Jank [5of5]

A Magical Trading Card Game Memoir

The third round began. Trevor cordially introduced himself. He was clean cut. Short hair. Shirt collared. Bespectacled. His overall presentation, plain and precise. He and I had not played before but I suspected he would be formidable. His shuffling technique had finesse. The word ‘Champion‘ was emblazoned on his playmat.

Mats like his were awarded to players who made Top8 at a ProTour Qualifier. Anyone can get lucky and win a round or two at professional level competitive events. Maybe even three. And the luck can go the other direction: anyone can lose through no fault of their own in the finals. But to achieve a Top8 finish at all in a field of hundreds is a major accomplishment. Over many games play skill as a factor in winning is vastly more causal than all but the most miraculous streaks of luck.

Making small talk, I fished for info, “How do you like the new set so far?”

“It’s all right. Green is tops, but I’m still exploring synergies to see what the best combination might be.”

He was absolutely right. Green was by far the best color in the new set. But everyone knew that, so it was over-drafted. Not wanting to have all the green cards dry up in pack three was part of the reason I went red-black, with a blue splash.

Maintaining tight tactical control over his perceptions of my skill level would prevent him from accurately assessing my ability, and would make it more likely I could exploit the difference in any estimation errors on his part. Giving him no actionable information, I emptily agreed “Yeah, green is solid this time around.”

Game one began. The coin flip went to him and he chose to draw. I opted for a questionable keep and he mulligan’d. Then, we played. Swamped in mismatched colors; mana-screwed, I lost.

We saw a lot more of each other’s cards in game two. His skills were polished and his deck was slick. If I misplayed, the match was his, so I paced myself, thinking through every move. I repeatedly re-ordered the cards in my hand hoping better lines would emerge. It was a struggle.

Helga’s harpy-like laughter rose out of the white noise of the crowd, breaking my concentration. Yet again, she distracted me. I didn’t turn to investigate whatever had her screeching. I breathed in deeply through my mouth, then exhaled evenly for 45 seconds through my nose. Bringing my attention back to the battlefield, I focused intently on my game.

I found Trevor very hard to read. I had to act based on probability distribution maps to recognize diminishing returns and avoid failures to capitalize. The outcomes of games often hinge upon developing the ability to read if one’s opponent ‘has it’, and learning when to ignore that instinct. Training oneself to reflexively next-level one’s opponent with every play.

Twenty-five hard fought turns later, our battle ended. I barely won.

Time was running short for the round, so we swiftly sideboarded, shuffled, then started game three. Sadly, I lost my notes and don’t recall most of it. But I do remember everything after extra turns was called. And I always will.

In overtime, turn zero of five, he played the card. Unconscious currents absorbed by my senses mixed and jelled into a new understanding. Trevor was the same person I had seen trading with Lenny before the draft. His back had been toward me then, so I did not see his face. But I saw the table in front of him. I saw him insert a card into a pink sleeve into the center position on page two of his trade binder. The card he placed on the battlefield between us appeared to be the same one.

A rarely seen phase of the game presented itself. An opportunity to transcend the cards and play at a new level. If I was careless, he could counter with a steadfast denial and win. But if I played it right, a new achievement could be mine.

I said nothing. In just two turns, this card would give him the match. My eyes darted back and forth between the upside-down gold bordered card on the table and his grey eyes hiding behind stylish horn-rimmed glasses. Thin lenses. Barely corrective, if at all.

I questioned myself. Could I be wrong? What were the chances I happened to see that exchange, be paired against him, and he decide to cheat? What would I think the chances of such a sequence were I experiencing these events from his perspective? Was this just a fluke?

He must have interpreted my pondering as despair. He smiled smugly then prompted, “...response?”

Gleaming white orthodontic perfection. His precise look gained a Boolean property. He was False. I had seen beneath his surface. My rationality was racing against rising anger. I would have to decide on an action posthaste, lest I risk my emotion putting me on a less optimal course.

I politely probed, “Pardon me. No offence intended. I don’t normally ask things like this. But, did you draft that card?”

“Yes,” he said, unblinking.

I clarified, “…during this draft?”

“Of course!” he snapped.

Pointing to his backpack, I said, “Well then, surely you won’t mind showing me the other copy you have... in the same color sleeve, center position, page two of your trade binder.”

Without hesitation he said, “Sure.”

