Futures Near and Far

by Will McIntosh

  He swallowed. “People have seen women being taken underground.”

  Green Arrow stopped walking. Underground, where Management operates. Where no one who isn’t Management, not even a superhero with a quiver of arrows, could ever reach.

  “What would she be doing there?” Green Arrow said.

  Beaners shrugged. Entertaining management was his guess, but he didn’t volunteer that. “That’s where clowns come from,” he finally said.

  “That’s where everyone comes from. What does that have to do with Diana?”

  “Nothing. I was just saying.” He hadn’t known that superheroes came from underground, too. No one at Circus Town ever told him anything, except other clowns, and they didn’t know anything.

  A working girl approached them. She started to say something to Green Arrow. He cut her off with a slashing hand gesture and a curse. She hurried away.

  “In any case, Diana is underground, that I’m sure of,” Beaners said.

  “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  “You know we can’t do that,” Beaners said. “We’d need an army to get in there.”

  “Damn it!” Green Arrow pounded his fist into his palm.

  Beaners barely noticed this; most of his attention was turned inward, where the wheels were turning. He had an idea—the sort of insane idea people sometimes get and then quickly discard, because as soon as they consider it at any length, a dozen flaws quickly become evident, exposing the idea as an absurd impossibility. But this idea, as staggering and insane as it was, still held together after Beaners picked at it for a while, during which time Green Arrow had resumed walking.

  “Wait. I may have an idea,” Beaners said.

  Green Arrow went on walking.

  “Hey!” Beaners said, clutching at the end of his jerkin. “I have an idea.”

  Green Arrow glanced at Beaners, but didn’t slow. “I’m listening.”

  “We go to the King of Mediaeval Village, and convince him to invade Circus Town.”

  “Invade it?” Green Arrow stopped, spun on Beaners with wide, incredulous eyes.

  “Invade it. We tell the King that the clowns are ready to rise up, that we can take out the security measures for the walls and open the gates from the inside. In exchange, he agrees that your wife and any other women underground go free. And so do the clowns.”

  “The clowns are ready to rise up?” Green Arrow asked.

  “Let me worry about that,” Beaners said.

  Green Arrow stared hard at Beaners. “Can you really do this, clown? Are you serious?”

  “Do I look serious?”

  Green Arrow searched Beaners’ face. He nodded.

  * * *

  Beaners was sure that if he looked down at his chest, he would see his heart thudding underneath the purple suit jacket he was wearing. He approached the entry turnstiles to Circus Town on wobbly legs. “This can’t possibly work,” he said.

  “This is the only part of the plan that I have confidence in,” Green Arrow said. He looked Beaners up and down. “You’re the spitting image of The Joker.”

  Beaners had seen a few Jokers in Circus Town, and they did resemble clowns. There were not nearly as many Jokers as there were Batmans and Spidermans, so he and Green Arrow were banking on no one in Circus Town noticing that Beaners was awfully short, and had awfully big feet, for a Joker. He touched his forehead and looked at his finger, reassuring himself once again that the white grease paint covering the red and blue parts of his face was not sweating off. The green hair dye would take weeks to grow out, but the greasepaint left him one smudge from disaster.

  “I never asked how your own quest in Sextown went,” Green Arrow said as they moved along in line.

  Beaners said nothing, but his eyes spoke volumes. They were the eyes of a clown who has glimpsed the infinite.

  “I’m sure she took a hot shower immediately afterward. And scrubbed her skin with lye.”

  Beaners chuckled but didn’t laugh. His laugh would give him away. “She said I was the best clown she’d ever had.”

  Green Arrow swiped his cash card at the turnstile, and they cruised into Circus Town, just two superheroes on a jaunt.

  As planned, they separated at the Ferris wheel. Green Arrow doubled back to set up in a sheltered spot near the gates. If all went well, he would open them as soon as Security was distracted putting down the insurrection. He’d serve as a sniper once the siege began.

  Beaners headed to the clowns’ tent.

  “Slinky, it’s me,” Beaners said, grabbing a friend’s shoulders. “Beaners,” he added when Slinky continued to stare blankly.

