Repetition

by Alan Gallauresi

  Only here, thought Chandrasekhar. Peter to pay Paul. It might only be a matter of years before they’d pull them down and reuse them again, like the casing stones on the Pyramids.

  He strode up the steps and through the entrance whereupon he approached the busy table on his right, one of two flanking the echoing hallway. This one bore the sign “M-Z”. An attendant with perfect teeth and buoyant energy smiled at him and asked for his invitation. A poster child for New Atlantis living. She took the slip he proffered and swiped it on a graphite surface that had a pin on it. Thank you, Mr. …Merris, she said, and reached up to place the pin on his breast pocket.

  Mr. Merris had generously given 200,000 standards to the Atlantis Collection eight weeks ago. The introductory letter knighting him as a “Patron of Art” and inviting him to the gala unveiling had been sent to his office, an address immediately adjacent to a warehouse where Chandrasekhar had spent many of his waking hours in the last several months.

  In a past life, Chandrasekhar might have felt dissatisfied with this approach. He was a trained Acquisitions agent and a dozen courses of action had materialized in his head. But money was always the easiest, the safest, and he was beyond professional pride. Money he had plenty of … and at any rate it had given him the time to work on the rest without interruption.

  Be sure to keep that on so we know you belong, she winked. Also, it’ll light up when it’s your turn to serve, so make sure to keep an eye on it.

  Chandrasekhar repressed a moment of distaste as he headed toward the main gallery in the direction the attendant had pointed. As the invitation had said, this gala was a serving party. It was a simple concept where the wait-staff were replaced by guests. At various points in the evening, guests were called to take around a tray of hors d’oeuvres or pitchers of drinks. Elaborate versions sometimes had servers with individual mixers – club soda, vodka, cranberry juice – coming around and filling up your glass in pairs while guests searched for the rest of the components. The purpose was social lubrication, encouraging the stiff and shy to commune with outgoing. These types of parties always had the potential to be disjointed affairs, prone to being ruined by the careless and drunk, and extremely popular when attended by affluent youth. Chandrasekhar detested the idea as one that could only be formulated by those so removed from the reality of service labor as to enjoy emulating it.

  As he entered the wide atrium where the guests were congregating, his path was blocked by a blowsy woman with dancing eyes carrying a tray of champagne glasses filled with a blushing liquid. She flirted in his direction, placing a drink in his hand and inquiring his name.

  He told her a lie, drifting away. Thank you, he added perfunctorily.

  Chandrasekhar circled around the guests, listening intently. He stopped near a woman whose attention was being pulled in several directions at once. She was dressed elegantly from the calves up but her shoes were a bit worn and comfortable looking. On occasion, she would glance meaningfully at a passing staff member. She was working tonight, then. He found an opportune moment and slipped into her line of sight. He dropped a name, gaining her attention as he knew it would. The staffers were trained to watch for the donation whales and keep them tipsy and well-fed. After a cloying exchange of pleasantries, Chandrasekhar asked where their hostess might be. Oh – you mean Miss Anders? Don’t worry – you’ll be seated right at her table as one of our museum’s Noble Patrons later tonight. He looked slightly disappointed and indicated he had hoped to meet Miss Siri Anders to discuss some matters of art in private. The woman smiled conspiratorially, giving him a look that was sure most men hoped for an opportunity to meet Siri Anders in person.

  A moment later, Chandrasekhar walked away with a whispered secret in his ear and an eye out for a tonic. He discovered several being offered by an endlessly smiling man of voluminous stature, the pin on his chest having called him to active duty. Garcon! he called out, and the big man chuckled and threaded his way over. The man ceremoniously handed over a glass and inquired: Having a good time? Wonderful, said Chandrasekhar. Thank you, my friend, as he shuffled past the gentleman, offering him a comradely pat and spinning him in the direction of a Grecian bronze resting on a pedestal.

  Chandrasekhar slipped over to a refuse table near the wall, taking a swig from the drink while adroitly replacing the pin on his breast with the glowing one in his right palm. He spilled the spirits on his collar and proceeded to sop up the damp spot with a napkin, pulling up the corner of his now slightly untucked shirt. Finally, he set the glass on the table and thought of Siri, dressed in white. Why her? he wondered, for the thousandth time.

  She was a woman as unlike her father as possible, from everything he had found in his investigations. Her father, for all his eventual fame and fortune, had been a secretive figure, unknown before his great invention and then driven to seclusion by unwanted attention. His biographers were hazy on anything but the public details of his life, tending to portray him as a sexless, worried person when called upon for flavor but limited in verifiable fact to the basics: he was a man of uncertain Eastern descent from a immigrant family who had somehow self-funded the development of his invention. Sources flipped a coin on his career – half anointing him a genius philanthropist and the other half decrying him as a devilish fraud. For all the importance of his life to history, it was clear historians had little insight into his personal life.

