IGMS - Issue 18 Read online

  I walked closer.

  It was just a mass of colour; swirls and splatters that followed no shape, design or pattern. It was bright, vibrant, and full of energy; it wasn't bad -- in the style of Jackson Pollock -- but it was nothing new. It was derivative drivel.

  My professional persona took over.

  "Well, Mr. Violix," I chose my words carefully. "Your style is good, but it isn't really --"

  "Mr. Whistler, you must look at the painting a little longer, before deciding. I believe it will begin to resonate with you in a most unique way."

  It was his insistent tone that reminded me of the fact that Hei Long wanted me to give this guy a break -- no matter what. My opinion counted for nothing.

  I sighed and turned back to the picture.

  After a moment I noticed that there seemed to be structure within the apparently random image, a structure that I hadn't perceived before.

  I leaned nearer.

  It was almost as though the picture had re-organised itself on some level. The sensation of change grew as colours flickered and shifted before my eyes. Flashes, as though a light had pierced the canvas, made me blink.

  The effect pulled . . .

  . . . lying on my back in a cot, watching the yellow curtains flapping in the gentle morning breeze. The house was quiet, but outside, birds sung. The dawn light was that tinge of violet glimpsed only on rare summer mornings in northern countries.

  All around -- even within me -- I sensed the infinite possibilities of the universe poised to be unleashed. Anything could happen, but most definitely, something would.

  I grabbed my foot and began to chew on my toe. It was a moment of perfect happiness.

  "Turn back, Mr Whistler . . . b . . . back to me, back to the studio." A faint voice cried from downstairs.

  My father? I twisted in my cot and . . .

  . . . the world lurched as two realities meshed for a fraction of a second -- the way fighting dogs blur -- and then there was just the studio.

  I struggled to breathe and my heart pounded like a trip hammer.

  "What the -- what the hell was that? What did you do to me?"

  "I . . . it is a singular experience, isn't it. That particular painting has a light immersive quality; hence you could still hear my voice."

  "That wasn't what I asked."

  "It was the picture, Mr. Whistler. I am able to paint beyond the quantum-level, beyond quantum string end-points. I can spin through specific energies from other dimensions and unfold realities so accurately that echoes from the multi-verse permeate through, infusing my brushstrokes with the images, emotions, and s . . . senses that I wish to convey. An oil and impasto medium for a trans-dimensional experience, so to speak."

  I barely followed the explanation, but shook my head towards his shape beyond the spotlight. "It's impossible -- no man can paint . . . trans-dimensionally."

  Already, the validity of my own experience was in doubt.

  "So true, Mr. Whistler." There was a scraping sound and Violix shuffled out from the shadows into the light. "But then I am barely a man, anymore."

  I gasped.

  His body-shape was obviously humanoid, though swathed in a dark, floor-length robe. Black tubes ploughed in and out the anaemic skin of his chest and neck like flesh-eating worms.

  His head, except for a thin lower section of his right jaw, was encased in a flexible metal. Tiny sections flickered open, and small devices poked out and retreated away like tiny, nervous mammals scanning for predators.

  Optics and metal filaments of varying lengths jutted from his eye region like a nest of insect antenna. They swivelled, reacting to every movement I made.

  Instead of a left arm, Violix's had a set of metal tentacles that hung together by his side like a single arm. His other arm ended in a set of metal claws.

  Violix flexed the grippers spinning them outwards, into a set so fine, I barely saw the tip.

  "As you see, I have been modified somewhat skilfully, but ultimately, illegally. Banned nano colonies inhabit my body and brain. Alien technology has been inserted using illegal surgical techniques. The g . . . genius that did it has since died -- it was his finest work, he said. Others disagree. Alas, my very existence," Violix murmured, "is a crime."

  Alien artefacts? I stepped back -- the man was delusional.

  "Mr. Whistler, there is no need to be alarmed. I am not infectious, nor do I intend to harm you. Please -- I would like you to continue to review my work, just as you'd normally do."

  "Why have you done this too yourself?"

