[TBBT] Ch: 17 [Sheldon's wager] (Patreon)

AN: Didn't get the time to edit. Let me know if you find any mistake.

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Penny took one look at Howard's expression after I accepted the bet and seemed to decide she'd already witnessed enough nerd insanity for one morning. She took another step toward her apartment, one hand already reaching for the door.

"Have fun wagering your funny books on Klingon spelling bees," she said, already backing into her apartment. "I'm gonna go stare at my one-dollar TV."

Howard immediately straightened his shirt and lifted his chin, trying to salvage whatever dignity Penny had just casually stepped on. "Your loss, Penny. You're walking away from a clash of intellectual titans."

Penny stopped with half her body already inside her apartment.

Her eyes moved over Leonard first, then Raj, then Howard. Finally, she looked directly at me.

"I only see one titan."

Howard's smile disappeared so quickly that I couldn't stop myself from laughing.

"Have fun, sweetie." Penny looked pleased with the damage she'd caused, then walked into her apartment before Howard could come up with a response. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving the four of us standing in the hallway.

Leonard rubbed one hand across his face. He probably knew clarification wasn't necessary, although that had never stopped him from twisting the knife whenever Howard made himself an easy target. "Just to be clear, she meant Karl."

Howard narrowed his eyes and muttered, "I grasped the subtext, Leonard."

With Penny gone, Raj's shoulders relaxed and his voice returned without difficulty. "That was a drive-by ego assassination."

Howard pointed toward Apartment 4A with enough determination to suggest we were entering a war room rather than his friend's living room. "Inside, gentlemen. We have a fraud to expose."

I followed them across the hallway. 

The whole situation had become far more elaborate than I'd expected when Howard first showed up at Penny's door demanding a language competition. Somewhere during the night, what should've been a ridiculous five-minute challenge had transformed into a serious intellectual operation involving rare languages, comic books, thousands of dollars, three scientists, one engineer, and four grown men who should've had better things to do with their morning.

Which, admittedly, made the entire thing much more entertaining.

Leonard opened the door, and we walked into Apartment 4A.

Sheldon sat in his usual spot on the long couch.

That alone wasn't surprising.

What caught my attention were the two sheets of paper. Sheldon held one in his hands while the second rested face down across his lap. The visible page contained twenty numbered sentences written in scripts ranging from familiar Latin characters to Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, and several others I couldn't immediately see clearly from across the room.

Sheldon looked up as soon as we entered.

The smugness that spread across his face told me everything I needed to know.

He'd been waiting for this since day 1, and Howard's challenge only gave him an opening to show his superiority. "Ah, Dr. Peterson. I assume Howard's badgering has successfully compelled you to subject your preposterous linguistic boasts to empirical scrutiny."

I slipped my hands into my pockets and looked at him. "Looks like someone took this seriously." I walked toward the table.

Sheldon lifted the first page slightly. "Howard's initial framework was laughable, relying heavily on Berlitz phrasebooks, Internet searches, and whatever butchered collection of syllables he continues insisting qualifies as Mandarin. I, conversely, have constructed a controlled twenty-item linguistic examination."

Howard crossed his arms beside me, clearly unhappy about having his contribution dismissed so casually. "My version would've worked."

Sheldon barely looked at him. "Your version would've been aced by a moderately attentive flight attendant."

I had to admit, I was becoming increasingly interested in the incomplete equation on Sheldon's whiteboard. He'd made an obvious mistake with the molecule count that was preventing him from getting the correct result. Damn it! It's like an eyesore. Should I fix it? 

Sheldon held up the page in his right hand. "This sheet contains twenty sentences. Each sentence is written in a different foreign language. You will identify the language and provide an accurate English translation."

Then he tapped the facedown sheet resting across his lap.

"This is the answer key. It contains the name of each language and its corresponding English translation. You will not see it until the examination is complete."

I raised an eyebrow. "Twenty different languages?"

