There were 17 possible ways to fold a paper swan, and Bob knew fourteen of them. He knew that at least two were purely theoretical- not possible in true 3D space. But that last fold, the 17th, was the one that drove him to madness. The last fold. The Omega swan. The Cob’s Lucky One Seven. One day it would be his.
Bob had scoured the world. He’d climbed mountains and crossed deserts. He’d sat for three weeks outside a swan folding sage’s yurt in arid Mongolia, feeding on passing beetles and drinking only rainwater. On the twenty-second day, the sage came out of the Yurt and sent Bob away, confessing that he actually didn’t know the Pen’s Gambit, and that the local boys who’d suggested he did were having a little fun.
Bob thanked the sage and fished a small knife from the front pocket of his serappe, which he used to cut off his left pinky finger. He buried it in the sand where he’d sat those weeks.
He’d come home then, rejected, lonely, and sure he’d die soon, his life a waste, his struggle for naught.