Anyway, Simon says, "When you lose, you'll be able to console yourself that I've prevented you from confessing to a mass murder." The non-physicist tablemates look at him, alarmed, and Simon shrugs, "Manchester figure of speech." Sort of like the Glasgow kiss, only on a much bigger scale, eh?

Zip! Ingrid's been whisked to the Los Angeles FBI office, where she's saying dazedly, "They killed Blanca but they were trying to kill me?" Yup, that's pretty much the long-and-short of it. Ingrid, sadly, does not add, "But Blanca's flashforward had her winning at the Bellagio!" or "I knew something was up when she refused to say whether she had a flashforward," which seems like a bit of an oversight on a show where everyone's operating under the logic "I had a flashforward, therefore I'm immortal" or "I had no flashforward, therefore I need to act like an extra in a Darren Aronofsky film." Wouldn't a flashforward be a valuable datapoint in a murder investigation, because it might provide motive?

ANYWAY, I may be thinking about this more than anyone currently involved in the show, so let's get back to the scene's main point: Ingrid's recitation of what she saw on that fateful night. Ingrid says, "I was working late, me and one of my clerks. I was locking up for the night. I went to my car, but there were men in the alley. Three of them. They were fighting, but I couldn't hear what about. When it got physical, I hid." We see the two men roughing up a third, asking. "Where is he?" as Ingrid crouches behind her car. She continues, "I called 911 but they put me on hold. I still can't believe I stayed calm enough to use my phone [to shoot the video]. My hands were shaking." We see the two people shoot the third, then relieve the body of its case. Ingrid can't remember too much about the two men -- one was gray-haired, the other big and bald -- but says, "As they were walking away, they were talking about something. It sounded like Q.E.D."

Back to the poker game. One of the players asks, "You guys ever read about that inevitability index thing that's been in all the papers?" Simon replies, "It's a scam -- some entrepreneurial hucksters' idea to sell us on the idea that the odds of the future happening can be 'calculated.' It's all rubbish. Fate is fate. We're not responsible, Lloyd." Lloyd looks up from his dwindling pile of chips to ask, "What about free will?" "No such thing," Simon declares. "Since when did you become such a hard determinist?" Lloyd scoffs. Simon says, "Simple quantum suicide theory. I will win this hand, and every subsequent hand we play ad infinitum. Q.E.D." Lloyd says scornfully, "Don't you get tired of hearing yourself pontificate?" Simon does not: "Don't you get tired of being a self-righteous prig? We're scientists, Lloyd, not attention-seeking reality show contestants looking for their 15 minutes of fame on a talk show." Well, there goes my dream of America's Next Top Stochastic Fluid Model Generator. Lloyd correctly calls Simon out for using his prodigious intellect to justify doing what he damn well pleases. "You upend the entire world and you hide behind determinist rhetoric," Lloyd says with the placid contempt of someone who feels he's got the upper hand in an ethical debate. And it finally hits me why Swingtown tanked.