Kayla ran her hands across one of the tablecloths and popped a grape into her mouth. “It tastes completely real!”
Turning, Kayla came face-to-face with the aristocratic couple who had been the center of the miraculous dance.
“My dear,” the French officer said to the woman at his side, “may I introduce you to Kayla.”
How can he know my name?
The woman bowed, extending her gloved hand.
“Kayla, I’d like you to meet my love slave—” The woman jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, and the officer grunted. “I meant to say, my esteemed companion, the Duchess of Lyon.”
“It’s nice to make your acquaintance,” the duchess said, her light purple eyes mesmerizing.
Kayla took her hand and curtsied. “Likewise.”
“Such a polite girl,” the duchess said to Tem. “I was starting to think you didn’t like any of us females!”
The French officer shot Kayla a look of disapproval. His eyes—something about them seemed familiar.
The dashing officer bowed. “Nigel Ohgelthorp is the name.”
“Ohgelthorp?” Kayla’s eyes widened.
The duchess frowned at the dashing French officer. “I thought we agreed not to add anyone else to the invitation list without discussing it.”
“I didn’t invite either of them.”
Tem held Ohg’s gaze impassively, and the duchess looked back and forth between them, tiny bells attached to her blonde curls tinkling like a distress call.
“Duchess, you’re needed to prepare the auction,” someone called from across the room.
“A hostess’s work is never done!” She kissed Ohg and exited in a flurry of ruffles and perfume.
“I hope you’re not angry at us,” Kayla said.
“No need to pretend you care about my opinion,” Ohg said. “If you did, then you wouldn’t be here.” He glanced at Tem. “It seems that my advice is deemed less and less useful these days.”
Tem said nothing.
“But I suppose you would have found your way here eventually,” Ohg said to Kayla.
“Is the duchess your wife?” Kayla asked.
Ohg laughed. “Few practice the antiquated system of monogamy anymore. I’m but one of her lovers, and she is but one of mine. But we have been close for several centuries.”
No children, no marriage, no real bodies, and no limit to one’s imagination. For some, this might seem like paradise.
Ohg presented them both to World Council members, actors, musicians, and others whose distinction consisted mainly of their wealth.
“Of what use is money in a place like this?” Kayla asked.
“Two things have value in Ixtalia,” Tem explained. “Processing power and information, which form the basis of the economy.”
Ohg nodded. “Wealth is also a way of keeping score. In past eras, having a bathroom with gold-plated handles versus wood, or a house with more rooms than any one person could use, served a similar role.”
“If wealth is a meaningless status symbol,” Tem said, “why have you bothered becoming one of the wealthiest men in all of Ixtalia?”
“I enjoy competition,” Ohg said, “and there may come a time when processing power serves a purpose beyond mere status.”
A guru dressed in the robes of an Indian mystic cornered Kayla and insisted that Jesus accomplished his miracles because he understood electron spin and quantum mechanics. He offered to adjust her aura using the same insights so she could reach her true potential. A dozen devotees trailed him and vouched for his mystical prowess. When she demurred, he offered her pills that mimicked the mind-altering mushrooms Native Americans used in their sacred rituals.
“May I have your attention, please!” the duchess proclaimed, followed by an expectant hush.
“As you all know, The One, as he calls himself, is the most celebrated artist of our time. His influences range from Kierkegaard to John Lennon and Mother Teresa. The One’s exhibitions have broken all previous sales records, and the inclusion of a work by this greatest genius of our time is de rigueur for any serious collection.”
A woman next to Kayla fidgeted as if desperately needing a bathroom break. “Can you believe The One is going to be here in person? I think I would die and go to Heaven if he said something to me.”
The duchess flourished her manicured hands and stepped aside with a bow. “I give you—The One!”
A thin, androgynous youth with unkempt hair, a dirty T-shirt, torn blue jeans, and a pair of old tennis shoes, stepped into the circle of light, looking bored and contemptuous. Greasy strands of hair obscured his eyes as they scanned the audience. His upper lip curled in overt disdain. The audience applauded louder, and his scowl deepened.
When the duchess came forward and raised her hands for silence, the room hushed. Her yellow silken gown was adorned in multicolored floral sprays that gathered into cascading folds reminiscent of a flower. The One appeared even more mousy and unkempt in contrast.
“As you know,” the duchess said with breathless awe, “The One spends years on the conceptualization of each new piece he creates. Every auction house in Ixtalia competes for the privilege of selling one of his new masterworks.” She paused in her panegyric, allowing the drama to build. “So it is a rare honor for us to witness the auction of The One’s latest creation!”
As the rumpled genius stepped forward, the room fell silent. A knot of anticipation formed in Kayla’s stomach. With such limitless technologies at his command, what wonder would the greatest living artist of the age have produced?
“It has been four years since my last work,” The One said. “I spend most of my time contemplating the temporal derivatives of our existential nature in all its convoluted permutations, contradictions, and meaningless bullshit.”
The One paused and looked a challenge at the audience. “Ever since I was a teenager, I have been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of the zeitgeist. What starts as hope soon degenerates into a corrupted tragedy of greed and impoverished morality, leaving a sense of decadence and the urgency of a new synthesis.”
