Chapter 3 – Lightcraft
“You rely only on memory whenever you shape your pieces?”
“If you think about it Zane, I don’t even have that.”
Marlena keeps her eyes locked on the form her fingers have been shaping from the square of three-dimensional and blue holographic light humming before her face. She’s given me scant indication of what she thinks of my intrusion into the work studio she keeps aboard her father’s star yacht. If I hinder her creative process in any way, Marlena doesn’t so much as frown to warn me.
“You don’t even work up a sketch first? You don’t at least work from a photograph?”
Marlena finally pulls her hands out of the light and sighs. “Oh, the archives back on Earth overflow with photographs of all the lost creatures, but I don’t believe those pictures do me any good. They’re too dead. They’re all only ghosts, either digitized into a computer or pasted into an old scrapbook. I try to summon a little of the lost life back into my light sculptures, and I can only resurrect the extinct animals by using my imagination.”
“Have you succeeded in bringing any of the creatures back from the dead?”
“No,” Marlena answers after a pause. “I’m afraid I haven’t.”
Marlena Jackson has been the highest-selling artist on Earth for the last decade, ever since she introduced her first holographic sculpture of an arctic fox on her nineteenth birthday. What’s left on Earth remains an ugly sight, and the views of so much poverty and trash exhausts everyone’s vision, so that most folks don’t have the energy to go browsing through resell tents and salvage yards in search for a little color to hang on the walls. Earth hasn’t seen an art movement for generations, and so the odds of finding any artist at all anymore on our home planet have become awful slim.
Marlena is the exception. That last one percent of the one percent of the human population that still has any money at all can’t seem to buy enough of the projectors the shape and size of tea saucers that project Marlena’s light sculptures into the air. The wealthy engage in bidding wars and subterfuge to get their hands on the first editions of the projectors. It’s sometimes hard to notice with her father’s wealth looming over her head, but Marlena’s hands have shaped one heck of a fortune over the years she’s been attempting to do what she can to preserve at least the memory of so many creatures lost upon our planet.
The rest of us, whose ancestors long ago fell out of the wealthy and privileged class, content ourselves with buying the cheap, key-chain mirrors that hold a two-dimensional replica of Marlena’s most famous works. The shapes in those mirrors sometimes seem to stretch beyond the flat surface when one flashes them just right in the light, but everyone knows they’re cheap knock-offs compared to what those projectors afforded by the wealthy throw into the air.
“I own one of your pieces.”
Marlena smiles at me. “A replica mirror?”
I grin. “No. I own an honest-to-goodness projector.”
“Which one?”
“The Risen Phoenix.”
Marlena’s foot taps a button on the floor projector humming her light canvas, and the blue sculpture she’s been devoting herself to the last several hours vanishes in a wink, no doubt preserved on some hard drive, ready to return at Marlena’s request.
“I remember crafting that one. I wasn’t excited about putting it on the auction block. Did it not bring much?”
I chuckle. “You don’t think I could afford one on the salary I make chasing stories through the stars? I saved my credits for that projector.”
Marlena frowns. “Why did the phoenix so attract your attention.”
“It’s beautiful,” I shrug. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
That sparkle returns to Marlena’s eyes. I like the sparkle.
“Tell me, Zane, would you consider yourself a collector of beautiful things?”
“Sure. When I can afford them.”
That’s not entirely true. I’ve been a collector of beautiful things when I couldn’t afford them as well. I had no business purchasing the Risen Phoenix projector. When first Harold Higgins, and then the bank, refused to loan me the credits I required to cover my folly, I had to turn to the slumlord Sal Valentia to cover my ass for the cost of the projector. The terms of Sal’s loans may have been no steeper than those the banks offered, but Sal didn’t have any qualms about breaking fingers and legs whenever the first payment didn’t trickle in on time. I had to jump through the stars for five years with Sal’s thugs always one planet behind me until I finally earned the funds to cover the debt I acquired when I purchased that Risen Phoenix.
My sight was still laced with hallucinogens when I rose my hand at that auction selling Marlena’s projectors. I’d just returned from covering the artificial meteor showers launched above the Franklin moon complex orbiting Ark Levant, and my pockets refused to empty of that wonderful powder the monks of the Levant throw into their eyes each year during their ceremonies celebrating the fourth messiah. I’d fallen into a distracting addiction to that powder during the star-jumps back to Harold’s office, where I needed to renegotiate my terms with his electronic tabloid after some of his competitors started knocking at my door after my essays about the monks jettisoned to the top of the best-seller lists. Maybe Harold knew exactly what he was doing when he sent me to cover that auction offering Marlena Jackson’s latest, and greatest, holographic projectors. Perhaps he saw all that powder dancing in the back of my eyes, and perhaps he sent me to that auction knowing that I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to raise my hand when so many beautiful animals of light surrounded me, all of them shimmering so powerfully thanks to the hallucinations swirling in my eyes. If Harold hoped I would weaken my negotiation posture by overspending my hand, I fell right into his trap.
