It's not over. It's. Not. Over.
So, as I said, I reinstalled Lazarus, which made it work. Got a bit of coding done, just like changing and moving a few lines, I must have recompiled it two, three times, then it started breaking again in exactly the same way, always the first time I try to do something to the card array.
So I reinstalled Lazarus again, which, this time, didn't fix the problem. I plan to try reinstalling it two or three more times because what else do I have?
This is terrible. So, unless anyone has any better ideas, this seems to be a unique interaction between my system and Lazarus, so I guess I could try ... buying a new computer? ... or porting the thing to another language.
Does anyone have a less awful idea? Thanks. At my wits' end.