Foreword By Ian Rowland

FOREWORD By Ian Rowland It is one thing to have a business card saying you are a magician. It is quite another thing to do something with your business card that proves it beyond all doubt. Welcome to Conjunction: the most magical thing in the world you can do with your business card. Magicians have been linking things in impossible ways since forever and a day. However, very few "this linked-to that" effects have the power of Conjunction, or can be said to shine with anything like the same brightness. The effect is as astonishing as anything in the close-up repertoire. The method is, if anything, even more astonishing still, in terms of its ingenuity and the effort that must have gone into its development. Joshua Quinn has clearly pursued this "holy grail" of linkage effects for many moons, fuelled only by his own fierce intellectual fire and a stubborn refusal to accept that anything in this life is truly impossible. The result is a wonderful new principle that will no doubt leave countless audiences seriously in doubt of their senses. It will also delight those of us in the dark, deceptive arts with a fondness for effects so deceptive they border on mental cruelty. After all, it is clearly insane to suppose that a single, unfaked business card can be torn into two inter-linked squares. Or that this can be done in real-time, while the audience watch, with nothing to hide or steal away. Or that the resulting linked squares of card can bc given away to bc studied and examined (and they will be!), since there is nothing to find. That's the good thing about Joshua: he keeps having these insane ideas and then finds a way to make them into practical pieces of delightful magic. Conjunction represents a significant leap forward in the art and science of "impossible" linkage. It is 100% practical, albeit some diligent study will be required by those wishing to master this particular miracle. It should also become one of the most performed, and most talked-about pieces of modern close-up magic (given how often we tend to hand out business cards). Quite simply, magic doesn't get more impossible than this. EFFECT Before handing out your business card to someone with whom you'd like to leave a strong impression, you give the card a series of folds and tears, in the process transfiguring it into an impossible object: two unbroken paper rings which end up linked through one another. So what's the difference between this and the profusion of other effects that have cards linking together? Simple: You do it for real. The rings are given away in their genuinely linked state, from which they can't be unlinked without ripping them. They can be examined indefinitely with no danger of anyone finding any seams, joins or tears, because there aren't any. Furthermore, no glue, tape, or adhesive of any kind is used. Only one card is involved, with no gaffs, gimmicks or extra pieces, and nothing to ring in, ditch or switch. And naturally, if you're smart, the rings will still have your name and contact information on them, intact, at the end. METHOD In essence, the description is the method: You do it for real. No kidding. This is one of those rare occasions in magic when you're actually doing exactly what you say you're doing, and therefore have (almost) nothing to hide. So, how do you genuinely tear two interlinked rings from a single business card when any lopologist, origami expert, or high school geometry teacher will tell you that such a thing is physically impossible, and has been known to be so for centuries? First I'll show you the basics of creating the link via a process that requires no

circumvention of natural laws, but just a slightly different way of looking at things (which has evidently eluded centuries' worth of topologists, origami experts, and high school geometry teachers). Then I'll discuss how to make the final product look deceptive. Finally, I'll teach you what I've found to be the most effective handling, which will allow you do the whole thing in front of an audience without giving them any clue how you did il. First off, let me address a small point of terminology. Throughout the text I refer to the linked pieces you'll be left with as "rings" even though they're not ring-shaped at all; they're rectangles with rectangular holes in them. "Frames" would probably have been a more accurate term, but 1 just didn't like it as well. I mention this only so you won't read through the whole thing expecting to get to the point where you tear the pieces into circle shapes, only to be disappointed with their rectangularity in the end. 2 All right then, lo start with you'll need: • Some business cards • A pen or pencil • A razor knife • A cutting surface Don't worry, when you do this in real life you won't need anything but a business card, but for now you'll need the other items to learn how to make the link. So go get them, and then come back. (! realize perfectly well that most people reading this will not go get the needed items and perform the actions as they're described, but will simply keep reading to discover the secret. And that's fine. However, know that those of you who do go to trouble of gathering the materials and making the link as you read will be treated to an extra little "eureka" moment that your more instant gratification-oriented brethren and sistren will miss out on.) Step 1: On the front of a business card, draw lines like the solid black lines in the picture below. (Don't draw the white dotted lines; they're only there to help show you how things align.) Step 2: This step involves the