The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 1: Hop skip and slip

It took me almost thirty minutes to realize something really drastic had happened.

I mean I immediately knew something had gone wrong. You don't just wake up in a damp, dirty alley with no memory of how or why you were there and assume all is well. But after a check to make sure my pockets were still full of the usuals and that I was unharmed, my panic went from "where are my kidneys?" to "what the hell did I drink?" pretty quickly. With a stretch and a groan I left my unfortunate temporary bed and stepped into the spring air of New York. My panic faded even further when I realized I knew where I was, at least vaguely. I knew the Bronx pretty well, considering I lived in it, though it had been a while since I had taken advantage of it's fine complementary sleeping quarters.

Looking up and down the street I decided to go left, half looking for a taxi, half looking for someplace to grab a coffee, all while wracking my brain for what had led to waking up in an alley. I certainly didn't feel hungover enough, hell I didn't even drink heavily any more. But if I hadn't been robbed, or drunk then what the hell had happened? Eventually I gave up walking and sat down on a bench, pulling my phone out and swiping it on. A quick check told me it was almost noon, and I had a singular message.

"Nice to know someone cares"

I mumbled to myself, trailing off when I realized it was from a number my phone didn't recognize.

Congratulations! You have been

chosen to participate in a new

reality exchange program!

I read and re-read the message a few times before I received a new one.

Check on the bench next to you.

I quickly looked around, checking to see who had sent that message, looking suspiciously at the building in front of me before looking back at the bench. Sure enough, laying on the metal next to me was a folded up newspaper. Slowly I picked it up, eyes drifting over the articles until I unfolded it, reading the headline. My jaw dropped at the newspaper quality picture, an image of Iron Man as he flew in front of a building. I could just make out several things flying behind him. My eyes flew down the article absorbing it as fast as I could. Any hope that they were discussing anything but an actual event was dashed pretty quickly. The article talked about an attack on during the Stark Expo, an investigation being started, as well as the arrest of Justin Hammer. When I finished the article I quickly brought up my phone, my fingers tapping out a message as fast as I could.

Who are yiou? What teh fuck

is going on?

I typed, my fingers shaking a bit as a new panic rose up in my chest. I knew those names, they were comic book characters! Not people you could quote in a legitimate article, especially in the New York fucking Times!

You won the lottery my friend! You

should be excited! Also, you should

check the date.

I shot to my feet, eyes flying across the paper before landing on the publication date. May 2010! I furiously typed into my phone, demanding an explanation.

What the fucck is going on!

Why is this paper dated

five years ago?!

I looked wildly around me, looking for someone with a camera, someone pointing and laughing, anything. I was desperately holding onto the idea that this was just one giant, terrible prank. I kept walking even as my phone dinged again, reading as I walked.

You loved the Marvel Comics

stories so much, it was really a

no-brainer where we would

send you! Now you get to

experience this reality for

yourself!

I read the message as I moved, my pace getting faster as I turned the corner, leaving the empty street. I heard more messages dinging in, but I ignored them, instead making a beeline to the nearest person.

"Excuse me!" I asked, the grey haired man stopping to look at me. "Would you happen to have heard about this?"

I showed the man, who was now eyeing me nervously, the paper with the headline still up. He looked down, taking the paper and adjusting his glasses.

"Guess you missed that? Explosions woke me up last night, all the way from Queens!" He said, handing the paper back to me as he continued to walk past. "Almost called in sick"

I turned to the next person, this one walking away from me. When I reached him I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and pushed my hand away.

"What the hell do you want?" He asked, taking a step back.

"Did you hear about the Stark Expo?" I asked in a rush, making the man take another step back.

"Of course I fucking did. It's all over the news and radio, now fuck off."

The man walked away at a bit of a faster pace, checking over his shoulder to make sure I wasn't following him. I barely noticed, having already stepped back and sat on an apartment doorstep, my legs almost giving out before I could. My phone gave another ding, so I pulled it out and quickly read the five new messages.

But don't worry, we recognize

that the reality you are now in isn't

quite like your old one.

So we transferred your financials

and belongings to this one! We

even bought your apartment so

you could live in the same place.

We attempted to place you there

but trans reality teleportation has

a rather wide margin of error.

Oh! Your job doesn't exist in this

reality! To compensate for this you

no longer need to pay rent!

We also understand that to truly

enjoy this reality you need to be

able to participate in its

adventures!

As such we have granted you a

single boon! An artifact that is both

flexible and powerful!

Head to your apartment to find

your boon!

I spent the next ten minutes trying to text the number, asking what was going on, trying desperately to get a response. Eventually, when none came, I gave up. After a moment of thought I stood, legs feeling a bit weak but not as shaky as before. They said that my apartment would be here, and that something would be waiting for me. Taking a deep breath, I waved my hand out, calling a passing taxi.

