Chapter 8
The Sandwich of Doom
With victory won, Inaction Man refocused his eyes and fixed his attentions on a small bistro opposite Place Monge. It was doing a brisk trade. Smokers huddled on the terrace outside, sipping beer and clutching cigarettes, as they watched the world go by. Except, of course, for the part of the world directly in front of them, where a dishevelled man in his forties sat rocking a broken bicycle to and fro, mumbling something to himself about the fog of phones.
Inaction Man watched the people pass in front of the bistro and pitied them. He saw them every day, at five in the afternoon, or others like them. Moving from work to home, from one box to another, oblivious to the changing world around them.
A nearby delivery man opened a van door and our hero tried to warn him of the dangers.
“Van man, lay down your load and heed my warning. You are a lotus eater, a fog muncher. You’re wrapped up in repetition, a slave to the Status Quo Force, a Squiff vassal. You’re turning to stone. Free yourself of possessions. You don’t own them, they own you.”
“Get a job!” the man spat back, and quickly entered his van and locked it centrally, before speeding away.
Inaction Man shuddered to think that he too had once been such a man – a man imprisoned by a job, an apartment and all of trappings of the fog of routine – before he saw the truth.
More mundane matters rose to his attention – namely his hunger. He would need to eat something if he was to make it through the dark night ahead.
The main problem was that Inaction Man was not in possession of any of what mortals referred to as money – a means of exchange without which living in modern society was surprisingly difficult, even for superheroes. Inaction Man explained to Symbol that he had to waste a lot of valuable time trying to obtain money. He could not understand why the Elementals who had made him a superhero had not had the foresight to also create a superhero bank account for him.
He didn’t need to live lavishly, but he did have needs, just like everyone else. The need to eat, for example; the need for whiskey to keep his skin water tight and prevent his insides from seeping through to his outsides; and the need to drink methylated spirits to promote visions. But now he needed food.
Symbol tried to understand but had never really grasped the concept of food. Inaction Man left him beside the fountain and ordered him to meditate on the matter.
Troubled by the rumbling in his stomach, Inaction Man surveyed the square with the eyes of a hunter. He looked at the bistro again and noticed that a man had just been given a cheese sandwich. A sandwich such as this, he knew, would sate his appetite. However, experience had taught him that food missions such as this one are fraught with difficulties. People could be very reluctant to part with things, even when another's need was far greater than their own. They could even become violent if they perceived themselves to have been the victim of theft. It was, therefore, essential to explain to the giver that they were not being robbed, but rather contributing to a greater cause and becoming active participants in the battle of good against evil.
Inaction Man approached the fat man with the sandwich head on, crossing the road and walking up to him with his hand outstretched in a gesture of peace, which Inaction Man had also noted sometimes had the effect of encouraging people to donate cash to the cause.
The man looked away from Inaction Man and stared downwards, fixed on a pattern in the Formica table top. At first Inaction Man took this to be a sign of respect, as many cast their eyes downwards in his presence, but as he got nearer, he studied the sandwich man’s face more closely and realised that he was fearful. When he was close enough to smell the fear he saw that the man had ceased to breathe and was holding his hand in front of his nose. He tried to calm the mortal.
“Fear not, fat man. I may be a superhero, but I was once a mere mortal, like you are now. I mean you no harm and I grant you full permission in breathe in my presence. If you request it, I may even grant you the boon of a methane blessing.”
“What!”
“I shall come directly to the point, obese benefactor, for I can see you are a man who appreciates brevity. A man of few words and a man deeply in tune with this age of reason.”
“What are you on about, dipso?”
“I am Inaction Man – defender of the day. Last bastion against the amassing forces of the dark lords. I hereby charge you, in the name of all that's good and holy, to relinquish your sandwich unto me, for I have need of it.”
“Get your own bloody sandwich, you smelly bum! Now, f**k off, motherf**ker!”
Inaction Man, inflamed by this coarse language, felt himself losing his temper.
“Hold thy tongue, flabmeister and sandwich merchant. Inaction Man is no fornicator of incest. Why do you abuse me so? Release the baguette unto me, I say again, or you should feel the wrath of Inaction Man.”
“The rat of what?”
At this point, the baguette found itself in Inaction Man's hand, but he had not taken it. To take something in this way would have been to act, and to act was bad enough in itself, but to act in such a criminal way would have brought disrepute to the name of Inaction Man. A superhero may persuade someone to give, but he must never steal.
What actually happened was that the baguette had made its own way into Inaction Man's hand, obviously choosing Inaction Man over the fat man. In Inaction Man's experience, even so-called inanimate objects can in fact move, given sufficient cause. Further evidence of this was that the baguette then made its way down Inaction Man's trousers, attempting to cement the relationship between them. Half of the baguette stuck out over our hero’s belt, flaunting its infidelity to the fat man.
He did not take kindly to this rejection by his sandwich and deluded himself into believing that Inaction Man had stolen it. In a rage, he clenched his fist and punched Inaction Man on the nose, knocking him backwards. Inaction Man stumbled and fell into the gutter, where he lay dazed and confused. Bloodied but not broken, he realised that events had become very serious and that he would need to deploy all his powers of inaction.
Symbol shouted at Inaction Man and begged him to run for his life but he remained quite still in the gutter and focused not on the towering angry figure above him, but instead on the stars in the night sky above both of them. He saw a billion points of light, all dependent on him, all willing him to succeed and defeat the forces of the dark lords.
He held onto this thought as the fat man kicked him over and over again: in his face, in his ribs, in his stomach. He even vented his frustration on his erstwhile sandwich, and stamped it into mush, determined that if he could not have it, no-one would.
Inaction Man began to lose consciousness, pummelled as he was by the fat man – this breaker of bones, this settler of arguments, this teacher of lessons.
Symbol looked on aghast. The bicycle was desperate to intervene but was unable to. Crippled by its broken front wheel, its spokes stood on end as the brave Inaction Man held firm to his principles and refused to act.
Eventually the police arrived and pulled the fat man away. They bundled him into a police car, much to his annoyance. Inaction Man saw none of this, lost as he was in unconsciousness; contemplating the beauty of the heavens from within the confines of his own mind, entering that Zen state of complete inaction, complete inactivity.
He was placed on a stretcher and brought to an ambulance. The stretcher bearers winced at the smell coming from Inaction Man, who was convinced that all forms of bathing would reduce his superpowers and had not deigned to do so for over a year.
His mottled beard and matted grey hair were now soaked in blood, which was still streaming from his nose and flowing from his mouth, carrying his shattered teeth away from their only home. Under his clothes, purple patches marked his bruised body and covered his broken bones and cracked ribs.
As the ambulance pulled away, Symbol was left alone. Lost and lonely, silent near a fountain in Place Monge, she wept for Inaction Man and his
heroic struggles – not with the forces of evil, but with the evil of man.