Murder Recall

Cards

Early days, nothing was said by Doug, Maya or Gwen to find out anything about the memories of Roger and the woman Roger believed was his girlfriend. Roger was aware that he was recovering from dysfunctional chip removal which caused gaps in his memory and he was deliberately going over his memories and trying to fill in the empty space. The woman didn't realize this about herself. She was not trying to remember more than what came to her mind at the moment and wasn't worried about her past or about what she knew of it at all.

They were all sitting around the table in Maya's cabin having herbal tea and eating pan-fried biscuits with honey. Maya was laying cards on the table, face down, explaining that these cards were handmade by her mother who was a healer known as Shamina. Shamina died years before and lived in this cabin for most of her life. The deck and the cards themselves were designed by Shamina and were based on her knowledge of psychic healing concepts. The cards were painted on flat, thin pieces of wood, all the same size, two inches by three inches. The back of the cards were painted a solid gray completely covering any grain in the wood, so that all the cards appeared identical when upside down. There were fifty cards, organized in two suits of matching pairs. Maya was moving the cards around the table top to mix them up.

Gwen held Michi in her arms, gently rocking her. None of them had seen any of the cards' upsides yet. Maya explained the game. Each person's turn consisted of picking up two cards and turning them face-up on the table in the place where they had been laying. If they were a pair, then the person could have another turn, as long as the cards turned over resulted in a pair, another turn was granted. If not, the unmatching cards were turned face down in their same places. Then it would be the next player's turn. Maya would go first and the turns would be taken clockwise. Each player would keep their pairs and the winner was usually considered to be the one who had the most pairs. The game was called 'Memory'. Pairs did not consist of identical cards. One suit represented daytime and the waking state and the other suit represented night and the dream state. Since this was their first game, Maya would explain which cards were pairs as they went along. At the end of the game, Maya would interpret each player's cards. Each card had an individual meaning which they could discuss as they played and groupings of cards gave another layer of meaning.

Maya picked up one card. The one closest to her and said, "Pick up the cards one at a time and remember where they are. When you pick up the first card, the idea is to remember if you have seen that card turned over yet and where it is so you can get a pair." The card Maya turned over was of a thistle and Maya said, "Notice that the border is light blue. The day suit has blue borders and the night suit has dark gray borders. Now let's see if I can turn over the night suit of this symbol." The next card Maya turned over was of the full moon at night. "Not a match," she said, "Now it's your turn and she turned to the woman.

The woman turned up her first card, choosing from near the center of the table, and it was of a thistle, barely seen, in the darkness of night. Then she immediately picked up the thistle card Maya had turned over before her. "A pair" Maya declared and they all smiled. Next the woman picked up a full moon during the day which was the card nearest her and then immediately picked up the other card Maya had.

"What a coincidence!" Gwen whispered. Michi opened her eyes and lay peacefully listening to the voices.

"According to Shamina, there are no meaningless coincidences. This would be synchronicity." Maya said.

The woman put the pair beside her previous pair and turned over another card. It was the sun and the border was light blue. She paused and looked with open, unblinking eyes, focusing on nothing, seeing all the light entering her eyes. "My name is Raya." Gwen looked straight at her stunned. They were all looking at Raya.