Illusion 11.05.23
"All right, let's see what you got," Skipper said.
Kowalski sat at the table in HQ with his flippers crossed, a grimace on his face and occasionally rolling his eyes. Skipper sat next to him, wholly unamused but engaged, his flippers resting on the table. Rico was on the other side of the table, grinning widely with his tongue hanging out, flippers to his chin in anticipation.
Private was in front of them, a tie hanging from his neck and a black top hat on his head. He had recently gotten into studying magic tricks and was excited to put on a show. "And now," he started with a smile, "I will make this milk disappear!"
Grabbing the glass of milk from the floor, he rolled up a newspaper and poured the milk into the cone. Once the glass was empty, he unrolled the newspaper to show that it was completely empty and dry.
"Ta-da!" Private said. Rico erupted into applause and Skipper sighed, clapped a few times while rolling his eyes, then returned his flippers to the table.
Kowalski scoffed. "Classic optical illusion," he said with a dismissive wave of his flipper. "The liquid is in the edge of the glass and flowed into the center of the glass, making it look like it disappeared."
Private frowned and dropped his flippers, the glass flipping back upright and the liquid magically "reappearing" in it. He turned and fished for another prop from a cardboard box. When he turned back, he was holding a deck of cards.
"You will see that this deck is arranged at random," Private explained, facing the cards away from him and fanning them out and showing that they were in a random order. He flipped them over so that they faced down and held them out to Rico. "Rico, would you do the honors of picking a card? Make sure I don't see it."
Rico giggled happily and plucked out a card using his beak, then took it in his flippers and looked at it.
"Do you have your card memorized?" Private asked.
Rico nodded enthusiastically.
Private smiled and held the deck out to him again. "Then please return your card to the deck, again making sure I can't see it."
Rico complied. After shuffling the deck a few times, he laid out three cards on the table. "Now, you may think I'm an ace at this," he said as he picked up the first card, which was an Ace, "but I don't thinking I'm joking around when I say," he continued as he picked up the second card, which was the Joker, "that this is your card!" he finished, picking up the eight of diamonds.
Rico gasped dramatically and snatched the card, babbling incoherently about how amazed he was that Private was able to pick out his card. Private smiled smugly. Skipper actually seemed a little more interested now.
"Classic mind trick," Kowalski said impatiently, taking the deck from the table. "You positioned the eight of diamonds in such a way that it increased its chances of being chosen. And given Rico's feeble mind, he fell for it, making your job easier."
"Can you stop ruining the fun!" Private said, batting the deck from Kowalski's flipper which caused it to fall in a haphazard mess all over the floor.
"I told you magic isn't real!" Kowalski insisted, throwing his flippers up.
The two started yelling at each other incoherently and Rico jumped into the pile of cards on the floor and started making a card angel. Suddenly, the lights went out for about one point seven seconds, causing the two to go silent, and when they came back on, Skipper was standing next to them with the deck of cards neatly stacked in one flipper and the other flipper on his hip. There was a beat as Rico realized the card angel he'd been making was gone as all the cards had vanished and he made a disappointed grunting sound. Skipper rolled his eyes and handed the cards to Private, who stared bewilderedly.
"Private, I found your demonstration mildly entertaining," he said. He turned to Kowalski. "Kowalski, we all know magic is fake, but let the boy have some fun anyway, will you?"
Kowalski's beak hung open as Skipper started to walk away, and Private turned around to watch him leave.
"But, Skipper, how did –" Kowalski started, but Skipper interrupted him by holding up his flipper.
"Now, now, Kowalski," Skipper said as he turned back halfway, eyeing him with a side eye. "You know how magicians never reveal their secrets?"
Kowalski stuttered for a moment before Skipper cut him off again.
"Well, neither do commanding officers."
Skipper continued on his way out of the hatch with Private and Kowalski staring up after him. The cards dropped from Private's flipper as his grip weakened from shock. Rico laughed as they splayed out on the floor again and resumed his card angel-making. Kowalski pulled out his abacus as he tried to do the math on how Skipper could have possibly cleaned up all the cards in less than two seconds.
Eventually he just bewilderedly dropped his abacus down on the table and put his head in his flippers, leaning forward on his elbows, muttering incoherently something about magic and science.
[Words: 883]