razor knife. But before I explain it, I'd like to relate a story which, someday, I hope to look back at and laugh, though as of this writing that day has not yet come. If you've looked ahead in the booklet, and if you're extra observant. you may have noticed that I'm wearing a thumbtip in some of the illustration photos. This isn't used in the effect; in fact, it makes many of the steps effectively impossible to execute. It's there because on the day before I intended to shoot the final photos, I managed to slice a substantial chunk off the end of my left thumb with a razor knife. I happened to do it while opening a package, and not while doing anything related to this effect; however, it's just as possible to do something equally stupid and equally painful while performing the steps described below. I was okay (relatively speaking, following a trip to the emergency room), but afterward my thumb was mangled and full of ugly 3 stitches and covered in bandages, and generally in no shape to have its picture taken. I then had the following internal monologue: "Damn it, now I'll have to put off the photo shoot until after I'm healed. If only there were something I could use to somehow disguise my thumb and make it look normal... hey, wait a minute...!" The moral of the story: Be very, very careful any time you have a razor knife in your hand. Now that my little safety lecture is out of the way, let's continue. With the razor knife, cut along ali the lines you've just drawn. So you'll be cutting small squares out of two corners, cutting a rectangle out of the middle, and cutting two L-shaped slits. The result should look like this: Step 3: Take the pen again and add the following four

lines: 4 Step 4: Flip the card over onto the back and add the following lines: Now take a look at what you've got. If the lines you just added to both sides were actual edges instead of merely drawn-on lines, you'd have two linked rings. The problem is, if you turned any of them into real edges by cutting along them, you'd also be cutting through the "other" ring underneath because you're only dealing with a single piece of card. However - and this is the crux of the entire method, so pay attention - this is only a problem as long as you think of the card as a twodimensional object. Once you start thinking of it as a three-dimensional object (albeit a rather thin one), other possibilities begin to present themselves. With that in mind, grab the razor knife again and continue... Step 5: Turn the card over to the front again. Take the knife and with light pressure, draw the blade all the way along one of the short lines you just drew. Don't press hard enough to slice all the way through the card (and if your blade is new, that won't take much pressure at all). The idea is to cut through only the upper surface: We'll call this scoring the card. Score the card along the other three short horizontal lines you just drew on this side, then flip the card over and score along the four short vertical lines on the other side. If at any point you mess up and slice all the way through the card (and you very well might at first), grab a fresh card and go back to Step 1. 5 Step 6: At the two sections where the rings overlap, you're going to peel the card apart into two layers, like splitting a playing card. Those of you who have tried your hand at splitting playing cards will be happy to know that business cards are much easier, and you have much less area to peel. There's not much to say about the technique except grab a ring in each hand next to the intersecting area, and slowly, carefully pull them in opposite directions. When you finish one section, the result should look like this: Do this with both of the intersecting areas, and voila! You've just created two genuinely, permanently linked rings out of a single card - an impossible object, or as Paul Harris might call it, a "permanent piece of strange." This is the basic principle behind Conjunction: cutting the card (or tearing it, as you'll do in a moment) into the shape of a "silhouette" of two overlapping rings, then peeling apart the two sections that overlap in such a way that the rings end up linked together. Of course, doing it like you just did leaves you with a piece of topological skullduggery that's interesting and clever, but perfectly obvious in its origins. To turn it from that into something that seems truly impossible, a little more effort is required... 6 HIDING THE WORK (IN CONCEPT) If someone handed you a set of linked rings like the kind you just created, you could easily tell how they were made even if you didn't see the process. What gives it away are the highly conspicuous "bald spots" where the card is peeled apart. I have good news and bad news about those bald spots. The good news is, you can make them go away. The bad news is. in order to do so. you'll need to use a card that meets certain requirements in terms of what is and isn't printed on it, and what type of paper it's made from. This means you may not be able to do the effect with your current business card. But even if you can't, and you're completely in love with your current card and you've just ordered 10,000 of them, there are other options for you that I'll get into later, so don't despair. With that out of the way, there are three things that make the bald