The audience stood transfixed at the flood of impenetrable art-speak, a few nodding agreement.
“This latest piece is meant as a statement on, and hopefully insight into, the vacuous hegemonic nature of our culture and individual, collective, and fugacious selves.”
The One removed something from his pocket and tossed it onto the ground with contempt. “The title of the piece is Just a Hunk of Carbon.” He spat on his creation and walked away from it as one might from a disgusting piece of trash.
The audience gasped, then gazed in worshipful awe—at an ordinary piece of coal.
“It’s brilliant!” the woman next to Kayla said as the duchess accompanied two Sims with white gloves, who carefully placed the hunk of black rock onto a silver platter for the guests to examine.
“A piece of coal?” Kayla said as the “masterpiece” floated past her.
“It is a statement most profound,” proclaimed the Indian Guru. “The artist is commenting on the essential nature of life itself, since coal is carbon and so is all of life. The title, ‘Just a Hunk of Carbon’ could apply to every human being.”
“I don’t think that’s what he’s saying at all,” someone else opined. “I think it is a statement on the art-world and a society that would pay a fortune for a hunk of worthless coal.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” said another man. “What he’s saying is that when Modern Art surrenders to ironically mocking itself, it accepts that all life is nihilism. It is the affirmation that life has no meaning and all work is useless. That is truly profound!”
“How can mocking one’s self and the people who buy your work be profound?” Kayla asked. “Why pay a fortune to be insulted?”
“Exactly!” said a voice behind her, and Kayla turned to find herself face-to-face with The One. At his side stood the duchess and a crowd of eager admirers desperate for the exchange of a single wo
rd with the genius.
“I’ve been a fan of yours forever!” declared the woman next to Kayla.
The One ignored her.
“What do you think of my newest piece?” he asked Kayla with a thick measure of condescension.
“To be honest, I don’t see how a hunk of coal can be considered art.”
The One smiled. “Exactly my point.”
Kayla frowned. “Your point is that it can’t be art?”
The guru nodded knowingly. “Which is exactly what makes it such a deeply profound artistic statement.”
“That makes no sense,” Kayla said.
People gazed at her as if she were a half-wit.
“My dear girl,” the duchess purred, “art transcends the object itself. It’s the concept that matters. The value of the materials of any work of art is negligible, after all. Would you say that the worth of a Monet is the cost of the fabric and ground-up pigments? The true value is what the artist is saying with the material.”
“I agree that art is more than its parts,” Kayla said, “but shouldn’t one be able to recognize a work of art without having it explained? If I found a Monet in a garbage dump I’d know it didn’t belong there, even if I didn’t know who did it. But I’d have no idea that this lump of coal was anything special at all.”
The One flicked a tangled strand of hair away from his eye. “Anything at all can be art with the proper intentionality and concept to elevate it beyond the mundane.”
“I thought art transcended words,” Kayla said. “Like an object of profound beauty that causes an emotional reaction in the viewer without needing an explanation.”
Laughter bubbled from the crowd.
“Beauty is too shallow a subject for art,” the duchess said. “Such ‘pretty pictures’ were left in the trash heap with the modern art revolution of the twentieth century.”
It seemed odd that someone who took such pains to make herself, her clothing, and her party so exquisitely beautiful would disdain its expression in art.
“I purposely avoid beauty in my work,” The One said. “Only artists interested in selling out for monetary gain pander in this way.”
“And yet you are the richest artist alive,” Ohg said, gaining an icy stare from the duchess.
The One waved his hand dismissively. “It is ironic that my disdain for money has showered me with so much of it, while those who sell their souls to the vacuous goddess of beauty in the pursuit of riches are unable to sell their works for a fraction of what my statements on the shallowness of all such pursuits command. In admitting that there exists no such thing as beauty, I am rewarded for exposing the deeper truth of the futility of all such relativistic concepts.”
“But if you don’t think beauty exists, how can you ‘purposely avoid it’?” Kayla asked. “Surely, this is itself a recognition of its existence.”
A tinge of red came to The One’s cheeks, and Ohg burst into laughter.
“Time to start the auction!” the duchess shouted, and the guests assembled like pilgrims offering their obeisance to the great artist. It seemed art had become a bizarre cult in this future, with the God of Art as mysterious and invisible as any religion.
The hunk of coal broke all records for a living artist, solidifying The One’s reputation as the greatest artist in Ixtalia, as well as the richest. When the blackened chunk was presented to the high bidder, The One shook her hand and winked. “You do realize you just paid me a king’s ransom for a computer simulation of a rock?”
The crowd laughed at his “joke,” and the proud collector displayed the prize to her admiring peers. The work itself seemed to serve as the entry fee of her membership into an elite club. A badge she displayed like any emperor’s crown or pope’s scepter.
Kayla shook her head in bemusement. But was this much different than paying money to a religion for an invisible product promised in an afterlife? Each required an elite priesthood to interpret sacred scripture for the follower. How else to discriminate between the profusion of lumps of coal and gods? Surely religion and conceptual art were half-siblings.
