March 4th, 2023
The first warning comes when I let myself relax in the elevator. Dropping back from the centre I try out an insouciant look: leaning against the far wall, examining the unscuffed mirror. As my back makes contact with the shuddering steel behind me I feel it. Shards of bass-thrum embed in my spine, grow around my skull, a premonition of the terrible music waiting for me above. Miserable proto-Sarkic noise-pop, dragged writhing from an ‘21 grave to haunt a ‘23 party.
Okay. So my host has bad taste. That’s just the job. People with good taste don’t hire artists; they make art. Only one chance at this, so focus on what matters:
In the reflection I’m wiry in an ill-fitting suit, festooned in chains and miscellaneous leather accoutrements, with overgenerous eyeliner and ironical side-swept hair bringing the fit together. Incongruous blocky features, skin alabaster to the point of translucence, pupils fixed and staring even as the fascia move under my skin, brows knotting and unknotting. I’m a kid from a scene that’s yet to be reborn. The joke will land with this crowd, I’m certain. I did a little market research beforehand, as they’d call it. There’s nobody who’d think I was being tacky sincerely. Right?
(But then again, they might see right through the winking self-deprecation, spear me through the heart with a thought, and then where will I be? If — )
I bounce urgently off the wall, one leg springing me back to the centre of the pointlessly spacious lift, and my eyes dart around, taking in the detail, trying to drown the doubt. I can’t afford to indulge my skittishness at this late hour.
Opulence and beauty have a parabolic relationship; on the far side of the valley of kitsch is the rising cliff-face of real elegance. Absurdly, that’s where the decor lands. Aside from the mirror on the east wall (redoubling the setting sun) every surface is covered in delicate trimmed-back gilding. Above me as I crane my neck are the twelvefold panels of a dome delicately enamelled with the lives of the apostles. As the lift rises past the mundane roof of the building, into the celestial floors, the figures take on a life of their own: laughing, praying, locked in bitter struggle.
I narrow my eyes.
It’s an attempt at metacommentary, winking at the viewer, presumed some novice, at how it draws attention with tawdry motion while the grace of the original artist fades into the background. God, it says, maybe we should install shortform video panels in all our galleries, and that’ll get the kids in. But this kind of moralising is hollow — they have made the work hideous, and not even interestingly hideous. This is the degree of infatuation with crude occult hackery I should have expected from my hosts, but still it disappoints. That’s the second bad sign.
A clear tone. The lambent far wall of the elevator slides open. Beyond is an unexpectedly narrow corridor, brightly lit by swooping crystal fixtures. To the right it ends abruptly, as if the architect simply walked away from the incomplete plans. The floor gives way to half a kilometre of whipping wind, and below it, spreadeagled, a vermillion world nearly bisected by a strip of slow whitecapped churn, where Lake Michigan rumbles against neo-gothic never-dead Chicago.
I take it in for a heartbeat, and then back off. I don’t want to be seen shying away, but heights have never agreed with me.
Down the left-hand path is a blessedly plain oak door, attended by a woman wearing a sleek Bardot and a perfectly measured smile. No, not a woman, by that glimmer at her neckline, which is not quite a jewel: a gynoid, probably the single most contemptible innovation I’ve ever heard of. I feel my mouth twitching into a sneer, but what if they see through her, and know my face? Instead I approach an image of meekness and nod at her with a curt quirk of my own lips. She — it? — fuck these people for doing this to me. The thing tilts its head one moment in what is surely an imitation of human curiosity, purposeless except in the sympathy it elicits, and asks:
“Lukas Havel? I hope the journey treated you well.”
They chartered a private craft for me, and still managed to make me late. They probably aren’t the types to lash out over a complaint, but why take the risk?
“Pretty good! But please, call me by my work name. We will be professionals here, yes?”
(Widening my nonchalant little smirk, playing up the eurojank for the audience.)
It swings the door open and nods once, flicking its eyes in a once-over across my body, eyebrows raised in appreciation. Choke on it, Anderson, you rat, I think, and step inside.
The first thing (the worst thing) is the music. I heard the bassline below the clouds, conducted unknowably through brass lines extending the whole length of the elevator, but the sound itself is contained to this room. A better word would be concentrated, because now that I’m finally exposed it roars over and into me, worse than ever.
