The Artificial Man the Killer Clowns Made and the Mouse Child Who Said What She Saw

In a broad rich country there once ruled a cabal of Killer Clowns who deceived the People into waging terrible wars that destroyed untold lives and wasted untold treasure. Even as the Killer Clowns spent the country's gold for their bloody adventures they lowered the taxes of the richest of the rich (many of them Killer Clowns themselves) leaving the People to neglect and disorder. Also, the Killer Clowns eliminated as many of the laws that held their powerful friends to account, and as the Killer Clowns and their rich and powerful friends grew ever more greedy and ever more reckless and ever more corrupt with few laws left to restrain their worst impulses together they nearly destroyed the world.

Nobody liked the Killer Clowns anymore and they were kicked into the streets, and then the Modest Mice were chosen by the People to clean up the mess the Killer Clowns had made, because the Modest Mice seemed to care more about the suffering of the People and seemed to dislike the Killer Clowns as much as everybody else did. But while the People gave the Modest Mice their crowns and scepters of office, the defeated Killer Clowns kept secretly to themselves many of the tools they had used to wreck the world and many of which the Modest Mice needed to clean up the mess the Killer Clowns had made.

Most of the Modest Mice were bright and decent enough, but they were a mixed lot: many of them had twinkling eyes and were so brimming with ideas that they talked over one another, while others had gentle eyes and were timid and sleepy and shy or more comfortable than they should be, especially when there was so much work to be done. Some of the Modest Mice had beautiful soft brown fur, and the thoughtful mouse with the beautiful voice who was their Chief and now lived in the Pillared Hall and wore the Great Crown and held the Great Scepter in his hand was one of these. And while you would think anybody would find such lovely soft brown fur the pleasantest thing in the world, for some reason it seemed to make many of the Killer Clowns in their livid white masks very angry and afraid and resentful, as they plotted their revenge or loitered about in the streets into which they had been cast by the People.

The People suffered day after day in the ruined world the Killer Clowns had made while the Modest Mice struggled to clean up the mess, sometimes doing their best, sometimes making terrible mistakes, and sometimes, too, simply napping because they were more comfortable even in a ruined world than most of the People were. And all the while the Killer Clowns held them back as best they could, whispering false promises of help and bad advice into their ears, raising a ruckus in the public square that distracted everyone from the work to be done, and sabotaging their accomplishments whenever they could.

As it happens, the Killer Clowns knew many evil spells, and they liked to use them from time to time when circumstances seemed propitious. The truth is that evil spells are quite weak and convoluted things, easily dispelled by the least bit of good sense or education or comfort or kindness. And the evil spell the Killer Clowns crafted this time as they grumbled and groaned and plotted and planned in the dark back alleyways was a curious string of nonsense. I cannot reproduce the whole thing for you, for no sane good person could repeat it accurately without going mad and mean themselves, but I heard the spell as all the People did, and I remember at least some of the words amongst the gibberish, words like "death panels" "job creators" "big government" "drill baby drill" and, many times, a mere whisper of the word "Black." As I said, the evil spell made no sense at all in any literal kind of way.

But very soon, the Killer Clowns began declaring in the public square that the Modest Mice were the reason the world remained ruined and many of the People in their distress and confusion were entranced by the evil spell the Killer Clowns were casting, nonsensical though it was, and they forgot altogether who had nearly destroyed the world. And although the work to clean up the mess the Killer Clowns had made was still underway, indeed before many of the Modest Mice had time enough to get truly underway in earnest, enough of the People decided they didn't like the Modest Mice anymore either that they kicked many of them into the streets, too.

The Killer Clowns grinned like skulls beneath their livid white masks and promised to get the world back up and running and get everybody back to a decent work and wage, but when they took up the People's crowns and scepters they did none of the things they had promised, for they were all liars and cheats. Rather than working to help the remaining Modest Mice clean up the mess the Killer Clowns had made, rather than encouraging the sunshine factories and modest shop-keepers to hire workers for decent wages to ease the poverty of the People, as they promised they would, the Killer Clowns devoted all their energy to circuses and spell casting, to demolishing the bright Union halls the People liked to gather in to solve their shared grievances, to taking away the medicine and help the People needed if they grew pregnant or old or sick, and to making the children mop the bathroom floors rather than studying and playing after school.