"Yes," Sheldon confirmed. "Selected from multiple language families and geographical regions specifically to reduce the probability that superficial familiarity with a single linguistic branch will allow you to bluff your way through the exercise."

Howard smiled. "In other words, you're screwed."

I looked at him. "Only time will tell who's screwed."

Howard's smile weakened slightly. 

My Login System's language reward had dumped an enormous linguistic library into my head. Grammar, pronunciation, regional variations, written systems, extinct languages, reconstructed historical forms, and constructed languages all sat inside my memory with the same frustrating clarity as everything else the System had ever added.

I'd never seriously tested the limits because there hadn't been much reason, except for occasionally cursing my professors or colleagues in Sumerian whenever they made some massive blunder or tried to control me.

That's all in the past. 

Anyway, Sheldon should be able to push me closer to my limits.

Before we began, however, there was one issue I wanted settled.

I looked between the four of them, then pointed directly at Sheldon. "And what's he putting up?"

The smug smile vanished from Sheldon's face.

He lowered the papers slightly, and a faint crease formed between his eyebrows. "Putting up for what?"

I turned toward Howard.

Howard, who'd been looking exceptionally pleased with himself only moments earlier, suddenly found something fascinating about the carpet.

Sheldon noticed immediately.

His eyes narrowed.

"Howard."

Howard released a slow breath. He clearly knew there was no version of this conversation where Sheldon failed to extract the truth. "We added a little wager."

Sheldon stared at him.

"What wager?"

Howard hesitated for perhaps half a second.

"Comic books."

Everything stopped.

Even the papers in Sheldon's hands became perfectly still.

His head turned toward Leonard with almost mechanical precision.

Leonard immediately raised both hands, distancing himself from responsibility before Sheldon could accuse him of anything. "Don't look at me. I only put up one issue after Howard wouldn't shut up."

Sheldon's eyes moved toward Raj.

Raj gave a helpless shrug from beside Howard. "He played on my insecurities."

Howard snapped his head toward him. "You volunteered."

Raj looked offended by that interpretation. "You said Karl would laugh at us."

Howard spread his hands. "Which is textbook emotional manipulation. You're welcome."

Sheldon's gaze returned to Howard.

His expression had moved past irritation and entered something closer to intellectual disappointment. "You degraded a pure academic exercise into a parlor betting game?"

Howard didn't look remotely ashamed. If anything, he seemed pleased with the development. "It raised the stakes."

Sheldon sat straighter in his spot. "Gambling is the tax on the mathematically inept. It is an inefficient wealth transfer driven by irrational optimism and dopamine addiction."

I nodded once because, philosophically speaking, he wasn't entirely wrong. "He's not wrong."

Howard turned toward me immediately. "Whose side are you on?"

I met his stare. "My own."

That answer satisfied me considerably more than choosing sides in whatever strange civil war existed between these four.

Sheldon lowered the test page and adjusted both sheets across his lap, clearly preparing to restore the dignity of his carefully constructed examination. "Then I shall remain an untainted, impartial proctor."

I pointed toward him again before he could settle back into that comfortable assumption. "Conflict of interest."

Sheldon's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"You designed the entire exam. You're hardly impartial," I said.

Howard's entire posture changed.

A grin spread across his face as he realized I'd just handed him a weapon he'd somehow missed. He nodded enthusiastically. "The man understands contract law, Sheldon."

Sheldon gave Howard a disgusted look. "Do not validate his flawed premise simply because it enriches you, Howard."

Howard leaned closer toward the couch, enjoying himself more with every second. "Just ante up one issue, Sheldon."

Sheldon's answer came immediately.

"I refuse."

Howard didn't move. "One comic."

"I am categorically opposed to games of chance."

There was something deeply entertaining about watching Howard search for the exact psychological pressure point required to move Sheldon Cooper away from an absolute position.

Then he found it.

Howard leaned closer, dropping his voice into something almost conspiratorial. "Fine. Sit on the sidelines. Let Karl walk away knowing he beat your personally designed test, and that when push came to shove, the great Sheldon Cooper didn't have the spine to back up his own intellect."