spots obvious: the fact that they're blank when they (possibly) should have printing on them; the rough texture of the pcelcd-apart paper; and the small but visually and tactilely obvious edges where you've scored the card. I'll address each of those things in turn. First, the issue of blankness where there should be printing. The solution is so obvious I almost feel silly typing it, but here it is. You can't make the peeled sections not be blank, so instead you have to approach the problem from the opposite direction: make sure the parts of the card that will be peeled off are blank to begin with. In the sample photos above I deliberately used the worst kind of card: one that's covered entirely with text and graphics. I'll go into more detail about what you can and can't have on the card later, but for now suffice it to say you'll need a card with a substantial amount of blank space on it. Next, the texture. Similar to the blankness issue, there's nothing you can do to the peeled sections to make their rough texture match the smooth texture of the rest of the card. Instead, you have to use cards made from paper that camouflages the difference between the peeled texture and the unpeeled texture. (And when I say paper, Fm talking about card stock.) Intuitively you might think the best way would be to use paper that already had a rough texture. That's what 1 thought when I started developing the effect, but eventually I discovered that paper with a small, busy, random-looking visual pattern running through it does far more to hide the difference than any physically textured paper I found (and I've tested literally hundreds of different kinds). Fortunately, whereas physically textured paper is relatively hard to find and can be expensive, patterned paper is cheap and readily available at any printer or copy shop, and is frequently used for business cards. If you look through any samples of available paper colors, they'll be broadly divisible into two groups: solid colors, and patterns that look, for want of a better word, "speckled." Most any speckled paper will do, although the "specklier," the better. The only catch is, the pattern must run all the way through the paper and not just be printed on the surface. (If the paper looks like blue speckles on the surface but turns solid white when you peel it, that won't help much.) Fortunately, very nearly all the speckled paper I've ever seen is speckled through and through, so that's really not an issue. As of this writing, the most obvious place to go for this sort of thing (in the U.S.) is Kinko's, and the best patterns they offer are the ones called Sea Spray, Glacier Mist, and Sandstone. 7 Finally, the scored edges. Unlike the blankness and the texture, you can just make the edges go away. Here's how. The picture below represents the corner of one of the rings, with the thickness exaggerated for clarity. What you'll do is remove the sections that are shaded below... ...thus effectively turning the noticeable "steps" into imperceptible "ramps" 8 To explain how to do this, I'll first have to talk about a certain facet of card splitting (or card peeling, which means the same thing; I'll use the terms interchangeably). When you split a card into two layers and pull them apart, the layers will tend to maintain equal thickness as long as you pull them both away from each other with equal tension: But if you only pull on one layer and leave the other one alone, the layer you're pulling will tend to get gradually thinner until it tapers off into nothing and breaks off: 9 Do that with a suitably camouflaging paper... ...and sweet mother of Bob, the boundary where the

paper tapers off and breaks becomes invisible: From what I've described so far, you might think you could simply separate the two layers at the scored edge, peel away the unwanted one while leaving the other one alone... 10 ...and the unwanted one would taper off into nothing and break off, like this: And while that is essentially what you'll do, you can't do it quite like that. The problem is that the tapering effect generally doesn't happen when you're peeling down a narrow strip of card; it only works reliably when you're peeling from a wider area. (I don't have a good explanation for why this is; it's just something I discovered through experimentation.) So if you try it with the rings you've just created, you might get lucky and it might work as pictured above. But more likely, you'll end up splitting the entire length of the ring until you reach the other peeled section, leaving you with something like this: The way to get around this problem is to peel off the parts that need to be peeled when the card is still in one piece, before you turn it into rings. And how, you ask, do you do that? Well, that's all part of the integrated process of tearing the rings by hand from scratch, with no blades, cutting or scoring - which is a topic so important, it gets its own section... 11 HIDING THE WORK (IN PRACTICE) Earlier I said the basic process involved tearing the card into a silhouette of two overlapping rings, then peeling the overlapping sections apart so that the rings end up linked. While that's fundamentally accurate, it's in the wrong order; in reality, you'll peel the layers apart first, then tear and peel off the parts you don't want to be there, and then tear the card into rings. That's the process I'll describe here. At the risk of stating the obvious, you don't need to use a suitable card to learn how to make the link. In fact, I suggest not using the sample cards included with the booklet until after you've learned what you're doing, so you can appreciate the results. Any old card will do for practice purposes, so now you have something to do with all those cards you've felt too guilty to throw out even though you have no intention of ever contacting the people who