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By Erik Ortlip
It had been a long time since the old man had last visited Edgar - too long.
The old man once said, "So you're an artist. Well, where's your divan? Every artist needs one." The next day the old man delivered one, a large dusty piece of furniture with red satin upholstery embroidered with gold thread. The black mahogany legs, intricately carved with serpentine oriental dragons, anchored the divan to the floor. Sometimes when he was lying on the divan, Edgar imagined that the dragons were moving. He could almost feel their sinuous bodies slithering beneath him.
Edgar looked around his studio, which really was the living room converted to a studio. He sat on a small three-legged stool in front of his latest canvas. Behind him were a half-dozen new paintings propped against the divan and a rough-hewn, handmade worktable blotched and spattered with paint. The precious jars of pigments stored in the worktable drawer were the results of barter or careful scavenging during his daily walks.
How long had it been since the old man was last here? He had never let Edgar's canvases pile up like this. Edgar's eyes wandered to the only other piece of furniture in the room, the wall-mounted Sensortron. The agent who sold Edgar the house had promised him a state-of-the-art Sensortron.
From where Edgar sat, it didn't look like much, just a flat monitor about two feet across, with a matte black frame that doubled as a mounting bracket. The Sensortron resembled an old television, but Edgar knew better. In school Edgar had learned how the Sensortron revolutionized modern-day society, just as the radio and the home computer had changed earlier cultures.
The pins in the Sensortron's interface plug glinted in the light from the corner lamp. Edgar touched the matching plug in his neck. Implanted at birth, the device allowed Edgar to plug into the Sensortron and experience a hyper-reality in which colors were more vibrant, scents richer, and sounds more voluminous than reality itself. A stream of binary information could become a flower, its sweet scent filling the air more powerfully than a garden bouquet ever could. A few lines of computer code could generate a soft breeze that would brush the skin or produce the electricity of a summer rainstorm. To unplug from the Sensortron was to return to a drab reality, the pathetic shadow of a brilliant world.
Since meeting the old man, Edgar had vowed never to use the Sensortron again. He didn't want to lose his grip on reality and to confuse this life, and his art, with the world of the Sensortron.
The old man also shunned the Sensortron. "I am an old man, and I have no need for such foolishness," he once said. Of course, he was fitted with an interface plug of his own, just like everyone else in 2224, but he refused to use it. "I am a man of the world interested in worldly pleasures," he would say.
Edgar first met the old man while walking home from work one day. Unlike most people, Edgar had never liked riding the trains and preferred being out in the weather and the sunshine. He'd seen very few people on his walks and had never talked to any of the people he did encounter.
The old man happened to be strolling along the same path. The old man spoke first. "Hello," he said in a strong, clear voice that startled Edgar.
The old man explained that he had taken this walk every day for 30 years. He talked about how he loved the smell of the leaves in autumn, winter's cool crisp air, and the new warmth of spring. Most of all, he enjoyed the heat of the mid-August sun that soaked through his skin and heated his bones. He said the summer sun had a brilliance that rivaled Ra the sun god himself.
"Who's Ra?" asked Edgar.
The old man only laughed. "What do they teach you in school these days? No, don't answer that. They didn't teach it to me, either. By the way, son, what's your name?"
"Edgar."
"Edgar, do you realize there was once a famous artist by the same name?"
"Artist?"
The old man laughed again. "I suppose they didn't teach you anything about art, either." Edgar shook his head.
"Art can be words or musical notes or colors on a canvas," the man said.
"They all have one thing in common, though. Art gets what is inside to there or there," the old man said, pointing first to his head and his heart and then to Edgar. "It's a wonderful thing."
From that day on, the old man walked Edgar home from work every day. He would tell Edgar about the ancient history he'd never learned in school, about the Egyptians and their amazing pyramids. The old man spoke of the ancient Greeks, their epics, and their political philosophies. Most importantly, they talked about art, which interested Edgar most of all.
"I have a surprise for you," the old man said one day on their daily walk. "Let's walk back to my house tonight, and I will show you."
It was the first time Edgar had ever been to the old man's house. He brought Edgar to an empty room at the rear of the house. The walls were bare except for the wall facing the doorway. Pinned to the wall was a picture of a basket of apples. The bottom edge of the picture was torn and ragged.
"This is what I wanted you to see," said the old man. "This picture belonged to my grandmother. She tore the page out of her calendar and gave it to me when I was a child."
It was the most incredible thing Edgar had ever seen.
When Edgar returned home, he took one of the thick pencils he used for drawing machine schematics at work and started drawing. The next day he packed up his sketches and brought them to show the old man.
"Well, Edgar," said the old man, "we may just make an artist out of you yet."
