week. That would create a track record of my gambling habit. If I actually used the Time Scope and bought tickets that missed the jackpot prize by one number that would win me a few million dollars. It would also validate the idea of my random number generator producing good results, which would support my occasional major jackpot win. I would need to design the random number generator using some historical lottery results data; so my random numbers had some relationship to the lottery. I will have to think about this before I buy more winning tickets.
I could even tell the public about my system, and sell it to anyone that wanted to buy it. No one would be able to intentionally recreate the random numbers that resulted in my winning a jackpot every three or four years.
No! On second thought, selling the generator is a bad idea. The people using my generator would not obtain winning numbers, and that would invalidate my claim of obtaining my winning numbers using the generator.
I worked on my random number generator program while we were waiting for Thursday, which was when we would go collect our first jackpot win. Trying to find four sources for generating four random seed numbers would be a pain. Instead, I designed the algorithm to read in the current Internet time and use the first six digits of the fractional portion of the number of seconds as the first seed number. I also used the seventh digit to generate a time delay before selecting the second seed number from the same source. After delaying and reading the time two more times, I would have the four seed numbers that were needed as input to the random number generator. It would then generate a Red Powerball number and a series of five White Ball numbers.
When I had the program working properly, I would do a final review of the program’s underlying logic. I know I randomized the generation of the four seed numbers that the number generator used. There was no way to predict the numbers generated and the seed numbers were not saved or displayed, so no one could ever determine what seed numbers were used. I downloaded the winning numbers for the past ten years and stored those numbers in a database table. The random number generator accessed that table and used those numbers to generate its random lottery ticket numbers. In fact, the design of the number generation algorithm made it impossible to reverse engineer the seed numbers from the numbers generated. For some reason, it seemed important that people not know the seed numbers, but, if someone did learn the seed numbers what difference would it make for they didn’t have the random number generator?
Humm, I suppose that if some engineer ever got their hands on my program, they could use those seed numbers to try and prove the generator did not produce the numbers I used to win the Lottery. Yeah, selling my generator is definitely a bad idea.
What most people are not aware of is, the series of numbers generated by a random number generator are not random. The output just seems random. The generator requires one or more seed numbers and given the same seed numbers and using the same number generation algorithm, the random number generator will always produce the same series of “random numbers”.
Every time my random number generator was run, it would read the Internet time four times at unknown intervals, thus it used different seed numbers every time it was run. I would never know nor could I ever determine what those seed numbers were, since they weren’t saved or displayed. Now that I think about it, it is also impossible to reverse engineer those seed numbers, because I had designed in several unpredictable factors that the algorithm used in generating the Lottery numbers.
It’s true that I worked on the random number generator while waiting for Wednesday evening’s drawing, but most of my time was spent in bed with Alicia. Her fertile time would be coming to an end on Friday, and we were both eager for my sperm to fertilize her egg. We were convinced that the best way to do that was for us to spend as much time having sex as possible. We were both sore by Thursday morning. It was going to be rough on both of us if we continued at our current pace through Friday. The sense of urgency we had previously had was no longer present. It never occurred to us that the reason might be that Alicia was already pregnant.
After we bought our winning tickets, I read all the information about claiming our winnings that I could find. After the first drawing, Alicia and I gathered our documents and I called to make an appointment to claim our prize. The earliest I could get in was Friday afternoon. Late Friday morning, we drove to Olympia to claim our Powerball prize money.
When we were approaching Olympia, Alicia said, “Jeb, exactly what do we need to do to collect our prize money?”
“I’m not certain what happens. What I do know is we present our ticket and a completed claim form. They verify that the ticket is valid. We tell them we want the cash payout and provide proof of our identity. There may be some other paperwork, but eventually we will be given a check.”
“Well, what about the newspapers? Do we have to do an interview?”
“No, I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t want our names to be released to the public.”
I had missed it in the Lottery website’s information, so it wasn’t until later that I learned the winners’ names are public information. Therefore, the Lottery Office would be required to provide our names to people who requested the information, but no personal information was given. Without our address, it might be hard to find us.
“Jeb, what would they do to us, if they think we are cheating the system?”
“Well to start with, they don’t know how we came up with the winning numbers. Other than looking into the future, there is no way to determine what the winning numbers will be before the drawing. Besides, what we are doing is not illegal. It may be unethical, but not illegal. Although, if anyone knew that there was a way to look into the future to obtain the winning numbers, that method would be declared illegal.
