Enter a strange and amazing new world you've never seen before, but you most likely already live inside. Follow Theodore, a lonely kid who has to Travel through the 7 Layers of Space in order to find a brick and probably save the universe. Unfortuna...
Our lives are filled with defining moments. Often, it's much later that we look back on a thing and accept its significance.
The first time you asked your Best Friend to come sit with you, the day you went left instead of right and discovered that wondrous used-book store, the first time you tasted Indian food. We don't always know what they are in the moment, but later, with wisdom, experience, and hindsight we come to perceive how these small actions set the stage for so much to come.
For Theodore, this was one of those moments. But this time, he knew it.
***
Theodore stood staring at the door to The Forbidden Office of The Magician Detective for what he felt had to have been at least three weeks. "What am I doing?" he whispered, emphasizing the point to the closed door.
He felt a bit like someone had hollowed out both his stomach and the top of his head. And for some reason he was very sweaty. He experimented taking his hat on and off, but it didn't seem to help. Gently, like a wounded hunter testing a sleeping beast, he kicked the door with his foot, and it creaked open to welcome him.
He stepped in to the familiar Office and his body shivered with its electricity, like diving head-long into cold water. He fully expected The Magician Detective to be inside despite having just walked out the front door. Relieved to find the space unoccupied, he waded through the sea of discarded documents, sat down in the Magician Detective's chair, and answered a long-standing question by spinning around until he was dizzy. He'd always suspected that it was a spinny chair. The act took the edge off, at least for a moment.
The spiraling motion landed him with his back to the desk, facing the little red door that had always stood directly behind The Magician Detective. He studied it, and tapped it with his foot. He looked more closely, and carved in a small simple style were three letters:
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"GUP"
He sat thinking about the breadcrumbs of information he'd picked up about getting through this door.
Colonel Truncheon had said he needed to concentrate on his "purest form of creative expression." A 'Power Pattern,' he'd called it. Of course, that had to be his love of card tricks, like the true Magician Detective he admired.
He pulled the reliable and well worn deck of cards out of his new backpack and focused. While the Magician Detective was clearly a master with cards himself, on the rare occasions that Theodore had convinced him to show him something, he really just did that trick without demonstrating any underlying principles. Over time, Theodore had developed his own abilities, though he'd certainly never seen any of the fire and sparks appear that typically accompanied The Magician Detective's work. Outside of sheer stubborn practice, most of what Theodore had eventually learned he'd picked up from one very generous book he'd discovered languishing in a forgotten corner, "The Royal Road To Card Magic."
