Authors: Stefan Petrucha
FutureImperfect (5 page)
“Please!” the white-haired cop said. “Don't do it. The negotiator will be here in just a second and she'll know just what to say. Just wait a little whileâ¦please!”
No! We've waited so long! Just jump!
Tough choice. Who to believe?
Harry looked out at the world, at the tops of the buildings, the little people down below, connected by so many things, disconnected by so few. Subject to disease and war, one hand reaching for the stars, the other slinking back to the darkest cave. And all this time, he thought it somehow all made sense, that he could figure it out.
But he was wrong.
“When you're right, you're right,” he said to himself, to the Fool. “It doesn't make any sense. Not one bit.”
He turned to look at the cop. “I'm really sorry about this, he said.
The cop lunged forward to grab him, but Harry smiled, shrugged, and let the Quirk-shard move his feet over the ledge.
Briefly, Harry felt weightless, just like he had so many years ago, trapped in his father's arms at the top of an amusement park ride. There'd be no parachute this time, though. His stomach lurched. Everything spun. He was expecting to fly, but the Fool had lied. He wasn't flying. He was falling. It would all be over in seconds.
Thanks, so so much! the Quirk-shard said.
“Don't mention it,” Harry answered, falling faster and faster.
Grinning wickedly, Jeremy pulled his hands from the muck. He wondered why Keller never figured out that you didn't have to be
in
a trail to
see
what was in it. Probably because he was an idiot. That was why he'd die this time for sure. That was why Jeremy would win.
Nearby, Jeremy's Quirk yipped merrily at the changes. It extended its single eye beyond the row of teeth that formed its mouth, to ferret out a spot for itself in Keller.
When it did, and as it stuffed its eye deep into the delicious cranny, Siara's lifeâlike a large blind wormâveered away, back toward the fate Jeremy planned for it. When it reached his massive sculpture, his masterpiece, Siara's life trail was sucked in like a piece of spaghetti into the mouth of a starving demon.
It was locked now, as if with a key. A keystone.
It was done. Really done.
Now there's nothing that can save either of you. Nothing.
Nothing. Zero. The Fool.
The giant loomed above Harry Keller, the size of a Thanksgiving Day balloon. No, bigger. Much bigger. It was the size of the whole damn Thanksgiving Day parade. Its moon-size eyes twinkled. The wide swath of red that circled its cheeks elongated its mad smile so it covered half the huge white face.
As Harry lay on his back, cowering, an image popped into his mind; a card from Aunt Shirley's tarot deck, the one with the vagabond staring at the sky as he merrily marched off a cliff, a small dog nipping at his heels. The image didn't comfort him, it only frightened him more. Panicked questions rushed from his mouth like rats deserting a sinking ship: “Who? What? Where?”
“YES! YES AND YES!” the clown boomed back.
Harry raised his arms to protect himself, not from the big clown, but from the words. Each YES set Harry's body bouncing and sent a swarm of sights, sounds, and feelings careening through his head; smiley faces, a parent handing him sticky candy, a girl's moist kiss, an A-plus scribbled in blue pen on a paper, Siara visiting his apartment. Every possible derivation, manifestation, and connotation of YES hit him like a fist, as if the meaning-volume of his soul's ears had been turned up full.
Harry thought he was being killed, but when the inner onslaught ended, miraculously, he wasn't only still alive, he was thinking clearer, cleaner, as if the giant's words had burned some of his madness away.
Harry looked around. Glimpses of life trails, Quirks, Glitches, and drifting Timeflys poked from between the enormous polka-dot folds of the clown's floppy pant-legs. He was in A-Time. Despite the drugs, he'd gone timeless.
How?
“Because I brought you here,” the clown responded, though Harry's question hadn't been asked out loud.
Its lips parted into a grin, revealing again its massive white teeth and horrid pink tongue. It looked awful happy. Was that a good thing? Better than having it angry, Harry supposed.
“Are you going to kill me?” It seemed as good a time as any to ask.
It shook its head. “We're not enemies, Harry. This isn't
Godzilla versus Cremora
.”
“Ummâ¦isn't that Gammera?”
“No. Cremora. Seems the big lizard is lactose intolerant.”
When Harry didn't react, the clown's face turned serious.
“It's a joke. Get it?”
Harry just stared at it.
Yeah, a
bad
jokeâ¦
“No, a good one.” It opened its cavernous mouth and laughed, releasing a gale that pushed Harry's body deep into the terrain beneath him.
The clown raised an eyebrow. “See? A joke. You should lighten up a little, y'know?”
Harry raised himself from the Harry-shaped hole that had formed beneath him. “Lighten up? How can I, with you haunting me, ever sinceâ¦ever since⦔
“Yes?” the clown asked.
Ever since what?
Harry realized he'd been seeing the clown since his father died. Ever since he was struck by lightning when the preacher asked God to do just that. Like a joke. Like a big, bad joke, a killer punch line no joker could resist.
