My fingers fidgeted on their own. Now and then I caressed the top card of the sorry pile of pugs I had been handed, and which I didn’t bother to check. Half of the fun was discovery. Discover the cards I had been loaned. What had changed, what remained the same. To misplay, and to be unaware of it, what a blessing that was. Who’s a good deck? Who’s a good deck? You probably are.
The Aquarist observed my behavior with a satisfied expression. It was like a mother witnessing how her child —ugly by every unmotherly standard, handsome in her eyes— played with a new tow. One of those that come inside the Easter edition of Kinder Surprise. The unpayable ones. Yes.
“Go on, examine the deck thoroughly if you want. It doesn’t bite.”
“What if I wanted it to bite?” I tried to appear interesting, mysterious. Sexy, even.
“I would beat you to within a centimeter of your life. That’s less than an inch.”
I didn’t know if I needed to be scared due to the threat or offended due to the clarification. So I did both, my face turning into a work of art as a I moved my head in a diagonal line, nodding and shaking it at the same time. “I am not American. I know my metric system.”
“You are American. Where is Argentina if not in America? What you are not is Unitedstatian.”
“Hell.” I simply answered to his rethorical question. “Argentina is in hell. We have mosquitos of,” I placed my hands apart, palms facing each other, the distance between them that of approximately 0,19 Canadian geese lengths, “this size.”
“You are exaggerating.”
“Maybe. But the Pomberito take me if our mosquitos ain’t big.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke, each one analyzing the other. The Aquarist picked up his deck and commanded it to spread in front of him, showing me their backs like a bunch of vain, body-building gorillas wearing animal print bikini. The image came to my mind and I couldn’t just suffer it alone, okay? I must spread my curses.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking which iteration of my decks I am playing. You know how it is when you have a collection that allows you to make dozens of variants of the same deck and you name them ‘SMALL-MEDIUM AGGRO 15’ or ‘BIG-ND CONTROL 12’. Well, that happens a lot to me. Not to the Warden. The Warden cannot freely make his decks for players to grind, so he takes solace in giving the ones the goddess approves for him funny names.”
“That’s so sad.”
“There’s no happiness in here but the one you make. Some find solace in collecting monster girls, but eventually they tire out of that too, with the passing of the years. The game grows stale despite expansion packs. The halls, ever changing, turn unexciting, collections of features of halls you have traversed before. And the mirror, the mirror is the worst part for your kind. The mirror always returns the same image: not a blemish appears in your face, not a wrinkle. And… I will change this one, I don’t need three copies… many chose obliteration to this perpetual servitude, Mauro. I believe that the monsters some players find in the halls are manifestations of their hatred. Damn this deck is a disaster for today. It was fine yesterday but—”
I slammed both hands against the table. “And there’s no way out of here?”
He smiled softly. “For us, no. For the unfused souls —this includes you— there’s a way. Theoretically.”
I relaxed my muscles back against my chair and crossed my fingers. “Go on, please.”
“Challenge the goddess to a match of Deck of Dogs, and win. The Goddess of Luck. Always using the biggest deck possible in the game, containing all cards that exist at a given moment, at four copies each unless they restrict or unrestrict themselves somehow. She has around a thousand copies of Chis from a Rose in it. The more the better, she says.”
I snorted. “That deck sounds extremely easy to beat. Would be the most inconsistent one in the game.”
“In anyone’s else’s hands, yes. The Goddess always has a perfect draw. Any deck that can be countered is countered by hers. She is playing every deck that could be, Mauro. When the game was young, a few tier zero decks existed, and by the skin of their teeth, some players managed to get out. But that window is closed now, and as the game ages, the locks that keeps it shut becomes stronger, inviolable.” There was longing in his eyes. It was clear that the Aquarist wanted players to be free, and I, while I processed his words, tried to keep from breaking in an infantile cry and engage in a harmful denial of my reality.
“But new cards poke little holes in that net that keeps us all trapped, correct?” and yet, a stupid hope shone through.
“Very rarely. And whenever that happens, the Goddess gets… incredibly angry. Tortures all remaining players whenever one manages to get out, reinforcing a ‘crabs in a bucket’ effect.” He leaned over with a conspirational air, pushing through the layer of evenly spaced cards. “If you ever hatch a plan to get out, tell no one. Ask none for advice, and give no clues about your true intentions. Wanting to get out is a common sentiment. Actually trying is often a fool’s errand.”
