What to do if you see a Clown: a rough guide to avoiding Joy.
Destroy this document after you have read and memorised its contents. If Euphoria learns how we're beating these things, it’s only going to get harder to do so.
How to survive a Clown encounter - a guide for those who want to avoid Joy.
This should never happen if you are careful. Make your commute as short as possible, memorise some cheesy stock happy-sounding phrases and remember to keep that smile plastered on your face.
However, mistakes do happen, and with some luck you might be able to regret this one later.
The easy option is to just accept your fate and become Joyful, but if you wish to fight for your mind, then follow the advice below.
Before anything - disregard any thoughts of evading or physically fighting the Clown, unless you can somehow withstand a ten thousand volt shock from the shock bolts all models are armed with - then by all means go for it.
The first step is to determine what model of Clown you are dealing with. There are currently two out on the streets that we have documented - the older Whimsy and the newer, but discontinued, Delight. The key way to tell the difference between them are their faces and the colours on their clothes - Whimsical have their red cheeks and noses painted on, while on Delight they are thin metal structures attached to the face. As for colours, a Whimsy will never be wearing green, and they stopped any blue outfits for the Delight models (it’s a ‘sad’ colour, right?)
If you think you are dealing with a Whimsy model, continue below. If it is a Delight, skip down the page. Quickly.
How to trick a Whimsy:
- Whimsy are older models of Clown, and their facial scanning software isn’t as advanced as it could be, so to convince them you’re happy it’s best to go for exaggerated body language and vocal expression. They’re slow to process language, too - so keep talking about how happy you are, what a wonderful world it is, ect. The maximum time for a Whimsy to spend analysing any single person is 200 seconds (just over three minutes), so keep the act up. It’s harder than you think to sing and dance for that long, so the ideal thing is to have a few cheerful songs memorised at all times, but if you’re really desperate you can always go for Happy Birthday.
- They see best when both eyes are focused on you try to keep to one side as much as possible without getting them to turn their head. Just be careful not to stray too far, as they might take this as an escape attempt.
- If their nose begins to flash - this means they have decided that you are unhappy. If you don’t want to become Joyful you must act very quickly - they will raise their right arms - aimed at your head. Again, don’t try to run, however tempting, as having your muscles spasming from a stun shock will seal your fate.
- When their arm is straight and against your forehead, you will hear one click (technically there’s two, but by the time the second one sounds you won’t be able to hear anything). This click is the mechanism for the stun weapon disengaging and the OSL (On-Street-Lobotomy) instrument being activated - for about a second here, the Clown is defenceless. Grab the head, and twist it as hard as you can in either direction.
- If all goes well, you will damage the main power cord that runs in a similar position on Clowns as the jugular vein does on humans, causing it to lose control of motor function. Note that if you tried this at any other time, the defence backup would have kicked in and caused a huge electric shock throughout the Clown’s entire body.
If it doesn’t work, then at least you won’t be sad about it.
If it did work, run. Very fast, and very far.
Don’t go home. It will have sent your name and address to Euphoria. Your only chance now is to find one of our safehouses (see below).
If you encounter a Delight:
Delights are different. They were supposed to be the replacement for the Whimsy, but shortly after being put into service it became clear that their programming doesn’t function correctly, and they have lost all connection to Euphoria, meaning they no longer receive orders.
They function on outdated and often corrupted protocols, meaning they are extremely unpredictable. We have an incomplete list of known behaviors.
- On occasion, their target observation protocol might go haywire, causing them to follow behind people extremely closely. If they do this to you, do not react, and encourage others not to either. They will remain around two feet behind you for a period of anywhere from an hour to several days. It is unknown why, but acknowledging their presence in any way when they do this makes it more likely for them to attack.
- The Delight was supposed to be able to cheer people up in more ways than just the OSL, and so they may sometimes tell jokes. Laugh. No matter how bad, or how odd, or how violent the joke.
- A Delight doesn’t always want you to be happy. Their programming is so unreliable that sometimes they think the target emotion is anger, or fear. Keep close watch of their eyes - if what they see matches what they think is their target, their eyes will be green. If not, they slowly turn grey. If the eyes completely turn grey, you’re in trouble.
- The easiest way to deal with Delights is not to encounter them. They are actively being recalled by Euphoria, and seem to somehow be aware of this and want to avoid it. Keeping to well lit and populated places lowers the risk of an encounter with them.
- Delights have no known physical weakness that can be exploited like the Whimsy, but they have a very odd software one. If you are being cornered by a Delight, tell them that “Fred will be home from the supermarket soon, so be sure to water the rabbit.” It makes them freeze up for nearly a minute. Quite who found this out, or how it works is a mystery - our best guess is some sort of debugging statement that was left in.
- Be cautious that if using the above method, you must run after causing them to freeze, since they will act with extreme aggression once recovered. And even though they can’t access Euphoria’s network, they will remember your face.
The safehouses:
- The password for our safehouses is “NRHVIB OLEVH XLNKAMB” - encrypted for our safety, as we believe Euphoria incapable of deciphering even simple ciphers. You’ll need the actual phrase to get in.
Good luck.