When I finally got to my apartment I nervously looked around. It was built the same way, had the same front entrance, but was somehow painted a different color. If fifteen minutes of listening to the cabbie talk about how backed up Queens was with police, ambulance and fire trucks didn't convince me I wasn't in Kansas any more, then standing in front of a building that was a faded grey yesterday, but a faded blue today sure did. I shook my head and pushed on. I could panic in my apartment. I hurried up the steps, stopping by the door to check the names next to the doorbells. Sure enough, Carson Walsh, my name was next to its usual button. I found my key and let myself in, rushing up the stairs to my floor.

When I finally slammed the door of my tiny run down apartment, I immediately locked it behind me, clicking and dead bolting the two extra locks as well. I turned around and leaned my back against the door, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. For a moment I focused on my breathing, before leaning forward and pulling off my jacket, hanging it on the back of the door. I walked further into my apartment, my head on a swivel as I looked for any inconsistencies, finding none. It was a perfect copy of my apartment, down to every stain. But it was in a building that was the wrong color, in a reality that I had read about in comics and watched on a tv screen.

Four steps into the apartment and I was standing in my living room. A craigslist couch, a pawn shop TV that was out of date and an Ikea coffee table, on which was a brown paper wrapped box, held together with twine. Slowly I moved to the couch, sitting in the middle directly in front of the said box.

"If this is a bomb, please let it be a big one. I don't want to be half exploded"

I mumbled darkly to myself as I reached out and undid the twine, pulling it off from around the box. Next went the brown paper wrapping, revealing a simple yet well made wooden box, accented with copper capped. In the center was some sort of green crystal, about the size of a large egg cut into an octagon. Pushing away the pile of paper I unlatched the lid of the box, opening it to find a cloth covered interior, and a perfectly stacked deck of cards nestled in the center. The cards were facing down, showing off the pattern on the back. A single eight pointed star that shined gold adorned the center, with a border line of the same set in about a quarter of an inch from the edge. The card itself was a marbled emerald green. Before I could reach out and touch it my phone dinged again, the first response after a long list of pleading messages.

Congratulations! You are now the

proud soul bound owner of The

Conceptual Deck! With a little

creativity and these fifty-two cards

there is nothing you can't do!

Please pick up the deck!

"I can't believe I'm doing this" I mumble to myself, picking up the deck and holding it in my left hand, putting my phone down next to the box.

Great! Now put your other hand on

the box and pull with your mind!

"Pull with my what?"

I asked myself, shaking my head. None-the-less I reach out and put my hand on the box, focusing on the feeling of the box against my finger tips. With bracing wince the box was gone.

"Oh sweet Christ, what the fuck."

I studied the space where the box had been, pulling back my hand and looking at my fingertips. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the top card of the deck. Once just gold and green, it now had a dash of red. In the center of the eight pointed star was a deep red circle. Slowly I drew that card, and gasped softly. I could sense what the card contained. Turning it around I could now see what I already knew. Bordered in more gold leaf was a perfect image of the box with a white background. In the bottom right corner was the letter A, the grade of the card, slightly embossed and stamped in solid green. I could feel the box was high quality, worth a lot, and steeped in energy. I could feel how big it was, what it was made of, and how much it weighed. I stared at the card for a few minutes, mentally examining the strange but clear feelings I was getting from it.

"If it went with a pull, then with a push"

I trailed off as in a moment the box had returned, exactly the same as it had been a moment before. The card had vanished with it, sparking a moment of panic as I looked back to the deck, frantically counting it, reaching fifty two with a frown. Again I reached out to the box, repeating my first action but focusing on the card staying in my hand. Surprisingly, the card appeared in my hand, rather than on the top of the deck. I counted the cards again, leaving out the new card, this time counting fifty one grey faced cards.

I quickly devolved into experimentation, muttering, and randomly disappearing and reappearing couch disappeared without a struggle, reappearing backwards, then right way around with a thought. My bike vanished with a cackle because that meant no more lugging it up and down the stairs. The coasters stacked into one card, and I could add to that stack by touching the card to the last coaster and pulling. I vanished the remote, making it reappear in the air when I threw a card at the ceiling. I couldn't disappear anything with a throw, though I could make a card fly back to my hand from the other side of the room with a mental command. So far the cards had always remained at fifty two, and the cards I wanted to draw were always on top, even if I shuffled them together.