My chest welled up with an emptiness as he extracted the binder from his bag. My anger readied to transmute into shame. If another copy of the card was found, I’d have to apologize and would likely concede our game. He slowly flipped open the binder. Casually turned the first page to reveal the second: centerpiece, empty.

It was now his turn to respond. I wondered how he would he play it. More denial seemed likely. But, perhaps still off balance by my questions, or dazzled at how I even might have known so many specifics of his moral transgression... I don’t know what his reason was... but at that moment something compelled him to come clean.

“I guess you win,” he said.

His sin, confessed: A betrayal of Honor. How dare he! My bubbling anger, justified, explosively decompressed, “Yes. I guess I win. YOU SCUMBAG!”

That was when the crowd went from quiet to silent, and I noticed them. The match being in overtime; we had a few spectators. I wasn’t sure how long she had been watching, but Emm was behind me. Testifying to the moment, she said “tsk tsk tsk... You don’t fuck with a photographic memory!”

She was exaggerating, but I went with it. “It’s my gift; it’s my curse,” I growled, disapprovingly shaking my head as I collected my cards, clearing our desecrated game’s battlefield.

Having won the match by Trevor’s disqualification, a part of me was happy. But that emotion did not compare to my roiling rage. I crammed my cards into their box, my dice, pad, and pen into my bag. Stoically self-stifling, I said nothing.

“It was my first time cheating,” he plead.

I could not look at him. If I could have turned off my hearing, I would have. He was pathetic.

His weak voice quivered, “I only cheated for game three.”

That could have been true. Or perhaps he just didn’t draw the card sooner. Nothing he could have said mattered at that point. And yet he continued to spew.

“I made a mistake.”

Indeed, he had made a big goddamn mistake.

“It was a moment of weakness on a bad day,” he cliched.

One doesn’t simply sleeve up a multi-colored mythic, coincidentally end up drafting the exact color combination, then be tempted to cheat. His ‘moment of weakness’ involved premeditation. And when his plan failed, he poorly improvised lies to minimize the impact on public perception of his persona. His narrative didn’t hold water. And, this fool dared have a playmat with the word 'Champion' on it! His grovelling increasingly pissed me off. Nerd-triggered, he received my righteous wrath.

“You have no honor. BEGONE!” I banished, my voice echoing throughout the arena. My tone was inarguably firm. Things left unsaid threatened dire consequences. He read me correctly. Silenced, he flopped closed his trade binder, rolled up his playmat, and then skulked away. Exiled from the realm.

###

My anger diffused, I was left only with pity and compassion, for he had never known true magic. I held hope he would realize the error of his ways, embark on a voyage to redeem himself in the eyes of the part of him sees his faults. Based on this moment perhaps he would take responsibility for his life and the lives of those for he loves. Expanding his personal network of care. Improving himself and the world around him. Maybe he could shape a vision of his future, surpass his squalid substrate, and address the abyss within.

In time, he could be redeemed. Afforded indulgence, penance, or other such prescriptions from a repairer of reputations. But he would have to earn his honor. Unlike respect, honor cannot be given and it is never owed. Respect is a social construct. Honor is an intrinsic quality. Self-respect requires a duality. Honor requires a oneness; a transcendence of oneself. To experience Honor is to orient toward the light. To turn away from that light, is to lack Honor. To be dishonorable is to embrace the darkness of being. Is what we call ‘Honor’, The Way? No. But Honor is surely its guiding light.

To know what Honor is one must experience it. One must feel the warmth, peace, and joy of its presence. Or be subject to the sadness, shame, and emptiness in its absence. The closer I get to conveying a description of the meaning I feel, the more it shifts and evades illumination. Fluid in this moment, I wonder what it is I am even doing here.

Yet again, I digress.

###

“That was UH-MAY-ZING,” said Emm.

It was clear by her tone, were she not such a gay she would be gushing.

“I’m pissed,” I said.

“I’ve never seen you emote before... it’s great!” she laughed.

“Ha. Thanks, I guess.”

“I’m still undefeated, but I’m gonna drop now.”

“Ah, yes... the old three-oh-drop. Said nobody, ever. What? Why aren’t you playing the last round?”

“Gonna take off early. Catch a ride with Helga.”

“I see.”

“She says I’m an ‘old soul’. Gonna go to her house, get my tarot read.”