I’d like to pen down mentally an assessment of the lounge’s aesthetic qualities, but in the blaring neon light, scintillating over two dozen sweaty bodies, it's impossible to make any real judgment. Instead, I make my way past wandering staff (who try to foist on me flutes of some obscure vintage) and head straight for the open bar, where the music is in a lull. It’s done up in a faux-speakeasy getup, all dark panelling and bowtied vendors. I’ve never scored a commission sober, so I snag a piquant vermouth negroni.
Not a moment too soon: As I move away from the bar someone claps me on the back with a throaty bark.
“Here’s the man! We really did muck up the scheduling, but, well, no use crying over spilled milk, am I right?”
I do not grimace and turn toward the unctuous voice of Harold “Harry” Freeman, Chief of Marketing for Anderson’s North American branch, recently hired after being caught up in the tertiary fallout of the infamous Foundation infilitration affair.
He would have been handsome when he was younger, but something has wilted, and his features droop waxen down his face. Greying hair has beaten a retreat from his temples and his head is crowned in a widow’s peak. Despite his withered muscles, his handshake is firm enough to crush my phalanges. I feel a heady flush, and then a stab of queasiness. If I piss this guy off enough, that's the last six months of networking wasted.
Thankfully, he seems ebullient as he pumps my wrist erratically up and down, arms emerging from a carefully-fit and carelessly-dyed Hawaiian affair. He gestures magnanimously to the two others who have followed him to the bar, forming a circle.
The first of them is a rather fetching lady in monochrome: white flats and palazzos, sable blouse, ivory jacket, jet sunglasses, etcetera. On any other day I would be stunned to be face-to-face with Beznash Bekele, egomantrix extraordinaire, one of whose shows set me on this path, but her accompaniment pins me to the spot with a glance.
Those foppish manners, the peach fuzz on his lips, is that a short bob with bangs over his forehead? After a certain point one sets fashions rather than serving them, I suppose. I don’t try to hide the tremor in my voice as I answer:
“I hope I didn’t miss too much. Thanks for keeping an eye out for me.”
I address my remark to the second man, much to Harry’s frowned displeasure — but so what? Only an idiot greets the Marshall heir second. — and give what I know must be a sickly smile.
Ms. Bekele laughs, high and clear, and says:
“They are not going to bite your head off, you know? And Harry has been talking you up all evening. If you are silent the rest of the night I am sure he will still be satisfied.”
(She has the infamous Italian accent.)
“I do try to keep abreast of movements in the art world, you know. Now, I’m no aficionado, certainly can’t say I have Bez’s knack for these things —” her expression dims a milliwatt, “— but I could hardly miss out on you, young man.”
“If we’re not wardens of culture, then we’re nothing.”
It’s Chrysophilus’ first contribution to the conversation, and he says it so drily that I can’t tell if he’s mocking me. It sounds like he’s quoting someone. He probably already hates my work, the insightless constructed lives, the brief forays into dadaist incoherence. Damn, damn, damn, I can save this.
Harry doesn’t catch the irony, or perhaps I’m delusional, because he barrels on.
“Precisely! That’s the insight that, well, that’s kept our firm afloat all these years. Anderson, the man has money, more money than God, but petty cash can’t buy refinement. People just can’t take it seriously, all that cyber-network mainframe crap. That’s why, Chris, you’re going to inherit a keystone of the whole, this whole hidden subculture, and Anderson will just be another silicon catamite in ten years.”
Chrysophilius nurses a tumbler of golden drink, and as he takes a sip I think I spy a grimace on that perfectly-framed face. Bekele manages his reproach for him (well-trained, I can’t help but think).
“Mr. Freeman, it is no shame to have a transactional interest in the arts, but you are hardly supposed to say it out loud.”
He throws up his hands in defeat and gives a conciliatory wink around the circle.
“Ah, you’ve got me. Still the marketing man, eh? I do apologise, Lukas, Antispace, whatever name you’d prefer, but these are the vulgar lines of questioning I exist to plumb. I get my hands dirty with all this low culture claptrap and the rest of the firm patronises the finer stuff in peace. But, please, enough about me.”