  “Beaners?” Slinky said. “Beaners!” He rubbed the tufts of green hair on the sides of Beaners’ head.

  “Beaners?” another clown named Gonzo said, turning. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Outside,” Beaners said. “Outside the town.” Others gathered round, many of them clowns he’d known all his life. He could hear his words being passed through the tent, muttered from one cluster of clowns to the next. Beaners had been out of the town.

  “Here, help me with this.” Beaners grabbed one end of a cot. Slinky grabbed the other, and they stacked one cot on top of another, and then a third on top of that. Beaners climbed atop the wobbly dais. He looked into the sea of colorful faces, trying to think of what to say.

  “I’ve seen things,” he finally shouted to the quieting, colorfully dressed crowd. “You would not believe the things I’ve seen.” Beaners paused, giving them time to imagine.

  “I talked to all sorts of people.” A buzz went through the crowd.

  “I ate Mark food.” The buzz got louder, peppered with exclamations of alarm.

  “I had sex with a woman!”

  The crowd roared with shock, then howls and cheers and whistles broke out.

  “And I want to do it again! All of it! And I want you all to join me!”

  Some cheered, others exchanged dubious glances. “Sure, we’ll all sneak out together,” someone shouted.

  “No,” Beaners said, pointing at the shouter, “we’ll storm out together! Ten thousand knights are waiting, hidden in the trees outside the gates, with guns and swords and giant spiked balls on the ends of chains. If we have the guts to rise up, to cause a commotion and divert Security’s attention, then freedom, and jobs, and sex with women will be ours!” Beaners pulled two dozen of the King’s finest chocolate bars out of his purple suit pants and tossed them into the crowd. “Taste it! Take a piece and pass it on. Just taste what we’ve been missing!”

  It is a perilous thing, to allow the downtrodden even a sliver of hope, a ghost of a chance. When your life is misery, you’ll risk it even when the odds are stacked a thousand to one against you. Beaners showed them how to cut the fiberglass support poles from underneath the cots, and how to sharpen them.

  They burst out of the tent sporting wide painted smiles, and set upon two Security guys lounging just outside the tent, stabbing them from all sides.

  If he could have, Beaners may have called the whole thing off after watching the men die. It was awful and brutal, the way they screamed. Their pain was real; he hadn’t realized how real it would be. It was like sex, or chocolate, only bad.

  The clowns tore through tents and upended pretzel stands, laughing their whooping, hiccupy laughs. Elephants howled and seals bleated. Lion tamers and stilt-walkers stepped aside and watched, wide eyed. Marks ran screaming in all directions. The clowns didn’t harm the Marks—they had no quarrel with the Marks. But the few members of Management who happened to be out were torn to pieces.

  Security arrived—a horizontal line of blue men with guns and shoulder-fired lasers and cluster grenades that sliced off a clown’s legs so cleanly that it took a moment for the clown to realize they were off.

  The clowns kept moving, kept laughing, and began to die in mounting numbers. The plan was to spread out so Security couldn’t use their heavy weapons without risking injury to Marks, and to cau
se as much commotion as possible. They executed this plan well, because clowns are smart. They have to be smart—it’s impossible to be funny and stupid. It’s possible to be funny and look stupid. People often confuse the two.

  “Come on, come on,” Beaners said, scanning the far end of Main Street through the chaos. A Security man spotted him, raised his gun…and then jerked backward, an arrow jutting from his chest.

  A hearty wet whinny rose above the commotion. Dozens of knights cantered into view, led by Sir Clarke. The clowns cheered. Beaners felt the strangest, most wonderful feeling glide down his back as he watched those knights race into view—knights who were, for the moment, their allies. Green Arrow, riding beside Sir Clarke, lowered his bow and gave Beaners a salute.

  The clowns shifted tactics, joining the knights in attacking Security rather than attempting to evade them. Soon the outnumbered security forces lay dead or dying. Knights and clowns fanned out, seeking more, until nothing moved except knights and clowns, jugglers and fat ladies, lions, trapeze artists, and Marks.

