I beg you to read this through to the end, because this might be the last article I ever submit. The information I am about to reveal will probably turn the Magic gaming world upside down and have repercussions that I can only imagine. Hopefully the editor of this site will delete all references to my identity and refuse to reveal it to the investigators who will no doubt follow.

Let me start at the beginning. This whole affair started about two months ago when I decided to submit an article in the hopes of winning a $25.00 prize. Since my article was published, I have become obsessed with being the most famous author of online Magic articles. I thought about what would get me to that goal - but did not really have a clue until I met someone at a recent tournament. This person was aspiring to become a Pro Tour player, but has been frustrated in his search for fame also. As we were talking about the future of Magic and how we could reach our goals, we jokingly hatched a plan to break into Wizards R&D facility to find out what they had planned for the future. I don't understand what led us astray, but somehow the imaginary plan played right into our perverted desperation and became something we talked about seriously.

Reality finally hit me when our plane touched down on the runway at Seattle airport. We were both ready to back out of the plan, but decided that this was our one chance in life to become famous. I won't give details about how we got into Wizards' headquarters because it would incriminate some of their employees who meant well, but were tricked by us many times over. We both brought our digital cameras and wore loose clothing because we were not sure what - if any - information we would be able to get. We managed to hide until they locked up the building and, after searching for about forty-five minutes, managed to find the R&D Department. Most of what we found were lists of new card ideas, piles of play test reports, and empty pizza boxes. We were about to give up when I spotted a file drawer labeled "business plans." I figured this information would probably be better than nothing... But when I opened it and searched through the files, I was totally taken by surprise at what I found. We quickly photographed every document we could until our camera batteries died. We hid again until morning and managed to sneak out without being stopped. What I will now present is a summary of what we found in the files.

1. DCI Membership Cards – There were complete detailed plans to put in place within the next five years a system that included DCI membership cards coded with a magnetic strip that can be scanned. The plans included equipping each Tournament Organizer with scanning machines attached to their computers to allow registration at tournaments by simply scanning your card as you entered. The documents also referred to a few other possibilities to consider "upon eminent implementation." The first one was adding a holographic photograph of each member to the card to prevent tournament fixing by players using falsified cards. Also mentioned was the possibility of using the scan ability for automatic reporting of prizes to the Internal Revenue Service.
2. Card Bar Coding – I am not sure I understand all of what is written in this document but it all was based on printing future cards with bar codes in the flavor text area of cards. There were dozens of possible uses listed for cards with bar codes. I'll just give a short-listing of the ones I thought were most interesting.

• Automatic Decklist Generation – Apparently the idea here is to provide equipment for tournaments that would allow participants to simply scan each card in their decks and generate a mistake-free deck list. There was also a paragraph mentioning the use of this feature along with the membership card to generate a computerized record of each deck attached to electronic membership files. These records can then be used for scanning cards during deck checks and matching electronically.
• Forgery Prevention – Apparently there is a way that each card can be given a unique number and, when scanned, will be matched to a master database to verify authenticity.
• Collectors Kit – Marketing ideas for a kit to be sold to collectors that includes a bar code reader and software that will allow collectors to scan cards and automatically update "need and have" lists.

1. Card Shuffling Machines – This document actually referred to some of the recent cheating incidents and listed manufacturers and models of equipment. I understood this was simply using already existing technology from the gambling industry.
2. Electronic Life Counters – The way these were described was somewhat vague, but I understand them to be similar to a calculator with the capabilities to print out a game summary of life totals for judging purposes. Mention was made of possible mass marketing after initial tournament testing.
3. Optical Retina Scanners – This idea was discussed as an option to be used for tournament registration. Apparently these would be similar to equipment used for security purposes and would require a person to actually have a retinal scan to be registered in a tournament.
4. Instant Card Purchasing – I found this one very interesting. There were many options documented. The most interesting was the use of a Kiosk-type system similar to the greeting card systems in place already. You could scan a credit card, pick a single card to purchase, and the equipment would print the card and charge your credit card account.