Tem rescued her from the crush of art enthusiasts and guided her to where Ohg conversed with a man wearing the rumpled clothing of a French revolutionary.
“My entire life has amounted to nothing,” the man said.
Ohg placed a hand on his shoulder. “Professor Blumenschein, your projects have made enormous strides in the understanding of Dark Energy, Quantum Theory, the origins of the Universe, and countless other fundamental breakthroughs!”
“What you call discoveries are nothing but rediscoveries of what Reinhold Watts and his AI creation solved hundreds of years before. He called his new life-form Eve, but she was so far above us intellectually that he might as well have called her God.”
The professor drained his glass and snatched another from a butler standing next to him. “Most of the technology that makes all this possible is unintelligible to our most brilliant scientists. We reproduce the quantum components inherited from Watts and Eve without knowing why or how they operate. We are like those living in the Middle Ages, who looked back to the genius of Rome and Greece with wonder and awe.”
“Has there been any progress in decoding AI Mathematics?” Tem asked.
Professor Blumenschein shook his head. “None. Eve recorded an extensive tutorial that explains it in detail, but no one has gotten past the first lecture. It’s like trying to teach an iguana algebra.”
“But you’re one of our greatest living scientists!” a guest exclaimed.
“And yet I will never grasp AI Mathematics. Most of my colleagues have given up trying and retreated into their own private fantasy world, or become V-Dreamers in order to forget their human inadequacies. It is depressing, indeed, knowing that what you’ve spent a hundred years trying, and failing, to understand, could be grasped in an instant by the lowliest Rogue.”
An awkward silence followed while the great scientist downed another drink and turned to Kayla. “You demonstrated excellent logic in taking that ridiculous charlatan of an artist down a notch. Have you any interest in science?”
“I’m fascinated by it,” Kayla said. “But I have to wonder if science itself is a new form of religion with its own priesthood, creation myth, and set of doctrines.”
“Absolutely not! Religions require faith, while science relies on observation and reason.” Professor Blumenschein disposed of another cocktail and swayed dangerously.
Were actual substances injected into his real body’s bloodstream to create the effect of inebriation, or in some other manner by his Mind-Link?
With unfortunate timing, the duchess approached their group. “I would like you to meet the most acclaimed of all Ixtalia’s empathic spiritualists, Sky Stargazer.” The duchess presented a woman with intense, oceanic eyes. Sky’s shaved head was swathed in a mist of shifting colors that resembled an Indian mystic’s turban. The rest of her naked body writhed with animated tattoos that danced across her form in mesmerizing patterns.
The duchess inclined her head to the unclothed spiritualist and turned back to the group. “Would anyone like to avail themselves of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have their future read, or speak to a deceased loved one, or—”
Professor Blumenschein snorted derisively. “A perfect example of the anti-intellectual, anti-rational woo-woo nonsense that has infected humanity. It’s as if the Enlightenment never occurred!”
“Professor!” the duchess exclaimed. “Show some respect for other people’s beliefs!”
“If I told you I was a potato, would you respect my belief or say I suffered from a mental illness?”
Ohg laughed. “Maybe you were a bad potato in a past life and have been reincarnated as a cynical scientist as punishment?”
The duchess reddened, but Sky waved her silent.
“It’s okay, Duchess,” Sky said with the air of a martyr stoically facing her execution. “I am used to persecution by the close-minded and feel only pity w
hen confronted with the purveyors of extremist forms of rationalism, for they know not the true enlightenment they deny themselves by their dogmatic adherence to the false God of Reason and Logic!”
The professor slurped down another drink. “H. L. Mencken said, ʻThe curse of man and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible!’ ”
Swirling tattoos pinwheeled on Sky Stargazer’s naked buttocks as she strutted away in a huff. A mob instantly formed around her as guests begged for reading of their auras, fortunes, and messages from the ghosts of their dead relatives.
Kayla spoke to Professor Blumenschein before the duchess could resume their argument. “Science must have made some strides in the hundreds of years since Ixtalia’s founding.”
“Deplorably little,” the professor said. “Einstein claimed that no information can move faster than the speed of light, and yet Eve invented the Heisenberg Communication system that is instantaneous. Only through AI mathematics can it be understood.”
The scientist spilled most of his drink and nearly fell. His personal Sim steadied him, but the professor shoved him aside. “The most ironic scientific program is SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. What’s the point in looking for intelligent alien life-forms when we can’t tolerate the existence of a superior intelligence that we have created ourselves right here on Earth!”
“What, exactly, are you saying?” the duchess asked.
“To be perfectly blunt—humans stand in the way of evolutionary progress!”
The duchess straightened with indignation. “Professor, one might mistake you for a traitor to your own kind.”
A hush spread through the gathering.
Professor Blumenschein swayed and glared at the angry faces surrounding him. He seemed on the verge of resuming his rant, when Ohg placed a cautionary hand on his shoulder. “We wouldn’t want the authorities thinking something like that about you, would we?”
The professor shrugged off Ohg’s hand. “Let them lock me up if I’m such a threat to their dystopian paradise.”
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