Indian Poker

**Indian Poker** (インディアンポーカー, *Indian Pōkā*?) is a type of card which allows one to view the dreams of another. Originally devised by Kuriba Ryouko based on work carried out at Clone Dolly Ideal, they have been created and spread around Academy City.

## Etymology

Indian poker, or blind man's bluff, is a poker game where the players see the cards of the other players except their own. Each player is dealt one card which is displayed to the other players, traditionally stuck to the forehead like an Indian feather, followed by betting as to whether they have the highest card based on the other player's cards and their bets.

## Appearance

In the manga, Indian Poker cards are depicted as rectangular and light-colored, with a slightly darker hued strip running along the right border and two concentric arches of similar hue in the bottom-left corner.

Most of the card's front is taken up by a box with an image. Many of the seen cards have two flower-like shapes, one in the top-left and one in the bottom-right, over a dark background. Some high-ranked cards have a more shiny image.

In the anime, the card's image has several concentric circles centred on the middle, with gaps at varying points along their circumference.

* A blank Indian Poker card
* Various cards
* Various cards
* A shiny silver card
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This is akin to a QR code, and the circle patterns are unique for each card.

The type of dream apparently affects the colors on the card, with orange supposedly being an enjoyable or happy dream. Other colors include silver, yellow, purple, dark red, dark blue, yellow-green, blue-green and magenta. A blank card has a plain grey image.

The original card used in Ideal, which Indian Poker was derived from, had a similar shape and image panel size, though below the panel it had a column of lines on the left and the box on the right.

## Principles

* Recording the dream
* Reproducing the dream
* Experiencing the same dream
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Indian Poker is a technology which allows people to record and experience dreams, stored on cards. By sleeping while connected to a specially made machine, a person can record their dream onto a card, and by sleeping with a card on their forehead, a person can experience the recorded dream, recreated in their brain via stimulation (and resultant electrical signals) from the aromatic elements mixed and stored in the card.

Aside from experiencing another's dreams, Indian Poker can also be used for a form of **sleep-learning** (睡眠学習, *Suimin Gakushū*?). By using a card with the dream of someone with proficiency in a particular area, a user can acquire a degree of that skill as they sleep.

For example, the dream of a professional bowler could allow one to learn a pro-bowling technique and dream of someone fluent in a language could enable one to speak it at a conversational level, in the course of a single night. In a similar manner, the cards can be used to record one's knowledge as insurance.

The cards' ability to pass on experience and skills to people via dreams has been noted as somewhat close to brainwashing, and they have been described as a Testament in card form. The original cards developed in Clone Dolly Ideal, from which Indian Poker is derived, were intended for mental doping and brainwashing, and capable of influencing an esper's Personal Reality through Personal Reality extracts recorded from another esper. In its regularly distributed form, Indian Poker does not have these capabilities, however the potential power remains within the cards, even though it is quite weak. With the right preparations, that capability can be drawn out.

### Production

The machines used to record dreams onto cards are not commercially sold, instead being handmade based on instructions and designs uploaded online. They are made from combinations of parts from various toys, such as a telekinesis mimicking toy with an earpiece which reads the wearer's brainwaves to control a ball. There are multiple combinations of different toys which can be used to construct the card dispenser.

Once the card dispenser is built and a blank card is ready, the supplier goes to sleep while connected to the machine and it will record their dream on the card, with the aromatic elements inside the card being mixed according to the contents of the dream and the color reflecting the type of dream (e.g. orange for joy and happiness). One problem is that the supplier usually doesn't know what kind of dream they will have and be recorded. However, with esper abilities capable of manipulating the brain to a certain degree (such as Mitsuari Ayu's Mental Stinger and Shokuhou Misaki's Mental Out) and the right preparations, it is possible to control the sleeper's mind to make them have a specific dream, which aside from producing a card with the desired dream also allows for the production of multiple copies.

To use an Indian Poker card, the film on card's front must be peeled off to activate it, then the card must be placed on a person's forehead and if the person is not already asleep, they must go to sleep. The enclosed aromatic elements and electrical signals stimulate the sleeper's brain while they sleep to reproduce the dream inside their mind. If the film is peeled off before the time it is intended to be used, it will be activated prematurely, reacting and releasing its contents, becoming useless in the process.

In order to experience another person's dream, an image created by the brain during sleep, the actions of the original person's brain during sleep must be reproduced. This means that the card's user experiences the same chemical reactions in their brain as the supplier. Aside from the conditions enabling sleep learning, if the supplier was being affected by an external influence like invasive hypnotism at the time, the user will be also be subjected to the same influence.

Certain espers are capable of either reading the information on an Indian Poker card, or skimming and copying it to a blank card, without actually using it.

### Dream Ranker

Those with the ability to create great dreams for others are known as a **Dream Ranker** (天賦夢路（ドリームランカー）, *Tenpu Yumeji (Dorīmu Rankā)*?, lit. "Natural Talent Dreamer"). Those that can create useful cards are given ranks, with the highest being "S" or "A" rank, whose cards can sell for lots of money. A similar ranking system is also used for the cards produced.

### Transactions

Normally, Indian Poker cards are exchanged between circles of friends without any monetary exchange involved. However, the demand for particular cards increases as the value of the card increases, allowing people to earn an income out of performing transactions involving Indian Poker cards. One notable exception is the high-ranking Dream Ranker known as BLAU, who distributes his Indian Poker cards for free.

For this reason, some people act as "traders", who mainly engage in transactions involving Indian Poker cards, notably the exchange of a single card of a particular rank for multiple low-ranked cards or the direct purchase of a card using money.

With Indian Poker cards being sold online, certain people have taken advantage of it for a con, attaching a photo of an attractive girl to a card and claiming that it is part of the dream to sell it for a high price and make a profit.

## Background

The original cards which became the basis for Indian Poker were developed as part of the experiments being performed at Clone Dolly's third laboratory, Ideal. Kuriba Ryouko, the creator of Indian Poker, visited Clone Dolly several times prior to its closure. By recording and teaching an impure version of an esper's Personal Reality extracted through their dreams to alter multiple espers' powers in a desired direction, researchers hoped to guide them into creating the "ideal" power they sought, with Yuuri Senya acting as the core. Shundou Toshizou had plans to spread the cards throughout Academy City after the experiment, but they were dashed by the experiment's disastrous outcome and the subsequent shutdown of Ideal after his Board sponsor pulled out (as part of a deal with Shokuhou Misaki).

Long after the Ideal incident, following the conclusion of an experiment where she had been separated into two cyborgs for a year before being recombined, Kuriba Ryouko learnt of her mechanical doppelganger, supposedly another soul created as a side-effect of the experiment which had come to reside in the combined cyborg parts. Unable to come up with a solution to the problem with her own knowledge, she hoped that by distributing the method to create Indian Poker cards and spreading her knowledge through the cards, it would eventually mutate to produce a solution or find someone capable of achieving a breakthrough. Around the same time as Indian Poker was spreading, persons associated with Clone Dolly Ideal, moved to make use of the cards to accomplish Ideal's unachieved goal.