  I couldn't comprehend the level of self-mutilation this man had voluntarily heaped upon himself.

  Violix raised his claws near his face. A medium-sized set of shiny grippers slid out, clicking around a small metal knob near his jaw and then rotating it at high speed.

  A jet of pressurised gas hissed out. The gripper-hand reversed the direction of spin to close the valve.

  "Why Mr. W . . . Whistler? It is no s . . . simple vanity, I assure you." Violix chuckled, although the effect was more of a shudder as his body clanked and clattered. "But, I will answer your question. In a way, it is why you are here."

  He waved his gripper arm and spotlights brightened around the studio, illuminating ten, hanging canvases.

  "Within these canvases lie the reasons for my changes. Why I have ruined my b . . . body." He shuffled towards me, one of his legs dragging behind him. "Come see the next picture. You'll like it."

  The tentacle-arm reached towards me. The individual tentacles were kept tightly together, but the tip splayed into three finger-like sections.

  Instinctively, I twisted away from it.

  Violix paused and dropped the tentacle by his side.

  "F . . . forgive me. I forget how my appearance affects people."

  I felt strangely guilty. "I just wasn't expecting it."

  He nodded his metal head. "Of course not. This way." He pointed with his tentacles toward the next picture. It seemed the same as the previous one, although, if pushed, I would have said it had more red.

  Each individual brush stroke or splatter appeared finer. The whole picture had a much more powerful level of detail and that seemed to immediately make me want to . . .

  . . . touched my lips against hers. From the corner of my eye, I saw the sunlight flickering, as the long dry grass stems waved in the breeze.

  Valentina slipped her tongue into my mouth and wriggled under me. My heart felt like it would explode.

  It had been her idea to meet in the fields. She was in the year above me at school -- a year older at fifteen and had been the object of my unrequited desire for two years. But then I'd shot up and girls began to take an interest. I remembered Valentina saw me one day in town as she got out of her parents' car, looking every inch the perfect teenage model. She'd smiled as I walked past -- a slow smile, a special smile -- and I knew; she'd noticed me -- really noticed me.

  I could have kissed her forever -- the moment was the most beautiful I'd experienced -- but, then she pulled away and leaned forward, her soft cheek brushing against mine.

  "I love you, Viol," she whispered, her breath tickling my ear.

  I knew then, we would never, ever . . .

  . . . the world tore apart as something spun me into a strange room. A metal creature stood before me. Metal tentacles gripped my shoulders.

  "Who . . .? What? Damn you . . ." I shouted as I tried to thrust the creature away.

  "Mr. Whistler? D . . . do you remember me?" The creature's mouth was a flickering metal hole.

  "What . . .?"

  I stood there gasping as knowledge crashed into place, like a fledgling planet bombarded by asteroids.

  "Yes, I remember now." I glanced at the painting, suddenly fearful of its power.

  The girl had called me Viol.

  Violix?

  "Are these experiences from your life? Did you know Valentina?"

  "Yes, though the image you experience is filtered and interpreted by
your particular perceptions. That was the first time I kissed my wife, Valentina. We met as teenagers, and --"

  "Well, Mr. Violix, I can tell you that your pictures are entirely unique. I can guarantee --"

  He raised his tentacle arm. "But you must see them all, Mr. Whistler. You must understand why you are here. I insist."

  I shook my head. "I can't." My heart was still fluttering like a small bird's. "I'd be dead from exhaustion. It's far too powerful an experience."

  Violix nodded and glanced at the next picture. "When I paint these pictures, first I form the basic image with paint. Then, I delve beyond the quantum strata of the impasto -- I uncurl space and twist open reality itself -- and, as glimpses of other dimensions bleed through, I am drawn into each world. Some I select, some I refuse. I create a blend of the elements without being aware of it. I experience the events as though living them for the first time. All the time, I am unaware that my hand still paints upon the canvas." He tapped a small, flashing, bulge on his head. "If it weren't for these psychic stabilisers, I would be quite mad, for I forget my life here -- completely. I am hopelessly lost in the pictures. So, Mr. Whistler, I quite understand your difficulty." He held out his grippers; a set of small pincers clasped a pair of green-lensed spectacles. "These will reduce the immersion by . . ." His tentacles waved vaguely in the air for a moment. ". . . about fifty-six point four percent."

