Magician Hired for Corporate Event Accidentally Makes CEO Disappear During Merger Announcement

A corporate event at Meridian Technologies took an unexpected turn Thursday when hired magician 'The Amazing Randolph' performed a vanishing illusion on CEO Patricia Thornton during the company's quarterly all-hands meeting, after which Thornton did not reappear as planned but was instead found forty minutes later in the building's underground parking garage. 'The trick is straightforward,' Randolph said, still visibly shaken. 'She stands behind the screen, I count to three, the screen drops, she's gone. She's supposed to be behind the black drape at the back of the stage. She was not behind the black drape at the back of the stage. She was in a parking garage two floors underground, missing a shoe.' Thornton, who was in the middle of announcing a $2.3 billion merger when she agreed to participate in the illusion, has described the experience as 'disorienting.' 'One moment I was behind the screen,' Thornton told the board of directors in a subsequent meeting. 'The next moment I was standing next to a Toyota Highlander on level P2. I don't remember the interim. I have one shoe. The merger is still happening.' Randolph, who has performed the illusion over 300 times without incident, has been unable to explain the anomaly. 'The apparatus is simple — a backdrop, a screen, a stage. There's no mechanism that connects the stage to a parking garage. That's not how the trick works. That's not how anything works.' Meridian's HR department has requested that Randolph not return. The company's stock dipped 2 percent following the incident, which analysts attributed to 'uncertainty about whether the CEO can be reliably located at future corporate events.' Thornton's missing shoe has not been recovered. She has completed the merger announcement via video conference, 'as a precaution.'