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Informationen zum Autor George R. R. Martin Klappentext "An alien virus ravages the world, with effects as random as a hand of cards. Those infected either draw the black queen and die, draw an ace and receive superpowers, or draw the joker and are bizarrely mutated. Croyd Crenson is the Wild Card's greatest failure--and its greatest success. Dubbed 'The Sleeper,' he randomly undergoes hibernations that can span weeks or even months. After each hibernation, he awakens with a new appearance and set of powers--sometimes a joker, sometimes an ace, and sometimes a combination of both--until exhaustion claims him and his next inevitable sleep shuffles the cards anew. Ever since his initial infection in 1946, he's awoken in a singular body-- until now. His latest awakening has left him split into six different incarnations, each of them a self-contained piece of the original and each with a unique look and set of powers. One of them, at least, recognizes this for the the disaster that it is, and tasks the clever and elusive Tesla--a joker with ace powers--to locate and gather the remaining five versions of himself before sleep claims them again and leaves Croyd permanently fractured. What follows is a journey through Croyd's long and colorful life, through the lens of some who have encountered the world's most unusual wild carder. And as Tesla delves deeper into the investigation, he'll have to work fast, because not every Croyd is as amiable as the first--and they'll do whatever it takes to survive" Leseprobe Part I Tesla shut the folder. He took the string of the closure between his gray thumb and forefinger—no easy task given his long black nails, invulnerable to clippers as they were. Then he wrapped the string around the circular cardboard retainer, once, twice, three times. The folders were an affectation, to be sure—as were the physical dossiers they contained, with their notes handwritten in pencil, and black-and-white photographs—but an affectation rooted in Tesla’s deep-seated needs for security and secrecy. He was a great believer in computers and databases for research and surveillance, but a much greater believer in absolutely never storing any data electronically, even on those of his machines connected to nothing but the electrical outlets in the walls of his basement office. He had heard rumors that his erstwhile colleagues at the National Security Agency were making progress on technology that could access computers through the electrical grid. Tesla was a great believer in rumors as well—at least when it came to the governmental intelligence apparatus that had once employed him, and for which he occasionally did freelance work, if anonymously, through a nested series of false identities and think tanks that existed only as post office boxes. Satisfied that the thick folder was securely closed, Tesla stood up from his oak desk and took a few short steps to the door of the bank vault dug into one side of his basement. He turned the dial through the sixteen-digit combination, pleased with the complete silence of the tumblers even to his preternaturally sharp ears, then wheeled open the heavy door. Nothing of his considerable wealth was stored in the vault. At least not of his wealth in various currencies, negotiable instruments, and specie. What it contained instead was a vast wealth of information. Filing cabinet upon locked file cabinet lined the walls of the vault. Tesla approached one, selected a key from the ring hung around his neck, and, after unlocking the cabinet, pulled open the top drawer. He carefully placed the newly closed file, unlabeled like the cabinets, in the crowded drawer. He narrowed his eyes, making of the random placement of the file in a randomly chosen cabinet a conscious memory. The next time he needed it, he would cast his mind back and watch himself in his imagination: turning the tumblers of the vault’s lockin...
