Disclaimer: I don't own Jonathan Creek
Jonathan's Illusions
"One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. 'Supernatural' is a null word."
-Robert A. Heinlein-
"Jonathan, don't fuss," my father called back to me from the driver's seat. I'd been squirming around, trying to escape the confines of the car so I could run off and find my friends instead of be forced to watch whatever theatre event my parents had chosen for our next bonding ritual. It was all to no avail, of course, and soon we were parked outside the looming red-brick theatre and my mother was tugging my hand into her own as I climbed out of the car.
Apparently the fact that I could walk on my own was lost on her.
As we made our way to the queue at the ticket booth, I braved a glance at the sign plastered to the wall. I ignored the obnoxious wrinkles caused by some shoddy hanging and focused my attention on the writing. We were seeing a magician.
"Oh, bollocks," I murmured, or maybe I said it out loud because it earned me a 'shush' from my father as he purchased our tickets.
I tried to stoic protest approach as we meandered through the crowded lobby, but all I got for my troubles was a promise of a lecture on behavior once we returned home. It seemed that moping was my only choice.
When we reached our seats (way up in the balcony, thankfully), I slumped down in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest; this, I hoped, would get the message across to my parents. If it did, however, they didn't say anything, and as the lights dimmed I knew I was stuck there for the entire show.
As the magician came on stage, I let out a soft groan; his large gestures and bellowing voice were far too overdramatic for anyone to believe this could honestly be magic. He introduced his first trick, making his beautiful assistant disappear. I just sat there waiting for him to be proved a fraud.
Instead, his assistant disappeared.
That got my attention. Don't get me wrong, I still knew it was fake, but now I was interested. I spent the rest of the show on the edge of my seat, which pleased my parents, and as we left my mind was spinning with theories of how exactly the illusions had been done. The following week, I spent every free minute I had locked in my room pouring over books and making notes.
I read about every illusionist in history, every illusion they'd ever done. It wasn't that I wanted to be a magician, far from it; I wanted to understand their tricks. Slowly, I worked out the kinks in my theories and eventually found that I could start designing my own tricks.
What I learned on that fateful trip was that magic isn't really waving wands and spewing nonsense words, it's all technical. What people see on stage all depends on calculations.
Maths, science, timing; those are my illusions.