  Beaners turned at the sound of an approaching horse. “Where would she be kept?” Green Arrow asked from astride the braying horse. Beaners led him to the entrance of the underground. The heavy steel door was sealed. Eight knights with a tungsten battering ram turned it into so much twisted foil.

  Beaners watched as Sir Clarke led a phalanx of knights, and Green Arrow, inside. As each stepped in, they were whisked silently down an incline. Almost immediately, there were shouts, flashes and screams. More knights raced into the entrance, guns raised.

  Beaners waited until there was no more commotion, and many of the knights had returned back up (a few of them dead, carried by comrades), before venturing inside.

  For some reason Beaners had always pictured the underground as a nest of narrow concrete tunnels and cramped rooms, but it was nothing of the sort. A huge, opulent expanse met him at the bottom. There were vast moving pictures on polished marble walls, sparkling blue-green streams pouring into gushing fountains, big glass balls tumbling through the air. All was silent. Beaners wandered from one cavernous room to the next, looking for Green Arrow. Occasionally he came upon the mangled corpse of someone from Management. He crossed a giant hall filled with glass balls. It had no floor save for a narrow, railed walkway. Below, glass balls disappeared into bright violet light.

  On the other side of the hall, Beaners encountered six beautiful, astonished-looking women in a big round pool of whirling water. He was too far away to see if they were naked, but close enough to see they weren’t Management. A couple were superheroes (a Scarlet Witch and a Supergirl), and the others looked like they could be from Sextown.

  “Have you seen Green Arrow?” he asked. Supergirl pointed toward an archway. Beaners tipped his little hat and forged on.

  Beaners found them sitting on a bed of floating marshmallows, in a courtyard. Green Arrow was comforting Diana, who was crying. Diana was a Wonder Woman—she had long black hair and a red, white, and blue costume, with hot pants that showed off long legs. Beaners got a lump in his throat watching them. He imagined comforting Roxy like that.

  “Did they…harm you?” Green Arrow asked Diana.

  She shook her head. “No. But I was forced to undergo a medical procedure. Otherwise they left us alone.”

  “Do you have any idea what they wanted?” Green Arrow asked.

  Diana shrugged. “They barely talked to us.”

  “You’re safe, that’s all that matters. Let’s go home.” They headed back, with Beaners leading the way, Diana and Green Arrow lagging and talking, their arms wrapped around each others’ waists.

  A scrum of knights were lounging in a long hallway, smoking. A short, chubby knight pointed at a staircase. “Take a look down yon. Ye’re not going to believe it.” A deep humming emanated from below.

  The stairs led to a room of polished steel. Giant bronze pigs, each a dozen feet high, lined the room like golden idols. The humming vibrated deep in Beaners’ belly. He eyed the pigs uneasily.

  “What in blazes is this?” Green Arrow said.

  “Look at this!” Diana called from behind one of the pigs down the long row. As Beaners and Green Arrow joined her she pointed at its posterior.

  The pig’s tail was rising. Its hind end bulged. Something gummy expanded, as if the pig was blowing a bubble out its back end. The bubble grew, swirling with colors, the walls of the bubble stretching and thinning, becoming opaque, until it was apparent that the colors and movement were inside…

  Without warning, the bubble burst. Three small, naked clowns tumbled out, landing in a heap at Beaners’ feet. “Woa!” one of them cried in a diminutive voice.

  They were slick with goo, their eyes half-closed and fluttering, straining against the bright light. There was a long, awkward moment when no one spoke.

  “Evidently,” Beaners said, “clowns are born of pigs after all.”

  “I’m sorry.” Green Arrow stared down at the clowns as if bowed in prayer.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Beaners moaned. He lurched, dragging his gaze away from the little clowns, who were falling over each other, pinwheeling their little arms. There was a wide double-doorway at the other end of the room. It led to a long, sloping tunnel. A far-off vibration echoed out of the tunnel, and a breeze wafted out, tickling the tufts of Beaners’ hair.

  Beaners turned, found Green Arrow and Diana behind him, standing arm-in-arm. Without a word, Beaners headed into the tunnel.