gave them to you (like the one on the previous pages, from some hack piano player with delusions of competence). For the illustration photos, you'll see I've used a custom card that's designed to clarify the orientation and make the peeled sections as visible as possible: 12 Obviously this is the exact opposite of what you want in real life, but for teaching purposes it makes it easier to keep track of what's going on. With that in mind, grab a card and let's go... Step 1: Fold and unfold the card in half, both lengthwise and widthwise. Bend the folds backward and forward so they can easily fold in either direction. Step 2: Prepare the upper left corner of the card to be split. You can do this either by just digging your fingernail into the edge right at the corner, or by "dog-caring" a small part of it (say an eighth of an inch) back and forth a few times until it separates into two layers on its own. 13 Step 3: Start peeling the card apart, moving from the corner inward at a 45-degree angle, forming a right triangle of peeled area. Keep peeling until the corner of this triangle reaches the halfway point of the left short edge. (Note: Card peeling is a knacky thing, and while it's a lot easier with business cards than with playing cards, it still takes some getting used to. If this step gives you problems, then don't worry about the folds for now and just practice peeling some cards until you get the feel for it, then come back.) Step 4:

Repeat this peeling procedure with the bottom right corner. Congratulations! You've just finished Phase 1, the separating of the layers. Now you'll move onto Phase 2, the tearing and peeling off of the parts you don't want to be there (in other words, creating the steps and then turning them into ramps). 14 Step 5: Tear a square out of the upper-left corner, about a centimeter per side. (Tear through both of the layers you've just created.) (Note: all distances are approximate and flexible. So know that from here out, when I say "a centimeter," I mean, "about a centimeter, more or less, though you'll later be able to make it bigger or smaller if you want.") Step 6: You're now going to grab only the upper layer of card, and tear it along the following imaginary line until it tapers and breaks off: So grab it between your right thumb and index finger as shown, grab the area next to it with your left hand, and peel it straight back. Hopefully it will taper off and break before you reach the opposite end of the card. But if it doesn't, and you end up with something like this... ...that's fine for now. Like I said, peeling is a knacky thing, but it will come to you with practice. For now, keep going. 16 Step 7: Turn the card over to the back. You're now going to do the same thing again, but along the short edge rather than the long edge. In other words, you're going to tear the layer that is now closest to you down the following imaginary line: So grab the layer between your thumb and forefinger and tear it straight downward. And again, if it doesn't taper and break before you get to the bottom, don't worry about it. When you're done, the card should look something like this: 17 Step 8: Turn the card back to the front, and rotate it 180 degrees so it's upside down. Now repeat steps 5 through 7 with the diagonally opposite comer (that is, the comer that you would call the "lower right corner," but which is now at the upper left because the card is upside down). The result should look like this: (Note: The rings and everything you do to them are completely symmetrical, so these instructions will contain a great deal of "do this and this and this, now do it again on the other side" -just so you know what to expect.) 18 Step 9: Fold the card in half widthwise, with the back side facing out and the folded edge at the top. Step 10: Starting at the top, a centimeter inward from the right edge, make a downward tear through the card along the following imaginary line: Stop when you reach the point 2 centimeters up from the bottom, 1 centimeter up from the edge of the square you tore out earlier. 19 Step 11: Lift the front flap of the card upward partway, so the rear half is exposed to you. Grab only the rear half and extend the tear you just made an additional centimeter downward, bringing it to 1 centimeter up from the bottom edge. 20 Step 12: Refold the card and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Before tearing any more, you need to check something first. At the leftmost end of the tear you just made (at the point circled above), the card should be split into two layers. Check and make sure it is. If it isn't, grab the layers and peel them a bit more so that the peeled section extends just past the end of the tear. An eighth of an inch past it is plenty. Step 13: You're now going to tear and peel off another part that you don't want to be there. This is probably the trickiest step to execute and to describe, so bear with me. What you want to do is tear only the upper layer of card along the following imaginary line: 21 This is one of the tears that will separate one ring from the other. It's only a

