Fang Xiang

This is both a work of science fiction and an exploration of the meaning of life, love, literature and art. Brainpower is no longer the main ingredient for being human in this far distant future world.  Spirituality, physical balance, and diligence all come together as integrity for Chen Mu, the Card Apprentice.  The cards which Chen Mu masters in his own scrappy way, distill all the powers of the cosmos –  human and nonhuman –  into something that is not a book, not technology, and neither art nor magic, but is these and more.  Learn about these strange cards, which can embody everything you might imagine for the future of technology, but also a future beyond technology which promotes the best, and sometimes the worst, from mankind’s past.

The Card Apprentice

The shuttle-shaped perceptual vortex was continually spinning inside Chen Mu, though it was now twice as big as when it had just taken form.

It was going to be Chen Mu's thirty-third test of the perception in his body. The test procedures were very detailed. To find out the different characteristics exhibited by the vortex at different rotational speeds, he did all the examinations systematically and in extreme detail.

From the results in front of him, he had separated the rotational speed of the vortex inside him into three phases; the slow-speed phase, the middle-speed phase, and the high-speed phase. He had also subdivided each of the phases into five sub-levels.

Breakthrough