The mention of my pseudonym, which is probably the single most embarrassing aspect of my career, does not draw a wince from me, because I have been expecting it all evening. Instead I force a laugh alongside him.
“It’s my honour to be here. I cannot say that I expected the call, but of course for an opportunity to be among this company —”
“Oh, do not flatter me,” interjects Bekele, flicking one hand dismissively, “They’ve been singing my praises for actual years. Instead,” and she leans forward, stage-whispering, “Tell me what you think of the piece.”
I glance around wildly. Only one thing catches my eye: Bekele’s centerpiece, a humming cylinder of cerebral tissue, ten feet tall, flayed by a hundred electrodes, to which a man screaming in vulgate Latin is being dragged. The other partygoers strap him into a purposefully rickety plastic chair as his face flashes through terror and ecstasy, and then he gets up laughing. From him a captive mind has been extracted and returned to its glisteningly organic container: the spirit of Valerius Solanus, who learned the secret name of Rome, and was condemned to wander the Earth eternal. Guests line up to pull him from his fleshy cage and let him live in them for sixty seconds, feel his hate and desperation, then reel him back out. Bekele’s contemplation of how history inhabits us, they say.
“It’s distinctive,” I demur, not wanting to give her the tongue-lashing she deserves, “And it’s an excellent choice of subject; I mean, Christ, that Italian does not stop talking. I don’t even speak the language and I feel bad.”
I chuckle and even Chrysophilius joins in, polite hollow hahahahas, but unbelievably Harry has seen right through me.
“Well, Lukas has to be diplomatic, poor guy’s the ambassador of the new pseudo-identitarian wave, and I’m not and I don’t, so I’ll say he thinks it’s utter wank, if you’ll forgive the expression. I mean, you set this thing up, basically treading on his toes, artificial experiences and so on, and all while we want to commission his own work. It’s practically an insult, and anyone can see that though Bez has her vision, she just can’t achieve the same depth with a real spirit that our boy Havel can with his homunculi.”
Now: he’s not wrong. I am a student of the artificial psychosphere; I build sixty-second slices of a life for any passerby to inhabit. This resurrectionism is a pale shadow of my art. And I’m glad he’s confirmed he might want some work out of me. On the other had, what the fuck is he doing? I shoot him an expression of repressed horror, the kind of thing you have to use at public functions, but he’s not looking at either of us artsy types. He has eyes only for his blonde leaseholder leashholder, who blows him off with a single skewed eye-roll.
“You know, I’ve heard that little insight somewhere before,” he replies, “In, oh, was it the Deer College Odyssey? As original as ever, buddy. I see why Dad brought you in.”
His eyes flick either side, to me and Bekele, as he shows just a hint of teeth, and Harry’s own grin fades. That gaze holds some real spite (for who?) and Freeman quails. He looks away, to the bar, making some private illuminated sign that draws from the bartender two shots of girlish strawberry-scented vodka. Chrysophilius shakes his head. I want to take a jab myself, but —
“Really?” says Bekele, sparing me Harry’s pique.
“I’m too old, madame, to stick to manly fashions. And you, I insist,” he adds, passing me one saccharine sticky shotglass. I cast my eyes around but the other two seem unwilling to help me. Beznash raises her eyebrows (what are you waiting for, punk, inserts the grizzled voice I’ve assigned her internally) and Chrysophilius could be mistaken for amused, but there’s a tense aspect to him.
I throw back the cloying liquor, do not make a face, and set down the glass on the bartop.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Harry.” mutters Chrysophilius (perhaps he prefers Chris? I’ll think of him that way; a preemptive strike on our friendship), “Uppers. Or downers. Not both, for God’s sake. It is not that fucking hard.” Like he wants to be angry, but can’t quite summon it up. Something stuck in his craw?
Now that I properly look at Freeman, though, there really is something electric to him, his breath and body thrillingly warm even as his skin dessicates, manic in his movements. I’m not a biologist, but anartists love their allegory, and I’m reminded of the sight of a rat twitching galvanically, reduced to a facsimile of life by an ampere.
“Now!” he cries, inordinately loud, “What do you think of the music? I think that’s real Old Slavonic; Skitter had a spectral monk consulted on the proper forms.”
‘Skitter’ spreads his arms, feigning modesty (his type, obviously, cannot mean it).