centimeter long, but it's tricky to get to. To do it, insert your right thumb into the tear you just made, from underneath, and slide it to the left as far as it will go. At that leftmost point, pinch the card (all layers of it) between your thumb and forefinger. Then slip your left forefinger in between the two split layers of the card, and move it to the right until it almost touches your right thumb. 22 Bring your left thumb down and pinch the upper layer of card between your thumb and forefinger. Now make the tear by twisting both hands away from each other. As I said, the tear only needs to be one centimeter long, but if it's longer it won't hurt anything. It should look like this (my thumb is moved out of the way so you can see the tear): 23 Step 14: The point from which you started the tear you just made is now a corner. At that corner there should now be a "flap" of card one layer thick, separate from the layer beneath it: This is why you checked to make sure the card was split at that point a moment ago. Grab that flap and peel it at a 45-degree angle until you've peeled out to the end of the short tear you just made. 24 (If it's already peeled that far, then don't worry about it and just continue.) Then change direction and peel it parallel to the long tear you made earlier... ...until it tapers and breaks: (And again, if you reach the edge before it breaks, it's no tragedy.) 25 Step 15: Turn the folded card over and repeat steps 10 through 14 along the opposite edge. When you're done, the result should look like this: Step 16: You're now going to perform something equivalent to steps 10 through 15 again, but on the other side of the card and along the opposite axis. Unfold the card, turn it over to the front side, and fold it lengthwise, with the folded edge at the top. 26 Step 17: Starting at the top, about a centimeter inward from the right edge, you're going to make a fairly short downward tear. As before, stop when you get to 2 centimeters above the bottom edge, 1 centimeter above the torn-out square. Step 18: Lift up the front half of the card, grab only the back half, and extend the tear you just made until it meets the (now horizontal) tear you made earlier. 27 Step 19: Refold the card and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Now it's time for another one of those tricky 1-centimeter tears through just the top layer, along this imaginary line: Put your right thumb into the tear you just made, as far to the left as it will go. Put your left index finger between the two layers of card, pinch the upper layer with your thumb, and tear along the imaginary line as before. 28 Step 20: As before, find the one-layer-thick flap at the corner you just created and peel that part off, tapering it into the other layer. You'll probably need to either unfold the card or peel around the folded edge of the card for this. Step 21: Refold the card, turn it over, and repeat steps 17 through 20 along the opposite edge. When you're finished, the card should look like this: 29 From here you're in a perfect position to peel off the upper layer along the long edge, so go ahead and do that. Now unfold the lengthwise fold and refold it in the opposite direction. This will expose the other dog-eared corner (to you), and hide the corner you just tore. Peel this corner, tear the square out of it, and then peel off the long edge, just as in the last step. Now you have to peel off the short edges on the back side. To get to them, you have to reverse both the folds. So unfold the card completely, then fold it widthwise in the opposite direction (back side out), then lengthwise into quarters. 33 Peel off the upper layer along the short edge, going

around the fold if needed. 34 Now your instinct might be to reverse the last fold and peel off the other short edge, but before you do, you might notice something. You're now in the perfect position to make the vertical tear and peel off the other piece of this section (steps 10 through 14 of the original handling), but with the card folded to hide the work from the audience. So go ahead and do that now. Once you've done that, then reverse the lengthwise fold and repeat both peels on the opposite corner. (I'm assuming you get the idea by now, so there aren't photos for that part.) 35 Now you're ready to do the equivalent tears and peels from the other side, on the adjacent axis (steps 16 through 20 of the original handling). Unfold the card, fold it lengthwise with the front facing out, then fold it widthwise into quarters, with the single folded edge to the left and the double folded edge on top. Make the short vertical tear from the top, making sure you only tear through one of the folded halves. Lift up the front flap, and extend the tear on the back flap downward to meet with the vertical tear. 36 You'll probably have to unfold the widthwise fold partway to do this. Refold it, then rotate the card clockwise, put your right thumb into the slit, and make the by-nowfamiliar 1-centimeter tear through the upper layer. Now you'll peel off the section from the new corner flap, but because the card is folded, you'll have to unfold the widthwisc fold and tear around the card. Reverse the widthwise fold, and repeat the short tear and peel with the opposite corner as before. 