By the Light of the Silvery Moon

The crowds attention veered away from the mud wrestling Medusa women for ten seconds to view the cracker shaped explosion in the sky above the tent. The same set of circus workers quickly flapped the roof back down after the display, and from cleverly devised pockets in the flaps rained down individual serving packets of Ritz crackers, as Cyan began singing "Puttin' On the Ritz" to a cacophony of noisy synth background music.  The crowd amusedly caught and snacked on the crackers and returned their attention to the mud wrestling pit only to discover that the Gorgons had been replaced by the band Cracker, who interrupted Cyan, Black and Magenta with their hit song,
"What the World Needs Now" as Smitty made his way down the stairs from the snack bar with a flimsy plastic serving tray of nachos and back to the center ring.  David Lowery appeared annoyed and smug, and once they finished only half the song, he could be heard muttering,
     "I can't believe we've resorted to this..." as he loaded his guitar out of the mud pit, inadvertently knocking over a mic stand.

     The sound of crunching Ritz crackers was all that could be heard for a couple moments, until Smitty announced, with fake cheese sauce dripping down his goatee,

      "AND NOW!!!  
        FROM THE CAVES OF COLDEST AUSTRIA!! THE SHARP SHOOTING PROWESS OF JENS THE WEREBEAST!!"

As Smitty said this, several circus clown types rolled out a dozen or so 6 foot tall targets, and from the right of the bandstand, a slightly emaciated greyish man in blue coveralls moped out with a fishing rifle and stood at a meter long piece of black gaff tape on the floor.  He had a small microphone clipped onto his lapel and a sad expression in his eyes.

He spoke.

"A long while ago, before the current era, I hunted in the Carpathian mountains for weary straggling travelers.  Sometimes for sport, I would shoot them with this antique Scottish fishing rifle before transforming from my human form into that of the man-wolf and ripping their throats out,"

Old ladies gasped and a child or two began to cry in the stands.

"However," Jens continued, "I no longer am that person.  It is a new reality now.  I have no desire to eat human flesh, although tonight I will, under the full moon, transform for you and perform a little target practice." 

     Far above the crowd, a couple of same said circus personnel pulled back only three of the ceiling flaps to reveal the full moon, which had only risen partway into the night sky and was rather large.
Jens cocked the rifle before removing his coveralls.  He was completely naked, but it didn't seem inappropriate, because immediately his human form began to morph and thick dark gray fur sprouted from all over him.

    Cyan looked at Black, who clicked his sticks together four times as the band kicked into 
"Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon.

Then Jens started shooting.

Firecracker

And projected on a screen behind them, an 82-year-old Emile Zola, immortalized by moving pictures in 1922, 20 years after his faked death, and 20 seconds before his real one. He was eating a chicken drumstick. It was a silent movie, with no subtitles for his words, only:

It is 1922.
Emile Zola is alive!
For now.

Meanwhile, the groop played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music."

The crowd murmured in confusion and was fleetingly gawking at the wrestling "gorgons" instead, when just then Emile could be seen choking on his chicken, catching his breath, losing it, and collapsing.

As he went still, the big tent's top was thrown wide (this took about circus ten staff members and was their least but also most favorite job), moments before the start of a fireworks display in the shape of a Ritz cracker!

Gorgons from Zola

    Their theme song was not circusy sounding, unless your circus took place in an alternate dimension in 1975.  If one has ever heard the cover of the Theme to Rocky and Bullwinkle, by Birdsongs of The Mesozoic, then one might have a good idea of how it sounded, but imagine it with a tad more synth.  The band rocked out the theme and segued into the Ringleader's Theme.
      In case you thought that they weren't a part of a real circus, they were.  It's just, the animals were not included.  But there were clowns, acrobats, aerialists, strongmen, and the like, and quite a set of freaks on the payroll, the band not included. What the circus lacked in animals, it made up for with very realistic side show acts. The ringleader, hearing the dulcet tones of the start of his song, pulled back a flap of the enormous tents stage entrance, and with great flourish strolled to the center of the ring, his arms raised up reaching to the audience, and a bright spot light meticulously following his moves. When he arrived to the center of the main ring, he brought his arms down swiftly, which was the cue to the band to stop, which they did expertly.  The head honcho and Ringmaster, whose name was Randall Smith, or "Smitty" as the crew called him, began.

     "Ladies and Germs, crocodiles and worms, I stand here before you and never behind you, to tell you something I know nothing about!! You are about to go on a journey, a journey not of sight and sound, but of mind!  Welcome to the 8th wonder of the world, the most amazing collection of novelties and strange acts you'll ever witness-- The Circus and Freak Show you all know as Cirque Du Psychedelique!!!  And now, LET THE TRIP BEGIN!"

'Let the trip begin' was another cue, and Cyan began the next theme, which was a foreboding and slightly disturbing rumbling deep toned number.  After a moment, the rest of the band joined in, and Cyan intoned the songs only lyric:

"GorGONzoLA!!!  GorGONzoLA!!! (repeated many times over a frightening cello like synth sound and Jose's purposefully fake sounding drums).  

The audience audibly gasped as the spotlights popped on in the ring to Smitty's left, where it appeared three harpy-like women with snakes for hair were apparently in the beginning of a... mud wrestling bout?  

Computer Game (Theme from the Circus)

VOLUME II

It really was a circus.

"Really, it is." That's Joe speaking, or "Cyan" as he was called in the band. And during their shows – "Cyan, Magenta, and Black." (Every now and then some smartass who knew all about printing would ask where "Yellow" was, and Joe would answer "We ain't yellow."

"But it's a shitty-ass burned-out hippie circus with no animals."

"Lucky for them we need a gig," Harry chimed in. "Lucky for us too."

"Bad luck for us, we need a gig because everybody else thinks our cool synth sounds are just a gimmick and we ha-ha sound like a computer game."

You might say the Techno Future Circus with no animals ("no hurting them!") and a wealth of weird and talented humans was more than just burned-out hippies, that it would be part of a coming wave, but who can blame Joe here?

Where Joe, Harry, and José fit into this circus with their voice, bass, and drums – and Rolands all around – was, well, obvious. What good is a circus without music, and what good is a Techno Circus without the highest tech of 1978?

"Hey, Black. I mean, *Dragon*," Joe snarked, snapping José to attention. José was as Mexican-American as you'd think, and Joe was... uhh.

"Yeah, I'm Dragon. Yeah? So? What do you want?"

"I want you to NOT DROP YOUR DRUMSTICKS ON THE DRUMS during our "computer game" opening this time, OK?"

"...*OK*."

Five minutes later, they were miked up and playing the circus's opening theme.

The End

"Reality," the Council declared, "must be destroyed. It is the only solution."

The people protested.

"A new one," the Council sighed, "will be created."

Reality was destroyed, and a new reality was created.

END OF VOLUME I