  Siri, on the other hand, lived her life in a glaring hotspot. The sole similarity to her father was that they had both been catapulted from poor and anonymous to world famous through a single circumstance. From the moment her existence was alleged during the lengthy probate of Anders' will, she was made into public property. The media latched onto her story like she was a fairytale princess: an ugly orphan girl transformed into a beautiful heiress. As she grew and lost the presumed innocence of youth, she was treated with alternating adoration and scorn. Her image was transformed into a debauched party girl, and her behavior - propped up, inebriated and lewd -- was gossip for trade. She lived unguardedly, accepting the scrutiny of her life and speaking freely of her escapades. A magazine famously quoted her over losing her virginity: Well, you'd be wild too if you had to wait that many years to have sex.

  The height of attention had passed some years back as she became a legal adult and the last wrangling over Anders' will were resolved. She was now rich without par, and had recently appeared to take part in her father's interest in art. Even her public appearances had begun to wane in recent years; this occasion was Chandrasekhar's best opportunity and he was unsure of what to expect.

  He looked the still glowing pin on his coat and headed over to the bar area. A man in a plain white shirt gestured to a repper set on a white console, surrounded by a sea of champagne flutes. He placed an empty pitcher inside and spoke to the machine. Whiskey and soda, half and half. Chandrasekhar saw the glass pitcher fill with liquid and revised his opinion. The machine was a mixer, not a replicator, probably being fed from the console beneath it. Quicker and cheaper if you didn’t manufacture it out of whole cloth.

  He deftly trickled the drink into two glasses, exchanging the pitcher for a cocktail in each hand. His hand shook, spilling an ounce of liquid in the process. He paused, taking a long breath, then wandered over to a heavy velvet drape concealing the threshold to a hallway. He slipped through, clucking his tongue and feeling a muscle twitch in response.

  Chapter 4

  The Fake People | The Fake Heist | The Fake Art Appreciators

  Someone in the aisle is having trouble placing a bag into the compartment above Wald's row. The owner jimmies his carry-on into the space and says something in Wald's direction. Possibly to Wald, possibly not. Wald removes his earphones out of politeness and smiles at the man, unsure of whether they are in a conversation or not. The man sits down across the aisle, one row back, leaving the matter unresolved.

  This is the modern dilemma of earphones. They are the ultimate way of non-verbally communicating that you are min
ding your own business, yet people are put out that you are not listening, prepared to hear them speak without prior notice. If you were actually deaf, people would be tripping over themselves to apologize for letting their faces betray their annoyance, but no one is sympathetic when it's a voluntary condition, like a musician with tinnitus from rocking too loudly and the clap from fucking too hard.

  They’re fake, you know, whispers 18-B from behind Wald’s right ear. She is an oversized woman with oversized jewelry plastered onto every surface area of skin. Her husband, 18-C, has his neck craned into the aisle and is staring intently at 16-D’s assets. So are your diamond earrings, thinks Wald, and her pair looks better. 18-C mutters: if I can touch them, they’re real. That's a theory, not the tautology he thinks it is, and it pisses off his wife something royal.

  The basic premise is unverifiable, because 16-D is untouchable. The plane is only just filling up, passengers blundering into each other, searching for a rare empty spot for their carry-ons. She is languorously stretched back in her seat, eyes gently shut. Even Marquez’s sleeping beauty had to wait for take-off. This sylph is already lying in repose, the universe reclining in her hair – as the poet says. Her seat is all the way back. All the way back! thinks Wald. You’ve got to be kidding me, lady – they haven’t even read us our floatation cushion Miranda rights. How long do you think this is going to last? She is wearing a short black skirt and a loose silk blouse: semi-professional; dead sexy. That can’t be comfortable, can it? I couldn’t sleep in that, thinks Wald.

  He’s alone in his seating row. It won’t last – he knows the flight will be full. He glances up at the faces parading by. Are you the one? The faces troop by, or stop short. Alternately big, noisy and kid-saddled or small, sleepy and clutching a thick book. Are you the one? Half of them crowding into a police line-up for you to hesitantly and grudgingly identify; the other half, eligible bachelors you’re hoping to add to your dance card.

  So, it’s you? An energetic young man of indeterminate race raises his arm to point at the window seat and says Excuse me in perfect English. A shuffle begins as Wald steps out and the young man falls in, adjusting his property, clinking his seat belt together. When his movement quiets, Wald returns to 17-B and puts on his belt so there will be no buckle confusion when 17-C arrives. He looks up at the rest of the oncoming passengers. Are you the one?

  Looks like it’s going to be crowded, says 17-A. Yeah, responds Wald noncommittally. This is the moment when we decide if we’re going to spend the whole flight chatting about nothing, right? Wald glances left without making eye contact – what is he? He looks white, but a touch of something else? Indonesian? Indonesia represented an unknown continent for Wald, a wriggling circle of incomplete geographic and cultural knowledge. 17-A pulls out a car magazine and starts rapidly flipping through. His right elbow plays fast and loose with their supposedly shared armrest. Wald sighs.