  The breeze varied as they descended—rising to a whistle, then falling away to nothing, then rising again after a few moments.

  “It must be the machinery that runs this place,” Green Arrow ventured as the breeze rose again. Beaners couldn’t imagine what was down there, but he was going to find out.

  Ahead, the tunnel opened to their left and right. Beaners hurried, rushed to reach the big entryway just as the breeze was at its peak.

  A hundred Spidermen hurtled past, seated in rows of identical plastic seats. They were all sleeping, their heads lolled back or resting on the shoulder of the Spiderman beside them. They disappeared, streaks of red and blue, out through the end of the cavernous room and into darkness.

  Beaners, Green Arrow, and Diana ventured to a wide yellow line painted on the floor. Beyond it, the ground hummed with energy, waiting to carry more seats along. The wind rose; all three peered to their left expectantly.

  A sea of scarlet flesh rose out of the darkness. Beaners backpedaled, gawking at the monstrous thing that lay unmoving on a platform. He glimpsed long, sharp teeth inside its open mouth. Neither Beaners nor his companions had ever seen a dinosaur, so they had no name for the beast that coasted past them and disappeared back into darkness.

  The next transport to arrive was empty. It stopped. They looked at each other, perplexed.

  “Has it stopped to pick up lions, or clowns, but there’s no one here to bring them down?” Diana wondered.

  “That seems like a good guess,” Green Arrow said. “But where is it going?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” Beaners crossed the yellow line, stepped onto the platform and took a seat. Diana and Green Arrow followed reluctantly.

  “You found what you came for,” Beaners said to Green Arrow. He waved at them with the back of his hand. “You two go home. This is my quest, not yours.”

  Green Arrow shook his head. “Some of my best friends are Spidermen. One of them may have been on that transport. This affects all of us.”

  Beaners didn’t argue. It was true, and besides, he didn’t want to go into that dark tunnel alone. “If we see anyone, we should pretend we’re sleeping,” he suggested. The platform began to move. Green Arrow pulled an arrow from his quiver, clenched it against his bow. It grew dark, with no sound except for the high-pitched whistling of wind. Beaners wondered if the clowns in Circus Town had fled yet. He should have told them to go, to split up and spread out. Two thousand clowns marching around would quickly draw attention, a
lthough Beaners wasn’t sure whose attention they would draw at this point. If Circus Town’s Management was dead, was there anyone left who cared where clowns went? Maybe. The Spidermen passing under Circus Town suggested Management in each town was not independent.

  The platform slowed. Beaners laid his head against the back of the seat and mostly closed his eyes. Through slits he watched as they passed through a station that looked just like the one under Circus Town, only the floor was lined with sleeping knights in full armor. Four people, Management types, were working around them, one running a thick machine carrying a pile of knights in a scoop. There were strange black marks on the wall.

  It grew dark again. They passed through another station. Vampires in black capes lay alongside werewolves and green-skinned Frankensteins. They were below Monster World. The stations kept coming, and Beaners kept watching, and thinking.

  “Clown,” Green Arrow whispered in the darkness between two stations. “If we come upon a station with only one or two persons, we’re going to leap off and take them captive, and find out what in blazes is going on.” It seemed a reasonable plan. They had no idea where they were going—this trail could lead to a furnace. Best to get informed.

  They hit a stretch that was longer than usual. The next station was unoccupied; the floors were stacked with crates, rather than sleeping people. There were some of those funny marks on the sides of the crates.

  The next station was the same, and the next as well; nothing changed except the size and shape of the crates.

  Finally they passed through a station where a lone graying man was bent over an open crate, his back to them. Green Arrow leapt off, shoulder-rolled agilely and landed in a crouch, with Diana right behind.

  Beaners leapt off the transport, landed on his nose, skidded, then flipped onto his back with a thud. By the time he got his wits about him, Diana had the man’s arm pinned up near his shoulder blade, and Green Arrow had an arrow pointed at his chest.

  “What the hell is this?” the old man whimpered. “Who unlocked you?”

  “Who unlocked us?” Green Arrow spat. “We unlocked ourselves.”