Like
Godzilla versus Cremora.
Emotion overwhelmed Harry's fear. “Did you kill my father?”
The giant's head shook gently from side to side. “Not exactly. Closer to say I
am
your father's death.”
Harry's body shivered, but his brow furrowed defiantly. “What's that supposed to mean?”
The clown gave him a half smile. “That I manifest in certain events. I'm an archetype, Harry, the visible face of a god. Specifically, the Fool, the Trickster, Azeban, Brer Rabbit, Aunt Nancy, Bamapana, Tezcatlipoca, Puck, the Monkey King, Satan, Renart the Fox, Bugs Bunny, Prometheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Coyote, Kokopelli, Kantjil, Amaguq, Kitsune, Mantis, Nasreddin, Loki, Sosruko, Nanabush, Maui, Agu Tonpa, Cin-an-ev, Baron Samedi, Anansi, Eshu, Ozat, Meribank, even Spongebob Squarepants⦔
Just like the YESes that came before, each name carried a score of impressions: steamy African veldts, windswept North American plains, smoky European cities, places of heat, of cold, and all the temperatures in between.
Harry shook his head, trying to shed the maelstrom, and said, “You're the balloon. The one that led me to Todd and Melody.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were a memory, a statue at Dreamland. Just something left over from childhood.”
“That, too. Just not
just
.”
An archetype. A god. Sure. According to Jung and Campbell, they were the building blocks of the human mind. Of course, you weren't supposed to be able to chat with them. But if it were true, Harry was staring at something created by the timeless energies of everyone on the planet, past, present, and future. Everyone.
Maybe it
was
a god.
A glint appeared in the Fool's eyes. From its expression, Harry could tell it'd heard each of his thoughts and found his despair amusing.
Harry swallowed. “Am I imagining you, like I did Elijah?”
The clown chuckled. “Yes and no. You have to be able to imagine to see me, but it's really more like redistrictingâsame pie, different slices.”
“Redistricting? Redistricting what? What kind of pie?”
Its huge index finger poked Harry in the chest. He felt as if he were being tapped with the base of a telephone pole. “The self-pie. Like Elijah said, it has loose boundaries. Slice it one way and you might find your feminine side, like Elijah, but slice it deep enough and you wind up outside again, where you'll find something like me.”
A giant white glove reached down and squeezed Harry's hopelessly tiny hand between its massive thumb and finger. It took him a moment to realize the thing was shaking hands with him.
“Congratulations. You the man. You made it all the way to nothing.”
“Uhâ¦thanks?”
It pulled, yanking Harry into a seated position. Then it crossed its legs and sat in front of him.
“You're welcome, but let's get down to it. You've got questions, I've got answers, some of which may even be true. Before we go any further, I want to spell out the deal. You ask whatever you like, and I'll answer, but for every question you ask, I'm going to hit you, really, really hard.”
Without thinking, Harry asked, “Why would you do that?”
SWAT!
The next thing Harry knew, he was skidding along the terrain, scraping the uneven surfaces like a rock skimming ripples in a pond. When he finally slowed, rolled, and settled into a moaning heap, the giant Fool trotted up, shaking the trails with his stepsâ
thud, thud, thud
.
It leaned over and looked at the fallen Harry. “Because I feel like it.”
Harry touched the side if his face. No bruises. He felt his arm and ribcage. No broken bones. Everything hurt though. Still, he couldn't keep from asking, “Can you tell me how to stop Jeremy, save Siara, and get rid of the Quirk inside me?”
WHACK!
Again, Harry flew, crashed, rolled, slowed, and stopped. Again, the Fool trotted upâ
thud, thud, thud
“That was three questions, but since there's one answer, I'll let it go. No. You have to figure that out yourself. I'm not your advisor. I'm more like the scorpion in the fable. You know, he can't get across the river so he asks the frog for a ride? The frog says, Are you nuts? You'll sting me! The scorpion says, Why would I sting you? I'd drown, too. So the frog says okay. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him. The dying frog asks, What'd you do that for? The drowning scorpion says, Sorry, it's my nature.
“Me, I'm a force for chaos and I don't act out of character. In fact, I'm not even really helping you. I just am. You move closer or farther away from me.”
But why?
Harry thought, just barely managing to keep from asking out loud. Again, the expression on the thing's face told Harry it knew what he was thinking. It was waiting, smiling, probably looking forward to thwacking him again.
Biding his time, Harry rubbed his jaw.
Bemused, the Fool said, “You know, you don't
have
to ask me anything if you don't want to. But this is where we're alike, see? You're like the scorpion, too. You're going to ask, even though you know you'll get thwacked. Then I'll hit you and you'll get up and ask again. That's what I like about you, Harry.”
It was right. Despite the certain pain, questions raced each other to his mouth.
“What's the voice I hear when I look in someone's trail?”
THUNK!