  I reached out tentatively and took hold of the edge of the spectacles. Violix snapped open his grippers with a click.

  They settled comfortably on my nose. Turning, with growing excitement, I looked into the next swirl of oil paint.

  The colours pooled and formed shapes again, but I felt removed, distant . . .

  ". . . so what do you have to say for yourself?" my father asked.

  He stood behind his heavy dragon-wood desk, his back to me, looking out his window at the distant storm clouds. Littered with scraps of paper and scruffy-looking novels, it looked nothing like the place to run a business empire from. But it was, and he did.

  "I worked hard this year. I did."

  "Your exam results say different. They say that no university will take you unless I build them a new library or something. Which I won't. I think you spent too much time with Valentina and not enough on your work."

  I looked at the ground. It was true.

  He continued. "Mmm. Well, I hope it was worth it. If you're not going to university, you can work your way up. They will expect you at the office on Monday morning. You may go."

  I left with my head bowed and . . .

  . . . turned back to the studio. It still made my stomach lurch as the one reality collapsed behind me and another bulged into being.

  "That was your father?"

  He nodded, his metal face unable to reveal any emotion, but his silence said it all. The pictures -- the experience, the emotional content of them -- wove me closer to Violix than I had possibly dreamed.

  I saw a person behind all the machinery.

  Violix lead me through the next few pictures. His marriage to Valentina, their deepening love.

  I leaned eagerly towards the next picture, but Violix's gripper-hand gently stopped me.

  "This one will h . . . hurt, Mr. Whistler." He removed his hand from my chest.

  . . . The pulse rifle's butt struck me a glancing blow across my cheek and everything dimmed.

  I was dazed, but able to re-focus after a moment. I saw the barrel of the rifle inches away from my right eye.

  "Move an inch and my pal will kill your wife while you watch."

  The man's face was covered in a layer of false skin. Close up he looked like a surgical disaster story, but over the low-res security holo, he'd looked like the janitor -- I'd let him in.

  "Viol!" Valentina screamed as they manhandled her past me and out to a skim-car pulsing hard outside.

  "Do what they say," I shouted. "Don't worry. I'll get you back."

  The guy with the pulse rifle leaned over and grabbed my collar, while pressing the barrel of the gun one-handed against my cheek.

  "If you want her back you'd better ask Daddy for a million sys-dollars or --"

  He laughed, the false skin of his face twisting into a grotesque parody of a smile, "-- the only thing you'll get is her heart with my knife through it. Get me?"

  I nodded.

  "Play straight with me and everything will be fine, boy. I promise."

  The butt of his rifle was a blur as it struck again . . .

  . . . I spun away as a gout of blood erupted from my nose.

  Violix's tentacles caught me before I fell. Blood dripped onto the floorboards in great drops. I lifted my head. A metal tentacle hovered near my face holding a tissue.

  "Thanks." I took the tissue and dabbed my bruised nose.

  "You don't need to see the other pictures, Mr. Whistler. I realise now that it would be a form of t . . . torture to inflict them all on you in such a short time."

  He turned away and limped across the creaking wooden floor towards part of the studio still in shade.

  "But --" I glanced at the picture and back to him. "What happened to her? I have to know."

  Violix paused midway across the studio.

  "Her fate was already decided." Violix half-turned. "I went to my father for the money. He said it was foolish to pay it, said that only thirty percent of victims were returned alive. Those that were had their minds ransacked by the security services, so those kidnappers were always caught. It was a strategy that effectively dissuaded the majority of kidnappers from keeping their word and returning victims alive."

  "So he wouldn't pay?" I prayed I was wrong.

  "No, he paid it in the end. But he suggested we hire a member of the Third-Eye Clan."