37 Now you're once again down to the final step - tearing out the center. I mentioned earlier that when you reach this point, the most straightforward way to do it is to start at one corner and tear all the way around the edge. Unfortunately, this is also the most boring thing you could possibly do. I mean, think about it. You've gotten the difficult part out of the way as quickly and efficiently as possible. So now that you're down to the dead easy part, why not have some fun and throw in some theatrics? I'll give you two very different but equally effective ways of doing this. The first way is to make the simple part look complicated, and make it appear that you're doing a lol more than you really are. You've got this card with all sorts of weird flaps and loops and folds in it, so use them. Unfold part of the card, wrap something around something else, then make part of the tear. Then fold it the other way and pull some part through some other part, and make another part of the tear. When you start stretching the different parts away from each other, their split, layered nature becomes obfuscated, so that's no longer a concern. And provided you don't tear where you shouldn't, nothing you do will affect the outcome, so get as convoluted as you like. Remember, you're creating a topologically impossible object, so it stands to reason that it should involve some pretty intricate manipulation of the card. As long as you believe that you're executing a painstakingly complex and precise process that you learned through hours of practice, and not just randomly moving parts around, your audience will believe it too. When you're done, ideally you should be left with a tangled, spaghetti-like mass of paper from which you can extract the rectangular center, and then untangle the remains to reveal the linked rings. If they pop instantly and dramatically into view, that's good. If they end up twisted within themselves and require some untwisting on your part, that's even better. The other approach is simpler but more elegant,

and involves some nice spectator participation. Go back to when you've finished the last peel and the card is folded into quarters. From here you're only one L-shaped tear away from being finished: 38 So make the short part of the tear, then turn and start on the long part, but stop when you get about halfway through it: Then hand the card to a spectator and, making sure to give her clear instructions, have her finish the tear herself and hand you the center. Then let her unfold the remaining packet and discover the linked rings. With the card folded into quarters, the result isn't obvious as soon as the tear is finished, like it is when you do it with the card unfolded. So not only has the spectator performed the final, crucial step herself, but she also then gets to reveal the outcome. This lends more of a feeling of the two of you accomplishing something impossible together. STAVING OFF ABJECT BOREDOM The downside of this effect is that in and of itself, there's nothing remotely interesting about it until the end, and most people's attention spans will give out long before you get there. I can do a card in about two minutes, which I've found is about a minute and forty seconds longer than most people find it interesting to watch someone fold and tear paper. To make up for this, you'll need a spiel. A rap. A pitch. A story. Some sequence of verbiage with which to engage the audience while you're doing the work. This involves two steps: coming up with something to say, and getting comfortable saying it while making the link. The first part I can't give you much help with; your spiel will depend entirely on things like your persona and your audience and your performing conditions and what you want to convey. I'm not including mine here because it wouldn't fit anyone but me. But the one thing I can tell you is to be sure to impress upon your audience the fact that tearing a piece of paper into two solid, linked rings is impossible. Without having that established in advance, people won't quite know what to make of the result, and it will take a few minutes of contemplation for them to decide whether they should be amazed or not. As for the second part, I have some more concrete tips. Obviously, you'll need to practice making the link while delivering your spiel out loud. But before you start doing 39 that, you may find it helpful to practice looking away from your hands as much as possible while making the link. (Those of you who have worked on a center tear will be in familiar territory here.) Don't close your eyes, because you'll never want to do that in real life; instead, practice looking up away from your hands, at the spot where a spectator's eyes would be if there were one there. Being able to look someone in the eye rather than constantly staring at your hands will go a long way toward keeping people engaged all by itself. Once you can do that, speaking at the same time will come easier. Also, get in the habit of holding your hands up toward your face rather than down in front of your chest. That way when you do have to look at your hands, you'll have less distance to travel and you'll seem proportionately less disconnected. DESIGN MATTERS When it comes to where you can and can't have printing on the card, this picture of the reassembled demo card pretty much tells the story: The peeled parts will end up blank, and the discarded parts will be, well, discarded. So plan the placement of the crucial information accordingly. Here's one basic but effective design... 40 ...which ends up looking like this: The title line ends up being discarded, but if people don't remember the basic

