Golden Veneer

The space station was very much a dead thing. It was well-kept, sparkling and beautiful, and many mechs lived and worked here. Still, there was no life to the place. Power flowed here and there and pieces moved. That was all. Cybertron, the planet below, felt alive, as if it had a soul of its own. This space station had no lifeforce to it, and why should it? The lack of lively aura about the station faintly unnerved some, but Needlenose knew a bit more about such things, and he knew that living souls would need to be bound into the structure of the station for it to have a life of its own. Needlenose did not disapprove of the practice, as it was just another craft, after all, but he did not fancy that fate for himself. The best way to avoid it was to avoid its practitioners, the vivincorporators, when possible, and to be on good terms with the ones who could not be avoided.

So, the lack of life to the station did not worry Needlenose. He paused to look out one of the windows. Space and the exploration thereof had been popular ages ago, but interest had waned. Cybertron was rich with energy, and even the lower classes could live relatively luxurious lives. Why leave? They had everything that they needed right there on Cybertron. Needlenose knew that it would pass, sooner or later, when energy ran low. He thought it best to enjoy himself while the good times lasted.

Needlenose was here to visit a few friends. There were endless reasons why artists liked the station, and he could rattle off all the most fashionable ones. They wanted to be away from it all without really leaving. They needed to use the microgravity sections for some project. They enjoyed looking down on others.

Needlenose glimpsed, reflected in the window, a figure approaching behind him. Even from that wan facsimile, he knew who it was. This one's explanation for being here was that he was by nature a creature of space, and that reason worked as well as any. Needlenose turned and, with a slight nod, acknowledged, "Hey, Prism."

"I trust your trip went well?" the other artist inquired politely. Prism's design was a fairly standard if somewhat outdated optical telescope satellite. His colouration was what made him conspicuous. His highlights were bright red, his mid-tones orange through indigo, and his darkest shadows deep violet. Thus, his colouration changed completely depending on the lighting, and only his gold optics remained constant. Prism did it without adaptive nanotech, and few had duplicated his acid look.

"Well, you know how the spaceways are," Needlenose said blithely, laughing a little. Swiftly changing the subject, he asked, "So what have you been up to? I heard something about a collaboration with Freezeframe."

"Indeed. We have been working on something that I call optical-kinetic sculpture," Prism explained, as he started walking towards his section of the station.

"And I bet Freezeframe calls it kinetic-optical sculpture," Needlenose teased, following the spectrum-hued artist.

Prism merely shrugged diplomatically. He dropped down a shaft leading to the centre of the station. The outside ring was spun to simulate gravity via centripetal force, but the centre was kept still for those who preferred freefall. Needlenose also made his way centre-ward and quickly caught the guide rails to have something to push off from and control his floating when it came to that.

He got his bearings rapidly and idly wondered if floating was anything like flying. Needlenose had never worn a floating shell, but forms of that type were slowly growing in popularity, mostly among the more expansion-minded machines. He would have to look into it, see if there was any solidity to the trend or if it would pass over quickly.

Prism had the proper systems to move easily in microgravity and effortlessly arrived at his sections. Needlenose watched him closely. The tenants of the station had considerable freedom to customise their quarters, and Prism liked to obscure the doors into and out of his place and lock them with hidden optical recognition systems. With a glance from Prism, a door slid open, previously indistinguishable from the rest of the panelling.

The now-open doorway exposed a shimmering, toxic-hued hallway, done in oil slick purple, lithium red, sulphur yellow, cobalt blue, and radioactive green. Needlenose knew then that he would see an inner chamber, a private gallery or a workshop, as if the side door was not evidence enough. Prism did not colour the areas open to the public so shockingly, instead choosing subtler hues more conducive to parting customers from their energon, and made these public parts easier to find and enter.

Needlenose shoved off a wall and followed Prism into the hallway. His acquaintance opened another door in the same fashion as the first, and Needlenose put out a hand to catch the threshold and redirect his movement into the room, a spotless white workshop. He grabbed onto a cabinet to keep from crashing into something.

"So what's the - ah," Needlenose started to ask, then stopped. There were a number of silvered globes floating in place. They hardly seemed to be anything special, which was what gave Needlenose pause. Prism was known for intricate light weavings and other light-related arts. The spheres seemed simple and unconnected to Prism's usual mode of operation.

