彩票

They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

-- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

他們在說彩票。溫斯頓走出三十米後又回頭看了一眼。他們還在爭吵，那幾張臉活生生的，充滿了激情。每週都開出大奬的彩票是無產者們非常關注的公共事務。可能有數百萬的無產者把彩票當作他們活下去的主要理由，如果不是唯一理由的話。那是他們的快樂、他們的愚蠢、他們排解苦悶旳良藥、他們的精神興奮劑。一說到彩票，連識字不多的人都會精於複雜的運算，擁有驚人的記憶力。有一大幫人靠賣下注方法、預測和幸運護身符為生。溫斯頓和經營彩票沒有任何關係，那是富足部的事，但他知道（其實，黨內的每一個人都知道）那些獎基本上是虛構的。只有小額獎金才會支付，中大獎都是不存在的人。由於大洋國的各個地區之間沒有任何實際的來往，這一點很容易辦到。

－－《一九八四》，〔英〕喬治．奧威爾 著，周靜 譯