Shame Money
If you’ve never been to the Nimbus Royale, the floating casino that drifts lazily above the cumulonimbus plains of the Upper Stratosphere, you’re missing out on one of life’s more peculiar pleasures. It’s a place where the chandeliers are made of crystallized lightning, the blackjack tables hover three inches off the floor for no apparent reason, and the air smells faintly of ozone and regret. I found myself there on a Tuesday evening—or what passes for evening when you’re 40,000 feet above sea level, where the sun never quite sets and the moon looks like it’s photobombed your holiday snaps.
The Nimbus Royale isn’t just a casino; it’s a spectacle, a gilded absurdity tethered to the sky by cables of woven vapor and the sheer audacity of its owner, Maximilian Voss. Max, as he insisted everyone call him, was a man who’d made his fortune in asteroid mining, then doubled it by inventing a self-cleaning sock that became the must-have accessory for every overworked commuter in the Northern Hemisphere. By the time I met him, he was swimming in what I’ve since come to call “shame money”—not just “fuck you money,” mind you, but a level of wealth so obscene it could make a tax collector weep and a rival feel like a toddler who’d misplaced his crayons.
The scene unfolded at the Diamond Vortex table, a game that’s half poker, half quantum physics, and entirely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t signed a waiver. Max sat sprawled in a chair upholstered in what I swear was cloned saber-tooth tiger fur, his silver hair gleaming under the ambient glow of a miniature thunderstorm caged above the table. Across from him was Reggie Pindle, a wiry little man with a mustache that looked like it had been glued on by a prankster and a suit that screamed “I bought this at a discount bin in 1997.” Reggie was a small-time grifter who’d somehow bluffed his way into the high-stakes lounge, and he was now trying to fleece Max out of a few million creds with a hand he’d clearly cheated to assemble.
“You’re bluffing, Voss,” Reggie sneered, tapping his stack of iridescent chips—each one worth more than my annual rent back on solid ground. “I’ve got a Triple Nebula Flush. Beat that, or hand over the pot.”
Max leaned back, swirling a glass of something purple and faintly luminous that I’m pretty sure wasn’t legal below 30,000 feet. He didn’t even glance at his cards. Instead, he fixed Reggie with a look that was equal parts pity and amusement, like a lion watching a housecat try to roar.
“Reggie,” he said, his voice smooth as the hum of the casino’s anti-gravity generators, “I’m not going to beat your hand. I don’t need to.”
Reggie’s mustache twitched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Max set his drink down and snapped his fingers. A holographic display flickered to life above the table, projecting a cascade of numbers and graphs that danced in the air like fireflies on a bender. “This,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the light show, “is the real-time valuation of my assets. See that spike there? That’s the profit I just made from a rhodium vein my drones found on Asteroid X-47 while you were fiddling with your marked deck. It’s about… oh, let’s call it fifty times the pot you’re so proud of.”
Reggie blinked, his bravado deflating faster than a punctured zeppelin. “You’re saying you won’t play?”
“Oh, I’ll play,” Max said, grinning now. “But not with cards. I just bought the company that makes the chips you’re holding. And the factory that prints the rulebook you’ve been cheating from. And, come to think of it, the shuttle service that brought you up here.” He paused, letting that sink in. “So tell me, Reggie—do you really want to keep going, or should I just buy your house out from under you and turn it into a storage shed for my sock prototypes?”
The casino went quiet—or as quiet as a place can get when the slot machines sing in three-part harmony and the cocktail waitresses glide by on hover-skates. Reggie’s face turned the color of the Nimbus Royale’s complimentary shrimp cocktails, which is to say a sort of embarrassed pink. He didn’t just fold; he practically collapsed into his chair, mumbling something about needing to check on his cat back on Earth.
Max didn’t say “fuck you.” He didn’t need to. That’s the thing about shame money—it’s not about the dismissal; it’s about the dawning realization in your opponent’s eyes that they’re not even a speck on your radar. As Reggie slunk away, Max caught my eye and winked. “Care for a game?” he asked.
I declined. I’d seen enough to know that up here, in the glittering haze of the Nimbus Royale, the house didn’t just win—it rewrote the rules and sent you home wondering why you’d ever bothered to play.