The Force Field Gets You Every Time

Reid had not planned on going to the show. He had the card in his jacket pocket — the one he'd been carrying for three years, ever since Portland — and Sloane had spotted it before the lights went down.

"What's that?" she asked, nodding at the fold of laminated paper sticking out of his breast pocket.

"A comedy prop," Reid said. "Or a life system. Depends on whether it's working."

The room was a mid-sized club on the south end of town, the kind of place that smells like ambition and spilled ambition. Danny Rosenberg was already on stage. Not in person — that was the whole gag. The avatar. The digital comedian in the suit, delivering the Expander material with the timing of a man who had never once been nervous about anything because he was incapable of fear. The audience didn't fully know what they were watching. That was also the gag.

Reid watched her face. That was when it happened. Not when she laughed — she laughed three times during the set, once so hard she covered her mouth — but when she read the card. When the words registered as something she'd always known but never held in her hands before.

"That's Card Six," Reid said. "The force field."

On stage, Danny was doing the bit about the amygdala feather. Tickling yourself from the inside. The audience was with him now, the skeptics converted by the sheer absurdity of it, the believers laughing because they recognized the truth dressed up as a joke.

Sloane turned to Reid. "I think I'm caught in your force field," she said. She meant it as a joke. They both knew she didn't mean it as a joke.

The rest of the evening was the rest of their lives.

Marcus Washington had been taking the Expander course for three weeks before he mentioned it to Donna. He'd been doing Card Three — the Sunrise card — every morning in his backyard, barefoot on the grass, watching the sky go from black to blue to gold, and he felt ridiculous and he felt wonderful and he hadn't told anyone.

The morning Donna found him out there was a Tuesday in October. She'd come down early to let the dog out and there he was, standing at the edge of the patio, no shoes, arms slightly out at his sides like he was balancing on something.

"Marcus," she said, from the sliding door. "It's 48 degrees."

"I know," he said, without turning around.

She stood there a moment. Then she went back inside. Then she came back. With her own shoes off.

The grass was cold and wet and slightly uncomfortable and she stood next to him and they watched the sun come up over the fence together without saying anything for a while.

"How long have you been doing this?" she asked eventually.

"Three weeks," Marcus said.

"You should have told me," Donna said.

He reached over and took her hand. The sun cleared the roofline. The dog sat behind them in the doorway, profoundly unimpressed.

Card Three. Every morning. Both of them.

Polly Cebos had the Finger Labyrinth card out on the table at the café — tracing the lines with her right index finger, reaching the center, pausing, tracing back out — when the man at the next table leaned over.

"Is that the Expander?" he said.

Polly looked up. The man was in his forties, wearing the expression of someone who has recognized something they didn't expect to recognize.

"Card Two," she said.

"Card Two," he agreed. He reached into his own jacket and produced the same card, slightly more worn than hers. He'd had it for longer.

His name was Jake. He'd taken the course six months ago after his sister gave him the pamphlet and said, with absolute confidence, "This is ridiculous and it works." He'd believed her immediately and then disbelieved her immediately and then taken the course anyway.

Polly moved her coffee. Jake moved to her table. They talked until the café closed and then talked in the parking lot until the parking lot lights went off, which was both romantic and a signal to stop blocking the exit.

The system, it turns out, was not metaphorical.