Oh, man.  After the debacle at Marcus and Minerva’s Halloween party, I needed to just focus on work for a while to try and get Tish out of my head.  Well, it was an idea, anyway.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t make myself forget about her.  I could still remember the sound of her voice, the smell of her, the feel of her.  The worst part was that I still remember how good it felt, but I couldn’t convince myself that there was anything right about what happened.  As far as I was concerned, it was an awkward situation that I let get out of hand because I was drunk at the time.  
    About two weeks after the party, I got a visit from an Asian couple who came to the shop.  “Hi.  Are you Brian?”
     “That’s me.  Welcome to the Cyber Shop.  What can I do for you today?”
     “Hi, I’m Vincent, and this is my wife, Leah.  We’re stage magicians,” said Vincent.
     “Oh, really?  Cool.  You looking for something that can help you enhance your act?”
     “Yeah, that’s exactly it,” said Leah.
     “Well, I can, say, give you a prosthetic arm with a compartment that you could hide stuff in like scarves and stuff.  I’ve actually done that for clients in the past.”
     “Actually, we were thinking about something a bit more dramatic,” said Vincent.  “We can already do stuff like productions and levitation, and we’d like to include some other effects, like sawing a woman in half.”
     Now, I knew perfectly well that I could help them out with that, but I was still remembering the party when I told Tish one or two things too many about what I am actually capable of.  “Well, I’m sure that would make for a cool show, but I’m not sure I can help you with that.”
     “Oh, come on, Brian,” said Leah.  “You can tell us.  We’re in the business, too.”
     “Excuse me?  What business is that?  I’m not a performer or anything.”
     “I’m not talking about performing.  I’m talking about magic.”
     “Yeah,” said Vincent.  “Just like there are performers who aren’t magicians, there are plenty of magicians who aren’t performers.  I’m guessing you’re one of those.”
     Did these guys know Minerva, or even Tish?  “Wait a minute.  I don’t know who you guys have been talking to, but I’m an engineer.”
     “Who is clearly capable of using magic,” said Vincent.  “Your products are capable of far too much to be based on even the most advanced robotics.”
     “We’ve done our homework on this, Brian,” said Leah.  “The most advanced prosthetic arm to date costs seven figures, and it’s pretty obviously no substitute for the real thing.”
     “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
     “Hey, don’t worry,” said Leah.  “We’re magicians.  We know how to keep a secret.  Like I said, you and we are in the same business.”
     “Here,” said Vincent.  “I’ll prove it to you.  Watch that stapler.”  He pointed to the stapler on my desk, and it suddenly rose up three inches.  I jumped back from my desk.  “I do the levitations in the act, and Leah does productions and vanishes.”  Leah waved her hand, and all of a sudden there was a long-stemmed rose in it.  Damn.  I thought I was the only one.
     “Now,” said Leah, “we tried finding out what you’re capable of, but you’re not listed in the SORM registry, so what exactly do you do?”
     “SORM?  What’s SORM?”
     They gave each other a weird look, like I shouldn’t have asked what I just asked.  “You haven’t heard of it?”
     “Um, no.”
     “The Society of Real Magicians.  They regulate magic use in the world to make sure it doesn’t get out of control.  Since you haven’t heard of them, I’m guessing you aren’t registered.  Am I right?”
     “Yep.”
     “Well, you’ll need to register ASAP so they know who you are and what you do.  We can help you with that.  So, anyway, back to the question at hand.  What exactly are you capable of?”
     “Well, I can divide a body without harming it, and I can also do limited telekinesis.”
     “Limited how?”
     “Limited in that I can’t make things float around like that,” I pointed to my stapler, “but I can make, for instance, a rope writhe around like a snake or something.  I can make things move, but I can’t override gravity.  I can also make creams and things that are imbued with the same properties.  That’s how I make the prosthetics work.”
     “Okay,” said Vincent.  “So, can you help us with our request?”
     “With your Sawing a Lady in Half trick?  Yeah, I think so.  I think you’ve shown me that you’d be able to keep it to yourselves.”
     “Actually,” said Leah, “we’d like to do more than just the sawing in half.  How familiar are you with stage illusions?”
     “Well, I’ve seen a couple of those TV specials.”
     “Do you know what the illusions are called?  Like the Mismade, the Stretcher, the Modern Art…”
     “No, I’m not that familiar with them.”
     “Well, here,” said Vincent.  “I can give you a quick crash course.  The Modern Art is basically like a regular sawing, except that the woman is standing up.  The Mismade is an extension of that.  The woman steps into a tall box, which is divided into four small boxes.  They are unstacked and restacked in the wrong order, and the fronts are opened up to reveal the woman in hips, chest, head, feet order from the top down.  In the Stretcher, the woman gets into a large, wide box and puts her head, hands, and feet into holes in the front.  The holes are mounted on tracks and moved around the box in weird positions.  The effect is that the woman is being either stretched or dismembered.”
     “So, correct me if I’m wrong here,” I said, “but it seems like all of these involve dividing the woman in certain places and moving the pieces around.”
