[OTC] 10.3 - Luck
I got lucky. That’s all it was...right?
My first night at the Magic Castle, and I’m checking out a wing the general public never gets to see. Fraternity only, y’know? Relics of the masters humans will never get to touch, much less see, and here I am running my fingers over Dai Vernon’s favorite pack of cards. I’m leafing through volumes written on Kellar and Cardini penned by Brothers for the Fraternity.
And yeah, Harry’s there, too. The master’s belongings, relics of the order that I’m actually allowed to touch.
Martin Mackenroy, he runs the group...he hands me this set of cuffs and starts telling me about them. I’m listening to the whole deal, but I’m also checking these things out. They’re beautiful, heavy in my hands. Just running my fingers over the shackles, I get this crazy urge to put ‘em on. I don't actually, but you get the idea.
“You’re looking at a gem here, Tommy. These were given to Houdini by a locksmith that belonged to the order, Anderson Melville. The public doesn’t know him, but we do...he was the single greatest maker of restraints that the world will ever know. The concept was one Houdini mentioned in passing, one that Melville took and made reality. These restraints are literally unbreakable, and incapable of escape unless you know how they work.”
“How do they work?” I asked, inspecting the base of the shackles. The things were solid steel, linked by a solid rod about two inches in diameter and about six inches long. Just the idea of wearing those cuffs gave me the freakin’ willies.
“That’s the heck of it: we don’t know. You can see there’s no keyhole, because there’s no key. Only someone with a talent like yours can open them. They’ve been examined to reveal a set of counterweights, but how exactly one manipulates them to get the cuffs open is a mystery only the master could have solved.”
It made sense to me...by this point, I was really into it. “Did he ever figure it out?”
“Sadly, no...Houdini made a friendly wager with Melville that said he’d pay for the cuffs if he couldn’t figure out how to open them, otherwise they would be a gift. Houdini ended up paying two guineas for them, it was all Melville would take even though they were worth far more at the time. Became his favorite puzzle behind the scenes...he always swore that he’d need a dozen lifetimes to figure out how to manipulate the mechanism into working...”
You gotta know a couple of things before you hear what happened next. One: everyone with the blood of Pandora has a special talent. We can all do the same shit, but there’s always one thing you’re gonna be better at than anyone. Jay and Mike are great mindreaders, Mackenroy can vanish with the best of ‘em...escapology is mine. If I understand how it works, I can make it open with a thought, no key needed. Sure, you still need to be in good shape to get out of some stuff, but it’s all about the locks. To that end, I’ve been cramming my head with information on every locking mechanism that’s been invented since God knows when.
Two: an aptitude for escapology is kinda rare. Not super rare...an aptitude for vanishing is very rare, why do you think Mackenroy’s in charge? Next is teleportation, then hypnosis, then levitation, then escapology. That’s one of the things that made Houdini so great, he had a rare gift.
Everything I had been reading was flickering through my head, bits and pieces of good solid facts and useless trivia hitting me at a mile a minute. Hell of it was? Some of the stuff I was thinking about was shit I know I ain’t gotten to yet, things I haven’t read or gotten the literature on. It was strange...
But I got it. I thought about it, and I got an idea in my head.
And the cuffs snapped open in my hands.
Just a lucky break...right?
Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 683
My first night at the Magic Castle, and I’m checking out a wing the general public never gets to see. Fraternity only, y’know? Relics of the masters humans will never get to touch, much less see, and here I am running my fingers over Dai Vernon’s favorite pack of cards. I’m leafing through volumes written on Kellar and Cardini penned by Brothers for the Fraternity.
And yeah, Harry’s there, too. The master’s belongings, relics of the order that I’m actually allowed to touch.
Martin Mackenroy, he runs the group...he hands me this set of cuffs and starts telling me about them. I’m listening to the whole deal, but I’m also checking these things out. They’re beautiful, heavy in my hands. Just running my fingers over the shackles, I get this crazy urge to put ‘em on. I don't actually, but you get the idea.
“You’re looking at a gem here, Tommy. These were given to Houdini by a locksmith that belonged to the order, Anderson Melville. The public doesn’t know him, but we do...he was the single greatest maker of restraints that the world will ever know. The concept was one Houdini mentioned in passing, one that Melville took and made reality. These restraints are literally unbreakable, and incapable of escape unless you know how they work.”
“How do they work?” I asked, inspecting the base of the shackles. The things were solid steel, linked by a solid rod about two inches in diameter and about six inches long. Just the idea of wearing those cuffs gave me the freakin’ willies.
“That’s the heck of it: we don’t know. You can see there’s no keyhole, because there’s no key. Only someone with a talent like yours can open them. They’ve been examined to reveal a set of counterweights, but how exactly one manipulates them to get the cuffs open is a mystery only the master could have solved.”
It made sense to me...by this point, I was really into it. “Did he ever figure it out?”
“Sadly, no...Houdini made a friendly wager with Melville that said he’d pay for the cuffs if he couldn’t figure out how to open them, otherwise they would be a gift. Houdini ended up paying two guineas for them, it was all Melville would take even though they were worth far more at the time. Became his favorite puzzle behind the scenes...he always swore that he’d need a dozen lifetimes to figure out how to manipulate the mechanism into working...”
You gotta know a couple of things before you hear what happened next. One: everyone with the blood of Pandora has a special talent. We can all do the same shit, but there’s always one thing you’re gonna be better at than anyone. Jay and Mike are great mindreaders, Mackenroy can vanish with the best of ‘em...escapology is mine. If I understand how it works, I can make it open with a thought, no key needed. Sure, you still need to be in good shape to get out of some stuff, but it’s all about the locks. To that end, I’ve been cramming my head with information on every locking mechanism that’s been invented since God knows when.
Two: an aptitude for escapology is kinda rare. Not super rare...an aptitude for vanishing is very rare, why do you think Mackenroy’s in charge? Next is teleportation, then hypnosis, then levitation, then escapology. That’s one of the things that made Houdini so great, he had a rare gift.
Everything I had been reading was flickering through my head, bits and pieces of good solid facts and useless trivia hitting me at a mile a minute. Hell of it was? Some of the stuff I was thinking about was shit I know I ain’t gotten to yet, things I haven’t read or gotten the literature on. It was strange...
But I got it. I thought about it, and I got an idea in my head.
And the cuffs snapped open in my hands.
Just a lucky break...right?
Muse: Tommy Karras
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 683