Marionettes, Inc 
	Bradbury mprov by Julad
	 
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	Not all mprovs turn out right.  This one... meh.
	 
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	Stand absolved behind your electric chair, dancing 
	Past the sound within the sound 
	Past the voice within the voice
	 
	Jeff Buckley-- New Year's Prayer
	 
	 
	 
	Lex sometimes wondered if everybody could hear his skeleton
	click-clacking as he moved.  To his own ears, he sounded like pieces of
	wood rattling against each other; dry, hollow sounds orchestrated by all
	the strings attached to him. A symphony of dead, polished timber and the
	wind that howled through it.
	 
	Clark sometimes wondered if he could speed up time by stopping
	altogether; if relativity as it applied to running really fast could
	also apply to hiding in the barn until his life was over.  He studied
	his physics textbook until he understood equal and opposite reactions,
	and then sat in the barn thinking about the meteor rocks seeding the
	town with death and madness, and resolved never to move again. Then,
	always, his father would knock on the railing and call for help with the
	harvester, or Chloe would be on the phone.  No matter how still he sat,
	time advanced on him, propelled him out into the day, the night, the
	town, the life he led.
	 
	Lex sometimes wondered where, in all his clicking, clacking pieces, he
	would find a piece that was warm, moist, that could harbour a pulse or
	move of its own volition. He wondered where the wondering was placed;
	what particular part of his dispossessed body he was haunting. He felt
	it, sometimes, in his left hand as held a foil, facing an opponent
	already off-balance by his backwards stance, but that was the hand that
	felt numb when it signed a paper or lifted a champagne flute in toast.
	 
	Clark sometimes wondered if it was his mind was as alien as his body. He
	felt normal, sometimes; a regular guy trapped in a foreign skin which
	didn't react to the world in any of the ways it was supposed to.  That
	was his "I'm human" feeling.  He felt normal sometimes, in a body that
	belonged to him; enjoying the slight pressure of a tractor engine
	resting on his palm, the resistance of the wind in a run to the Kansas
	border and back, the ticklish warmth of fire against his skin.  When his
	body was energised, enervated, exercised, that was his "I'm whole"
	feeling.
	 
	He jerked off in the loft to thoughts of Lana, moving fast, pushing his
	body to its limits, shuddered with guilt and shivered with pleasure. 
	When he came, he felt briefly human and united.  He wondered if he could
	ever feel like that with a human.  He wondered if jerking off was a
	violation of his vow to keep perfectly still all morning, but then his
	mother called out for him to start his deliveries, and motion was
	inevitable.
	 
	Lex wondered, sometimes, who Clark was, under the flawless skin and
	liquid eyes. Not a mutant, he was sure, although he wasn't sure where
	the part of him was that knew that. There was just a tone, a minor
	variation on a major key, a quality to the wind as it blew through his
	carved joints when Clark was around, which sang of something less and
	something more. There was a sense of himself as something motionless, a
	harp on a hill that sounded when Clark breezed gently past him. The
	sound was almost warm, almost moist.  He could almost feel where he was,
	when he felt his bones vibrating with it, but could never feel the
	muscles which would move his limbs in pursuit of the breeze.
	 
	Clark sometimes wondered if Lex knew all the secrets to the universe. 
	Lex stood in the barn, with the stillness which said he could stand
	there forever, and raised his eyes to the sky. 
	 
	"If you stand still long enough," he said, "you can see them moving." 
 
	"They're always moving," Clark replied. 
	 
	"Depends on your point of view," Lex said, and smiled.
	 
	Clark wondered about that, about time and space and orbits and gravity,
	and where in the universe his point of view really *was*.  As he stands,
	and thinks, the stars wheel more quickly across the sky.  Lex is
	motionless, but far from lifeless; subtract his fevered motion and he
	hums softly with patience and peace.
	 
	A phone rings; Lex leaves his eyes in the sky as he answers it.  "Sure,"
	he says.  "Of course.  Yes.  I'm sure you will be."  Clark tightens his
	grip on the windowframe and the stars slow to stationary.  "Clark, I'm
	sorry.  I need to go."
	 
	"Sure," Clark says, and walks him down to his car, stands there and
	watches the dust settle in the night.
	 
	"Clark!" his mother calls, through the kitchen window.  "Bed."
	 
	Lex wonders if he'll ever be able to move of his own volition.
	 
	Clark wonders if he'll ever be allowed to stay still.
	 
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	end