Dave Noble eventually found me. He had taken the long way round. I was still trying to pick up the splinters.
He looked and sighed. He knew what was coming.
In the hotel lounge, I announced that it was all over—no more snooker. That I couldn’t play without the cue. I played the OCD card several times.
“Steiner … you’ll be ok. Trust me. You’ve had a bad day—the first in months. True champions learn to handle the bad as well as the good. And it’s been pretty good. Do you know how much you are worth now?”
“But … listen!” I rebutted. “That crazy woman today … what about the things she said. I mean … how could she know these things about me?”
“What things? She just recognised you from TV and spoke some gibberish about witches. None of that stuff is true. Everything is just chance and coincidence—everything has a rational explanation. She probably has mental health issues.”
“But she was bang on … those things are true.”
It was confession time.
I told him about everything—including the ceremony the chat with Chris, what Murphy suspected—the lot. He looked embarrassed and uncomfortable as I rambled on.
“Lots of teens go through a Harry Potter stage,” he responded, trying not to belittle me too much. “It’s like a cry for power. That’s normal. Using magic to get that power, isn’t. You create your own destiny. Remember Steiner:
‘One man’s magic
Is
Another mans Science.’
“Science is real. What we can see, hear and touch is real. There’s no proof of the supernatural; so just forget it! There’s no God, no magic, nothing.”
“But how did the Universe get here if there’s no God?” I asked, remembering the slogan on the RMPE classroom wall:
“Every Cause has its Effect.
Every Effect has its Cause.
There is no such thing as Chance.”
“It just happened.”
“What, by Magic?”
“No, by Chance. One day, Science will explain it, Steiner. We just need to believe and have faith in scientists, and one day they will explain it to us.”
“But what if we’re all dead before they explain it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Scientists are still right, even if they never explain it. These religious people live in the past. They let some Bronze Age book tell them what to think. We live in the Modern World and we need to believe scientists. We must make our own decisions and shape our own future. We are our own gods.”
“So, do we believe scientists or make our own decisions?”
“If in doubt, follow the scientist!”
Later that night, after hours of arguing, and without a scientist in sight, I made my own decision alright and that decision meant not returning to Tel Aviv to play snooker, and never to play snooker again.
YOU ARE READING
Steiner and the Hypnotic Cue
FantasíaSteiner and the Hypnotic Cue is an Adventure Story about Magic and Professional Snooker. Steiner's curiosity gets the better of him and after performing a magic ritual from the key of solomon, he is catapulted into a life of magic, money and success.
