Card of the Week: Knight of Cups

When people don’t know what is going on, they speculate.  When they think they know, they fabricate.  And when they do know, they often disparage.  Jealousy is insecurity turned sideways.

The Knight of Cups is an idealistic crusader on a long spiritual quest, one whose wearying journey leaves him open to emotional pitfalls such as jealousy.  Perhaps he is returning  home to find himself estranged from those he once held dear, or he could simply be exhausted, tired of having to fight to continue to prove himself, longing to simply be recognized, wanted and welcomed.

Inverted, this knight’s outer guile may mask underlying deceit.  His goals may be sincere, but his motives or methods may not, or he may be masking a hidden agenda.

In “The Ultimate Computer”, twenty Enterprise crewmembers remain aboard while the rest are temporarily moved to a space station, replaced with a new M-5 computer to be tested in war games with other Federation starships.  The M-5 initially does well, but as it draws more power from the ship, its behavior grows increasingly problematic.  It destroys an unmanned cargo ship, kills a crewman attempting to disconnect it, then reengages the other Federation ships with the Enterprise’s weapons at full power.  Dr. Richard Daystrom, designer of the Enterprise’s original computers decades earlier, had tried to recreate his past glory by promoting the M-5 as a breakthrough in computer design, but had imprinted it with his own unstable personality.  In the end, the M-5 is only able to be disconnected after Daystrom himself suffers a mental breakdown.