gist of what you do by the time you give them something like this, then you're doing something very wrong. Of course your design can be a good deal more elaborate than this, provided you bear in mind which parts will be peeled off and you plan the placement of your text and graphics accordingly. 41 Also note that it's okay to have graphic elements that end up getting peeled off completely, provided they won't be obviously missed and call attention to the method through their absence. The only problem is if you have something that gets only partway peeled, thus giving away what you did: That's bad. Don't do that. MATERIAL CONCERNS If you're going to get custom cards to use for this effect, there are basically two ways to go about it: have them printed, or do it yourself. If you decide to have them printed, all you have to do is find a printer that has suitable paper, and give them your design and your credit card number. But if possible. I would recommend going to several different printers and getting samples of their paper to try out before choosing one. This is because not all card stock paper is created equal. For one thing, some is easier to peel than others. For another, sometimes the inside looks slightly different than the outside, making the peeled sections more apparent. So it will be worth your while to find the best kind that's readily available to you. If you want to make them yourself, besides a desktop printer, you'll also probably want to make one other investment: an odd but extremely handy piece of office equipment known as a "business card cutter.'" It's basically a plastic, loaf-of-bread-sized thingamabob that lakes an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and cuts it into ten business cards. You feed a piece of paper into it, turn the handle, and it comes out the other end sliced into two long strips. Then you turn those strips 90 degrees, feed them into a different slot, turn the handle again, and they come out the other end sliced into business cards. I love the thing because I'm constantly fiddling with different card designs and types of paper, and it lets me try them out without ordering a thousand at a time. If you too like to tinker with such things, you may well find it to be a worthwhile investment. For me it's been an absolute godsend. I found mine on eBay for about sixty dollars, and since then there have always been a few up for auction at any given time. A search for the phrase "business card cutter'" or "business card slitter" will turn them up. There are also electric ones available that don't require you to turn a handle, but they're considerably more 4? expensive, and for me the added cost wasn't worth the minimal added convenience. Of course both options have their advantages and disadvantages. Having cards printed professionally is more convenient, and the print quality may be better than what you can get at home (though inkjets have come a long way). On the other hand, doing them yourself allows for more experimentation and doesn't stick you with a whole bunch of cards that you then have to either use or waste. And now for something that many people have told me I'm a fool for tipping: the Rolls Royce of card stock paper and how to get it. Numerous friends have opined that rather than revealing the origin of this stuff, I should just buy a bunch of it wholesale and then sell it to Conjunction users at a reprehensible markup. And while the idea is not without a certain appeal, the bottom line is that dealing with receiving, storing, and shipping large quantities of heavy paper is not my idea of a good time. Hence, my hedonistic laziness is your

gain. I mentioned earlier that having a visual pattern in the paper is more helpful than having physically textured paper, and that's true - but it's even better to have both. The best is a combination of a good visual pattern and what's known in the paper biz as a "felt" texture, which consists of small, random bumps and ridges not unlike, well, felt. It's the closest thing you can get to the actual texture of paper that's been peeled apart. It's not identical, but when combined with the visual pattern, the difference really is unnoticeable. There are a number of brands out there that fit the bill, but as of this writing the best ones available are: • Sundance Felt paper, made by the Fox River division of the Gilbert Paper Company, in the Navajo White or Maize colors. • Via Felt paper, made by Mohawk Paper, in the Flax or Jute colors. Out of the hundreds of papers I tried, these two in the colors I've listed are the cream of the crop. They hide the work well, they practically peel themselves, and they make great looking cards. The samples you got with this booklet are made from one of those. IMPORTANT: Whatever kind you get, you'll have to specify the weight you want it in (which, in paper biz terms, means how thick it the paper is). The weight you want is "80- pound cover." Note that both parts of that phrase - the "80-pound" part and the "cover" part - are important. You don't want 80-pound text, which is regular writing paper, and you don't want 65-pound cover, which is flimsier, tougher-to-work-with card stock. Now that you know what to get, the tricky part is finding it. The only place I've found that carries both brands, and will sell them in quantities from individual sheets to cartons, is a company called Glodan, reachable on the web at wvvw.glodan.com. You can also order Sundance paper direct from the manufacturer at: www.gilbertpaper.com/fox/papers/sundance/buy 43 I also had some luck with The Paper Mill Store (.com), who didn't stock any of the ones I wanted but offered to order it for a good price, provided I bought a carton (500 sheets). There. Now don't say 1 never gave you nothin'. IF YOU'D RATHER FIGHT THAN SWITCH 1 realize that many of you reading this will not want to have new cards made up for this effect, either because you're attached to the design of your current card, and/or because designing a new one to meet the requirements of the effect seems like too much trouble. And that's fine. I'm not hurt. No, really. I mean, I only put three years of sweat and toil into developing this effect, tenderly nurturing it from its promising but problematic conceptual infancy, onward through a long, clumsy, awkward adolescence fraught with