“We both know I’m not a musician. I just gave my girl a little shove; the rest is her work, which means it’s God’s.”
(By his expression he thinks he has said something wise.)
“But I was never a music guy. Neither are you, of course, but there is a certain je ne sais quoi to having a real artiste’s view. Go on.”
Why the fuck has he started spouting French? Does he think I’m French? Is it some kind of bit? Bekele by his side clearly wants to make some acid remark, but Chris has gotten into the swing of things, now.
“Freeman, as he says, is a salesman. He thinks we pay artists so we can lure in more customers with some pretty pictures. It’s hardly his fault, but what we know — and Bez, here, of course — is that it’s backwards; all my money’s good for nothing if it isn’t good for art. What is the point of power if I can’t build a little beauty, hm? That’s all I really want to be able to say at the end, that I left this world prettier than I found it. Not that I hit some real good KPIs!”
(He is pulling this snobbery from somewhere outside himself: it’s not in his nature to look down on good workers.)
“Did it work out, you think? Good piece?”
He probably does not realise that his rant sounds positively Hitlerian, and I definitely won’t be the one to alert him. Now, how to massage his ego? I squint a little and listen in to the squealing riffs, the uninterestingly disharmonious spikes of signal, and what sound like neofolk lyrics that got horribly lost.
“Awful,” I think, and say, because I really shouldn’t have agreed to that shot. I have to go on, because commitment is the only way to save this.
“This is the most unmemorable thing I’ve heard since I left the Vienna underground, and for them you could say they really were experimental, but this is imitation of indie, the worst kind of industry plant bullshit. I have no idea what you were thinking, and I would ask for a refund.”
God, I got too into it. I can hear the carefully neutral midwestern American accent fall away, that Czech snarl leaking back into my voice. And as expected, when I look at Chris’ face, there’s the disappointment, the irritation, even (though it’s fathoms deep, this I know better than anything else) the hurt. But though he’s dropped the shit-eating smirk I can’t help but feel he’s also happier than ever.
I drift through the next hours semi-conscious, still not past the instant of terror where I thought I’d wasted my chance on a cheap shot at his house musician. At some point we take a seat in some nook; Chris (who I cannot bring myself to think of as ‘Skitter’) buys us a round of nutty amaretto, though he doesn’t partake, and Bekele some shockingly smaragdine sours. Other drinks diffuse between the three of us as he watches on, grimly sober. The conversation drifts away from me, as does Freeman, off to talk business with his ‘lads’ elsewhere. This is strictly still an industry meeting; the art is as always a showpiece first and foremost (the artists, too).
A few mumbles carry me through the banal conversation we manage, and I let my attention wander as Chris halfheartedly tries to keep up with Bekele’s talk on the contesting ontologies of historiography. She’s a striking figure, though she often struggles to get out from under the shadow of her name. That melodic Latian accent is the product of a distinguished family history of which she prefers not to speak. She’s not the type whose presence can be bought for any sane price, which means that improbably Chrissy has something she actually wants. She’s a legendary laconic, having memorably excised her own last memory of her half-brother at a Glaswegian exhibition, so that means he has hooks in her, real barbed things gleaming with a promise, waiting for me too, if only I take the bait.
And then there’s the junior Marshall. He cuts an indistinct figure: skim off the designer overwear, fix that hair, and he’d blend seamlessly into any — every — crowd on the planet. (Isn’t that a thought, pale skin and bone glimmering at the centre of some town square? But no, so lithe, not enough weight behind the tread, and altogether still too boyish, not my type.) He scarfs down the scant hors d’ouevres, slivers of steak tartare still bloody, carmine running down the curve of his neck. He chews methodically, with a distant expression, like this is his day job. The lines of his face are distant as he looks, oh Christ he’s looking right into my eyes, forcing a smile, bits of bovine filigree stuck in his teeth.
He stands upright to my side of the table we’re situated at and throws his arms about my shoulders in a stiff embrace.
“Lukas, Luke, you really need to be more aggressive. You let that old scrote run circles around you. You need to be tapped in on this, marketplace attitude, on the balls of your feet.”
He grabs my shoulders, and I recede deeper into the plush of my seating, stickying the genuine leather with my sweat. His voice isn’t slurring at all.