I swallowed, and I swear I felt my saliva thicker than normal. “Can we play so I can buy the mulligan?”
The Aquarist recovered his usual carefree appearance and joined his hands in glee “Absolutely! Whenever you are ready, Mauro.”
His cards gathered back into a deck and automatically shuffled, before landing softly to his right.
“Do I need to follow any sort of playmat positions, for lack of a better term, for the decks and the Rainbow Bridge?”
“No as long as the piles are somewhat orderly and not spread over the table and mixing with the units in play. The Rainbow bridge goes face up and your opponent must be able to check it whenever. Your decks must be in plain sight.” He stopped, blinked, nodded to himself and continued. “The cards in your hand should not be visible for your adversary.”
“Was that last addendum necessary?”
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“You have no idea.”
I manually shuffled the main deck using only a single hand at first, before going for an overhand shuffle. Then I stopped to look at the kibble deck. How would one shuffle a deck of three cards in an honest way? Soon an idea came to me. I placed a finger upon the tiny pile and spoke: “Shuffle.”
The cards began floating in front of me, still face down, and their contours became a blur. After a few seconds, as smoke started to float up from them, the room dinged like a microwave oven and the cards fell on the table. “Even the automated shuffling process is stupid. Amazing.”
“The Clerk suggested adding the microwave ding to warn players the process had concluded and avoid them waiting until the cards cooled down to touch them. He got a few kicks out of it.”
I waited a few moments and then carefully poked the kibble deck with my little finger. It was lukewarm. “The other players cannot be that stupid.”
“The ones who last as long as you did aren’t. The ones you may meet in tournaments. The ones we meet… well, not everyone that ends up here has played trading card games, Mauro. If the Goddess brings in two hundred random people, build their dimensions, and a single one survives and prospers, she comes out even in energy balance. Zero point five percent is the break-even rate for her. Humanity is not enough of an orangutan abortion bin to reach such a low number. And being the goddess of luck, she seldom gets a batch of two hundred without even one suitable candidate.”
“How many players are there?”
He touched the top of his deck so it would tranquilly, slowly shuffle as we chatted. “Truth is that we cannot know. My sphere of influence is limited; the Warden and Clerk know of many more players than we that manage rooms that need to be dropped. They tell me about some of them. But I have no proof that they meet all players. There could be other wardens. Other clerks. Other aquarists.”
“Other Goddesses?”
The aquarist raised a finger, and a second after, another. He was counting. And that was probably bad for me…
The Manual violently popped on in front of me, sending my decks flying all over the aquarium’s floor tiles.
NOOOOOOOO Ò#Ó I AM THE ONE AND ONLY. I AM UNIQUE. UWUNIQUE, EVEN.
I slapped it away and almost get out of my chair to pick up the card, but then smiled and sank into the back of the seat. “Shuffle.”
The cards floated in front of me and began exchanging places one with another. After a few moments of shuffling frenzy, they ended up to my right, organized in two neat piles.
“What can I say, I love feeling a bit Matilda. I just need a cute teacher to adopt me now.”
“Hope you drop one from a pack, champ,” he said, and I noticed there was no trace of ill intent or mockery in his statement.
I tidied the stretch of table in front of me, readying the cards to play. “Why are you being all sincere and nice with me?”
He tilted his head, confused. It almost looked like a real collie, just… metallic. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shrugged and gestured at the world around me with both hands.
“Well, yes, the others are jaded. But we are all slaves here. Some are even slaves of slaves. And we cannot do anything to solve that, so what do we have? Kindness. So long as we are kind to each other, this existence is bearable.”
I mimicked the fingers movement necessary to make a top spin. “You did this to beagles. Is that kind to you?”
“Beagles live for the spin, Mauro. They love it.”
Inhale, Mauro. Exhale, Mauro. Don’t mention the stapled knife, Mauro. And similar thoughts crossed my mind. “Let’s play, okay? Do I draw?”
“Yes, feel free to do so.”
I drew five cards from my deck, and it was even weird to not see them floating in front of me, and instead held physically in my hand. To be unable to automatically zoom in and out of textboxes felt… nostalgic. It was almost like playing in local tournaments again. “Aquarist, can I ask you for a drink?”