impractical handlings, elaborate preparations, imperfect method concealment, and draconian design requirements, before finally seeing it through to its maturation into the elegant piece of mystery so lovingly presented to you here. So there's absolutely no reason for me to be upset if people get this far only to decide not to use it because they can't be bothered to spend a pleasant evening's work making up a new business card. Really, it's no problem at all. I'll just be in the corner wailing and gnashing my teeth. But seriously, there arc a number of options that don't require changing your current card, for those of you who are unwaveringly intent on riding roughshod over the creative efforts of one of your fellow [Stop it. - ed.] Right, sorry. Basically, if the piece of paper you use for the effect is not your business card at all, but rather a completely separate card that

you utilize to demonstrate something interesting and impossible, then a whole world of choices opens up to you. The easiest and most obvious one is to use a blank card. Why blank? Well, maybe something about a blank piece of paper representing infinite possibilities, and/or impossibilities, and even the gray areas where the two intersect... but that will be for you to work out. Or the card could bear a pre-printed message that tics in with your presentation - something like, "I am impossible," "I can't exist," '"Impossible is only a word," etc. Another option is to start with a blank card but write something on it that lends itself to the circumstances. If you're performing for a couple, a nice idea is to have them write their names in the appropriate spots, and end with them ''joined together." Or if you're working a corporate event or trade show. I"m sure you can come up with some word or phrase that would be beneficial to make ''intrinsically linked" to the company or product you're representing. (Ah, I can smell the corporate cheese already: "Some people will tell you it's impossible to make 100% customer satisfaction an integral part of a company's identity, but here at SchmuckTech, we do the impossible..." I confess I look forward to my effect being used for such purposes with the same anticipation with which one looks forward to one's daughter becoming a whore.) Yet another possibility is to have a diagram of two linked rings printed on the card, and use that picture as a starting point for discussion. I hope the above provides enough alternative ideas that those of you who were expecting to use your current card can now be persuaded to put down the pitchforks and torches. 44 WHAT'S YOUR FUNCTION? I'll be the first to admit that as effects go. Conjunction is an odd bird. It doesn't fit within any of the standard categories of magic plots - vanishes, appearances, transformations, transpositions, penetrations, levitations, etc. When I've described the effect to magicians, many of them have said, "Oh, so you mean it's a one-card link." Well... no. Though the similarity is obvious, there's a subtle but important difference. In a one-card link, the rings start out separate and then link together, so the impossible act is the passing of solid objects through one another - a standard and easily defined plot. That never happens with Conjunction, as the rings are linked from the moment they come into existence. So the impossible act becomes the very creation of an object that should be uncreatable - not exactly a soundbyte-friendly premise. So, you may ask yourself, what's it good for then? As with many things in our field, the answer is, "whatever you choose to make of it." With the right framing it can be a fine piece to use as an effect within a close-up performance, be it formal or impromptu or anywhere in between. Personally I tend to use it more as a thought- and conversation-provoking promotional and marketing tool - a way to make myself and my business card more memorable and more likely to be talked about after I'm gone. I've found it's an effective thing to do for someone whom you're trying to convince to hire you, as it leaves them with a tangible piece of impossibility that serves as a constant, hard-to-ignore reminder of you. And in a field where the word "puzzle" has become one of the most derogatory terms in the lexicon, it can make for a fine one in the best sense of the word; not something to be solved and defeated, but something with which to challenge people to think about what is and

isn't possible. Truth be told, it's also a great way to win free drinks from engineers and topologists. Note also that this doesn't have to be performed as an Effect with a capital E, with all attention focused on it. In a casual environment you can just grab a card and start fiddling with it, without calling attention to what you're doing until the appropriate time. It's worth pointing out that when I perform, I do so as a mentalist, with no "straight" magic included; I deal solely with abilities of the mind, and I don't ever make things vanish, appear, transpose, levitate, or jump to the top of the deck. But I do use Conjunction, because although it has nothing to do with what we think of as the standard mentalism feats (demonstrations of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, etc.), it is a fine example of the power of the human mind to overcome accepted limitations and accomplish things that are considered impossible. And it helps that unlike most premises and justifications in mentalism, that happens to be an accurate characterization rather than a line of unmitigated bullshit. Similar ground has been explored by such mentalists