Two hours later I sat leaned back on the couch, watching the news on mute, absentmindedly disappearing and reappearing the remote. Images of the Stark Expo, of the man himself and of the attack flashed on the screen as I continued to wrestled with everything that had just been dumped into my lap. The fact that I was in a different reality wasn't all that big of a deal. I didn't leave any family behind, and I had been in between good friends. There was a reason I didn't drink heavily any more but my first assumption this morning had been that I drank too much. No, the problem wasn't what I had left behind, it was what, and who, I was sharing this reality with. I was stuck, deposited into this world, a world with heroes, villains, Hydra, aliens, sorcery, magic, gods, celestial beings and who knows what the fuck else.

Everything I knew about this reality came from comic books, wiki articles and cartoon shows. And what I knew was terrifying. While the deck was certainly impressive, and I could already think of several ideas that I could leverage to my advantage, how the hell could they compete with the power of Mephisto? Magneto? Hell, I don't think I could even go toe to toe with any of the dozens of cheesy villains that existed in the older comics! Before I could sink into the all-new panic that was rising in my chest my phone dinged again.

Hint: Try combining the gem from

the top of the box with something.

Be Creative!.

"Combine?" I asked the empty room.

With a furrowed brow I pushed the box back out onto the table before studying the gem, embedded in the top. Assuming they meant the gem separate from the box I fiddled and tugged at the green crystal. It slid free surprisingly easily, revealing a pointed eight sided pyramid cut underneath.

"Okay"

I looked over the room, wondering what they had meant by combine, and wondering what I could combine it with. My hand played with the cool gem while my eyes settled on the end table next to the it was a statue I had gotten as a gift, a small ghost from Destiny, a game that probably didn't wouldn't exist in this reality. It was mostly white, with orange accents and an angular body that looked vaguely like a folded origami fortune teller. I lifted it up from its base and pulled it into a card. It was an B rank.

"Damn, better quality than I thought." I mumbled to myself as I spun the card in my hands.

I pulled the gem into a card next, my eyes going wide when I saw a golden S in the corner. Shaking my head, I began to wonder how I would go about combining them and if I even should. The statue had been a gift, but judging by the rank I was pretty sure that the gem was an actual massive emerald.

Steeling myself I eventually I settled on tapping the gem card against the statue card, using the same pushing I would have used to take it out of the card. The gem card vanished as the bag card glowed. It pulsed once in a pale green light, just bright enough to cast a shadow of my hand against the table. My eyes grew wide, suddenly aware how much the statue had changed. Everything I could feel from the card was different. It felt active almost alive. I push it out of the card and onto the table, not exactly sure to expect. The ghost had changed color, mostly shifting to a dark green with the edges lined with gold, very reminiscent of the deck itself. The eye in the middle was marked with a small blue glowing eight pointed star. Much more impressive than the color change was the fact that it was floating in front of me, slowly bobbing around.

"Uh hello?"

"Greetings!" The little metal robot replied, its voice faintly feminine, before falling silent.

"Uhh what are you."

"My apologies, I was running a scan of the room. My name is Emerald, but you can call me Ema."

It took me a moment to restart my brain, eventually nodding with wide eyes before responding with a cough. The small ghost flew in a circle before returning to hover in front of me, leaving slight green glow streak behind her

"Alright Its nice to meet you Ema. Are you an actual ghost or?"

"Do you mean can I make you a guardian?" The floating construct asked, before shaking side to side. "Unfortunately that isn't possible. I only look like a ghost. But I'm sure I'll be able to help you somehow!"

"Of course, what else can you do? Are you like an AI or something?"

"Not exactly. I am an artificial construct, but I dont have the pure computational hacking abilities that a real ghost would. I do have detailed scanning equipment, and my ability to interface with technology is superior to a normal human. I am simply bound to what a human could do at that interface."

"Oh, gotcha. So more Oracle than Cortana?" I asked, watching the little robot slowly move around the room, thinking about what it had said.

"If I understand the first reference correctly, then my ability to hack and scan through data is more grounded in reality than the comic book character Barbara Gordon, but essentially yes."

"Well the fact that you understand my references is a priceless power worth more than anything in the world." I assured her with a chuckle. "Beyond that, being a realistic Oracle is still incredibly useful. The emerald I used to make you was an S rank, but that still seems pretty overp-"

Before I could continue my phone dinged, drawing my attention down to it. I put my new bag of holding down, picking my phone up and turning it on with a flick.

Congratulations! You have figured

out the primary use of The

Conceptual Deck. By mixing and

matching, it's possible to create all

sorts of powerful objects!

But be warned! You new friend was

an exception! Creating and finding

unique objects with such potent

powers is rare! With creativity and

ingenuity there are no limits, but

they won't come cheap or easy!

Good luck, and have fun!

Oh! One final bit of advice. If you

ever want to destroy an item you

make, simply tear the card in half!

It will destroy the contents, but the

card will return to your deck!

"Well alright. I need a drink."