[pause]
I wish there was a way to press a song onto the canvas. But how to demonstrate the rhythms and melodies and harmonies with just shape and color? I know the rudiments of reading music, whole notes, quarter notes, 4-4 time. Given a keyboard and someone to tell me where middle-C is, I could slowly, excruciatingly, grind out a tune. But to do the reverse, to take a tune and turn it into notes, into the written language of music? That is beyond me. And so, in addition to the music of the birds, I have lost all music.
I have lost all music, other than the music that remains stubbornly within my skull. I cannot paint it, cannot write it, cannot fashion it from my surroundings. To know our songs, you must find me and let me sing them to you. I will not sing into this message. To hear me, you must come to me.
Surely, you are close now.
[pause]
I shall make another sculpture. After I have collected all the birds I can find, after I have pressed their shape into the canvas—I will press them into the sky of my painting, and into the trees because that is where they lived—I will add to my substantial museum a sculpture made up of their bones, and feathers, and sharp hollow beaks. I must design a way to show the liquid of their eyes because the truth of the lidless sockets will be frightening. You should not be frightened of the birds. They were beautiful.
I will truly be the artist I dream if, in fashioning their eyes, I can do more than merely show liquid orbs, if I can recreate the eager and uneasy meaning they assigned me. The challenge of creating the avian eyes will provide me with purpose.
The sculptures in my museum are not to scale. I tell you this now because I do not believe I have mentioned it in any previous message—although perhaps I have (over these years I forget what I have told you and what I have merely meant to tell). Each sculpture has been crafted with the materials at hand. My bird will be only as big as I can make with all the bird corpses I can find. While the avian population has dwindled in recent months, without the larger predators and scavengers which left me so long ago, perhaps I can recover corpses from months past. If I find only seven or eight, my bird will be small. I hope to find hundreds, even thousands. I wish my bird to rival my squirrel. My squirrel stands loftily above the other sculptures, taller than I am twice again, perched on posterior legs made of hundreds of thousands of posterior legs, balanced on a tail made bushy with individual squirrel tails. I have already told you of my squirrel in an earlier message, but in my pride, I am telling you again. You will be stunned and impressed by my squirrel.
Stephen would have been impressed by my squirrel. And my bird—by the whole menagerie. As our zoologist he was always fascinated by animals. He could talk endlessly of recessive versus dominant traits, subspeciation, mating habits and generational lifespan variations. He did not much like to touch the living creatures he studied—I always had the impression he thought them unclean—but study them he did. That is why I believe Stephen would like my sculptures. They are neither living, nor dirty.
I suppose if I was being true to life they would be a little dirty. I will have to think about that.
[pause]
I miss Stephen. Despite his peculiarities, he loved me well, and was the last to leave me. For the Stephen sculpture, I will save the most beautifully formed, colorful feathers from the birds I collect. I will seek out feathers that have no tears in their vane, and that have the softest, fullest down at the base of the quill. I will search for gentle gradations of color that surpass any genetic necessity of survival. These I will weave into Stephen’s hair, or perhaps sew them into the curls of his beard. If I thought I could spare bird skulls or beaks, I would add those to the Stephen sculpture as well. Alas, I must wait and see how many corpses I find.
I will add decorations to the sculptures of Ray and Debra, my parents, as well. Perhaps if I pierce them with one fine long beak each, and save the feathers for Stephen, I can be thrifty with the materials for my sculpture, and quell the whispering that haunts me as a fiend when I feel I have slighted them. Ray and Debra deserve every honor I can give them. Although Stephen undertook to educate me, spent more time with me, and stayed with me the longest, Ray and Debra gave me the physical affection which so repulsed Stephen, and generously shared their allotted portion of food with me. In our limited, enclosed world, their protection of me served no function related to survival of the species. And yet, they protected me. In moments of detached scientific musing, I wonder if their nurturing was merely an instinctual tendency, formulaic and inescapable. I ought, in fairness and because of the unprovable nature of the question, give Ray and Debra the benefit of the doubt. Whatever the motivation, they cared for me.
