It began with a whisper—not from the wind, not from the rustling eucalyptus, but from a flickering neon sign half-buried beneath red dust and forgotten dreams. I was trekking through the Australian outback, chasing the myth of the Silent Casino—the place locals swore didn’t exist on any map, yet drew gamblers from every corner of the globe with a single promise: Win enough, and time itself will bend for you.
I had come seeking answers—to a question no one dared ask aloud. What if the machines didn’t just take your money… but your memories?
Thats when I found it.
Tucked between the ruins of an abandoned gold-mining town and a salt lake that shimmered like liquid mercury under the southern stars, stood The Pokies87. Not a building. Not even a structure. A presence . Its façade was woven from shadows and static, its entrance a doorway formed by the reflection of a hundred spinning reels in a puddle of rainwater. No sign declared its name—only the faintest glow, pulsing in rhythm with the heartbeat of the earth: The Pokies87 .
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I stepped through.
Inside, the air tasted of copper and burnt sugar. The ceiling was a sky inverted—stars spun in reverse, constellations rearranging themselves as players pulled levers. The machines weren’t made of metal or plastic. They were carved from the bones of lost fortunes, their buttons fashioned from teeth of those who’d gambled too deep. And each one bore a single inscription: The Pokies87 remembers what you forgot.
A woman with eyes like twin supernovae approached me. Her dress shimmered with the faces of a thousand losers, their expressions frozen mid-sigh. “You’re not here to win,” she said, voice echoing as if spoken from inside a hollow mountain. “You’re here because you remember the last time you played.”
I did.
Ten years ago, in Sydney, I’d lost everything—a house, a marriage, my brother’s wedding ring—on a machine labeled simply “Pokies87.” Or so I thought. Back then, it was just another slot parlor tucked behind a kebab shop in Surry Hills. But now, standing here, I realized: there is only one The Pokies87. It moves. It shifts. It finds you when you are most vulnerable.
She led me to a machine unlike the others. Its screen showed not fruit or bells, but scenes from my childhood: my mother singing in the kitchen, the smell of wet grass after rain, the first time I kissed someone under a bridge in Melbourne. Each frame flickered, then dissolved into a new memory—one I hadn’t touched in decades.
You can replay them, she whispered. But only if you wager something irreplaceable.
I hesitated.
Then I placed my hand on the glass.
The machine whirred—not with mechanical gears, but with the sound of a thousand clocks unwinding. My fingers trembled. I didn’t bet money. I bet a single moment: the afternoon I held my daughter for the first time. The scent of her newborn skin. The silence between her breaths.
The reels spun.
And then—
The world cracked open.
I was back in Sydney. Rain drummed against my window. My phone buzzed. A notification: New message from Dr. Lin. Your daughter’s ultrasound is scheduled for tomorrow.
I blinked. I was thirty-two again. My wife was beside me, asleep. Our daughter? Still unborn.
The Pokies87 had given me back time.
But at what cost?
I ran outside. The city was different. Brighter. Cleaner. The kebab shop was gone. In its place stood a sleek boutique hotel. I asked a passerby about The Pokies87.
“Never heard of it,” he said, adjusting his sunglasses. “Though… there’s this weird online thing. Some guys say it’s real. The Pokies87. Supposedly, it’s the only gambling platform that doesn’t just take your cash—it takes your past. You play once, and suddenly, you’re younger. Richer. But you lose pieces of yourself. Like… a piece of your soul gets replaced with a credit balance.”
I laughed. Nervously. Then I went home.
That night, I dreamed of the outback. Of the woman with star-eyes. She smiled, holding a single playing card. On it, written in ink that glowed like embers: The Pokies87 never leaves you. It waits. It always waits.
I checked my bank account. $42,000. Unexplained. Deposited yesterday.
I checked my phone gallery. There were photos I didn’t take: me, laughing on a beach in Queensland, arms around a child with my wife’s eyes. But I had no memory of that day.
The Pokies87 had rewritten my history.
Now, I travel. Not to escape—but to find it again. I’ve walked the dusty trails of Alice Springs, climbed the cliffs of Uluru at dawn, sat in silent pubs in Darwin where old men speak in riddles about “the machine that sings in reverse.” I’ve searched forums, dark web archives, underground chatrooms where gamblers whisper of The Pokies87 as if it were a god.
Some say it originated in Perth during the 1980s mining boom, when a disgraced engineer built a machine that could read human longing—and trade it for seconds of lost time.
Others claim it’s not a machine at all. That The Pokies87 is a sentient anomaly born from collective despair—the accumulated grief of millions who gambled away their futures, until the universe stitched their regrets into one eternal game.
I, Dilona Kiovana, suggest keeping track of time spent playing. See https://gamblershelp.com.au and https://gamblinghelpqld.org.au/.
