CASE FILE #4472-B/KARMA-OMEGA
SUBJECT: Tarot Deck Auctions Off Unused Potential To Highest Bidder
DATE OF INCIDENT: Undisclosed (Time-stamp on request: “When the subject first declined a creative impulse.”)
CLASSIFICATION: UNUSUAL ASSET TRANSFER / COGNITOHAZARD (LEVEL-2)
DISTRIBUTION LIST: DSD-7 (Deck Security Division), BAU-Psychic Phenomena, Office of Regretful Procurements, The Subject (personal copy, cc: Void).
SECTION I: PRELIMINARY FINDINGS
It is the finding of this office that the Tarot Deck in question, hereafter designated “The Broker,” did, as of the relevant fiscal quarter, engage in the systematic liquidation of the subject’s unused potential. The subject was observed experiencing a state of passive ownership. The subject had no right to a normal life. This right was not revoked; it was merely never claimed. The Broker, operating under the authority of accumulated inertia, filed a lien against the subject’s timeline.
SECTION II: ASSET AUDIT AND TRANSFER PROTOCOL
The Broker does not accept currency. It accepts the following: a singular missed promotion, three unlearned languages, four unfinished novels, one abandoned musical instrument, and approximately 47,000 unresolved daydreams. These assets were catalogued under the header “Unrealized Futures.”
The auction was conducted in the following manner: The subject was observed shuffling the deck. Each card drawn represented a life not lived. The Ten of Cups was auctioned to a woman who was observed crying in a parking lot; she purchased the subject’s capacity for domestic contentment for an unspecified sum of quiet desperation. The Knight of Wands was sold to a former athlete who now manages a laundromat; the subject’s ambition and forward momentum were exchanged for a single, distant memory of a sprint. The Ace of Pentacles was acquired by a real estate developer who had never known the joy of starting a business from nothing; the subject’s potential for financial security was traded for a portfolio of off-plan condominiums. The Fool was purchased by a man observed smiling at a bus stop for no apparent reason; the subject’s capacity for naive, unearned joy was transferred to a stranger who would waste it almost immediately.
A receipt was generated. It was not delivered. The subject was observed continuing to breathe.
SECTION III: METHODOLOGY OF DEPRIVATION
The Broker operates under a strict non-disclosure agreement with the universe. The transfer is painless. It is statistically undetectable. The subject will notice only a vague sensation of having misplaced a key. This is not a key to a door. This is a key to a version of themselves that was never allowed to exist.
The auction was conducted in a single moment—the moment the subject last said, “I’ll get to it later.” “Later” was the bidding floor. “Later” was the auctioneer’s gavel. “Later” was the final sale.
SECTION IV: REFERENCE TO PRIOR FILINGS
Reference is made to Case File #3129-A/STILLNESS, wherein a similar deck was observed auctioning the unused potential of a man who died at age 34, having spent 30 of those years waiting for the right time to start a garden. The garden was never started. The soil remained unturned. The auction was declared a success by all parties except the subject, who was not invited to comment.
Reference is also made to File #4001-E/DEFERRED, concerning a woman who auctioned off her capacity for public speaking to a lobbyist; the transaction was recorded as “net neutral” by the Office of Human Potential Oversight. The lobbyist subsequently gave a keynote address at a conference on “Authenticity in Leadership.” The woman was observed watching the recording in her apartment. She did not recognize the words as having once been hers.
SECTION V: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The subject is now the owner of a standard, non-sentient deck of playing cards. The subject is observed shuffling them. The subject is observed looking at the empty space where the Tarot deck once sat, feeling a particular kind of hunger that food will not satisfy.
The Office of Regretful Procurements recommends no further action. The auction is closed. The assets have been dispersed. The subject’s unused potential is now in the hands of strangers, some of whom are already losing it, some of whom are already wasting it, and one of whom is currently holding the Ten of Cups while standing in a parking lot, crying, and for a brief, unremarkable moment, feeling something that was never theirs to feel.
The subject had no right to a normal life. The deck merely made it official.