Despite my desire to achieve an intellectual detachment that is compromised only in my art, the deaths of the other humans have tinctured my mind with a quiet bitterness that creeps upon me when I allow monotony to settle in. It is my sculptures and my canvas that revive me—my creation of something new in a closed environment which theoretically only recycles and recycles and recycles. Through my creations I become divine, and also serve the useful purpose of cataloging, depicting and representing the ruin I have survived. I am sometimes struck with the idea that you have no need of these representations, that you too, on the other side of the barrier, have birds and squirrels, leopards and crocodiles, deer. Our stock came from you. And yet.
[pause]
Enough for today. Tomorrow I will send another message, throw another crumb along the trail toward me. I picture my messages, capsules flowing away from my world, fanning out in the distance, or, perhaps, creating a mountain of messages that avalanches away intermittently. A Doppler line of words that inexorably points to me. I need only wait for the first of them to reach the shores of your awareness.
Except, sometimes I imagine that you are just outside the barrier, receiving my messages, one by one. Reading my thoughts and cataloging concepts. Sometimes I imagine that as I press myself against the cool, reflective barrier—and although I cannot see you—you stand on the other side watching me, studying me as Stephen once studied his animals, enjoying the academic study, but unwilling to touch me.
Are you there?
Are you there?
Davyne DeSye writes from a cozy spot nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains in beautiful Colorado, USA. She is an author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and romance stories. Her latest novel, Carapace, is due for release in June 2017. For more information, visit her website at www.davyne.com.
Anyone Can Ask About Enhancement
Terry Jackman
Art: Jackie Duckworth
They’d got to cuddling when Vita mentioned it, then frowned as if she wished she hadn’t. Pol laughed. “For Enhancement? Are you kidding? Me? You seen those people?”
The question was rhetorical of course cos everyone had seen Enhanced, if only at a distance. Never for long. They came, they did whatever weird thing they’d come for, always wearing darkened visors that disguised their thoughts and feelings, then they disappeared. Pol had never got too near but those who had—who’d talk about it—said they felt repulsed. Enhanced were an exclusive echelon within the Company. They left a chill behind them, and they altered people’s lives. And maybe they weren’t even human any longer?
That thought stopped his laughter. “They act like they’re our gods.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” She pushed away. “They get the best, a special section of the city, credit ratings we can’t even dream of, leave to travel.” Vita dropped her voice. “I heard they’ve even left the planet.”
“Yeah? You know a lot about them suddenly.”
“You hear stuff, in reception. And I read about it once.” Her tone was airy but her face looked… furtive?
His attention sharpened. “You applied!”
Oh, she denied it, several times, but when she left it was without a smile. Sadly he acknowledged it was often like that these days; she came in all warm and eager, but afterwards… she looked around as if she wondered why she’d come. She didn’t ask him up to her place any longer either.
His place wasn’t so bad, was it? Small, but neat; a bed just long enough to take his length, the usual wall for storage then the counter and the shower. Basic room allowance, but he kept it clean and tidy.
Now he’d better wash away the scent of sex before he went on-shift this evening.
Two long strides and he was in the shower. Pitted plascreen sealed in the mist of the recycled spray which once again was running tepid and uncertain. Twice this week supply had faltered. Ah well, they’d deal with it, when they chose to. He was pretty lucky really, rating a rare single unit in this good multilevel instead of rowdy quarters in a concentrated singles’ sector. Stepping out again he measured his ‘apartment’, seeing it as she might, the bare simplicity and basic fittings. Still half dressed, he sat down on the bed and faced the facts.
It wasn’t bad, but it would never be enough for Vita. She already rated half the area again than he did, being an ancillary where he was still a Tasker. Soon she’d pout and say they had no future, look for someone higher up the ladder.
A despairing voice inside his head protested, “But we’re good together, and it’s not one-sided, she keeps coming back.”
“But she won’t live with you.” The second, sneering voice poured acid. “Not in any Tasker allocation. For Vita it’ll be Exec or nothing.” And he couldn’t give her that, the pay, the perks, the status; didn’t matter if he took more risks or laboured extra shifts. Unless…
Her perfume lingered on the sheets. He breathed in deep and stared up at the sterile metal ceiling, heard the sighing in the air vents. She was all he’d ever wanted. He could live without more status, or possessions, but she seemed to need them. She felt… cheated. “She loves me, really, but she can’t accept I’m nothing special.”
