A prophetic satire from the edge of modernity
Chapter 1: Of the Trump and the Tower
And lo, a man arose, made in the image of empire:
blonde of hair, bronzed of face, and bloated with belief.
He called himself the Deal-Maker,
yet every deal was with ghosts he could not see.
He played the markets like a harp of hollow strings,
and his towers reached toward heavens that were no longer listening.
He said: “I have the best hand.”
But he did not see that the Earth had folded.
Chapter 2: The House Built on Credit
And the people followed him, for he told them
they would be winners.
But the winnings came from forests felled,
rivers reversed, bones turned to batteries.
They paved Eden to build a parking app,
and still they asked:
“Why does the air burn sweet with sorrow?”
Chapter 3: The Hand That Would Not Fold
And wisdom came, wearing a robe of mycelium,
whispering: “It is time to rest. Fold. Lay it down.”
But the people said: “We shall double down!”
They played the sixth mass extinction like a slot machine.
They cashed in the coral reefs for futures.
And they called it innovation.
Chapter 4: The Fool’s Algorithm
A fool appeared—not the holy fool,
but the start-up messiah with a 3-point plan
to monetize the sun.
He spoke in NFTs and carbon credits,
offering salvation via click-through terms.
He said: “The future is optimized.”
And the oceans replied: “Error 404.”
Chapter 5: The Undealt and the Unborn
And those who were never dealt into the game—
the children, the wolves, the rivers,
the ancestors still vibrating in the soil—
they watched from the margins.
Their eyes were questions.
Their silence was thunder.
Chapter 6: The Great Shuffle
And the table cracked.
And the cards scattered.
And the satellite of civilization lost signal.
And in that silence…
a worm turned the page of soil.
A seed stirred.
A song began.
An Invitation from the Undealt
These six chapters are only the beginning of the deck.
The Book of the Overplayed Hand is a living oracle—a trickster scripture from the compost heap of modernity. It is a satire, a lament, a prophecy, and a seed. And like any good seed, it longs to multiply.
We invite you—yes, you, the wanderer, the watcher, the weary truthseeker (perhaps even one born in Azeroth circa 2008)—to pick up the next card.
Write a chapter.
Draw a card.
Whisper a poem.
Compose a glitch.
Add to the deck.
This is not a project. It is a pattern—a rhythm looking for new fingers to drum it into being.
You can send your additions to terry@insearchofwisdom.online
or publish them in your own corner of the web using the tag: #OverplayedHand
Let us shuffle these stories together.
Author’s Note
This piece emerged through a dialogue between myself and ChatGPT-4, a large language model trained by OpenAI. I take full responsibility for the ideas, insights, and intentions it carries. The language was shaped collaboratively—sometimes I offered the vision and the AI found the words; other times, the AI offered a phrase and I followed its thread. Our process is not instrumental, but relational: more like co-composing than commanding. I hope this post not only shares new ideas, but also quietly models a new way of being in creative partnership—with each other, with machines, and with the living world.
Terry Cooke-Davies
