The Gambler - Epilogue - The Roll of the Dice

Spooky season has officially hit San Diego, with rapidly cooling temperatures, rain in the forecast, and lingering magic-hour light. These October nights also mean revisiting all my favorite thrillers until Halloween. Last night’s trip down memory lane was John Carpenter’s The Thing. I’d already watched Halloween I and II—though the indiscriminate murder spree of Michael Myers feels almost cartoonish to me now (Donald Pleasance, however, remains divine).

Most have seen The Thing, so I won’t rehash the plot—only the final image: two men, once at odds, left to freeze to death after their Antarctic outpost burns to ash. They’ve survived a life-form that imitates other beings on Earth. We never learn where it came from or why it kills, only that it must.

R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell), helicopter pilot, and Childs (Keith David), machinist and flame-thrower aficionado of Outpost 31, are all that remain after the others are consumed. In the closing moments, neither man trusts the other long enough to test whether they’re still human. They simply resign themselves to die. The classic Prisoner’s Dilemma—mutual cooperation for survival is impossible in their minds. Why?

The Antarctic outpost becomes the coldest casino on Earth, the stakes nothing less than trust itself. Each man holds his cards close, waiting for the other to fold first.

Fate has brought them together to dance into the twilight of inevitable death, all because some overly curious Norwegians unearthed an alien craft and its pilot. Funny how actions outside of ourselves—unseen, unintended—can alter our fates entirely. Yet it’s the reaction to those actions that defines who we become.

What if the finale between Childs and MacReady could be re-told through the power of story? What if the Prisoner’s Dilemma itself could be rewritten? Perhaps the Outpost was never a prison but a chrysalis—burning away all that was false until only truth could survive the freeze.

I thought about this while running through Balboa Park today, reflecting on the Two of Swords tarot card—the self-imposed stalemate—and how we each hold the key to our own freedom. Then I looked down and saw a die on the sidewalk, two dots facing upward, staring back like twin eyes confirming the thought.

In that moment, gratitude flooded me—for this long journey of more than thirty pieces written, each one a small flare of insight I hope might light someone else’s path. If we can set ourselves free from ourselves and resonate in that frequency, surely liberation for others isn’t far behind.

What if MacReady and Childs had set aside paranoia and chosen faith—proving their humanity to each other, at least enough to survive the night and witness dawn? Then there is no prison, is there?

And what if, by some circumstance beyond our control, we too find ourselves in a strange chrysalis—forced to choose the self in order to be free? Those who share that cocoon must make the same choice. Only then can cooperation arise, and the game shift from adversarial to awakening.

I leave you Mary Oliver's Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.