     “That’s pretty much it,” said Leah.  “The rest is showmanship and stage presence.”
     “Well, then.  It seems like what you need is a series of precut seams with joints in them, where you can place a blade and pretend to make a cut.”
     “Is that something you can do for us?” asked Vincent.
     “Actually, I can do that for you right now.  You don’t need a prosthesis, you just need the joints, and I have those in stock.  If you’ll follow me in back, I can take care of this for you today.  You free for the next twenty minutes or so?”
     “Yeah, that’d be great!” said Leah.  “We’ve got the whole day.”  
They followed me into the workroom.  Leah took a seat in the chair, and I took out my sword.  They thought that was cool.  
     “Oh, wait,” I said.  “If you want to be able to detach these on your own, I might need to install a release switch, and that might take some time.  However, since you’re capable of magic on your own, I imagine that you’re used to controlling effects through willpower, right?”
     “Sure,” said Vincent.  “We do it all the time.”
     “In that case, you should be able to control the joints in the same way.  You just focus on the joint opening, and it opens.  Will that work for you?  You want to try it out first?”
     “That should be all right,” said Leah.  “Do you have one you can show me?”  I help up one of the disc-shaped joints and showed her how the mechanism worked.  “Yeah, that looks pretty straightforward.  I should be able to manage that, no problem.”
     “And I can apply some of my telekinesis cream so you’ll be able to do it with a lot less effort.”
     “Great.  Well, slice away.”  She held on to the edges of the chair.  
     “Okay.  Well, where would you like the cuts to be?  Would you like the in-half cut at her waist or halfway up her body, which would put it around the mid-hip area?”
     “Well, the Mismade would actually divide her at the waist, so start with that one.”
     “Okay, hold on, Leah.”  I slid my sword through her waist just below the navel and raised the back and arms of the chair.  With Leah’s upper half sitting about two feet higher than normal, I pressed the disc joint into the cut surface on both halves and rejoined her.  “All right, try to work the joint.”
     She closed her eyes for a moment, then put her hands on the arms of the chair and lifted her torso clear of her hips.  She then set herself back down, closed her eyes again for a moment, and lifted her whole body as a unit.
     “Very good.  This should work just fine without a quick release, don’t you think?”
     “Oh, yeah, no problem,” she said.
     “All right, then, we’ll move on to the other cuts.  So, for the Mismade, the lower cut would be halfway between the waist and the floor, which would put it just above the knee.  That about right?”
     “Yep, right about there,” said Vincent.
I strapped Leah’s feet to the footrest of the chair with Velcro and sliced through her legs.  “Can you straighten your legs for me, Leah?” The bit of thigh that was still attached to her knee raised up, and I pressed two small discs into both pieces.  “Okay, lower them again.”  I moved her leg pieces into alignment and pressed them back together.  “And the next one goes at the neck, I believe,” I said as I got a confirming nod from Vincent.  I paused a little as I brought the sword to Leah’s neck.  “Okay, Leah, this’ll be a first for me, so let me know if I’m doing it wrong.”  I tried to keep my hand from shaking as I cut Leah’s head off, since I was accidentally reminding myself of when I did practically the same thing to Tish.  Fortunately, Leah didn’t notice anything, and I pressed another disc into Leah’s neck and reattached her head.
     “Okay.  That covers the Mismade and sawing in half.  What’s next?”
     “That would be the Stretcher,” said Leah.
     “Ah, yes, and what is required for that?”
     “Well, we hadn’t actually thought about that much,” said Vincent.  “What do you think, wrists and ankles?”
     “At least that, Vin,” said Leah.  “We might want to do shoulders and hips, too, just in case.”
     “All right, we’ll do both,” said Vincent.  
    “Okay, wrists, ankles, shoulders, and hips it is.”  The wrists and ankles were quick; I’d done a lot of hand and foot work for people.  “Now, for the hips, do you want a straight cut across both legs, or do you want a more V-shaped cut that follows the line of the pelvis?”
     “I think a straight cut would be better,” said Leah.  “Faster that way in the show.”
     “Okay.  How about the shoulder?  Above or below the joint?”
     “Probably above.”
     “Yeah,” said Vincent.  “It makes for a more streamlined look.”
     “All righty then.”  I made the final cut.  “And there we are.  Thirteen pieces ready to go.  You aren’t superstitious, are you?” This drew a laugh.  “Okay, let’s go back to the front and settle the bill.”
     After they paid their tab, they had one more question for me.  “Hey, if you’ve got some time, we can get you registered with SORM this afternoon.  Shouldn’t take more than half an hour, 45 minutes tops.  Hey, sooner the better, right?”
     “Sure, I can spare a bit.  It’s been a slow day, anyway.”  I got up and followed them to their car.
     “Oh, by the way,” said Vincent, “you also need to register anyone who works with you.  You don’t by any chance have a gorgeous female assistant, do you?”
     Before I could do anything to stop it, my mind flashed back to Tish, and how wonderful it felt when I was holding her top half in my arms.  
     “Nope, just me.”