The whir and hum of the cleaning robot going about its duties woke Edgar from his reverie. It really had been too long since he'd seen the old man. Edgar got up and walked straight for his best painting, a picture of smokestacks that he was particularly fond of. He put the painting under his arm, left the house, and made his way into the night. The house sensed his departure, and the lights shut off.
As Edgar walked down the street, he noticed how much the houses resembled the heads of giant robots with glowing, staring eyes. The houses' gleaming polycarbonate exteriors would never deteriorate, their roofs would never need new shingles, and the houses would never lose power. Silent and dormant, the soulless houses waited for their occupants to awaken from their Sensortron-induced trance. No children ever listened to bedtime stories. No husband held his wife close and whispered, "I love you." No one curled up next to the fire to read the classics by Twain, Bradbury, or Hemingway. People came home and plugged into the Sensortron to have their individual fantasies.
After walking about a half-hour, Edgar arrived at the old man's house. He studied the small, weather-beaten house he had visited many times before, then stepped inside.
"Hello, is anyone here?" Edgar called. No one answered. Sensing his presence, the house turned on the entryway light. Edgar shielded his eyes. From ceiling to floor, his paintings covered the walls of the tiny entryway. Edgar's only patron, the old man had purchased all of Edgar's works, making his home a permanent gallery for the younger man's paintings.
Edgar paused to contemplate his work. From one canvas, a likeness of Edgar's kitchen robot stared intently, contemplating the next cooking disaster it would have to take care of. Another painting captured the eerie nighttime glow from the homes on Edgar's street. There were still-life paintings, studies of the old man, self-portraits, and paintings of robots.
Edgar moved deeper into the house, and the light followed him from room to room like a spotlight. Every room was filled with his works. Here, in his private gallery, he could imagine himself to be a success, congratulated by admirers and friends.
The next room was hung with variations on a single image, a still life of a basket of apples, a wine bottle, a white cloth, and a pile of dessert cakes. Pinned to the room's back wall was a page torn from an old laminated calendar, dated March 2113. The page bore a single image and the caption: "P. Cézanne (French, 1839-1906), The Basket of Apples, c. 1895."
As he had so many times before, Edgar paid homage to the eye and hand of a master. How did Cézanne get the red to be so brilliant, he wondered. Edgar had gone down to the junkyard the day before and had scraped some rust from an old machine. With the right binder, maybe that would do the trick. Edgar gave the Cézanne a final look and continued his search for his friend.
Entering the old man's room, Edgar found him lying on the bed. He looked like he was asleep, but when Edgar took a step closer he knew that the man was dead. The old man looked so small and frail.
He was good to me, Edgar thought, and I thank him - for everything.
The mechanical hiss of the kitchen robot startled Edgar. Sensing the presence of a visitor, the robot had prepared two cups of tea, one for the guest and one for the old man. The robot extended the tray and offered a cup to Edgar. With a sigh, Edgar instructed the robot to take the old man's body and notify the mortician.
The robot took the tray to the kitchen, came back to the room, and began to remove the old man's body. The only sound was the whining of the robot's servomotors as it lifted the body, as if it were mourning for his old master. Or perhaps the robot might have sensed its fate. After its useful parts had been salvaged, the robot would be melted down and molded into parts for new robots or machinery. Probably it would become a Sensortron.
Edgar watched in a melancholy silence until the robot left the room with the body. Then he remembered the painting he had brought with him, the one with the dark and somber smokestacks against a gray sky, their plumes of smoke trailing off into infinity. Near the foot of the old man's bed was the only wall section not already hung with Edgar's paintings. This empty space was just the right size, and a nail protruded from wall in just the right place.It was as if the old man had known all along that the painting was coming. Edgar hung the painting, stepped back and looked at it again, then turned and left the room.
Edgar retraced his steps through the house, viewing his paintings one by one for the last time. When he reached the still-life gallery, he stopped and carefully removed the calendar page from the wall. He hid the page under his jacket and made his way home, past the dead houses and their Sensortrons.
That night, lying on his divan, Edgar felt more alone than ever before. Usually a comfort, the studio only emphasized his loneliness. He took the calendar picture from inside his jacket and threw it on the floor near the divan in a gesture of despair and pain. The neural implant burned in his neck. It felt alive. He longed to forget the old man, his paintings, art, everything. To escape, to feel nothing...
Edgar touched the implant's warm metal with his icy fingers and glanced at the plug in the Sensortron. Something was moving. He sat up to take a closer look. Inside the plug, a small spider was busily spinning her web, intent on creating her miniature work of art. Edgar reached down and brushed the calendar page with his fingers.
She is right, Edgar thought. Leave the interface to spiders, insects - and drones. Edgar shivered as he pictured all the people plugged into their Sensortrons. He glanced once more at the tiny spider, rose to his feet, and walked to his worktable. He pulled open the drawer and took out his junkyard gleanings.
"Red-Rust," he said to the spider.
