57
With all of its expensive furniture and prestigious paintings, Garth’s new large house loomed around him. Every light was on in every room, but the world still felt too big and too dark.
Musing, he stood in the carpeted corridor leading to the master suite, thinking of the hardcopy books in the library, the fancy foods in the kitchen, and the pseudo-antique furnishings. Every item sent a proud signal of his success, but Garth no longer felt it inside.
He wanted to do a project bigger and better, more spectacular, more meaningful—yet the canvas of his imagination remained blank. He needed inspiration, not this moody creative block. He began to realize why a failed aspiring artist like Mordecai Ob might have turned to Rush-X. . . .
That thought made his mind stray to Eduard, still lost and on the run, and Garth felt the gloom even heavier around him.
Though it was late at night, he smelled fresh coffee brewing downstairs, and he smiled wistfully. Pashnak’s faith in the artist’s work and his assuredly bright future remained undaunted—a blind faith. The assistant puttered around the mansion, serving without question. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” Garth muttered to himself.
After being raised by the Splinter monks, he’d always had meager personal requirements. In truth, he had bought this over-the-top mansion more for his assistant than for himself. Pashnak deserved it. Years ago, the gaunt young man had gambled everything on Garth’s potential, keeping him on track . . . whatever that track might be.
Pashnak had no other passions, and he enjoyed basking in the glow of Garth’s success. He managed the business affairs, taking care of all the social duties that Garth hated, while forcing him to meet his commitments and not become sidetracked by other priorities. Pashnak could easily have been a successful accountant or executive secretary, but he’d devoted everything to Garth’s artistic career.
The COM signal startled him like a bolt of lightning, even at such a late hour. After a moment, Pashnak called from the kitchen. “Garth! It’s Teresa on the screen. She wants to talk to you.”
Garth smiled warmly at her image on the filmscreen, though it still startled him to see her wearing Eduard’s face instead of one of the familiar female forms in the portrait spectrum. “Oh, Garth! I’ve got good news.” She looked much healthier now, happier, with a fire in her eyes that made him briefly envious.
“Something amazing happened, and I finally have a lead. Jennika, the woman who took my original body, works at a place called Precision Chaos, an expansion-chip manufacturing facility.” Breathless, she hesitated, as if afraid to say more. “I think . . . I think it was Soft Stone inside COM who guided me.”
Though he had never really understood why finding her old body was so important, Garth knew how much it meant to her. “Are you going there now? Do you want me to come with you?”
“They’re closed, Garth. It’s three in the morning.”
“I don’t think I’ve looked out a window all day.”
She chuckled. “You work too hard, Garth, don’t you think? I’m going first thing in the morning.”
Garth didn’t want to tell her that he longed to feel the fresh drive Teresa had found, the meaning she’d rediscovered in her life. “Best of luck. Come and visit me anytime, no matter what body you happen to be in.” After she signed off, he felt a flicker of rejuvenation just from talking with his friend. He walked down the hall toward the studio.
Closing the door behind him, Garth stared at his nearly completed work, ANGER. His new experiential piece was meaningful, showing the nuances of one of humanity’s most powerful and destructive emotions, the pettiness and nastiness, the damage it caused, the blindness it inflicted. ANGER.
Standing inside the arrangement, he touched the images, tweaked sound loops. Hawkishly, he looked for gaps, weaknesses. He tried to imagine other directions or connections that could tap into the viewer’s emotions. Anger . . . he had to be angry. People should be livid when they emerged from this exhibition, and ashamed at their own susceptibility to such violent emotions. They should feel chastised and penitent.
In his heart, though, he knew that ANGER would be even less popular than APATHY (which had lived up to its name, if the audience response numbers were to be believed). Critics would complain that Garth Swan no longer gave the audiences what they wanted. Stradley would have a fit, would probably write off his client altogether.
All his life Garth had had sharp eyes, a huge heart, a wealth of compassion—too much compassion, some might have said. But he’d never tried to rationalize his actions. He just stumbled along, curious, learning, searching. And now he had lost that feeling. Had all of his success been a fluke—a timely accident, forced into place by the pressure and funding of Mordecai Ob, an abusive drug addict who had doomed Garth’s friend Eduard?
Now, in the studio, he worked as hard as he had ever worked, but his output no longer seemed vibrant and new, just a pale repetition of techniques and experiences. Maybe something was wrong with him; maybe it was too easy to pin it on the fickle tastes of a public whose attention span was too short.
Surrounded by ANGER in the silent studio, he found that he couldn’t experience the rage, couldn’t tap in to the powerful emotions. Garth had already reached the pinnacle of success and could not go any higher.
Flash in the pan, now get off the stage and let someone else have a try.