It was almost midnight when Naomi dropped Lexi off at the front entrance of her apartment complex. They hugged each other before parting ways.
“Lex, one final word of caution. You seem to clinging rather tight to this tarot deck and ignoring the rest of your life. I know that you are going to work because without that you have no way to keep your home. But from what I can tell you are staying secluded at home and doing nothing but learning and reading the cards. You should try and get out and maybe hang out with your other friends. Do not get me wrong, I am happy that you keep calling me and we keep hanging out as I do enjoy your presence, but I know that I cannot be your only friend and you should try and hang out with some others too,” Naomi said, as she placed a hand on her friend’s arm. “Remember sweetie, that no matter what the cards tell you; you will always have the judgment of your friends.”
Lexi smiled and nodded, “Thanks Naomi. I promise I will not forget about my other friends and studies. In fact, with all the fascinating images and symbolism and how it seems to tied into other similar symbols of belief, would work perfectly in my dissertation so that is why I am using it as a basis in the paper.”
Naomi smirked a bit and tried to hide her fear. Lexi caught onto it unfortunately, which is why she tried to be a bit jokey with her friend. She waved good bye as Naomi’s Honda Prelude took off down the main road that separated her apartment from the South campus border.
Quickly she rushed back into her apartment as the weather continued to cool down, Lexi hated how the cold froze her hands and feet. Slowly the heater warmed Lexi’s cold body up. Thankfully the apartment did not charge her for the huge heating bill. It was all wrapped up into the nice package that they offered students attending Fieldsmith University. The humor in that she was probably getting them to pay more for her heating bill than she was paying for her rent made her giggle in a way. Even still her apartment was a comfortable 78 degrees, it was not like she was trying to go overboard with making her apartment like some tropical sauna or island.
Her boots dropped off her feet one by one, thinking onto the hard wood floor. She wiggled and stretched her toes out and flexed each joint as it regained freedom from being enclosed in the boots. “It is times like this where I sort of wish that I had that really old nineteen seventies shag rug to run my toes through. I miss that feeling of quickly brushing my feet through the long shaggy carpet as it massaged my sore feets,” she thought making a mental note to her self that she needed to purchase a small square of shag next time she was out at a home improvement store and had some spare cash to throw at some small, ugly shag carpet.
Seeing that it was so late, Lexi decided to start getting ready for bed. She took off the warm outfit and quickly changed into her comfy grey cotton sweat pants and her favorite well-worn and loved t-shirt that she had had for probably ten years now. Her body relaxed back into the clothes and she yawned as she moved back into her bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Her tooth brush felt hard and cold in her hand and the bristles scrubbed her each tooth from her dinner at the Half-Cup Illusion Cafe. She closed her eyes and allowed the scratchy bristles to do their work. She hated how something that felt like she was taking a really rough grade of sand paper and running them over the soft pink insides of her mouth. Once she was finished she then washed her face free of smoke and soot and sweat.
All ready for bed but not tired at all, Lexi picked up her room a bit more and tried to figure out what she should be doing to help get herself tired and sleepy. She glanced over at her neglected desk and saw a small glowing and throbbing light emerge from underneath all the paper and notebooks she had scattered on top. She moved towards the desk and cleared off some of the old, dusty paper off to get to the bottom and the wooden section of her desk. Finally she got to the tiny will-o-wisp light glowing from underneath. She brushed her hand over the warm, smooth surface of her iBook. She had been using three by five sized index cards and small black and white cheep composition books that she could buy at the local twenty-four hour pharmacy that was located down the street in walking distance.
“Hello Melpomene, my old faithful computer. I almost forgot I even owned a computer, with all the notebooks and index cards that I have been using to capture most of my notes. I am sorry I have been a bad, bad Apple computer. When was the last time that I took you out and played with you?” Lexi said to the computer as she unplugged it and brought it over to her futon to open it up, “Ah yes, it was when I got that Pet Shop Boys cd for really cheep at the Play It Again store and ripped it to put it on my iPod. And on that note, I wonder when the last time was when I checked my email, I guess I should log in and do some routine maintenance. If anything it just may be boring enough for me to want to go to bed.”
Lexi pressed the button that unhooked the powerbook’s screen from the bottom and watched as it popped up from its long sleep. She pushed the lid open and adjusted it so she could get the maximum screen viewage without getting any of the glare. She checked the wireless icon in the right hand corner and searched for an open wireless connection. Thankfully, she lived in an apartment complex that catered to many students who could receive funding from mommy and daddy who gave them just enough money and toys so they could get high speed internet and wireless connectivity at that. And many of them did not read the manual to close their access point to outsiders because for the last two years Lexi sat in the luxury of having free wireless. The icon went from grey to black as it found a point to connect and tap into. She checked the speed and discovered that who ever owned the point had a nice strong feed to the internet.
