Mermaid Pirate Dispatch

I thought I was used to hot studio lighting. Ten years on the air had made me a little too complacent about my job. I glanced past the man I was interviewing, peering into the darkness. I wanted Kim to come back and powder my forehead again. I could feel my scalp crawling, sweat beading up along my shirt collar. This guy was unbelievable. I did not need a stressful interview the night before my hernia surgery. He was going to make me rupture internally.

I looked back at him and tried to smile. “Well I think most people would consider…”

He leaned forward in his seat and interrupted, polite but confident. “Most people don’t know the difference between the Internet and magic,” he said. He extended an arm and held out an open hand, palm up, just in front of me. The toga he wore offered no sleeves, instead all I saw was his thick arm hair coating a thin forearm leading up to a steady, soft hand.

I looked at it. It was empty.

“A magician,” he said, “uses the simplicity of the human mind against his audience. He hides the truth with sleight of hand and clever contraptions. He tells you a story that you want to believe because your eyes and brain collectively can’t come up with a better explanation for his illusion.”

My eyes darted to his. He was staring at his open palm, focusing intensely. My gaze followed his and I looked again. There was a soft shimmering accompanied by a gentle glow, like a tiny glass cloud hovering over his hand. It simultaneously condensed and accumulated mass, distorting the space above his hand until a little toy car had fully materialized into his palm. It was an intricately detailed, immaculate reproduction of the same kind of car I drove, a convertible Mazda Mx-5 Miata Rf in fire engine red. Every detail was perfect, but miniature. I looked up at the man’s face, wide eyed, and I gasped.

He gingerly set the car on my desk and leaned back in his chair, crossing a knee over his leg under the toga and folding his hands in his lap. “George,” he said, “that wasn’t magic. There’s no trick, no illusion. That was the laws of physics bending to my will. The car is real, but one sixtieth the size of the real thing. You should be intimately familiar with its details since you drive one.” He paused and smiled politely at me.

My brain was too stunned to function. There was a broad, deep chasm between what I expected from reality and what had just happened. I just gazed down at the car, trying to sort out the various dissonant thoughts ringing in my head.

The man continued. “Instead of a lie, what you just witnessed was the impossibly profound truth that we are capable of influencing the very nature of mass, energy, and quantum phenomenon on a macro level to achieve the most improbable outcomes that were always possible within the operations of the natural universe.”

My jaw was slack. I continued to stare at the car on my desk. It was unreal. I leaned to one side to get a better look at the dashboard. Every dial and button was visible. I leaned in closer and peeked at the seat belt inside. Every fiber in the woven belt looked right, only dozens of times smaller than the real thing. The tires had detailed tread and appeared to be filled with air, resting on the desk exactly how I would expect the full sized version to. I collapsed back into my chair and stared at the man.

The show’s producer spoke up in my earpiece. “Questions, George. You need to ask him the questions.”

I shook my head and blinked a few times, trying to remember any of the backup questions we had prepared earlier. I had stopped using cards and prompters after just a couple years. For a brief moment I wondered if this one interview might derail my entire career.

I cleared my throat. “That was… amazing,” I managed. Alright, my brain was making words again. Good start. “A magician never reveals his secrets, but since you aren’t a magician I presume you are prepared to reveal your methods to us?”

A sly smile spread on the man’s face. He remained relaxed in the interviewee’s seat. He showed no signs of sweating or tension. His round, nearly bald head was as dry as it had been before the camera had started rolling. After a long moment, he said, “I keep no secrets, but I am afraid that the mental discipline and effort required for this kind of work is beyond what most people are willing to invest. It demands complete dedication to the craft, a lifetime of study, and an accumulation of knowledge that simply isn’t feasible for most people.”

I watched as he opened one hand over his lap, palm up as before, and cupped the other hand around the area over his palm. A faint light occupied the space and when it faded he was holding a glass of water. He brought it to his lips and drank.

He looked at me and smiled, then offered me the glass. “Would you like some? It’s the best water you’ll ever drink in your entire life.”

I stared at him like an idiot. The voice in my ear sounded frustrated. “Dammit George, snap out of it. What has gotten into you?”

I reached out and took the glass. It was heavier than I expected. I took a sip. The water was perfectly cool and refreshing. It wasn’t flat and flavorless like some over-pure water. It was light and clean. In the back of my mind neurons were lighting up to tell me that this was the way I had always wanted water to taste and feel. I got goosebumps. The water made me feel happiness and joy, as though I had just taken a sip of water from the fountain of youth, poured into my lips by the holy grail. My eyes teared up and I hastily offered the glass back to my guest.

He refused it. “Keep it,” he said. “I can have as much as I want whenever I want it.”

“How?” I asked. “How do you do it?”

“I told you,” he said. “Knowledge. Practice. In theory, anyone can do it. But in practice, there will likely only be a few people in the history of humankind who will achieve what I have.”

I stared at him. He had refused to give a name. He had refused to give contact information. He had simply walked into the studio and talked his way into the interview.

“One more thing,” he said. He reached out his hand. “Take my hand.”

I took it. There was a tingling sensation, like the vibration of excited electrons zipping around. My hand was sweaty, but his was dry. Mine was weak while his was firm. My circulatory system buzzed with excitement and various nerve endings in my flesh twitched and flinched along a path from my hand, traveling toward my gut. The area where my hernia had been causing intense pain every morning flared up with intense heat. It burned for a second, then the stinging faded into a gentle warmth.

He grinned and released my hand, leaning back in the chair again. “You should cancel your surgery for tomorrow,” he said. “There’s nothing for them to patch up.”

I gasped and grabbed my belly, pressing in where the pain had become a normal part of my everyday life. It was gone. It felt fine.

“George,” my producer began impatiently.

I reached back and yanked the cord, ripping the earpiece out. I leaned back in my seat, gasping for air. My heart was racing. I looked at the man. He looked steadily back at me. “What do you want?” I asked.

He smiled. “I just want the world to know that we are so much more than our lowest common denominators. We hold ourselves back with the preoccupations of politics, consumerism, and the pursuit of pleasure. I want everyone to focus more on knowledge and kindness and less on differences and achievements. I want people to seek wisdom over popularity, and find peace in the acceptance of reality and truth.”

My lips parted. I wanted to say something. I wanted to ask questions. Not because it was my job, but because this man knew things. For all I knew, he knew everything. But before I could speak one of the overhead lights went supernova, or so it seemed. My guest was illuminated by a powerful beam of light that hurt my eyes. I shielded my face from the intense brightness with my arm and closed my eyes. I could feel the intensity of the light on my skin, and when it faded I opened my eyes. It took several long seconds for them to adjust again. The lighting was exactly as it had been before, but the man was gone.

I shot out of my seat and leaned over the desk, looking around for any trace of my interviewee. Producers and stage crew began frantically rustling about, barking orders and searching the sound stage. A camera man leaned out from behind the main camera and stared at me, shrugging. I locked eyes with him and shrugged back. Then I looked back down at my desk where the car had been. It was gone also, and in its place there was a little shimmering stone. It was translucent and pearly, with an oily rainbow shimmer just under the surface. I picked it up. It was about the size of a plumb. It was warm and perfectly smooth, and its oval shape fit nicely into my palm. I wrapped my fingers around it and squeezed. Then I slipped it into my pocket, closed my eyes, and smiled.

[Reddit Post]