He looked behind himself and considered the rays for a moment “From the tanks?”
“No, in general. I want to drink mate. It’s an infusion of—” I blinked and the colorful weave of a poncho immediately made itself manifest upon the shoulders and around the neck of my interlocutor. “Do you want me to stab a cardboard cutout of a man of African ancestry to get you further in the mood?” he offered with a friendly tone. Now this was more like the other armored abominations. Except the Clerk would have volunteered to stab an actual person, no doubts about that.
Among nervous chuckles, I shook my hand slightly. “I am allergic to Martín Fierro references.”
The Aquarist slammed a steaming thermos upon the table and grinned. “As long as it is devoid of sugar, mate doesn’t count as food, and I can freely provide it to players.”
“Bitter mate? This reminds me that time a vicious truco-playing gaucho sneaked it into that one magic tournament. He had no idea how to play,” I reminisced the happy day of card-collecting-induced poverty.
“He must have given someone an easy victory, then.”
“Nah, he was fearless, ruthless, resourceful. Whammed a thermos over the head of his opponent in the finals. Took the prize home because that wasn’t an illegal movement yet.”
The collie raised an eyebrow. “What deck was he using?”
I looked at the cards I had drawn for the first time since doing so. I whistled. “That one is new to me.” I placed them face down on the table and spun a hand in the air, as if looking for the words to explain myself without sounding deranged. There weren’t any. “…Performapal Performage, somehow.”
“He was playing a tier zero Yu Gi Oh deck. In a MTG tournament.” The collie lowered his gaze as he drew from his deck. “No doubt he won, the monster.”
We made a minute of silence. Those were dark times.
I took another peek at my cards. I was tempted to read the effect of the three cost spell Gather the Grumble. “Care to toss the coin while I check the cards?”
“Sure.” The Aquarist produced a platter sized coin from the inner side of his poncho. Silver and glittering, engraved on one side you could see the faceof a GSD, and on the other a Labrador’s ottery tail. “Head or tails?”
“The side that depicts a tail, that, knowing this place, is likely to be heads.”
He tossed the coil in the air. Its spinning didn’t spur anything more than the tiniest speck of curiosity from me. I didn’t particularly care if I went first or second: first was better, albeit without knowing the matchup, I could be charging blind against a massive pug demise as soon as turn one.
The coin landed, and the Aquarist happily announced that he had won the toss.
“Shouldn’t we have done that before drawing?”
“Beats me, never paid attention to it. As you have no right to mulligan, I won’t use it either.”
“You are being too nice.”
A fiery blue unit of omnikibble manifested, floating next to the Aquarist’s head. He gave it a little touch, and its light grew dim. “That’s how you invest here. I’ll draw and it’s your turn.” He drew from his main deck, which meant he was not in a hurry for mana.
I took a glance at my hand. I had drawn two pugilists. I mumbled as I read the text of Gather the Grumble, the new —to me, at least— Really-not-Common spell that depicted a choking pug extending his little legs outwards, his right side flat against the floor, his eyes teary, as if covered in oil, and a …well, a grumble of pugs reunited around it, mourning the trachea-wrenching loss.
Trigger Breathing issues on a unit that has it —this sends that unit to the rainbow bridge— to draw 3 random pugs from your deck.
My cortisol levels shot up. I started sweating, hands trembling. Expensive and conditional removal, in my aggro pile? Outrageous. I had to lie to myself, tell my inner goblin that it was a case of misprint, an unintended effect derived from lack of care when writing the text.
I nearly buried a copy of Pugilist (1 cost, 2/2, the boxer pug) onto the table and drew from my kibble deck. The card caught my interest, because it wasn’t the kibble card I was used to run in my pug deck. At GBG rarity and called Asthmachant Kibble, it fostered the following effect:
Shuffle a 0 cost 1/1 pug with Breathing Issues and “Walkies: draw a card” among the six cards at the top of your deck.
So, basically, it was free ammo. Forgetting temporarily the inadequacy of my deck, I formally declared my turn’s glorious finale as the card of the Pugilist lay on the table, inert.
The Aquarist smiled wide, his eyes almost disappearing into thin lines. He began pouring a mate, never dropping the unnerving gesture. Then, he slid it over the table with care. “Here, you will need it.”