His folks started hinting about what he planned to do next. Did he envision an academic career or something else? Or at least they attempted subtle questions along those lines. He rather thought they were hinting they wanted him to tell them he was getting a job. He gathered they’d be happy with him getting any job! The truth was that he had no plans, not really. Everything had changed. He wanted to study this strange magical ability he had acquired, but he realized that to be able to do that, he had best come up with some way of making money. And some method that gave him a sizable income for as little work as possible so he could spend his spare time on the magic stuff. So, what could he do? At first, he had no idea of what he could do to earn money and how his newfound abilities would help him earn a living.

Three days later, he was trailing his folks around the mall, and they happened to pass a games shop. He begged off following them on their errand and agreed to meet them in the food court up the way. While walking past the shop, he noticed a roulette wheel and had an idea. He entered the store and found a spot where he could see the roulette wheel better and decided his idea looked like it was maybe workable. After contemplating the roulette wheel for a minute or two, he asked the shop attendant if he could get a close look at the mini-roulette wheel they had in the window. Okay. Casinos all around the world had roulette wheels, and they were famed for being unbeatable. There was a spell idea he had been fooling around with that might just be usable on a roulette wheel. He spent a good amount of time studying the mini-roulette wheel, and in the end, he spent nearly sixty bucks buying the thing.

During the next week, while his parents were at work, he experimented with the roulette wheel. Of course, it was much smaller than a real one, and the ball was much fiddlier, but he practiced and practiced trying to make the ball land in a particular number. At this, he failed dismally unless the wheel turned so slowly that it almost stopped. He seriously doubted that casinos would let their wheels get that slow. No matter what he tried, he just couldn’t get the ball to land in the number he wanted reliably. After a week of disappointment, he was about ready to give up on the whole idea. Instead, he took a break from it for a couple of days while playing around with other stuff. He worked on the translocation speel, which was what he started calling the spell that moved things. He could only move one thing at a time, but if he held something, that object would translocate with him.

Three days later, he sat down and studied the roulette wheel problem again. So, what could he do? He spent another couple of hours trying various things, but the basic problem was that the wheel’s rotation made it too difficult to focus on any one number as it whizzed around. Or even a number type, as in a big number or odd number. He could sort of pick out single digits as the wheel spun, but they were so spread out around the wheel that it was still hard to get the ball to stop in one. He would probably make money if he tried betting on the single-digit numbers, but it was erratic. At least on this small roulette wheel.