Leonard's eyes immediately closed.

He knew exactly what Howard had just done.

Raj looked between Howard and Sheldon with an expression caught somewhere between admiration and horror. "Oh, that's evil."

Sheldon's expression changed.

Only slightly at first.

His lips pressed together while his eyes moved from Howard toward me. The rational part of him clearly understood he was being manipulated. Unfortunately for Sheldon, the much larger part of his personality that couldn't tolerate the possibility of someone interpreting caution as intellectual cowardice had already entered the conversation.

Howard recognized the shift and pressed harder. "You can explain how gambling is irrational while Karl tells everyone you backed out."

Sheldon stared at him.

Then his eyes moved toward me.

I didn't say anything, but I did give him that mocking smirk.

That did it.

Sheldon stood so quickly that the papers nearly slid from his lap. He caught them, placed the stack carefully on the table, then straightened with rigid determination. "I'll be back."

He disappeared down the hallway toward his bedroom.

Leonard watched him go before slowly turning toward Howard. "Wow, Howard. You just weaponized his neuroses."

Howard looked deeply pleased with himself. "I know my friends."

Raj shook his head. "You exploit your friends."

Howard barely hesitated before accepting the improved description. "I know how to exploit my friends."

I laughed quietly and walked farther into the living room while we waited.

Less than a minute later, Sheldon returned.

This time, he carried a comic book.

Even before I saw the cover properly, I noticed the way he held it. Both hands supported the protective sleeve, and his fingers stayed carefully along the edges as though direct contact with the wrong part might reduce the comic's value through sheer disrespect.

When he came closer, I recognized it.

The Flash #110.

First appearance of Wally West as Kid Flash. First appearance of the Weather Wizard. A major Silver Age key, and judging by the condition, easily worth somewhere around fourteen hundred dollars.

Howard recognized it too. His eyebrows shot upward. “You’re risking Flash number one-ten?”

Sheldon looked irritated that anyone would describe the situation as a risk. "Risk implies a meaningful probability of failure. The probability of my losing is negligible."

Leonard stared at the comic for several seconds before giving Sheldon an incredulous look. "You just violated your core hatred of gambling to satisfy an even deeper hatred of appearing cowardly."

Sheldon returned to the couch and sat down with his usual deliberate precision. "Your psychological assessment is pedestrian and insulting."

I looked over the issue again and mentally added its current collector value to the other comics Howard, Leonard, and Raj had put forward.

The total jumped considerably.

I looked between them. "That puts your side around seventy-seven hundred dollars."

Howard's attention immediately moved toward me.

The grin returned.

"You said you'd match everything."

"I did."

I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out the folded stack of cash.

Leonard's eyes widened almost immediately.

"Who walks around with a wad of cash like a mob enforcer?"

I replied to him while separating the bills. "Me."

Howard stared at the money with open disbelief. "You walk around with almost eight grand?"

"Today I do."

Besides, judging by everyone's expressions, pulling out several thousand dollars in cash had produced exactly the psychological effect I'd expected. I counted enough bills to match their combined wager, checked the amount once, then placed the stack neatly on the coffee table.

Seventy-seven hundred dollars.

Raj stared at the money. Howard's earlier confidence weakened for perhaps half a second before he forced it back into place. Leonard looked from the money toward Sheldon's Flash issue and seemed to reconsider every decision that had brought him into this situation.

I walked over to the armchair and sat down.

"So, let's do this."

That was all Sheldon needed.

Howard dropped onto the long couch, trying to look casual despite the fact that several thousand dollars' worth of comics were now involved.

Raj sat beside him, leaning forward with obvious curiosity.

Leonard remained near the kitchen island, arms folded while he watched the entire situation unfold from a safer distance. Of everyone in the room, he seemed the most aware that this could end catastrophically for someone's ego.

Possibly several egos.

Sheldon kept the answer sheet facedown against his thigh and raised the test page.

"Number one."

.....