“Yay, jackpot,” she said and opened the web browser that was installed on the computer.
She then navigated to the free web email service she used and logged into her email. The small mail icon moved in a small dance as her computer connected to the service and started to download all the messages onto her screen. “Wow, I guess it has been a long time since I last logged in,” she said closing her eyes and dozing off as the messages kept downloading.
Finally her system beeped at her to let her know that everything had downloaded. Lexi adjusted the computer as the heat grew warmer on her lap. She rubbed some sleep induced tears from her eyes and yawned.
The system told her that she had about 100 messages to deal with and sort through. The screen was set up in a three panel frame layout. At top there was space where the usual annoying banner graphic spam advertised all sorts of new products, porn sites or other crap that Lexi was not even interested in purchasing or clicking. Thanks to the new technology that came out to block such banner reducing plug-ins from appearing on screens, she was forced to always endure the horrid epilepsy colors and flashing images. Which is probably one of the main reasons why she never spent a lot of time online or in her email system checking her mail. Beneath the banner area the screen slip vertally to give her a quick column of who the mail was from and what header the message had and a blank space that would display the entire message when she did click and select one.
She inhaled deeply and then breathed out to prepare her self mentally for the chore of cleaning out her inbox. She stared at the screen and blinked. One of the most common and favorite flash-based banners featured a line of brown cartoonish dancing monkies with a large blinking caption that taunted the viewer to catch, poke or slap the monkey to win a free item. Well, the banner at the top displayed something similar except the words at the top read, “STAB THE MONKEY WITH THE FIVE OF SWORDS AND WIN A FREE IPOD.” Monkies danced across the screen as a small sword image sat unmoving, waiting for Lexi to move the mouse over to the sword to pick it up and engage in the art of slaying a virtual monkey with it. Lexi shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She did not expect to see a tarot image in the banner.
Quickly she changed her focus down to the email. Her inbox was filled with mostly spam messages from people like ran.dom VIA.ga or need.to.get.big. She scowled at those people who tried to sell her viagra or drugs or always asked her to visit web sites that could help teach her to make her penis, which as a woman she did not have (or could not under normal standing), bigger. It was a bit rediculious and she got annoyed from it. A few messages under the familiar spam, a new one caught her eye.
Simply titled “A Free gift from your friends at tarot.com”, the message asked her if she participated in filling out an online form she could be entered in a drawing to receive a new, carefully hand crafted, fabric decorated and made to order tarot tote with a gold cord to carefully close and tie your cards safely inside. Lex rubbed her eye one again and blinked.
“What the hell,” she said, “am I dreaming this? How did they know I have a tarot deck?” She deleted the message quickly.
She continued to cull through her messages and found that somehow tarot images and symbolism dominated her inbox. She found several email messages asking her to receive mailings for tarot predictions and a few others asking her to sign up for their infamous tarot readings. She even had one message that simply read “Feeling stuck at home? Well, feel trapped no longer. Chariot for nine dollars and ninety nine cents. Act fast, supplies limited. Get yours now!” Lexi was growing more and more disturbed from seeing the sudden rush and influx of tarot related mail in her inbox.
About twenty messages in, however, she came upon one of her anthropology group messages. It was simply labeled with [list-serv: anthropology]. She clicked on the message and scanned the news. It had been sent a few weeks ago and revolved around a topic one reader sent in about methods for recording items found on location at a dig. Various people wrote in to tell the questioner that they could use the old method of using weather-free paper and wax pencils so that water did not ruin the important dig information. A few others, part of the new and growing line of computer anthropologists, suggested that they use various computer database programs loosely designed for users to create their own tags and field inputs to document whatever it was they were entering. These people suggested that the archaeologist take digital pictures of each item that was found on a dig site and then import and enter the image into the database and catalog the features and other important data specs electronically. Archaeological field work, while a bit interesting to Lexi, bored her to tears while she read through all the materials. However, when she got to the bottom of the message, where the online group placed the customary list-serv .sig, she read the following words: “if you wish to no longer receive these predictions, please click this link.”
Lexi freaked out and closed the computer, putting her system asleep again. She then vowed not to check her email alone again late at night after having discussed tarot.