Prism smiled slightly and turned his attention to each of the globes, taking no order that Needlenose could discern. As Prism did, they lost their silvering and became clear. Within each sphere were smaller spheres. The little globes weaved lazy orbits at first but swiftly increased speed. They shone with their own light and were soon nothing but smudges of colour. The smears and suggestions resolved into crystal clear renderings. Most of the globes featured timeless scenes - the movements of the clouds, the breaking of the mercury waves, the orbits of planet, et cetera.

Needlenose shoved off the cabinet gently to get a better look at one of the spheres and hooked a foot around the leg of a worktable to steady himself. The accuracy of the animations was amazing. It was as good as a high-quality holocube. No, he decided, "It's as good as life."

Prism nodded and suggested, "Look at the others."

Needlenose did so, quite enchanted by the optical-kinetic sculptures, and asked, "Can you change the pictures on these or are they set?"

To answer, Prism looked at the one that Needlenose was considering, and its display shifted to a recording of a bash. A little figure of himself appeared briefly in the crowd, and Needlenose remarked, "They even do justice to my own good looks."

Prism could not help smirking a little but was too well-mannered to comment. Needlenose dislodged himself from his perch to look at the one sculpture that he had not yet considered. It was in a hard spot to look at, which was why Needlenose has saved it for last. This sculpture gave him pause. At first, Needlenose thought that it might be flawed, but Prism would never let a substandard work be seen by outside optic, even that of a friend. The sculpture showed a dancer, classically beautiful, if a bit old-fashioned, but it had an edge to it. The picture looked as real as any of them at a glance, but a more probing examination showed that it danced on the threshold of reality, sometimes not quite real and sometimes realer than real, the colours too bright for life and the motion too fluid for mortal grace. The effect was quite disconcerting. As Needlenose watched, he perceived faint glimmers of extra colour on the dancer, a hint of dull blue-green here and a streak of brownish-red there. When Needlenose caught the glint of lurid pink, the information clicked, and he jerked away from the sculpture abruptly. The sudden action sent him crashing into a cabinet. The dancer hinted and glinted death colours: corroded copper, rusted iron, and spilled energon, and these signs of decay on such a creature of beauty had deeply startled him.

Prism frowned slightly and queried, "Do you not like that one?"

"It's art," Needlenose managed. Prism's inquiring look encouraged him to elaborate. "I'm sure that there's a lot of skill behind the other ones, but all you've done is reinvented the holocube in a more stylish package. That's not a bad thing, and I'm sure they'll sell well. This, though, is different. It's more than just the pretty reality. It's got the ugliness beneath."

Prism smiled, bemused. "Really? Most just think it is an older work, done before I perfected the medium."

"Uh-huh. If it was, I wouldn't be seeing it. These aren't going to sell as well, you know."

"That is hardly the point."

"It never is, with you."

"You are far too commercial, my friend."

"And you're pining for the dead exploration age," Needlenose snapped back and immediately regretted it.

Prism visibly sagged but quickly drew himself into a sort of wounded dignity. "This age also dies."

"You think I haven't noticed the trends? I know. I just wish I could figure out what the next big thing is going to be."

"The rustsouls see a future where we all die horribly," Prism said lightly, and they both laughed. The rustsouls always said that.

"So this is where you got to," came a clipped, intense voice, every word like a midair collision.

"Let yourself in, eh?" Needlenose asked of the newcomer.

"Prism gave me the codes. Couldn't always be banging on the door to be let in."

"I was just showing Needlenose my optical-kinetic sculptures, Freezeframe," Prism explained.

"Kinetic-optical sculptures," Freezeframe corrected absently. He was not a stylish machine, but he was a striking one. Freezeframe had four arms but suffered none of the clumsiness to which extra-limbed mechs were so often prone. Instead, he was incredibly graceful, his movements so fluid that he seemed to simply appear in various poses, rather than actually have to move to assume them. Freezeframe radiated motion in potential, like an energon cube poised on the edge of a counter, perpetually about to fall but never moving. He required a complex software and hardware setup to keep him coordinated, and the hardware part was obvious on his energy field. Freezeframe was not built specifically for freefall, but with his four arms and his easy, liquid movements, he fooled many. "You ought to go see what I've done with this medium."

"All in due time," Prism said mildly.

Freezeframe had a faceplate, but his pose and the brightness of his optics suggested a mischievous mirth. "Yeah, and it's due time he saw my sculptures."

The End