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The Libertarian

Jill E. Harris

    The Great Dylan walked through the sea of the pre-show crowd, beneath a big top suspended magically in mid-air. The clowns, the circus women and men in scandalously exotic costumes and make-up, the big people as tall as the 19^th century early sky scrapers, and the little people the size of dandelions — tough as armor because they were always being trampled – mixed among the ordinary folk, most of whom had arrived on the noon Maglev, and all of whom were drably naked, their weary faces lighting up at the sight of the circus marvels.
    The Great Dylan wore his dazzling, black iridescent feathers which came to a plume at the top of his head and folded into enormous wings that rested on his back, covering the small pocket where he kept his wand. He was headed back to what he called his “bird’s nest,” the pod just big enough to be a cozy home for him and his wife, Mabel – Assistant to The Great Dylan. But there, at the foot of the friendly cotton candy bot, was an ordinary man lying face down in the genetically altered violets that served as the turf for everything beneath the big top except the center ring.
    The Great Dylan turned the poor man over on his back, but he didn’t stir, although he was breathing. He looked to be a young man, perhaps in his fifties, probably in the first stages of his working life. How odd to find even one of the ordinary people well enough to attend a circus but sick enough to be lying face down in the violets. What could have happened to him? Well, he thought to himself, the Virtual Reality presses may have stopped publishing interactive Bibles, but the term “Good Samaritan” is still heard from time to time. He took out his wand and with a wave brought the medic to have a look, and within a few minutes the young man was sitting up, his eyes open.
    The young man was disoriented, of course, and didn’t seem to remember how he’d come to be at the circus. “I was at the Academy,” he said slowly, “but I’d made up my mind to claim my liberty.”
    Oh my, The Great Dylan thought, suddenly regretting that his mother had raised him to know what it meant to be a Good Samaritan. The Academy was a place for the genetically malfunctioned, and although they had the right to leave and claim their liberty, they gave up the protection of the state when they did so. Most died within a short period of time, too witless to support themselves, to get along with others, or to provide themselves with food and drink.
    But still, there were a few at The Academy who didn’t seem to belong there, or whose malfunctions had hidden an unpredictable genius in them, and who had gone on not only to survive but to become societal leaders. One of the circus patrons was such a Libertarian, as such people were called, and although The Great Dylan was not a greedy man, he could not help but imagine the sick man before him as a potential genius and, therefore, a potential patron. As much as the status of the circus had risen in society over the last century for its proven ability to create endorphins and generate the atomic structures in the mind proven to keep social order in place, funding was always unpredictable, and patrons always welcome. Since the performers owned the circus, it was natural that like The Great Dylan, they all kept an eye out for the rare, potential patron of the future.
    With a wave of his wand, the new Libertarian and his Samaritan were both in the pod. At home with his wife Mable, Dylan was not known for being great at anything, but he did make sure that the young man arrived tucked cozily under a blanket on the floating cushions that helped the magician and his wife maintain their image as they approached the hundred year mark in their lives, an age that was considered the end of middle age and the prime of a magician’s life. “It’s downhill from there,” people tended to say at hundredth birthday parties, and everyone knew that although they pretended to be joking, it was all too often true that the sweetness of reaching the prime of one’s career was tinged with the bitterness of knowing the decline would likely follow on its heels.
    Mable, scoffing at the pretention of Dylan’s floating couch, sat in an antique Laz-Y–Boy, her feet up, a cup of steaming rose tea cupped in her hands.
     “Look what the bird dragged in,” she said.
    “He’s a Libertarian.”
    “From the Island of Misfit Toys. I wonder what the etymology of that phrase is?”
    “Who cares? And not all malfunctions are misfits.”
    “Not all are patrons.”
    “Never mind. He was face down in the violets, unconscious.”
    “Great. So even the basic health genes are malfunctioning.”
    “Listen, Mabel. It doesn’t cost anything to give the man a couch. Malfunctions happen. It’s not his fault.”
    “Claiming his liberty is certainly his fault, and he knew the repercussions. But never mind. Let him rest, then send him on his way. You need to get ready.”
    “You used to help me get ready.”
    Mable ignored Dylan’s implied request. “I’ll keep an eye on the Libertarian you dragged in, and don’t worry, I’ll be your fire breathing companion when our moment arrives. Have I ever let you down?”
    But Dylan’s mind had drifted to the show, and without realizing he’d snubbed his wife he’d begun rehearsing the act in his mind. No matter how many times they performed, he never stopped rehearsing, inventing, worrying that something would go wrong – a fuse would blow, he was sure it was bound to happen someday, and he’d be left standing as naked as the ordinary people, as naked as the Emperor in the ancient children’s tale in the Virtual Reality museum he used to visit with his mother.

