After the Fall

I headed off on my own to site the next card. So dramatic. So final. There wasn't anything that dramatic and final in town, really. So I just let myself wander.

"Excuse me?" asked a kindly old man. His beard was white, and he wore sunglasses.

"Yes?" I answered.

"I'm looking for the Long Grain Feed & Seed. I thought this was the address."

I looked up at the drive-in bank rising out of the lot next to us.

"Feed & Seed? Oh, wait," I said. It was all coming back to me. "Yeah, this WAS the Feed & Seed, wasn't it? I used to come here to get guinea pig food when I was little."

The bank was very fresh and new. Not imposing. Almost like a Taco Bell with its soft white fake adobe walls and subtle sign. And drive through.

"Oh, excellent, thank you!" the old man said. He proceeded to walk to the front door of the bank. "You know," he said. "It wasn't that long ago things changed. I was just here in the fall."

"Well, it's after...." I said, just as the old man took a tumble over the curb.

The Unbroken Shape

It kinda sucked we had to visit each of our locations by ourselves. No one else to ping things off.

"Yeah but I guess it makes sense." It was Kim, who walked up behind me at the roundabout down the hill from campus.

"I was between cards and saw you headed this way."

The circle of the roundabout was the fist place that came to mind for "unbroken shape." Sure, it had lines going off of it, but the circle was unbroken.

"By and by Lord, by and by," Kim said.

"People act so weird about them, right? Do people in Europe complain?"

"They're better about following rules," Kim said.

We watched cars pass through. Some were hesitant, and some seemed mad about them and drove over aggressively. Most just followed their flow.

"I mean, I guess it's better than a four-way stop? They've got engineers who study this kind of thing, right?"

"Traffic Control Engineering. Sure. Plenty of opportunities in Traffic Control Engineering," Kim said.

A hearse drove through. It got kind of hung up on a curb because it was so long.

"There's a better home awaiting. In the sky Lord, in the sky..." Kim said.

"Yeah I don't buy that," I said. "I mean, like, conditionally? Only if you've aligned yourself with Christians then when you die you'll be in a euphoric happy fuzzy world where nothing ever happens but you get to see all the other Christians who ever lived? Which may or may not include everyone you loved?"

"I admit it lacks a certain sophistication, when transposed against an intelligence behind the creation of all matter and energy in the known and unknown universe," Kim said.

The hearse made it out. Followed by some Subarus and some KIAs.

"Still," I said. "Circles are circles."

"They certainly are," Kim said.

So we played games. Three card spreads. Effery laid them down for each of us.

"Before Names, The Crownless King, The Last Light."

The holographs, taken three at a time, could be unnerving.

"That's the quality of the craftsmanship," Cecil says.

"Hollow Ascendant, Still Burning, What Remains."

"Sheesh!" Tingy said about theirs. Each trio was interpreted from the psychic POV of each querent.

"Jungian style," Cecil says. "You're up!"

"The Unbroken Shape, After the Fall, Silent Apex."

"Do you understand?" Effery asks.

"Yes," I answer. Each card represents three places we're each going to go today. Places on campus or nearby that we figure comes closest to the feeling of each card.

Just to see what happens.

"First Silence, Held Together, Not Yet Gone..."

"The heavy cards are made by people. Humans. Humans made this," said Kim.

"The cards were, sure," said Effery. "But the cards aren't 'the thing.' What they represent are eternal, universal forces."

"Like nuclear energy! It's natural!" said Tingy.

"And atomic bombs? God didn't make those," said Sabine.

"Well how exactly would you weaponize them?" I asked. "Put them on the internet?"

"You can already get PDFs on the darkweb," Cecil said. "But they're not the same."

"And of course you would know," Tingy said, smirking.

"No, seriously," I said. "Even if you sent one to everybody in the world, and everybody looked at them... then what? It wouldn't blow up the world."

"People would be freaked out though," said Sabine. "And rightly so."

"Maybe we'd all be better off," I said. "It would sure make everybody stop and think."

"I dunno," said Cecil. "Still seems like they could blow up the world. Maybe just not in the traditional way."

It turned out Cecil did have other friends. Similar outcasts from other dorms, and off-campus. None of them fit in with the regulars. They tended to have interests and powers in the fields of electricity, herpetology, biochemistry. Photography and music and art. They were a pretty fun loving bunch, once you got to know them.

And we all shared having seen the cards. The big cards. The High Cards. That gave us a kind of camaraderie that we didn't share with everybody else.

It was weird thinking of us living our lives in the midst of everybody else. Nobody else had seen what we had seen. "Regulars" is a name I just came up with right now, writing this. As a group, really we didn't think of them as any more regular than us. In the grand scheme of things.

Cecil had described the basic forms before he showed me the cards.

"The Primordial Force. Perhaps a planet or an egg cracking."

"The Chosen One. A single figure, ascending"

"The Dragon. Wings spread. Fire."

The cards were nothing like that.

"There are some out there that will kill you right away," Cecil told me, before letting me see his cards. "That's why it's super important to know the source. Counterfeit ones, poisoned ones, sabotaged ones."

"These seams here," he points to the top of the packaging, "can only be made by certain very expensive machines. The ones you can trust."

"And what's inside?" Cecil asks. "You won't be able to unsee it."

He keeps looking at me. I nod.

"Ok then," Cecil says.

"You got kimchi?"

"Well, it'd be key to making it hotpot. Sorta," Cecil said.

We got back late from the bus ride and were both starving. And the kimchi was a really good idea. We cooked the noodles and dumped everything into the broth.

"So, what else did you get?" I asked.

"Cards," Cecil said. "Foil packs. Really good ones."

"I really don't understand the whole card thing," I said.

"It's probably better you don't start," Cecil said. "Better you don't know what you're missing. It's not like you can ever un-see them."

We continued to slurp.

"I'm sure you could just show me one. Glance at it. Just so I can see what you're talking about."

Cecil looked unconvinced.

"Well...," Cecil started. "We wouldn't want to get messy ramen fingers on them."

We certainly would not! Why was he being so cagey?

"See? What did I tell you?"

Cecil and I were back on the bus. Cecil had what he wanted in a brown paper bag. I had a the sack full of groceries I wanted. And everything was exceptionally fresh.

But something about it all just didn't seem right. The store was too clean, too well stocked. And what about the squalor outside of it? And why didn't we see any other customers? The prices were really competitive.

"So, about that hotpot?" Cecil asked.

There was no way.

The back room opened into a giant showroom. Well lit, and clean, with man aisles and grocery store music playing quietly in the background. I think it was Hotel California.

We were the only ones in it.

"There's cameras all over the place, so don't try anything," Cecil whispered to me.

"Here." Cecil shoved a basket in my hand. "You go shop," he said. Meet me up front at the cards when you're done.