“When you’re rocking with the punches, then you’ve got the momentum. Mo-men-tum. Be the man, my man.”
Bekele is sat primly on the third seat, legs neatly folded, sipping her schnapps. It’s not fair that she handles her drink better than either of us, but what can you do? She looks distinctly disdainful of the whole affair, and I can’t pass any further judgment because now Skitter’s face is right up in mine, breath rank against me, and I’m not going to kiss him because he’s definitely not doing that on purpose, the legendary bachelor. (But what if—)
“Look at me.”
One finger crackles between us.
“You don’t like this.”
He twirls on one leg, and looks back over his shoulder at me.
“Why don’t you like this? You’re going to get a commission out of this, you know.”
Because apparently I pissed all sanity out to make room for the third flavoured shot, calling up an old college memory for someone in the C-suite out in the crowd. I spent the entire trip here worrying about my financials and lost them the first wineglass someone passed me. I really should be down for this.
He pivots to face me again, keeping his distance this time, and juts his chin out at me.
“Speak up. I didn’t bring you here to mope.”
(This to Bekele, still sour on her own:)
“I should have seen this coming. Invite in my own Diogenes and what does he do? Sits in his barrel all day! I need a better class of cynic.”
He rounds away from me, on me, again and again. An insight: Foucault’s pendulum is unvarying; when it seems to move it only tracks the motion of the Earth.
“Come on! You had an opinion just now. Do you know how many new peoples’ opinions I get to hear in a year? Here's a hint, it’s in the single digits. Just this fucking circle, over and over —”
He cuts off to take a breath, pressing down some memory. Something he just said finally clicks into a part of my brain gummed up by the acetate haze.
“You didn’t invite me anywhere, Chris.”
He stops, stunned, as do I. This backtalk will get me literally killed. I think I might have caught him offguard with the insight, oh God, what happens now?
He makes a moue of displeasure.
“Skitter, please. Nobody calls me Chris. I’m not a teenage model, for fuck’s sake.”
Ah. But then what —
Bekele polishes off her last mouthful and stands up to join Chris, (who is Skitter), leaving me feeling terminally surrounded. She shoots him a scowl.
“I did say you would slip very fast, if you recall.”
“Fuck off, Bez, I’m not done yet —”
She ignores whatever he’s about to say and strides over to me, hinging me up at the knees until I’m vertical.
“What he wants to say, Lukas, is that when he heard of you in the Foundation Anart Almanac he was so impressed that he set up this whole pantomime to reel you in. The overbearing executive and all. Because he thought it would be too humiliating to just ask.”
“Bez—”
Chris motions as if he’s going to throw his glass, but she’s still as a mirror.
“But a charade revealed is worth nothing, so maybe now he will get up from behind that stage and talk to you.”
With one finger she pokes a silently fuming Chris — Skitter — right in the brow, sending him crosseyed, and then adds:
“Oh, and he asked me to help him out because he does not quite grasp that you think of me as a dilettante.”
The man is for once lost for words, as she strides off into the ember-gathering, dying with the sunset. Outside it’s pitch black, and dimming fast, plunging into an abyssal dark previously known only to squirming hadean things. I need to get out of this place, which now seems nothing more than an oversized coffin. But as I leave —
“We aren’t done.”
There’s that voice of command, the molten lead pouring down my spine, casting my limbs solid. The Marshall specialty. I take what I hoped would be one last look at him.
He reaches out an affable hand. It’s unmistakeably human. The first glimpse of anything like vulnerability. A frisson rolls over my skin, and I try not to recoil. Here is the miracle. Here is the killing-time.
“You came here wanting me to ask you for some work? Let’s hammer out some terms.”
He seats me back in the central lobby, on stools by a little round table only feet from the peristaltic cranial mass that holds the iconoclast tribune. At this hour the night has seeped into the room and rendered the guests immobile. The only movement is from corners too obscure for it to notice, where the secrecy of dyads and triads is undermined by their furtive giggling. By the entrance Freeman is spacing out on some kind of psychedelic. He opens.
“Five million, and six months. I want the memories of a week worth living, wholesome working-class joy, something for Amos to enjoy. He loves that shit. You know the man.”
(He doesn’t feel the need to verify the latter; his confidence is well-placed.)
