The car sped around the bright orange floor of the Big Top in tight circles, spinning faster and faster until it was balancing up on its two right-hand tires. With a sudden swerve and a puff of upturned sawdust, the car careened away, racing toward a solid brick wall.
An African American boy with a burgundy ski beanie sputtered in fear. “Mr. B-Barnum! What are we …? Where are we—?”
The portly vice principal dismissed the child with a wave.
“Please save your questions for after the tour, when they will have more than likely been forgotten,” he said, his chins jiggling with every bump.
“But we’re going to hit a wall!”
P. T. Barnum sneered. “Hit a wall? Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve only just started!”
The boy pulled his beanie down over his eyes as the clown car slammed into the brick barricade. Luckily for all concerned, the wall was simply another piece of expertly painted paper, just like the one at the center of the Big Top floor.
“Here in Fibble, you will be tutored in the fine art of advertising—the massaging of perception for fun and profit,” the vice principal shouted through his mini-megaphone. “That brick wall was your first lesson. Advertising is about creating problems that aren’t real so that they can be solved by otherwise pointless products.”
The clown car shot into another spacious circus tent. This one was lavishly decorated, like some kind of comic-book palace painted in bright yellows, reds, and blues, with ornate Middle Eastern archways, high ceilings, and flickering candelabras. The round tent was lined with rooms—classrooms, Marlo assumed—with an open, second level above crammed with bunks. As the gaudy decor whizzed past, Marlo realized that the walls were really just moldy old drywall, their garish paint job and fussy details mere projections cast upon them from above. The archways were plaster—Marlo could see chicken wire poking out from behind—the candles were sputtering electric bulbs, and the high ceilings simply mirrors (unless there was another crazy shrimp-driven clown car snaking up above Marlo’s head, she thought).
It was like speeding through a cheap set for a bad TV movie that people on a bad TV show would watch: a tacky, secondhand imitation.
Marlo’s quickening pulse slowly cleared her cloudy soul, as if her racing heart were carefully shaving the fuzz from a peach. Crisp images flashed in Marlo’s mind before quickly fading away: doing ridiculous errands for Satan as part of her Girl Friday the Thirteenth training, Madame Pompadour’s weird Me-Wow spa …
“Advertising is another way of saying marketing,” P. T. Barnum said as his twin trouser torches left trails of sooty smoke behind the speeding car. “Which is another way of saying manipulation. Which is another way of saying the expert sculpting of lies until they resemble a sucker’s—I mean, customer’s—unexpressed desires, those irrational wants and foolish aspirations that gnaw upon our souls like a dog on a bone.”
The shrimp demon banked hard to the left, nearly falling off his seat of amputated dolls, while P. T. Barnum struggled to right himself.
“Careful, Scampi, or do I need to put another shrimp on the Barbies?”
The demon shook his rainbow-hued head and honked his squeaky red nose twice. Marlo took that to mean no.
Marlo stared at her brother’s hand, knuckles white as it clutched the side of the hightailing clown car. As her sense of herself sluggishly returned, Marlo’s immediate circumstances and surroundings seemed all the more hard to believe. It was as if fate had written her a Reality Check that threatened to bounce due to insufficient funds.
Shabby plaster fixtures and flickering projections of opulence streaked past as the clown car scooted toward a massive portrait of a young, slender, ludicrously idealized P. T. Barnum at the far end of the tent.
“In Fibble, we are all craftsmen, fashioning plush pillows of lies for a world sore from sitting upon the hard truth,” the real Barnum squawked through his megaphone.
Marlo grew dizzy. Fact and fiction blurred and commingled like a library floor after an earthquake. The glazed faces of Marlo’s fellow Fibble freshmen crammed in the backseat like sardines—sardines driven by a jumbo shrimp with horn-nubs poking through its clown wig—confirmed that Marlo wasn’t the only one losing her grip on reality.
The lurid light dazzled. Barnum’s voice held her in its charismatic sway. The car’s steady cradle-like rocking lulled her into a pleasant stupor. Marlo felt drunk on hollow spectacle, disorienting motion, and a steady stream of blustering lies.