I must’ve been a sight at that auction, with my antique, red sunglasses hiding my burning eyes, with my antique, green-tinted dealer’s visor resting crookedly upon my forehead, dressed in my colorful, Tiki shirt though the occasion’s quiet etiquette demanded formal attire. I must’ve looked more parts alien than human to those wealthy stiffs whispering observations about Marlena’s light rabbits and glowing chipmunks. I can still hear the way they gasped when I so casually swept my hands through the projections of monkeys and canines displayed just in front of the auctioneer’s podium. I can still see how their faces cringed when I started dancing next to so much light.
Mixing work with pleasure has always been easy for me, and I settled into my seat after accepting the bidder number Harold’s office purchased for me. I didn’t have any problem concentrating to collect all the details that would make my story another popular spread for the tabloid. Harold wanted another number on the lifestyles of the last remaining characters of Earth’s rich and famous. The story would be a guaranteed smash with Marlena’s wonderful light creatures tossed into the mix. I’ve done a hundred such stories. The setting might change from the sunny tennis and golf country clubs that sprawl across the private planet of Washington Mount to the synthetic ski ranges of Alpine Eleven, but the characters remain the same men and women who keep planting their heads into the ground while old Earth decays all around them. I mix together a few weak-willed, triple-chinned men responsible for nothing more than inheriting fortunes from their distant ancestors with a few young and vapid mistresses hoodwinked into believing their bedroom tricks are going to earn them mansions on fresh planets. I throw in a few wolves with schemes to swindle the fortunes few in the suits know how to keep, and my story thrills the hard-luck masses.
But that auction event turned into a different story the moment that foxy lady dressed in a skirt shorter than anything a rocket stewardess would wear rolled that Risen Phoenix projector piece upon on the stage. The bird’s fiery red and orange plumage brilliantly burned in my eyes thanks to the influence of pills from the monks of the Ark Levant, and there was no way I wasn’t going to resist that offering. Participants nodded their bids to the mumbling auctioneer who droned th
at price higher and higher. It didn’t matter whether or not I understood the numbers that auctioneer kept shouting. All that mattered was how that Risen Phoenix kept twisting in my vision, how its wings flapped and fluttered, and how my drug-soaked mind kept imagining that bird leaping to the ceiling before falling into a pile of ash on the floor a moment before its cycle started all over again. I first raised my hand a moment before the auctioneer lowered his gavel, and I ignored everyone’s stunned face when I refused to stop bidding no matter how high the challengers tested the price.
Sal Valentia might’ve hunted me through the stars for the next five years, but I never regretted putting my neck out on the line for that Risen Phoenix. I got one hell of a story out of the auction, one that Harold still brags about at the annual tabloid conventions held on the planet Praxis.
“I take that bird wherever I go.”
Marlena smiles. “It must’ve seen all kinds of things by now. Do you have it with you now?”
“Of course.”
I take the projector disk out from a pocket in my Bermuda shorts as Marlena makes space in the center of the room for the light. I flip a switch hidden in the side of the device, and the room instantly fills with the Risen Phoenix’s plumage of bright red and orange. What must the world have looked like before asphalt and concrete covered the Earth? I’ve never thought of myself as a very sentimental person, but I always have an urge to weep whenever that Risen Phoenix leaps out of its projector like some kind of genie and fills the room with its feathers. It’s sickening to think how the world once supported such life, to think how my ancestors so cruelly kept choking mother nature’s throat until nothing but stinking humanity remained.
Marlena grins at her work. “Is the bird some kind of good luck charm?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Mainly, it just keeps me company. I watch it rise and fall from time to time to just keep me on my guard, to remind me about how lousy people really are, to remind me of all the things we’ve ruined during our millenniums.”
Marlena’s smile turns a little sad. “Oh, Zane, that phoenix bird never flew in any blue sky of old Earth.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Risen Phoenix is from my lineup of holographic creatures inspired by myth,” she answers. “I needed to turn somewhere for inspiration after I worked through all the photographs I could find of Earth’s old wildlife. I was desperate to find material. So the idea came to me to turn to the books my father stocked in his library, books of gods and heroes teeming with monsters and beasts. Those books were crowed with the stuff humanity used to dream about before anyone knew the first thing about faster-than-light engines and colonized planets. I shaped dragons, uniforms, kelpies, trolls and more monsters than you can count. The Risen Phoenix rose from those efforts. I’m thrilled the bird found such a great owner. It’s always been one of my favorites.”
