The End of Light (1)

Sometimes, in the years that came after, people would look up and wonder: What if the sun had actually been starting to go out before we arrested him? That is, they would look up at the now-dark sky in the now-freezing air that they struggled to exist in, and wonder: What if we were wrong?

Others thought something else. They wondered: What if he could have helped, for real?

* * * * *

Joe was a stage magician. A trickster. He engaged in sleight-of-hand and misdirection and other fool-the-eye shenanigans. But he dreamed of more. He dreamed of becoming the greatest magician, the magician who would capture the imaginations of the public the way only a few entertainers ever had.

There was Elvis, of course. Elvis could have taken over the world, if he'd done it right. Joe sat at a stoplight on his way to a show and ticked them off in his mind. Elvis was an entertainer who everybody knew and who was more famous than anyone else. And the Beatles. He clicked a second long, wiry finger up, making a peace sign on the red tuxedo pants leg he wore in the rarely-hot San Francisco sun. Oprah. That's three. Three fingers, and the light was green, and he drove on, tuxedo shirt crisp and silver in the afternoon sunlight that almost never reached the ground in San Francisco, usually blocked by buildings and by fog and by clouds and by the general climate.

Not too much longer to the theater where he'd booked a weeklong series of shows that would begin in just 5 days. Ads had been running on television, even, promoting this show to a national audience. 7 shows, each with a bigger trick ending them. 7 shows, billed as The Beginning.

Joe had gotten on the Conan O'Brien show, last night.

"The beginning of what?" Conan had asked him.

"The next phase," Joe had said, "Of human existence." This was part of the spiel, the part the advertising guys and his agent and even his girlfriend, had loved. Joe had mixed in some new-age-y stuff and mixed in some religious elements (carefully, of course -- no need to invite trouble) and gotten new patter and had begun selling his magic not as tricks but as interventions from the next phase of existence into this.

It had been big. The first couple of shows, in little towns around California, had begun drawing buzz. He'd even made it into not just Entertainment Weekly ("We might someday put him on the cover as the first magician to ever be there..." the article had said. "Keep watching his act...") but also a blurb in Newsweek, mentioning that he was the "Hot New Stage Show" in California.

On Conan's show, he'd said: "I've found a way, Conan, to move beyond the laws and energy we know and use, and tap into what's next. The Mayans knew it -- most of the ancients did -- that something big is going to happen. It's going to happen in 2012. And that's almost here. And what's Next," Joe always said Next so as to announce that it was capitalized, "Is amazing."

He'd paused. Conan O'Brien, for his part, had been skeptical in his own mind. He'd sat back and thought That's a load of horseshit, but something made him not say that. As he looked at Joe, as Conan had looked at Joe and thought What kind of one-named entertainer goes just by Joe?, he'd also thought: there's something about this guy.

Joe had ended his pause: "In the Next phase of our existence, there will be new energies, new ways of thinking, of doing, of being, Conan. And I've found out how to tap those now. So I'm giving a preview of sorts. Starting June 23, I'll be doing 7 shows. Just 7. I have to limit it to 7 because of the danger of going beyond 7. But each show will be different -- you can come and see all 7 and not see the Joee phenomenon" -- Joe didn't use trick -- "Twice. And each one will end with a bigger revelation than the night before."

"Those sound excellent," Conan had said. In his mind, he'd thought again this guy's a little different. Not bad different... And Conan had said "I can't wait to see those tricks."

Joe had pulled two tickets out of his pocket, to the roaring applause of the audience, and handed them to Conan. The clapping nearly drowned out his tagline:

"It's not tricks. It's the beginning of our new life."