Marlo looked up above her and noticed a dome on the ceiling that oozed plumes of heavy, glittering smoke. The projected light danced and twinkled in the shifting haze.
That smoke must be clouding our minds, she thought as she scrunched closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, Marlo felt as if her soul was driving her brother … his body and mind were laid out before her like a dashboard, but her soul was in the driver’s seat. Somehow, Milton’s innate goodness seemed to help Marlo steer clear of whatever Barnum was trying to sell.
Marlo shook the sticky gossamer cobwebs from her head and opened her eyes. Unfortunately, this was the exact moment that the clown car was about to make impact with the vice principal’s larger-than-life-sized portrait. The boys squeezed their eyes shut, yet Marlo’s clarity revealed that the painting was merely another portal of flimsy paper.
The clown car tore through the vice principal’s pompous visage and careened into the third tent of Fibble’s Three-Ring Media Circus.
Marlo’s throat tightened. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Blue lasers inset in the ceiling sliced through the glittering smog, creating a maze of illusionary paths. Scampi the shrimp demon spun the steering wheel hard to the left, then the right, as he navigated the labyrinth of swirling smoke and light.
The vice principal chortled, like a fleshy frog having just snatched a juicy fly with its tongue. The paths of laser light converged as the car sped toward pitch-black nothingness.
“Advertising is like learning … a little is a dangerous thing. That’s why all you gifted young liars are here: to learn the power of puffery and to help propel the Greatest Show Under Earth to new heights of dizzying hype! And that, my prevaricating pupils, will be the most dangerous thing of all!”
The clown car hurtled through a wall of black velvet into a concrete hall strewn with castaway props and sets.
Just then, Marlo’s stomach flopped harder than Tourette’s Syndrome: The Musical. It was an awful, swirling, sickening movement in her gut that had plagued her ever since switching bodies with her brother. Something seemed to have awakened the writhing nest of molten yuck in her belly.
The clown car lurched past an area cordoned off with caution tape marked R & D, patrolled by a sentry of hulking chameleon guards with protruding eyes and camouflage skin (their red kerchiefs gave them away). Marlo could make out beyond the barricade, through dingy chain-link-enforced windows, a maze of brass tubes and tanks, stoppered decanters, and glass vials full of bubbling, silver liquid.
“R and D?” Marlo muttered, patting her stomach gently with her palm.
“Research and Development,” Colby clarified. “From what I heard in the stands, no one is allowed in there. But I’m sure Mr. Barnum will let me take a peek once he learns I used to be a scientist. I invented that new electric liquid paper that lets you cover up mistakes you make on your computer.”
As Scampi the shrimp demon jabbed the accelerator with a severed Bratz leg, the tiny car zipped away and the dull, slurping ache in Marlo’s stomach quieted—that is, until she and the other now-screaming passengers of the clown car realized that they were speeding toward a small flaming hoop. The lapping, crackling flames, to Marlo’s eyes, were all too real.
“Well, thus concludes our tour,” P. T. Barnum said as he took off his top hat and flung it toward one of the lizard demons, who watched it whiz past with its stereoscopic eyes. “Please exit responsibly. While you still can.”
4 • ONE HOT PROPERTY, PRICED TO MOVE
> “DO YOU KNOW what that room is?” Mr. Welles posed as he gestured grandly toward the imposing metal door at the far corner of the office. Milton shrugged.
“Off-limits?” he replied hopefully.
Mr. Welles guffawed like an idling old minivan in need of an oil change.
“No and yes,” he continued as he galumphed toward the dull, hexagonal door. “For production assistants, no. For everyone else, yes.”
Milton followed behind as Terri and the other girls shot him hostile glares at this sudden, upward shift in status. Mr. Welles gave the small red wheel at the center of the door a twist and nudged the hatch open. Inside was a cove with darkened TV screens and old video players mounted in each of the chamber’s twelve panels, with a thirteenth screen set in the ceiling.
