Infinity Tarot

The fifth phalanges of Teh-Mi-Ja’s first and second opposed fingers bent to twist the card. She paused millimetres before the picture would be revealed and allowed herself to guess. Her glance slid over the two cards already on the table. The slender human body of the High Priestess, with silvery engineered skin, in fluid dark robes with the print of a nebula. Teh-Mi-Ja’s lower jaws separated and clacked again, as when she had drawn the card – this reading was excessive: she was already isolated and withdrawn, the most passive in her centuries of life. Next to it was the massive carbon black chariot, not pulled but pushed by powerful thrusters; a tall android with olive skin and black eyes stood tall staring right into her clusters of eyes. Her throat throbbed, as she swallowed the cry. How could she, the Senior Matrix, resolve the conflict when she was thrown millions of light years away from it? Stranded from both the Creators’ civilisation and that of the little humans, from whom she had taken the cards.

She realised her hand with the card was trembling. Worst, she could not tell whether from anger or fear. Some humans believed in the power of tarot, but none of them were capable to imbue the pieces of plastic with the infinity quanta – the particles of the universe consciousness the Creators used to uphold life. When Teh-Mi-Ja merged the cards and the quanta, she turned the guess game into her Matrix’s code. This way of designing the events turned out to be subtler and more nuanced than the usual progression method. It left more probabilities, but at the same time it enriched the universe consciousness.

The Fool? The Wheel of Fortune? The Moon? She prayed for anything to annul the cards already on the table. With a powerful twist of her opposing fingers, she sent the card flying. It flipped six times and landed with the picture up. With his legs up in the air, a bulky, muscled man in a leather office chair glared at her. He had a bald skull and a thick trimmed beard. Teh-Mi-Ja looked closer and saw the tiny details, added by the infinity quanta to turn the generic face into someone she knew. The Primal. The man who had vetoed her scheme.

Suddenly she knew the proper interpretation and the cards glowered with ultraviolet radiation, telling her that the universe was bending to her Creator’s will. The High Priestess was the Supreme Matrix, who had refused to oppose the Primal. And she, Teh-Mi-Ja, had to find a chariot to bring herself back to the conflict and face the Primal. In fact, the second card was already pulling in the dark matter so that she could create the means of transport for herself. This time the Primal would hear her and see that Creators must collaborate with those on Earth who called themselves artists and writers. If they were to keep wielding the universe consciousness, they had to listen to them, to look at the details they provided in the so-called works of art. Otherwise, they weren’t worthy – they were nothing more than calculators.