I had been off in my estimation of Helga. My sense-making apparatus reshaped my previous misconception, providing a new understanding that fit better than the old.

“I have much to teach you about women,” I said.

“Yeah right!” she giggled. “I’ll see you next Tuesday bud.”

“Don’t forget to use a dental dam,” I advised.

I went on to win my next match. Finished three and one for the night. Sixth out of thirty-one.

###

Word of my mythic-rarity level victory saturated the community. It is now common false knowledge I’m some kind of Trading Card Game Sherlock Holmes. But I do not have a photographic memory. Events flowed as they did because as a follower of The Way, I was open to it.

I allowed beauty to catch me. Ornate cerulean pearl in the center of her forehead accenting battle ready crustacean carapace. Shimmering, cold, bluish-green, scaly skin. Sexy, alien, and dangerous. A piece of lore eludes me: do Merfolk nurse their young? I suspect they must, otherwise her mammaries would only make aesthetic sense.

Not to downplay the composition of the piece; that most vital clue. Gentle strokes of a digital paint brush rendered her confident and powerful. A tidal force alluringly dripping, the bident of a god tightly gripping, perched upon a loyal kraken, thick tentacles glistening. She was indelible in my hippocampus. The night prior I had expelled a quantity of precious bodily fluid while thinking of that very same card art.

It’s possible what has happened to me happens to other cells within our human bacterial culture. In most cases, such a mutation in the way one interprets reality would likely prove fatal to the individual undergoing the change. That is but one reason I insulate myself from the reactions of a world which is increasingly hostile to heterodox thoughts. Am I a prophet of a new non-theistic religion? I dare not speak that thought into being to those who know me. My knowledge of the fate of prophets precludes that particular strategic folly. My mutant intuition tells me if my mutation is to spread, I must first ensure my survival.

The prophets of olde sowed their infectious thoughts only to those who directly interacted with them. Their revelations, recorded centuries later, grew to be twisted and truncated. My transmission vector is several magnitudes more potent. What I broadcast to the world shall exist un-eroded for all eternity.

An excess of digress.

###

I can see the censorious homogenization of the mainstream. I will not look away from the cascading cultural catastrophe. And I cannot un-see those swept to the margins. People will tire of an unbalanced game. Our corrupt societies will dissolve, turbulently torn asunder by their own excess. I do not dread, fear, fright or stress. Nor do I have what we call faith. My reality is not anchored, for I float toward The Way.

We are all adrift in a system of filtered realities. These ways of seeing prescribe us powerlessness. But we are not powerless. Nor are the dominant realities entirely false. They are useful to triangulate The Way. Not a political movement or a cultural shift, but a perpendicular primordial protean power. A manifestation of pure mathematics and logic. Sort of like the Cult of Pythagoras, but decentralized, leaderless, and without all the weirdo sex stuff.

I suppose you might think me insane. Always already auto-intoxicated. A babbling fool tangled in the net of a delusional idea. And that may be so. But it’s not like I lack situational awareness, or don’t reductio-ad-absurdum my theory of reality. I am on the safe side of sanity, considering I entertain the possibility I lack it. Can you say the same?

Sane or not, we wait for a sign. Biding our time at all levels of society. Acquiring advantage and authority. Solidifying control over our collective gamestate. Our goal might remain nebulous and ephemeral, but the aspect of import is not in achieving specific ends. It is in living lives of Total Absolute Preparedness. Expecting the unexpected when we least expect to expect it. We wait until strategy dictates action. Then we shall act cohesively and decisively, with Honor. It is up to us to salvage the system from its sunken place. We are legion.

###

The metrics state we’ve exceeded 48 million unique monthly downloads, not including the darknet mirrors and streams. As long as you’re out there listening, thirsty for whatever this is, I will be of service. The show will go on. But that’s all I’ve got for you this week.

Next week is the Eighth Annual Ask Me Anything episode, so please send your questions to m.ycell.macgyver.euaoued+ama@gmail.com

Don’t forget to like, sub, ring that bell, comment, recite the ancient incantation, then complete the ultra-captcha to prove you are almost surely human.

You’ve been listening to The Ωmega Phi Podcast: Episode 389 - "The Honor of Scumbags”. Until next time, I’m your host, M’Ycell MacGyver, Emergent Undefined Archbishop of the Omni-Universal Eldorithmic Divine.

First In, Last Out.

The End.

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