Genesis's Backstage Tarot Parlor
Genesis’s Backstage Tarot Parlor
I futzed with tarot as a teenager, mostly to piss off my devout mom. Genesis and a lot of other synths used the cards as meditation, with the million possible meanings, stories, and futures hinted by each spread offering an escape from the linear data they were always plugged into. Some made their own decks and traded cards with each other. Genesis carried a classic deck, while her girlfriend and fellow synth queen, Dee Construction, favored one based on human history. The ten of swords was the fall of Tenochtitlan. The queen of pentacles was Nobel laureate and activist Wangari Maathai. Justice, the 350-years-too-late pardoning of Galileo. The highs and lows of the past to tell Dee and the others where the future might lead them. - A Fractured Infinity, page 46
For a book with a bunch of tarot references, I knew early on that it would be really cool to commission an artist to create custom tarot cards based on things in A Fractured Infinity. I worked with artist and friend David Reimer, who created the Wheel of Fortune based on the Envisioner—the predictive machine at the center of the story.
I handed out postcards/bookmarks of these with some silver foil effects at book signings
That got the ball rolling on some character portraits based on the major arcana. Go ahead and pick a card and read your fortune. Which one are you?
Hayes / the Hermit
Reply hazy, try again?
Throw the dice. Film, then cut and recut as you try to figure out just who the hell the hero is in all of this.
(Because, that voice in your head reminds, it's certainly not you)
Yusuf / the Hierophant
A silent man of science who breaks particles down into their smallest parts just to understand the world around him.
Unflappable. That is, unless you goad him, "Have faith."
Kaori / the High Priestess
Which face is the mask, which is the woman?
Is she heartless, or the most reasonable person surrounded by emotional, irrational fools?
(She knows the answer to that. And to everything.)