“A great trick has delightful mechanics as well,” Magic Nick, the magician, told Sadie, who was interested in magic tricks. “You want someone to be just as impressed by the trick once they see how it’s done as they are when they see the trick for the first time.”
“How do you manage to do that?” Sadie asked. The 15-year-old had a notepad out and was diligently jotting notes.
“Well, the easy way to do this is to take a trick that isn’t terribly amazing and then have a complicated way of making it happen,” Magic Nick said. He pulled a table in front of him featuring a hat. “Do you know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat?”
“Of course,” Saidie said. “You have a table with a trap door in it. You reach your hand through the hat and trigger the trap door to pull out the rabbit.”
“Very good,” Magic Nick said. “That’s not how you do this trick.”
Nick stood behind the hat, waved the cape he was wearing in front of the hat, and when he removed the cape, a rabbit stuck out of the hat. Sadie politely clapped.
“So, fine trick,” Magic Nick said. “It’s cool to have the rabbit already sticking out of the hat.”
“So how did you do it?” Sadie asked.
“There’s a conveyor belt behind this table,” Magic Nick said, taking Sadie around. “It grabs one hat and places it over the rabbit.”
“Why would you spend all of this effort?” Sadie asked.
“Because when I can show the audience this trick,” Magic Nick said. “I use multiple rabbits and different hats, so the audience is confused.”
“And then what?” Sadie asked.
“I turn the table so that they can see the conveyor belt.”
“And they don’t hate that it’s not magic?”
“I use that as a diversion for an even greater trick.”
“What’s that trick?”
“I saw off my own arm,” Magic Nick said.
“And you do that by having a fake arm?” Sadie asked.
“No, actually…” Magic Nick began.
Sadie rolled her eyes and wrote in her notebook, “We’re going down a rabbit hole.”