Why, far from cleaning up the mess they had made -- apart from a few bathroom floors, I suppose -- every day in every way the Killer Clowns seemed to want only to make the lives of the People still worse and worse! Many of the People wailed in dismay at being fooled again, and gathered in the public square to protest being so cruelly mislead, but the Killer Clowns repeated their evil spell time and time again and shook their fists in anger to divide the People who should be working together so that many of the People in their bewitched befuddlement blamed one another for the mess they were in and buried their heads in their hands in despair.

As before, the Killer Clowns said they would create jobs by lowering taxes on the very rich still more, even though lowering taxes on the very rich had drained the country of much of its treasure in the first place and made the very rich even richer… and yet the rich had never created the jobs they had promised before. Why things would be different this time was never explained, but the Killer Clowns just insisted over and over again, as if it were another of their evil spells, that making the rich richer still would somehow create jobs for the People. And some of the People began repeating it, too, if only to share in the conviction of the Killer Clowns, for sometimes it is simply nice to feel convinced of something, even if one doesn't know why one is convinced at all, rather than feeling frightened and unsure and unwell all the time instead.

And although the People despaired at all their senseless suffering in a country that remained so broad and rich, the Killer Clowns said it was weakness and folly to end such suffering, because suffering is usually the righteous punishment of undeserving People, and they beat their chests promising to make more and more and more of the People who deserved it struggle and suffer to show what leaders they were: for Killer Clowns believe that demanding sacrifice and suffering of Other People but never themselves or their friends is the same thing as leadership. And although the People despaired of all the senseless wars in a world that craved peace and diplomacy and mutual respect, the Killer Clowns said it was weakness and folly to end the wars or stop building the bombs and they beat their chests promising to go to war with more and more and more countries to show how strong they were: for Killer Clowns believe that bluster and bullying and recklessness is the same thing as strength.

Now, the Chief of the People is, as everybody knows, the most famous and most powerful person in the whole country and many of the Killer Clowns, in their greed, and many of the Modest Mice, despite their modesty, longed to live for a time in the great Pillared Hall which stood at the end of the longest street in the most monumental city of the country. Every few years, all the People gathered for a great parade that slowly and boisterously traversed the long street. And they put on their livid white masks and their whiskered snouts and other outlandish costumes they made, and sometimes they cheered the passing parade and sometimes they paraded themselves for a time to see whether they would be cheered. Eventually great crowds gathered to cheer the special favorites who attracted the most attention and adoration along the long parade route and lifted them to their shoulders and carried them slowly forward on and on while the People quarreled and danced and rioted all around. By the end of the parade it was usually clear, if not always exactly clear why, one of the People, clown white or twitchy whiskered, was best loved by the People at the great parade, and the doors to the Pillared Hall were opened wide to them, and the Great Crown placed on their head and the Great Scepter placed in their hand while everybody cheered hysterically or wailed in rage so loud and long it was difficult to tell which was which, even though most of the People, in their own way, were having a fine time.

But in the long ruined world the People felt too hurt and too hungry to look forward much to the great parade. Most of the People had finally had enough with the cruelty and nonsense of the Killer Clowns, but many were desperately tired from their struggles and many were terribly confused from the evil spells that had been cast on them time and time again, and few felt there was much hope to clean up the mess or knew for sure who to trust anymore. The thoughtful brown mouse with the beautiful voice who lived in the Pillared Hall and hoped to return there to continue his work had made many friends as he strove day and night to clean up the mess at his doorstep, but many were heartbroken that he had not done enough with so much still to do, and many more had still not shaken off the Killer Clowns' evil spells and they despised the beautiful brown mouse in an evil trance deaf and blind to all sense. When the day came for the Great Parade many of the People huddled together in cold corners far away from the long street where the parade made its way, and many of those who came wore their livid white masks and whiskered snouts at best half-heartedly or simply held them in their calloused hands.