Thud, thud, thud
“Your filter, talking back. It does what's easiestâturns everything into a story.”
“Why could Todd Penderwhistle enter his life trail when I can't enter mine?”
SHUNK!
This time after he hit the ground, Harry rolled for what felt like a half mile, slamming his side and shoulders into the curved tops of trail after trail before he finally came to a stop.
But the Fool knew where to find him.
Thud, thud, thud.
“That you probably could have figured out yourself. Ever see anyone
other
than you unable to enter their own past?”
“Uhâ¦no.”
“That's because the rules of your filter don't permit
you
to enter your life trail. It's the way you set things up.”
Harry shook his head. “That doesn't make sense. It's a rule of A-Time. I didn't make this place upâthe Quirks, the Glitches, the trails! I just named them! I only see it because my linear-time filter
isn't
working. I don't control reality!” Harry said.
“No,” the Fool answered. “You don't. But you create and control yourself. Scorpion stings the turtle. Harry gets answers in a way that thwacks him. Language makes the world. It's better to hear your name than to see your face. Get it? It's a joke.
Godzilla versus Cremora
. And you really should lighten up a little.”
“Butâ¦,” Harry began. He gritted his teeth, trying to come up with the right phrasing. He thought he had it once or twice, but he didn't want to get hit for nothing.
As it waited, the Fool lay down in front of him, flopping on its belly across the terrain, resting its head on its white-gloved hands. It raised its gargantuan feet up, crossing them at the ankles and letting the moon-sized bells on its boots jingle. They sounded like the chimes of a thousand churches.
Its eyes glistened. It smiled invitingly.
“Go ahead,” it whispered. “Ask. You know you want to; you want to bad. And yeah, I know the answer.”
The words appeared on the tip of Harry's tongue, as if the Fool had conjured them. It was the question Harry's father had always wanted him to answer. So he asked:
“How
does
reality work?”
It used a full fist on him this time, and didn't hold back.
POW!
There was pain, great pain, really, really great pain, then flying, falling, landingâ
thud, thud, thud
âand an answer at last.
“It doesn't,” the Fool said.
Harry's head listed to the side. He worried he might pass out, but he didn't. It was a cheap answer. A cheat. The world had to make senseâit just had to.
The Fool shook its head. “Working, not working, they're
all
just what you call filters. They're masks really. Everything is. Everything. Got that?
Everything
. All that terrifying, life-taking, debilitating, crippling, killing, overpowering, numbing, cracking, crunching, hating, separating, cultivating, inspiring, integrating, degradating, carbon-dating, creating, writhing, withering, deadening, deciding, hoping, coping, loping, doping, troping, trapping, winking, thinking, tree-hugging, exonerating, ozone-depleting, freedom-fighting, resource-wasting, conservating, renovating, aggravating, abdicating, syncopating, calculating, blinking, blanking, indicating, medicating, habituating, levitating, eradicating, irritating, flagellating, focusing, locusing, heat-seeking, exiting, activating, scintillating, decapitating, transposing, excruciating, invigorating, pixelating, cherry-picking, gerrymandering, deficit-spending, crawling, falling, mauling, calling, scrawling, scrolling, rolling, doling, molting, gloating, kicking, mixing, fixing, nixing, abstaining, abstracting, faxing, adultering, appropriating, backtracking, bloodsucking, counterpunching, nesting, resting, besting, testing, cresting, jesting, knowing, glowing, fascinating, compromising, condescending, fixating, obfuscating, breathtaking, whitening, brightening, canceling, carousing, normalizing, corroborating, agitating, characterizing, epitomizing, fantasizing, cleansing, clouting, clowning, lightly browning, napkin-tying, flirting, blurting, burning, boring, whirring, turning, tracing, facing, lacing, devastating, ingratiating, energizing, finalizing stuff is a mask, just a mask. And me, I'm one of them. And what you think of as yourself is another.”
As before, each word flooded his mind with a million pictures, feelings, and smells, but this time there was no release. They kept coming, stacked miles high, words upon words, worlds upon worlds, lining up to invade his skull, as if he were chained to a rock as Niagara Falls came down upon him forever. And every single thought, even the smallest, felt as if it were being written in white fire in the darkest depths of his brain.
And when it was finally, impossibly over, nothing lingered. It just raced through him without leaving a trace.
Confused, staggered, exhausted, Harry Keller managed to say, “Soâ¦nothing's real?”
A big open-handed white-gloved hand swept toward him, slapping him full-body.
WHUNK! Thud, thud, thud.
“Of course it is! Masks are real!”
“Soâ¦nothing's important?”
Again the hand rushed him, knocking him back a hundred yards. The terrain he landed in this timeâdark, shapeless, and coldâwas utterly unfamiliar, Harry wasn't sure if it was past or future or if he was even still in A-Time at all. The only recognizable thing was the most horrificâthe grinning giant that stormed up to him.