  Excuse me. Miss? Excuse me, but your chair – can you lift it up? Someone is trying to get into the row across the aisle and 16-D is in the way. Her face doesn’t react; she tilts her head and leisurely reaches for the button, angling her body forward and closing her eyes before the chair clicks into position. Stephen Wald pegs her thought process as neither privileged nor careless but simply carefree. A reductive philosophy where the reclining state of one’s chair is irrelevant. Crazy.

  A petite middle-aged woman blocks his view and sits down next to him. His impression is fleeting, a shadow of red and black, but as she settles he notices some slight disfigurement on her face. He looks down, not wanting to stare. He angles his line of sight across her lap and into the aisle, taking in details out of the corner of his eye. She travels light -- no bags, just a purse and a music player. He steals another glance and sees a harelip on a plain face.

  17-A appears to have restless leg syndrome. 17-C’s narrow hips sit in the middle of the seat, her arms tucked in close. Wald lowers his forearm onto the right armrest and shifts his weight. Wald was going to need all the room he could reasonably appropriate.

  Ladies and gentlemen, please store your luggage quickly. Our flight today is full and we have limited time until take-off. The plane was at capacity. A few stragglers boarded. A mother and child stopped a few aisles up. Too close for Wald’s liking, but not as bad as it could be.

  17-C brushes Wald's arm with the sleeve of her deep crimson silk blouse as she reaches for her purse under the seat. The fabric is soft but heavy, almost like felt, and it steals along the length of his forearm for an unexpected extent -- less than a second, but still... Wald looks in her direction, wondering if it was an accident, or a play for the armrest space, or something else. She smiles out of one corner of her mouth and apologizes while digging through her purse. Sorry, just getting my carry-on. It's nearly book-reading time. She grabs several books from her bag and kicks it back under the seat. Her left arm stays well away from the armrest, and a half-smile stays on her face while she browses through her options.

  Wald wonders about her inflection. The woman had spoken oddly as if she was not native to America, without being definitely from anywhere else. Carry-on. Book-reading. There had been a strange emphasis on both words... not an accent, but her own peculiar inflection.

  Please turn off all electronic devices at this time, crackles through the loudspeakers over the clunk of the overhead compartments being shut. Wald savors his last few moments of solitude and shuts off his music player.

  The visual noise of boarding dies down and the scenery is replaced by the backs of chairs. Wald stares ahead at 16-D’s languid form. They’re very clearly real; it's obvious, even to layman. This is the thing about fake boobs: a thousand years from now they will be a defining characteristic of our society to caricaturists, like lip plates on African tribeswomen or cat-eye make-up on ancient Egyptians. They will draw us walking around, talking on mobile phones -- oversized off-center globes on our chests, men and women alike. Wald tugs at his pant legs where they have bunched up, and stares vaguely ahead at the flight attendant who is standing motionless in the aisle.

  … direct your attention to the front of the plane where we will be demonstrating safety procedures… exit doors…

  Stephen wonders why the attendants don't make over-exaggerated motions with their arms to the tempo of the pre-recorded safety video anymore. Now they just stand there, like supervisors looking over cubicle rows, or pit bosses.

  ... masks may not inflate… a flotation device…

  Hand me my phone, honey, says 18-B. Get it yourself, retorts 18-C.

  ###

  Who is the arbiter of what is real and what is fake? The most popular manufacturing technique in the world, MES replication, is built on so-called fakes. Each copy an industrial repper creates is a perfect clone of the original, built from scratch atom-by-atom -- a 3D printer working on nanoscale. A single design can be universally shared and universally stolen. The digital piracy problem of the early 21st century was just the tip of the iceberg compared to the modern crisis of object piracy, where no brand is safe from easy duplication.

  The history of early replication was an evolutionary one, born from additive construction devices where small amounts of single material types were deposited to build up layers. Eventual improvements to nozzle scale and increased variety of material tanks led to expectations that somewhere down the line – fifty, one-hundred years, maybe – commercial production via replicators on a large-scale might be possible, eventually finding its way into the home. Instead, a revolution occurred with the emergence of mass elemental sintering (MES) replication in the early 2020s. The nascent technology promised manufacturing with a precision and a magnitude unimagined, transforming the entire world.

  In the early 21st century, those dreams were far from reality. In 2025, the number of true MES reppers numbered in the hundreds, expensive beasts possessed by universities and research centers presumably working on projects more important than constructing more reppers. It was this presumption that preceded the indus
try’s first scandal and introduced the world to one of history’s greatest forgers, Santosh Banat.

  Banat’s early life was one of constant motion. He was born in 1972 to Nepalese expatriates who had temporarily settled in London. Santosh’s father, a textile dealer, managed to provide a moderate, if inconsistent, income for a time. When things went south, he and his wife packed up and left for greener pastures, dragging their son with them. Santosh grew up in a half-dozen cities across Europe – Brussels, Marseilles, Munich, Prague – each imparting their own impression on his young mind and contributing a share to his polyglot knowledge.