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The Reality Experiment
by Al Dafonso

I bought Paul Harris’ Reality Twister and, like most everyone else, enjoyed amusing myself with it, yet never really did much beyond that. It was a super eerie effect, yet I never felt I was using it to its fullest. I recently re-visited the Reality Twister book by Pete McCabe, and found buried deep in the back, the following plot line. Pretty much everything that follows came from various ideas and routines in that book. My contribution is the combination of the various pieces and the flow of the routine. I really enjoy the rhythm of this routine as it starts out slow, yet each revelation both builds and provides all the misdirection you need for the next step.

The Story
“Have you ever heard of the USS Eldridge? In 1943 the navy experimented with a procedure that was supposed to make a ‘stealth’ ship. They were trying to make the Eldridge invisible to radar. Can you imagine the value that would have had during wartime? You might be more familiar with this project as ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’. They used a combination of electricity, lasers, and a special lens to manipulate the light fields around the ship. They had some limited success during the summer, but they couldn’t maintain the effect. On October 28th, 1943 , so the story goes, they crossed the line from appearance to reality. That was when the Eldridge, for 90 seconds, completely disappeared from Philadelphia, and materialized in Norfolk before returning back again. The process worked fine on the ship, but not as well on its crew. Those that spoke about it talked of nausea, body cramps, and migraine headaches, and they say that there were some sailors that re-appeared imbedded half-way between the bulkheads of the ship. Of course the Navy calls this an urban legend, with no basis in fact and that was good enough for me until…”

The magician takes a small sealed clear plastic bag from his pocket. Inside the bag is a small business card-sized piece of plastic, and on the bag is an official looking sticker with a long series of numbers on it.

“A friend of mine got this at a flea market in Annapolis recently and thought of me. He said that the person he got it from told him it was an actual piece of the lens used in the Philadelphia experiment. My friend said this guy called himself “Dr Reno”, and he acted like he was right out of an episode of the X-Files….a paranoid, forgetful, mad scientist type. I have no idea how this guy could have gotten this lens, but it DOES seem to have some unusual properties.”

The magician takes out a stack of business cards and a pen. He turns the top card over and on the blank side draws a thick line (actually 8-10 lines) of about 3 inches across the middle of the card then gives the pen to the spectator.

“If you look at the line as the water, and put the pen across the water at a right angle…”

The spectator does so.

“…you can see when I twist the lens, it looks like the middle of the pen disappears”

The spectator still holding the pen watches the portion of it that’s under the lens disappear, then re-appear, when the magician turns the lens back.

“It seems that as long as you return the lens back, that everything goes back to normal.”

The magician pockets the pen, and repeats the process, with just the line on the card, the spectator watches the line bend and flex thru the lens.

“With the pen out of the way, the lens seems to focus on just the line. But as long as you return the lens back, then everything goes back to normal.”

Magician holds up the lens and looks at the spectator through it.

“Yep, normal. But you know what I think happened??. Let’s say you’re experimenting and you don’t turn the lens back…when you maybe lose power in the middle of an experiment”

He repeats the process on just the line but instead of returning the lens back to how it started, he slowly moves it off the card, and the line seems to freeze in the bent-up state. He takes the card off the stack, and runs his finger over the line, which now has a crooked piece in the center of it, and gives it to the spectator.

“It seems like the lens focuses its attention on whatever is closer to it. Let’s suppose that a sailor got the full force of the lens directly”

The magician takes the pen, places it directly on his fingers, without the card and repeats the process as the spectator watches the pen start to twist. The magician slowly moves the lens off without twisting it back, and the pen has a strangely twisted center; he hands it to the spectator. He holds up the lens, and looks at it nervously, and gives a forced laugh.

“I was going to try it just on my fingers alone, but I think you’ll understand if I quit while I’m ahead.”

The Works
The hardest part of this routine is to find a mini plastic bag that the lens fits into. I found mine in a box of unused magic convention goodies. I printed up a label with the following on it:

Classified: FRC-102843.784

Project Rainbow/USS Eldridge

I tried to use a font that looked to me like a typewriter printed it (think 1943). Also the number I made up, “102843”, helps me remember the October 28th date when telling the story.

The only preparation in the stack of business cards, is to draw a line with a jagged piece in the middle of it, on one card. If you flip over your pack of cards, and look at the bottom, the set up should be the prepared card, followed by 2-3 regular cards, printed side facing you, then the rest of the pack, white side facing you.

Since this routine is about the mysterious lens I shy away from using the Reality Twister pen, as it, to me, screams “trick pen”, and that would take away from the story I’m telling. For the pen, I twist a blue stick-type pen. Find a method that works for you…I hold it over a long fireplace lighter, while slowly rotating it. Then after 60-90 seconds, it gets soft enough that you can twist the barrel of the pen, then let it cool with the twist in it. These pens are cheap enough (especially when stores are having back to school sales) that you can actually leave the pen with your spectator. It can even be a personalized pen, with your contact info imprinted on it.

During the presentation ,you take a card off the top of the stack, flip it over, and draw the straight line on it, while it’s on top of the deck, with an ungimmicked pen. After doing the first section with the center of the pen disappearing you pocket the pen. When you look through the lens at the spectator in the routine, you naturally drop your hand with the stack of cards to your side. After you give the “Yep, normal” line, you flip the pack as you bring it back and cover it with the lens again. The lens conceals that the spectator is looking at the “twisted” line until you take off the lens again. While the spectator is looking at the card, you bring out the twisted pen…at this stage the misdirection of the card is so strong, you could bring out almost anything out of your pocket, and they will not notice.

Additional Thoughts
You can add more to the story if you like; a web search will bring lots of sites about the Philadelphia experiment, Charles Berlitz touches on it in one of his Bermuda Triangle books (“Without a Trace” 1977) ,and there is also a movie (1984) and sequel (1993) than may inspire you. I purposely start by talking about the Eldridge, and not the experiment by name. I like the idea of being already into the story before people know what it’s about…I feel it helps people appreciate the story for what it is, without having a lot of pre-conceived notions about where I’m going—I just want them along for the ride. The Eldridge seems familiar to people but a lot can’t place it, so it focuses them in a bit more. Occasionally when I say the name of the ship someone will reply, “The Philadelphia Experiment”, which works just as well, as they even help set up the story with me and it makes the effect even stronger. Because the routine is “top heavy” with story it really blurs the line between “set up” and “trick”, so that by the time I bring out the stack of business cards, they are so deep in the story that the props don’t even mater. There are some subtle fine points that I enjoy: the bag protects the lens from scratches and fingerprints, and makes perfect sense to the story, as if it was “filed away”, it would be in some kind of bag or envelope. I don’t mention it, but the sticker says “Project Rainbow”, which was one of the code names associated with the experiment, and Dr Reno was the head scientist that was in charge of the project. Little layers of detail that are there for those that notice, but don’t affect those that don’t. Because of the nature of the optical illusion this is only good for one or two spectators at a time, which makes what could be creepy and unsettling, into an intimate magical experience. If I do it for two spectators I show both the bending and unbending effect at each stage of the effect, and do the card reveal to one, and the pen reveal to the other; that leaves them both with a souvenir of the presentation. As I said, nothing difficult or new, method-wise, but a fun routine that gets a great reaction for me—enjoy!

Al Dalfonso