  "The Third-Eye Clan?"

  "An illegal group of intuition-enhanced operatives my father used for industrial espionage and the like. I turned him down. I thought he wanted to avoid paying the ransom -- I didn't believe him, and we argued. I trusted the kidnappers instead."

  I felt my eyes fill and I tried to blink the tears away. "But they didn't, did they?"

  "No. They killed her."

  Grief took away my breath and tears ran down my face. I'd known Valentina -- I'd spoken to her, loved her, and held her. I had memories of her stretching back for years -- memories that lived in me, like my own.

  I wiped away my tears.

  "After the payment had been made, I received her heart in a parcel. It was carefully connected to a micro-life support system. There was a note." Violix paused. "It read, 'As agreed, her heart in perfect condition.' I guess they thought it was a big joke."

  "What did you do?"

  "We hired a Third-Eye operative who found the kidnappers within twelve hours and killed them. We recovered her body and laid her to rest. Then I left. I'd trusted a snake -- a murderer. I hated myself."

  His words resonated terribly with me and I thought of the trust I placed in the serpentine Mr. Long. I knew I was being incredibly naive.

  Violix continued. "I left and wandered the world, fought in wars; gambled, but always searched."

  "What for? Redemption?" I felt his agony and guilt.

  "I suppose. I wanted her to never be forgotten. Then I met the creature who altered me -- living in the Southern Wastelands in a cave. He showed me how to immortalise her." He lifted his tentacles and snapped them together like a whip. "It was my way out."

  "So you painted the pictures?"

  "Yes, it's the story of her through my eyes -- my only way of telling it, I suppose." He turned and his optical sensors twitched as though he was peering first into one of my eyes, then into the other. "But I needed you. I told Mr. Long you could make me famous and then I could repay him. He got you to come to me."

  "Why?"

  "The pictures need to be shown -- you own the b . . . best gallery in Chola. Valentina will live in the hearts of all that see these paintings -- like she lives in you. They will be changed by knowing her. Of course," he laugh
ed, "you will need to manufacture more spectacles." He turned and limped to the darkness in the corner. A spotlight glowed into life, revealing a huge canvas leaning against the wall.

  "I have just a single picture to complete."

  "A final picture?"

  I walked towards him, my eye immediately drawn to it. The picture swirled with crimsons and oranges -- splatters of green. The effect of the twisting colours reminded me of the Gova's Sensate -- messier, but similar.

  "Please." He held out his grippers. "Come no further. It is too dangerous. This is my most powerful piece. Within it lies my death. It's taken me ten years and multiple s . . . surgeries to survive what I have thus far painted. Still, the neurological damage has been extensive. I have waited to paint the final few strokes -- and tonight I can. You must destroy this picture after I am dead." He pointed with a tentacle to a can of solvent on the floor.

  "You were the last piece of the jigsaw, Mr. Whistler."

  "You're not serious? You can't do this." I started forward.

  "Stop," he said. "It's not safe to be near me while I paint."

  From under his cloak, tentacles snaked out and grasped the edge of the canvas. His gripper hand extruded smoothly and a set of pincers picked up a fine brush, which he delicately dipped into some crimson paint from a palette on the floor.

  He turned and looked at me.

  "It is the right way for me to die. In this picture, I fight back when the k . . . kidnappers come; I defend her." He looked at the floor. "It's a fiction, of course. But it's the one I want to believe as I die."

  He turned back to the picture and beams erupted from his eyes. Metal flaps across his head opened and lasers folded out and traced flickering patterns across the surface of the picture. He began to move the brush, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. Energies swirled and coalesced; strange three-dimensional shapes spun into being. Shadows from other realities pushed through in rainbow-like nimbuses, bulging from the surface of the picture. The gripper arm blurred as it spun across the canvas.

  Then everything stopped, like a switch was turned off.

  Violix's tentacles retracted, the devices slipped away into his head, and for a few heartbeats he just stood there. Then he slowly toppled sideways in the silence.