“Behold the Boob Tube,” Mr. Welles said as he led Milton—who couldn’t help but let out a short-lived snicker at the word “boob”—into the cramped, cylindrical nook. “Sit, Miss Fauster.…”
Milton wriggled into the swiveling chair at the center of the Boob Tube. Mr. Welles handed Milton a stack of scripts and schedules.
“This will be your T.H.E.E.N.D. Command Center—the bosom of our operation,” Mr. Welles relayed in a voice as thick and slow as vintage cough syrup. “Where you can review the latest script revisions, juggle our criminally insane production schedule, review dailies on a weekly basis, and even evaluate submissions, as I simply haven’t the time.”
Mr. Welles fidgeted with a leather attaché case tucked under his arm.
“Speaking of which …”
He pulled out a stack of scripts and a thick old Beta videocassette and dropped them onto Milton’s lap.
“Oddest thing,” Mr. Welles said as he put on his wide-brimmed fedora and made his way to the door. “No one beyond the devil’s inner circle even knows about T.H.E.E.N.D., yet I received an amateur submission just this morning. Normally I wouldn’t consider such things—crass art by the people for the people and all—but my timeline is tighter than the elastic band on my boxers, and I have a lot of airwaves to pollute, so I’ll consider just about anything.”
Mr. Welles lingered in the doorway, smirking.
“I’ll leave you to your entertainment laboratory, miss,” he said in his crumpled velvet voice.
Milton cringed. Not only did he hate being referred to as “miss,” but—judging from the soft hair rising on his sister’s forearms—Marlo wasn’t too keen on it either.
Mr. Welles’s eyes gleamed with dangerous fire, twinkling like the fuse of a just-lit explosive.
“In fact, you could say that the whole wide world is our laboratory … with T.H.E.E.N.D. as the ultimate experiment in mass programming.”
Mr. Welles lumbered out of the Boob Tube and shut the hatch behind him, giving the handle a twist and sealing Milton inside.
Milton sighed as he considered the hefty stack of scripts upon his lap. His usual joy in reading seemed dampened by the body in which his soul was currently residing, as Marlo wasn’t exactly a bookworm.
Milton felt as if his soul was house-sitting: his sister’s weirder-than-weird sociopathic halfway house at that. So, until he got more accustomed to being Marlo, Milton decided to watch a little TV instead.
A moment after slipping in the videocassette, a glowing white title flashed on the black screen, accompanied by the sound of a fuzzed-out guitar lick.
THE MAN WHO SOLDETH THE WORLD
PART ONE: THE DEAL
The title dissolved to show the Eiffel Tower piercing the lazy, pink-frosted clouds of dusk. The sluggish sun gave one last Gallic shrug of light before disappearing behind roofs supporting hundreds of clay chimney pots.
“ ’Tis in a wondrous location, with lots of curb appeal,” explained a haughty voice offscreen. “Convenient to most everything while maintaining an aloof charm. And the price is in Seine … get it? The river that floweth through central Paris?”
The camera—obviously operated by the speaker—panned to a creature by its side: a large, woolly pot of gurgling pudding with slimy white tentacles for feet.
“In any case, the right buyer could do much unto it,” the voice continued, sounding as if the speaker’s throat was made of alabaster and his vocal cords the plucked strings of a harp.
The creature’s cube of a head was like a large die, only instead of spots on each side, the creature had various set facial expressions. Floating in its creamy, churning, butterscotch-colored guts, the creature’s bobbing head rotated from a Smiley Face to a Face Creased with Skepticism.
“Let thine eyes set upon another room,” the voice sighed as the unseen man tossed a stick of gum into the creature’s pot.
“This will help keep your ears from popping during the quantum folding process … if thou even hast ears, that is.”
The image began to wobble, the Paris skyline shimmering in sweeping waves until, finally, the picturesque scene crumpled as if scrunched by a pair of gargantuan, invisible hands.
Cool, Milton thought as he shifted in his chair, enthralled by the show’s combination of candid, reality-TV amateurism and expertly rendered locations and special effects.
A new vista began to uncrease and flatten until smooth, one of sweeping sands and majestic stone pyramids.
