The card was a System.

"Once upon a time," my old man said, "living beings discovered cards. The story is so old that nobody really remembers anymore—"

"Then why do you remember, Father?" I asked.

"Well, I don't. But that's not the point. The point is that cards began somewhere. It didn't just pop out of nowhere, you know—"

"But I did!" I replied, smiling at him.

"Well, that's not the point either. The point is that cards started—"

"When we are born!"

"No, no, no." He shook his head (wryly, I learned this word recently, and I think this was what it meant). "Cards have always existed since . . ."

"You said cards were discovered?"

". . . since it was discovered, yes, one point for you, nowhere to claim it though."

The year was 12,423. I was six. My old man was raving again, this episode of his, this story, always beginning with questionable points. He would talk about how cards were discovered, how living beings from the tiniest worms began to build into smarter and smarter persons (not humans, mind you, we were a small population in this universe), to evolve, so to speak, until present day.

I didn't know what the point of it was. I knew that I was a bit special, though, because I only had one card, and the one card only had six letters on it that spelled "SYSTEM."

Neither my father nor I knew what that meant. The Corporation, maybe, or something else? Father said that, once I was old enough, maybe we could buy one of those C-certificates that could help our little two-person family open a store—an actual store!

Stores, of course, were special things. We always trusted them. Not like how Father said we should never trust strangers. That didn't make much sense to me, and I asked him, but he only replied that they were under the Corporation, and no nations, no planets, nay, no galaxy ever attempted to use the name of the Store to cheat anyone. No fighting was ever allowed, although I didn't understand what fighting meant. We got everything from the store, from food to household cards that helped us cook and clean and mop and wipe—everything, from the store.

A store manager was thus one of the more prestigious jobs that Father said I could choose when I asked him what I should be.

Occasionally I thought that was what the System was. The system of selling and buying with our ID cards that doubled as our identifications everywhere. Maybe I was wrong then, but that was the meaning that we were taught in Language and Civic classes.

We were also taught history in class, too, beginning from the point when I was four: right after we learned to spell and to read we started to learn about our history. It was different from the stories Father told. So I kept on asking him, and he said the history classes were besides the point.

Why history at that age?

Well, our planet was a little special in this universe. We were the Beginning, the singular planet that, not ravaged from the war, rose up and rebuilt the Internet that hooked up to every nook and cranny of this spectacular universe (at least as the images told me). Our stores were the best, of course. The Corporation had headquarters here. (Headquarters was a brain, Father said.) So we were made to learn these things at a young age so that we could understand our ancestors (whom other kids called their great-grandparents) better.

Father and I had a special game. Every week we would take one day off, and the teachers at school knew that my father had to work every day of the week except Friday, so they allowed me to skip classes on that day without questions (after the first ten times). And we would go to the museums, where the First Cards were stored. They weren't technically the first cards, but the first man-made cards that the universe ever had.

We would look and play some identification games. "This is a card of fire," I would say. "No, no, no, it is a fire elemental card," Father said, "a special man-made creature." Other times we would go to map cards, and Father would make me name places that he called special. Why special? I had no idea.

All of this made me very happy. Especially the skipping school part. Because school wasn't so good. School had kids that said things I didn't want to hear. Kids that, after I hit them for the first time, told on me and so afterwards never played with me again.

It was lonely, sometimes, feeling like you didn't quite belong. Home was where everything became better with Father. So I just went to school to learn, and learn well so that Father would be happy, and then went home to make him even happier!

Sometimes, just sometimes, it felt bad when I looked forward to the Manifestation birthday. I didn't know if others out there existed who were like me, and I didn't know if anyone else had the same nagging problem that I did.

If, and I meant if, there existed someone out there that did, how were they living? Did they ever feel like me? Did they have their own father, who loved them and cared so much for them?

Could I ever become someone that could make Father proud? Prouder, at least, than just merely supporting me in what I would do, as he always said he would?

Let us see then.

July 12, 12,423. Sixth birthday.