Chapter Two

Life is short, art is long…

Hippocrates

February 14, 2020

I stared at the canvas from my quiet spot. The world was slowly disappearing from my notice as my concentration focused on paint, brush, and canvas, but most of all on the picture in my mind that was slowly and inexorably taking shape on the canvas. I was in my studio, looking at a work that I had started more than a year ago. That's what it takes if you paint in oil in the classic seven layer style. There were six layers of paint on this canvas, each layer a different series of colors, each layer for a different purpose. Each layer took a day or three for me to complete, then I let it dry for seven weeks before proceeding to the next step. The final layer, the bright color layer, would bring everything to life with details and reflections and color. The colors would show up as deep, rich, brilliant, even sparkly where they where supposed to be sparkly. All the layers together would create an optical illusion—an illusion of great depth as well as fantasy come to life. And it would last for many centuries, I don't know how important that's going to be to others, but it's important to me.

I was using a #3 Kolinsky brush with Prussian blue, making rapid strokes for texture. Occasionally, I would trade with a flat blending brush to smooth out the transitions. This particular painting was a landscape, a specialty of mine. At first glance it looked like a classical landscape: you could find similar examples in every art museum in the world. But a closer look showed some unusual objects, perhaps unnatural, and a darkness that was central to the theme. But I always showed a way out, towards the light. That's my theme, in fact, that's the whole theme of any of us X-series that escaped Manticore.

I often wondered if my transgenic reflexes helped or hindered my art. I figure that I was so used to my superhuman reflexes that it probably helped in ways I didn't realize. But one thing for sure, my upbringing was dark and violent, and that affected my work from the first pencil stroke to the last varnish coat.

When I finished painting for the day I carefully cleaned my brushes in turpentine. After washing them in soap and water, fussily shaping the bristles and putting them on the drying rack, I pulled up a chair and sat down in front of my work, to judge it, see if it was good enough. To see if the year and a half of time and work was worth it. Mind you, I still needed to add a little paint tomorrow, then I would let it dry for six months. Then it would be varnished, or destroyed. I was possibly a lot pickier than was good for me.

It was always that way though, I thought, as I leaned back and let my mind drift back to my time in Manticore. This was the one time of year that I wished I could confide my past with someone. I considered this my birthday, not the actual birth of course—like all X series I didn't know when that was—but the day of my liberation.

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