    After he left, Mabel tried on costume after costume in the VR closet. How ever did women shop before VR, she wondered? She knew about the old stores, of course, but she couldn’t imagine how cumbersome it must have been, and how limiting to commit to owning a single outfit for years. Kudos to the Department of IT for bringing an end to those dark ages. She was growing tired of plumage, but it was all the rage among the ordinaries. Perhaps she should be a male cardinal and add a touch of the homo-erotic to the act for fun. But Dylan wouldn’t even notice. Once the act began, it was the fire that mattered to him, not her. He had the gift, or the curse, of concentrating on one thing only.
    The act began with a snap of the ringmaster’s whip. Until that moment, the audience was held in a spell of amazement as more than a hundred performers stretched the Ordinary people’s sense of human possibility, some of the performers floating magically through the air like bubbles; others creating a fifty foot high, human simulation of the historic Eiffel Tower; the trapeze artists swinging, catching, and somersaulting between the twenty or more moving trapezes a hundred feet above the heads of the ordinaries and without the old-fashioned nets; the contortionists performing handstands on their fingertips with their bodies rolled three times around themselves; and of course all the while the ordinaries remained plugged into their point of view glasses, so that they could view the spectacle from the forehead of any one of the performers and feel as though they were the ones flying, plummeting, and spinning; or watch an overview of it all; or switch from one point of view to another throughout the whole thing. But at the snap of the whip, the point of view options shut down and the audience could see through their own eyes only, and everything under the big top disappeared into complete and total darkness, something the ordinaries never experienced in their daily lives, so that the moment never failed to elicit a gasp from the crowd.
    Dylan, knowing he alone held the power of the moment, would draw out that moment of suspense as long as possible, with an almost uncanny sense for each audience’s peak of anticipation, and then, alone in the previously crowded big top, he would light a single, old-fashioned match – a real one — which would, in turn, illuminate nothing more than the head of his magical bird persona of the evening. Tonight, the head of a raven.
    That moment, when he struck the match and it illumined his beak and beady eyes, always got a laugh, because the ordinaries recognized the primitive match stick but had never seen one in anything but a VR history text, and they loved seeing an extinct bird – any extinct bird — come to life before their eyes.
    The laugh was her cue.
    In her closet, Mabel sighed and resigned herself to being the female raven, an ordinary mate for her husband’s choice of birds. With the VR costume erotically disguising her body, she emerged from the closet only to find – as she had so many times before – that her husband had finished his preparations, and filled with the adrenaline of the imminent performance and the added adrenaline of tempting a missed cue, he had created a VR partition around their guest so he could carry her into the pod’s bedroom and stroke her with the feathered tips of his wings in just the way she most liked....

#

    Under the big top after the show began, The Libertarian found the spectacle breathtaking. He’d heard of circuses, but had never been to one. None of the malfunctions ever had the opportunity to attend the circus, and it made him feel confident that the bold choice to claim his liberty had been the right choice, even if it did leave him vulnerable in a world he knew little about.
    Like the rest of the Ordinaries, he had never experienced darkness before, and he breathed a sigh of relief when The Great Dylan lit his single, antiquated match.
    “Scared ya, huh?”
    The man who stood beside him looked like the man who had saved him, but without the bird plumage. He wasn’t naked like the others in the audience, but wore a simple, pale blue tunic.
    “Mister....mister....Dylan? Isn’t that you out there? Aren’t you the magician?”
    “He’s my brother.”
    “But....”
    “Sssh. This is my favorite part, where he and his wife start spitting fire at each other like the dragons of old. Fifteen feet that fire flies from his mouth to hers, and she does such a wonderful job of swallowing the whole flaming streak in one gasp. Marvelous! Watch! My wife would be too terrified, but not Mable. And then, she tosses fireballs back to him, scorching his wings! See the anger on her face and the smoke from his plumes? Listen to the crowd, man! It’s a great house tonight.”
    “But his lovely wife! She’ll be hurt!”
    “Nonsense. Watch him. See the wand? It keeps her safe, no matter how hot the fire burns and oh! Did you see that? The way he surrounded her in a circle of flames twenty feet high? But watch, watch.... God! Do you feel how hot it is, even out here where we are? But just wait....”
    The Libertarian stared at the wall of flames. His skin felt scorched. The lovely woman! He was in agony at the thought of her burning to death. But just when he thought he would have to either run away or sacrifice himself to the flames in an effort to save her, she came walking right through the fire, her wings stretched upward in triumph, her head held high. He was dumbfounded. “How...?”
    “I told you, he keeps her safe with the wand, and look – she’s walked right through the wall of flames with nothing more than singed plumes. Listen to the roar of the applause! Oh my God, she’s magnificent, magnificent! And he’s not bad himself, is he? Learned it from our father, as the eldest son. But here, here comes the finale – watch, he’s juggling balls of fire and then they land on the tips of his feathers, and now his wings are on fire. Brilliant! All these years, and I still don’t know how it works, unless he just doesn’t feel any pain. Oh it’s a good night—the crowd’s on their feet. Look at their faces! They think the two of them are going to die out there!”
    The Libertarian’s face was even more aghast than the others. Surely they were going to die?
    “It’s the wand, my boy. Don’t worry. The magic wand is passed from one apprentice to another. From my father to my brother, and soon, The Great Dylan will choose his own apprentice, and teach him the secret of the wand. There! He’s wrapped his arms around her! They’re both going up in flames! Singed to a crisp! The crowd can’t believe it – look at their faces! The ringmaster’s back – oh he’s good, he looks more horrified than the Ordinaries, as though he’s never seen it before! He’s pointing to the heap of ash, the cremated bodies, picking up a handful, letting it sift back down to the floor so we can all see that there’ nothing else left of them. They’re dousing the fire with buckets of water, the lights are up, but there’s nothing left but that pile of ash... What a performance!”
    “But I thought you said the wand....” Confusion and horror overwhelmed the Libertarian. What a strange, cruel world he had entered! No wonder everyone had warned him not to venture into it on his own. He covered his face with one hand and began to cry.
    The ringmaster spoke. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I don’t know what to say. The Great Dylan and his lovely wife —- Never, before have they failed; never before have they.....”
    “Look up kid! Look up! Stop crying! They’re falling out of the sky like snowflakes, as good as new!”
    The young man looked up, and there they were, the mated ravens, their plumage as perfect as before the show began, smiles on their faces. The crowd was on their feet, craning their necks upward, applauding thunderously.
    “But how....”
    “The wand, boy, the wand! Like I keep telling you, it’s all in the wand.”