From the Killer Clown College came a cohort of candidates who hoped to prevail in this years' Parade and made Chief of the People to really do some damage. But so many of the People were fed up with the lies and crimes of the Killer Clowns that the cohort who decided to try their luck this sad bad year were quite a strange and mean and superstitious bunch and the People wondered at their cruelty and laughed hard and long at their antics. But the False Professors of the Clown College, whose livid white faces needed no masks to look that way, so wizened and pinched with a lifetime of meanness were they, feared they had little chance to win the Pillared Hall and the Great Crown and Great Scepter that year when their candidates were more Clown than Killer and when so many of the People were fed up with their tricks. So they withdrew to the attic of the Killer Clown College where there lived and worked the Mad Scientists who built their bombs and invented the miracle metal bars and vaults they held their prisoners and treasures in with, and where lived and worked as well the Sad Scientists who tallied the profits and tabulated the dead from their many frauds and schemes and raids. And the False Professors demanded that the Mad and Sad Scientists turn their clever heads to the making of a monstrous puppet, an artificial man they might use to trick the People into making their Chief.

And so, there was one among the cohort of candidates from the Killer Clown College that day who wore a face that seemed solid while all the others' were grotesque, and there was one whose moves seemed smooth while all the others' were frantic, and there was one whose words simply echoed mechanically whatever they heard while the others' remained outrageously the same. And even though it was clear that his plans were the same and his promises were the same as all the rest of the cohort of candidates from the Killer Clown College, all of the self-important self-appointed Experts from the Village surrounding the Pillared Hall nodded and squinted and declared the artificial man the sanest, smartest, safest, most sensible of all the Killer Clowns, for saying so was not saying much, after all, which was what the Village Experts liked saying most of all when they couldn't get away with saying nothing at all.

And as he moved along the long parade route he was indeed a splendid sight, for the Mad Scientists had made him very tall and strong and the Sad Scientists had made him very suave and clever. He had a square head and a square jaw and wore a square suit, and his heart was square, too, for it was nothing but a cube of ice held in the great square refrigerator of his chest. And how smooth he seemed as he made his way through the crowd, for the Scientists gave him wheels instead of feet! And when the False Professors of the Killer Clown College provided them marvelous polished badges of Expertise to wear, how pleased the Village Experts were to extol the virtues of the artificial man and the good sense and moderation of his promises and plans. And hearing these words, the People wondered what to do. They liked the thoughtful mouse with the beautiful voice and they trusted the Modest Mice to work as hard as they could -- but did they trust them enough? did they work hard enough? And as they wondered, all along the parade route the Killer Clowns were ready with circus performers and spell casters mingling among the crowds and working their distractions and bewitchments. The False Professors and the Killer Clowns all rubbed their hands in glee, for it began to seem their deceptive plotting and planning might succeed yet again.

"But he isn't sensible, or honest, or moderate at all," said a gentle perplexed voice nearly lost in the riotous din.

And then it was as if the voice rang out again, plain and sure. "He isn't sensible, or honest, or moderate, he's power hungry, deceptive, and extreme as the rest! Why, he's not a real person at all, he's an artificial man!" a sensible little mouse child was saying to her father whose hand she held to protect her from the great crowd.

"Did you ever hear such infantile nonsense?" said the artificial man, as he mechanically tapped the mouse child's soft head. "Corporations are people, my friends." And he wheeled his way on then, in sight of the Pillared Hall.

But her father looked at the artificial man with a puzzled frown and beside him one after another the faces of the crowd squinted in the sun and gave the artificial man and all the Killer Clowns a long, hard look. And all along the parade route one person whispered to another what the mouse child had said. "The artificial man is a liar and cheat, through and through, as awful and dangerous and mean as all the rest of those Killer Clowns," they muttered to one another, shunting aside the gaudy acrobats who sought to distract them and shrugging off the evil spells that clung like cobwebs to their hearts and their senses.

And the artificial man shivered in his gears and wheels, and the False Professors shivered in their golden gowns, and the Killer Clowns shivered in their livid white masks, for they all suspected they had been caught. But the artificial man said to himself, "The parade must go on, and after all, the Professors promise there is a mansion waiting for me nearly as fine as the Pillared Hall even if I lose," and he squared his square shoulders and smiled his smug smile, as the Village Experts gossiped obliviously on and the False Professors desperately declared their lies would come true this time all the way to the end of the road.