“Do you expect to find a creature worth the effort of shaping into light on Tybalt?”
“I do. Don’t you? Don’t you think the mudders must’ve found something incredible if they couldn’t kill it?”
“I’m sure they found something.”
Marlena laughs. “Does Zane Thomas, the star-hopping journalist who’s not afraid of any story, suddenly worry about monsters? Don’t you think we would’ve found the monsters by now if any of them exist?”
“I worry we already have,” I respond. “I worry we’ve just not recognized it yet.”
Marlena stares at me. She doesn’t give me one of those measuring looks a woman might give a man when she’s trying to determine if there’s something attractive beneath all the stench and all the flaws. Her eyes are going deeper. She’s trying to guess what kind of man might be standing in my sneakers when things turn dangerous.
“Why are you chasing to Tybalt with my father and me? You must’ve done your research, read at least one of my father’s hunting memoirs. You must know that he always sees a thing through until the bitter end. You have to know that he won’t let any concern for your safety keep him from finding that old thrill of the hunt. He’s starved for it now after all these years.”
“That’s why it’s going to be an incredible story.”
“Are stories the only things that pull you into the stars?”
“There are other things.”
Marlena chuckles. “Like what?”
“Let me show you.”
I pull a plastic bag of powder out from another pocket in my shorts. Like that projector, I take that powder with me on every leap I take through the stars. My hands have a lot of practice when it comes pouring that pixie dust into my palm, and I don’t spill so much as a mote onto the floor.
Marlena arches an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
“Does anything about my reputation suggest that I’m not?”
Marlena takes a breath. “Sure, Zane, I’ve sneaked my fair share of gin cocktails back when I was an academy girl, but I’ve never done anything stronger than an alley vendor’s cigarette. What if something snaps in my mind? What if I toss that powder into my eyes and go blind?”
“Wow. That’s some kind of imagination for terrible impossibilities.”
“Your reputation precedes you, Zane.”
“I deserve that,” I respond. “But the monks of the Art Levant have crafted this. You can’t find safer drugs of higher quality anywhere else in the cosmos. The powder never gives too much, or too little. The monks are true masters. Join me and know why I would’ve sawed off my right arm if that would’ve been the price I needed to pay to get hold of that Risen Phoenix.”
I press some of the powder into Marlena’s hand before I toss my lot into my eyes. It stings for a second, but my eyes don’t roll into the back of my head, nor do I fall to the ground in convulsions. I smile when the warmth spreads from my heart into my fingers and toes, and I know it’s time for me to stare at the flaming shape of my cherished bird.
The Risen Phoenix doesn’t waste a second before leaping into its unending cycle of birth, death and resurrection. The bird would hardly move at all if it wasn’t for those monks of the Levant and their miracle powder shimmering upon my eyes. Wonderful as that Risen Phoenix appears without the pills, it’s nothing compared to what it becomes once my eyes start shining in hallucination. The holographic light jumps and swirls, turning and banking about the studio, and its slender neck reached back before silently screeching a plume of flame. I watch the phoenix catch fire before exploding into a mist of ash that falls to the floor, where a moment later a new phoenix rises to start the cycle all over again.
“What do you see, Zane?”
I only smile and nod towards that powder Marlena holds in her palm.
Curiosity remains one of humankind’s most powerful movers, no matter how many stars humanity charts within the heavens. Even though Marlena hesitates as she rolls that pill around in the palm of her hand, I know she’s going to toss that drug into her eyes and join me in attending the Risen Phoenix’s fabulous lightshow. I’m tuned in, and I’m turned on. I’ve never shared the full experience of my bird with anyone, and I suppose it’s because I’ve always been waiting for someone like Marlena Jackson with which to share it.
It doesn’t take long until the shine reaches Marlena’s eyes. Her dark eyes widen, and I know she watches the phoenix dance as I do. We’re holding hands a few minutes later. The clothes come off a few minutes after that, and it’s not long until Marlena and I are tossing along with that bird through that burning cycle of rebirth and death.
Marlena catches her breath to make an observation. “That phoenix is no less real than any of the other animals I’ve sculpted out of the light.”
I silence whatever words Marlena might still offer by pressing my lips to hers. Marlena’s right, and I don’t know if I want to cry out of sorrow or joy because of it.
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