HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD

THE CARDS

He took the deck of cards in his hand and immediately felt the connection. He allowed the energy to flow and underwent the strange sensation of being possesed.

He broke the spell by hustling the cards slowly. Giving Ylona and Laura a blank, basic card had been an impulse. But he didn't worry about that. He had grown old by learning to follow his intuition. Anything that is not given is lost, as they say in India. When you are out of money, start a shrine. And they did.

These cards were his personal cards. They had been in their family for generations. He discovered them one evening on the attic. A forbidden, mysterious place filled with strange stuff; cuppards, boxes, trunks and piles of books. It were the books he was interested in. In the years after the war, the level of education had dropped dramatically. Being a bright and eager student he was bored most of the time. His teachers got frightened of him. He gave answers to questions, he was not supposed to know or saying litteraly his teachers thoughts. It took five years before the final battle took place. Hans, a local looser, who was not as tall, but a year older and 30 pounds heavier, attacked him in the schoolyard. It was over in seconds.

At the end he was sitting on the back of his opponent hammering his head against the stones. He was dragged away and expelled from school.

The cards played an important role in his life. Though in the beginning he had no idea what they were, where they belonged to and what you could achieve with it. You can compare them with the cards Roger Zelazny uses in his Amber-books. They can do all that and more. Every card is a singularity, a frozen vacuum with a inprinted network of nanopossibilities. They function the best as a pack, but you can use them individually and even when they are broken. Each layer of the card, which number seemed endless, looked like a deliberately broken mirror, which could be filled and operationalised by the owner. Cards differed. Because everybody was using them there was a difference in quality, possibilities and hidden possibilities. Some cards were specialised, for instance travelcards, which could bring him all around the place; others were used a library, laboratories and dataprocessing. Now that he had finally found a place to stay, the Academy gave him the opportunity to spread his findings and insights. The battle could begin and operation “Mind-fuck”, he planned for so long, would be operational soon. But the most interesting cards were the personal ones. Faces that stared him in the eyes. His Royal Family; owners of the planet.