#

    What a night! The Great Dylan was exhilarated long after the crowd had gone home, the blood still pulsing through his veins. The show never grew old, but tonight was something special. Perhaps the VR Dylan he had sent to his wife had put her in a particularly heated state of mind; she certainly looked flushed when she entered the ring. He could hardly bear to switch it all off, to use the particular series of motions of his wand that signaled the remote control device to turn off the holographs. Finally, he swooped the crystal and oak wand through the air in the manner that his father had taught him, and that his grandfather’s had taught his father, and his great grandfather had taught his grandfather. Who knew how far back in the family the secret went? But when he’d finished the precise series of flicks and swoops and twists of his hand, the floating big top disappeared, the giants the size of the early skyscrapers disappeared, and the ability to create virtual fires with virtual heat was extinguished along with them. All that remained were the pods filled with the other real performers, the empty rings, and the empty seats.
    He headed back to his own pod, to Mabel, and to the resting Libertarian. What was it like for the young man to see a circus for the first time? He felt some satisfaction at having not only helped the poor soul through a rough day, but having some confidence that his performance with Mabel would have managed to fill the young man with a sense of awe.

#

    Dylan crawled into bed beside Mabel and cradled her naked, featherless body.
    “You were wonderful,” he whispered to her.
    “Where have you been?” she whispered back.
    “I just couldn’t bring myself to shut it down,” he said. “So little of our world is real. It feels empty without the holograms, almost as though they’re real and we’re the illusions.”
    “Don’t let the Ordinaries hear you talk like that,” Mabel whispered, “or before you know it, they’ll understand that the only thing that separates them from us is a well kept VR security code, and we’ll be out of job. No more costumes. No more fire, except your silly little antique matches.”
    “They’re not silly. Some of the fire has to be real, if only to help me get in the spirit of the thing. But you’re right. Sometimes I still find it hard to keep the secret.”
    “You’re not so bad naked,” Mabel teased.
    “That’s because you can’t see me.”
     “Maybe. But you’re still better than that VR bird you sent me.”
    “You knew it wasn’t me?”
    “I always know.”
    “I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten you.”
    “And you wanted me hot for the performance.”
    “You know, I don’t know what it is that the Ordinaries have against the dark. It’s kind of nice.” He stroked her skin without being able to see her.
    “Mmmhmm.”

#

    They heard it at the same time, the sound they’d heard so many times, but never here, never from somewhere out of their own control.
    The strike of a match.
    The Libertarian’s young face glowed before them like the old pictures of the moon before it became overpopulated.
    “What? What are you....”
    “I will protect you,” the Libertarian said. “I will protect you both!”
    Grinning, he cast the match, the only real prop in the show, onto the bed. As it burst into flames, he laughed, waving the wand he had seen Dylan put in a hidden drawer when he thought the Libertarian was asleep on the couch.
     “I will protect you!” he called over the flames and the shrieks of the husband and wife that sounded just like the old recordings of screeching birds. “I have the power of the wand! I am not malfunctioned!”
    When all had turned to ash, he scooped up a handful just as the ringmaster had done – it was all so easy! He must be one of the lucky ones, the geniuses!
    He looked to the ceiling and waited. Any minute, the beautiful pair of birds — the kind birds he had protected — would float down to him, their eyes on fire with the realization of his magnificent power.

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