He forgets his stool has no back and nearly leans far enough to fall, and hisses as he catches himself. His eyes do not meet mine.
“This has to be good. Bez is solid, she knows her stuff, but she’s not got the spark. I never understood why Dad felt that way, but if you agree then he’s right. And he speaks well of you. Vindicate his faith.”
Bekele has wisely evacuated the suite entirely, leaving me alone with my first glimpse of his unvarnished desire, the thing that burns men to touch.
Time to play dice with God. I’d curse that I’m so drunk, but really, how else can one shore up the arrogance for it? I think I know what he needs, if not what he wants.
“No.”
A microscopic sneer flickers across his mouth.
“No? I can do ten, whatever, don’t quibble over pocket change.”
“The pay is fine. You don’t have any idea what you actually want out of me. You’re just gesturing at a portrait of the world, an ideal you want me to bridge to. I can’t make your father respect you by following your genre conventions. I need a free hand.”
“You know, you’re the very first person to ever try the daddy issues line on me. I’ve never heard that one before. You’ve just pierced my fucking heart, great job. You think you know better what he’ll like than me?”
He can’t manage the deadpan he’s going for. Instead the line comes out as if he really is about to cry. That contempt can’t be faked, though.
“I’m not trying to get under your skin; I value mine. Yes, whatever, not my business if you get into shouting matches with daddy. But I can’t use your ideas as a starting point. If your father respects me, trust in his taste.”
He narrows his eyes. That line doesn’t work on him, but he prefers that it seems as if it did. Odd.
I stroke my chin as if thinking. He probably doesn’t grasp that mine is a nonsensical complaint. Of course I can work with direction, what use would I be otherwise? What he’ll see is a man with principles, a pillar to anchor himself by.
“Hm,” I add, before he can make a cackhanded attempt at a ‘solution’, “You said you forced Harold — whatever — to play the fool. Do you really have the Anderson C-suite so whipped?”
There’s an ungentlemanly snort as he turns to look at the sprawled form of the salesman on the far side of the room.
“If all of Anderson were so cooperative there wouldn’t be an Anderson; there’d be a Marshall robotics line and a screaming shrunken head labelled ‘Vincent’.”
His brows furrow parodically:
“But there are certain downsides to being overleveraged when you’re on the soul options market.”
A devilish little grin, and he taps the side of his nose. His hands whirl gracile and slow. I’m so caught up in the delicate weave of his fingertips I hardly notice when Freeman twitches in his sleep.
I do notice when he sits straight up, yells in animal terror, and frantically scans the room for three full seconds before falling back dead asleep.
“Word of advice: never get assigned a put, and especially never get assigned on your anima.”
There’s a light in his eyes. I won’t have nightmares about this, but I’ll think about it as I’m about to go to sleep and shudder.
“Very classy,” I drawl, “Is that how you keep Bekele on side, too?”
“Oh, her I just keep around because she’s a bitch.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, but he just shrugs.
“You can imagine how much pushback most people are willing to give me. I need something to keep me earthed. The stratosphere is pretty, but you’ll drown in it as surely as any ocean.”
Not sure what got him so eloquent, but I examine the back of my hand, projecting indifference so transparently he must see right through to the hope at the heart of me.
“Well, details aside, I do think your proposal has some merits. We can discuss trivialities later, but for now I really do need to get to sleep.”
He nods slowly, fists clenching and unclenching.
“Is it that last detail that brought you around? Freeman, the agent of history, now inhabited in turn? And my father said I didn’t have the soul of a visionary.”
I can’t help it; I burst out laughing. My sides ache, I hunch over, tears briefly cloud my eyes. When I look up past the slow eye-roll and the feigned amusement, I see it again: a real and sustained injury. How strange, that he should care what I think. But it’s the crack I’ll need to pry open to win a lifetime position. So:
The shakes die down, and I stand, ready to descend icarine from the celestial suite back to terra firma, seedy ever-dead Chicago, and my comfortably drab hotel.
“You have not,” I make very clear, “Got a visionary bone in your body, not yet. But there is an ember in you, and if we tend it well, it might be a fire. For now…”
I fluff up my jacket to give it that perfect arhythm, and turn. Here's what he wants to hear.
“Leave the art to me.”