24 March, 2002: Nymphomation
Nymphomation is the prequel to Vurt; it takes place in a future Manchester, where a lottery based on dominos has utterly seized the public imagination. Those who hold a winning bone -- one with the same pattern on masked sex symbol Lady Luck's uniform as she completes her dance every Friday -- get rich; everyone else scrapes up enough money to buy another bone next week. The general shape of the plot is simple enough: a group of college math students are convinced that there's an underlying pattern to the winning symbols, and they want to find it and make themselves rich.