Elias ran a trembling hand over the smooth, cool surface. He was here to play a high-stakes hand of Texas Hold'em against "Big Tex," a loan shark who collected kneecaps like baseball cards. Elias owed Tex a debt he couldn't pay, and his only way out was a miracle.

The shark wasn't leaving. He was shuffling the cards for a solitary game of solitaire.

The legend went that a brilliant, disgruntled engineer had once sat at this very spot, wiring a frequency transmitter into the frame. The table didn't change the cards, and it didn't load the dice. It changed the people .