“Now this wing not only boasteth designer features—handcrafted I may add,” the unseen narrator said as he traipsed across a dune before turning the camera back at his bubbling client. “Hands are like little meat tools that Earth mammals use to … it is of no import. What is, especially if your race happens to be prone to allergies, is an arid environment devoid of molds and airborne spores. And please take note of the high ceilings.”
The creature’s block head flopped between a Skeptical and a Seriously Considering It face.
“Thy Surreal Estate Agent said that thou wert highly motivated, what with your home world being renovated and all,” the voice relayed with a trace of irritation. “But I have one more wing to show you: a cozy nook that, with meager finishing touches, could be a righteous showpiece.”
The scorching desert air began to hum and quiver around them, until the sand, pyramids, and great stone sphinx crinkled and folded away.
In Egypt’s place unfolded a creased panorama of oil-slicked mudflats and offshore refineries belching out acrid soot.
“I … I humbly prostrate myself,” the voice apologized. “I must have accidentally taken us to-eth the very ends of the Earth, or at least the same zip code.”
The creature vibrated like a teakettle.
“You … like it?” the voice inferred. “Let me restate, I knew that thou would liketh it. It just required someone with sweeping vision who could see to the bones … the possibilities.”
The creature tottered toward the foamy surf that sluggishly caressed the shore.
“And do not concern thyself with the humans,” the unseen man continued as he joined the extraterrestrial pudding pop on the gloomy shorefront. “The bald monkeys. They hath been squatting here for ages. A true nuisance. I will see that they are cleared away.”
The creature’s square, dielike head rotated in its pool of gurgling guts, its Face of Delight rolling to one of Suspicious Inquiry.
“How?” the man replied in his smooth yet ancient voice. “I assureth thee that the humans would only be relocated and in the most humane way possible; that is to say ‘kind’ and ‘without hurting’ as opposed to ‘what a human would do.’ The transfer would be seamless—going off with nary a hitch—and no creature would be-eth the wiser.…”
The man turned away from the creature, his camera briefly trained upon the dismal cloud cover overhead.
“… Not even the Big Guy Upstairs,” he mumbled beneath his breath as he turned his small surveillance camera back to the creature. “I taketh it we have a deal, then,” the man continued as he pulled out a contract from the inner pocket of his white robe. “There art only six billion or so of them to evict, so I’m sure that I could have the place ready for ye by, say, when Pol
aris entereth the third phase of Ophiuchus?”
The man rolled up the contract and tossed it into the creature’s churning sea of tapioca entrails.
“Or, as the locals sayeth,” he added with an audible smile, “by the first of the month.”
The image abruptly ended, and the VCR spat out the bulky cassette like a fussy kid rejecting a slice of meatless meat loaf.
Wow, it was all so real, but—at the same time—absolutely ridiculous, Milton reflected, his sister’s dark eyes wide with awe. But of course it can’t be. I mean, the exotic locations, aliens on the Surface, teleportation, someone actually selling the Earth. It’s got to be an elaborate hoax.
Milton stared at the monitor that glowed faintly in the dimness of the Boob Tube. He tried to shake off the creepy feeling that gripped him about the waist—though it very well could have been the itching, cinching tights that he had tugged on so poorly this morning.
I switched places with Marlo so I could go as deep and as far into the dark heart of this place as I could, he reflected as he stared at his sister’s reflected face in the monitor. So I’ve got to just keep my cool, keep my eyes open, and let everything play as far as it can, then—when the moment is right—somehow turn it all around.…
5 • FROM AD TO WORSE
MARLO SUNK DOWN as best she could into the unyielding vinyl upholstery of the clown car as the circle of sizzling flame sped ever closer.
She wasn’t sure if she could believe her brother’s nearsighted eyes. The blazing hoop just had to be another one of Barnum’s lies, but it seemed so real. In any case, Marlo didn’t relish the thought of getting the third degree from Milton about his third-degree burns, in the off chance that they ever reunited.
P. T. Barnum reached through the nonexistent windshield and grabbed an orange crash helmet.
“I will see you gentlemen on the other side,” he said as he secured the helmet’s strap in between two of his chins.
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 3