“However, if I understand where you are going with your questions, Alicia, I think you may be right. The Lottery Commission would definitely be upset with us and the public would be angry, too. If someone ever got the idea we can predict the winning numbers, we could be targeted to find out how we do it. I don’t think we would enjoy their questioning technique.”
I generally don’t like to talk while I’m driving except to answer a quick question, especially on freeways. So while driving to Olympia to cash in our Powerball ticket, I had been thinking about yesterday’s conversation that started off about cashing the ticket.
“You know, Alicia, I’ve been thinking about tomorrow. It seems to me that we shouldn’t go in together to cash the ticket. You need to go in by yourself.”
“I’m worried about doing this by myself, Jeb. It scares me to do it alone without knowing exactly what will happen; so why shouldn’t we go in together?”
“Next week, someone may remember us being together today, and they would connect us to two winning tickets; which might cause us problems.”
We hadn’t signed our tickets or filled out the forms, so I asked, “Would you prefer for me to go in this time, and you do it next week?”
“Yes. You can tell me exactly what happens, and then I will know what to expect when I go in.
“Jeb, what are we going to do with our winnings?”
“Well, as you said, we need a larger house; especially if we decide to have several kids. How many do you think we should have?”
“I always thought three would be a good sized family, but right now that doesn’t seem to be enough. What about you?”
“Yeah, three is a good number. I think we should go for three, and then decide if that’s enough for us. We can always have more kids if that isn’t enough.
“Any specific reason for deciding how many kids to have right now, Alicia?”
“Yes. When we go house hunting, I think we should get a place big enough to hold our entire family and that means we need to decide how many kids we will have.”
“Good thinking, Alicia. What neighborhood would you want to live in?”
“Well, something nice of course, but it doesn’t have to be in the ritzy part of town. Our neighbors will be more important to me than the status of the area. I don’t want to live next door to someone who sticks his nose up in the air because we don’t belong to the right family. I also don’t want to live next door to someone who doesn’t take care of their place or reminds me of a scumbag.”
“Yeah. I grew up in a housing tract where the homes were all the same. Looking back on it, I now realize we had a mix of good and bad people in the neighborhood. Then I moved into an apartment, but that was after spending my first year in a college dorm. I had good and bad neighbors back then also. I suppose I should call them inconsiderate rather than bad for they never did anything wrong. Since then, I have moved from apartment to apartment according to where my job took me, because I don’t like long commutes.”
“I know what you mean, Jeb. I want to live near stores, hospitals, and other places that are important to my lifestyle, so I don’t have to drive a long way to get somewhere I need to go to.”
“I understand what you mean, and I’m tired of living with my neighbors on the other side of a thin wall. I probably annoy my neighbors with my choice of music and TV shows, and they definitely disturb me when they play heavy metal, rap, and other types of raucous music with the volume turned up as high as it can go.
“Alicia, what if we were to find a large house on a couple of acres of land just outside the city limits? Somewhere within an easy commute of stores and schools, and close enough to emergency services that we won’t have a problem if we get sick or something else happens.”
“That sounds like a good idea, Jeb.”
That evening, I signed the Powerball ticket and filled out the form. Alicia signed the MegaMillions ticket and filled out the form.
The Friday morning commute traffic had dissipated so the drive south on Highway 5 was pleasant, and we were in no big hurry. I was doing sixty-five and the traffic was passing us by as if we were standing still. As we passed Martin Way, I started looking for our exit.
“I missed that sign, Alicia. I think it said our exit is coming up soon.”
Another mile and Alicia said, “Yes, that sign said our exit is next. Maybe one of the amenities we need to buy is a new car with a built-in GPS system.”
“That sounds like a good idea, but do we really need to buy a new car just to get a GPS system. Maybe we need to start a list of things we want to buy.”
“I already have a list, Jeb, and no, we could get a GPS system without buying a new car. But we both need new cars, so I’ll just add new cars with GPS to my list.”
Glancing at Alicia, I said, “Humm, pretty, smart, and organized. Just my type of woman. Okay navigator, we’re about to exit onto Plum Street. Where do we go from there?”
I could see Alicia rummage in her purse and pull out a map. After consulting it, she said, “Well according to the map, just go straight on Plum until we reach Fourth Avenue, and then make a right. The Lottery Headquarters building should be halfway down the block on the left.”
A short while later, Alicia said, “There it is. Keep going straight and find a coffee shop, fast food restaurant, or some other place where I can sit and have some coffee, while you cash in the ticket.”
I dropped Alicia off at a coffee shop. I told her not to worry if I wasn’t back when we thought I should be, as it might take longer than we’d planned