SCS Sidestory - Elegy Marie - The Artist - ///

Part One - The Artist - ///

“Alright,” I say as I take in my canvas. There’s a blank wall that’s actually pretty large right behind the chair. The strange chair bolted to the floor. The strange all-metal chair that looks like it was made from a few bits of square-tubing welded together by someone who didn’t have an eye for aesthetics or comfort. “S-so, this is my workspace?”

“No,” Chuckles says. He points to the wall. “Paint on that.”

“Alright, cool! Yeah. So... is this like, a torture chamber? Can’t be, right? Torture’s not a very happy activity.”

Chuckles squints at me. “It’s a room with a chair in it. There’s nothing special about it. Just storage.”

“Right, yeah,” I say, nodding too fast. “And a wall. For painting. Super inspiring. Real... brutalist. Very trendy in the underground scene right now.”

He doesn't laugh. He doesn't even smirk.

One of the goons outside the door snorts. I can’t tell if it’s amusement or something else.

I turn back to the wall. “So! I’ll just get started. No problem. Easy. I, uh, work best under pressure. Not that this is pressure. This is totally fine. Good vibes. Just... paint the torture chamber.”

“Torture chamber?” Chuckles finally says. “Nah. That’d be illegal.”

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t wink. Just says it like it’s a perfectly normal clarification.

I force out a little laugh. “Right. Of course. Totally. That was a joke anyway. Just, you know, testing the vibe.”

Chuckles turns and walks to the door. “Vibe is: make something good. You’ve got forty-five minutes.”

He steps out, and the door clunks closed behind him.

I’m alone again. Just me, my half-empty satchel of supplies, a blank wall, a metal chair, and a drain.

The vibe is immaculate.

Unfortunately, it’s a ‘run the hell away’ kind of vibe. But... the Happy Gang has credits, and I’ve got bills. “Holy crap,” I mutter before rubbing my face.

I take a deep breath, then let it all out. Work. I’ve painted plenty of things before, and I can do this.

First, I need to know what I’m painting. That means a quick check online. First of all... who the hell is Erato?

The search returns with something about the ancient Greece muses. There were nine of them, and I recall there being nine doors, so... that’s something.

Maybe I can do something with that? Nine feminine figures, all... happy, and not torturing someone? Yeah, that could work.

I pull out a small pallet, then my white acrylic paint. First, a background. I need to work fast. Forty-five minutes is nothing. I’ll have to be a little more impressionistic than I usually like, but it’ll be the only way to get anything done so quick.

And then, everything goes wrong.

I dip my brush into the paint, test it on the palette. It’s shitty. A bit goopy, and it flows a little too much. The pigmentation is... it’s ass. I stroke the brush on my pallet, and try to get a good consistency. Not too bad, I’ve had worse. I go for the wall, a long sweeping stroke across at shoulder height.

The brush catches on a speck of rust. I push through, then hiss in irritation. I smack my brush on my pallet, getting the rusty flakes off.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Not ideal.”

I try again, switching brushes, going for something broader.

The paint doesn’t stick. It beads on the wall like it’s been sprayed with some kind of anti-graffiti coating.

I scrub at it harder, as if elbow grease will somehow beat chemistry. Instead, my second-best brush snaps at the ferrule, the metal part twisting free with a little wet plop.

I stare at it.

Then I stare at the wall. There’s a streak of paint leaking down. It looks like nothing.

Then I stare at the chair.

I try not to scream. I am soooo dead.

After a solid minute of wanting to bash my head into a wall, and another minute of strongly considering whether or not I can make a run for it, I just... turn and stare.

Stare at the wall, with its flaking paint, and rusted splotches. Heh, some of them even look like faces...

I squint, then tilt my head a little. Wait, they really do... well, not quite but... I can kind of see the vision. The paints I pushed onto the wall have dried, and in drying they’ve left this kind of cool marbly effect? I know that it’s because the pigments are settling in poorly but they did stick.

I work my tongue around inside my mouth as I contemplate the wall some more. If that bit there, and that chunk there were linked, then a few lines were drawn...

A glance at the clock in my augs has me jumping. Ten minutes have passed. I only have a bit before Chuckles shows up. It’s flight or art, and I’ve always chosen art before. This isn’t the time to back out.

I grab my pallet, but tuck my brushes away. They’ll just get caught in the flaking paint already on the wall. I’ll need to apply paint by dabbing it on, then, and that might be done with raw cloth and my fingers.

Paint on pallet, I mix a few colours, keeping it simple, but also bright. A bit of white mixed into my primaries, and then applied while the paint hasn’t been homogenized yet. It makes for a strange effect where the paint looks a little streaky, but if I use that effect on purpose...

I paint fast, gaining speed as I go, cursing whenever I have to stop to squeeze out more paint onto the pallet. For a moment, I’m afraid, it all looks like meaningless splotches, but then a few strokes later, and it’s starting to look like something.

There’s no time but I don’t need to paint everything. My fingers start to hurt, so I chew on my lip, then reach down and rip a length of cloth from my shirt off. Wrapping it around my hand, I daub it into the paint, then press it into the wall. It’s... functional enough, actually. Not as good as a brush on canvas, but again, there’s some texture to it.

I paint faster and faster, ignoring mistakes that I’d usually fuss over.

A face is created, sad, cracked, lonely, almost. I don’t know how, but somehow the twist and texture around the eyes kind of gives this feeling that these are the eyes of someone who has seen too much. I don’t know if I could even capture that on purpose.

Across from it, I sketch out another face. It’s smiling, happy, but too smooth, on a part of the wall that isn’t as cracked and brittle, and without as much texture, but... but it works. There’s a sort of weird symmetry here, a contrast. The smile is smooth and fake and it’s like a mask being ripped away from the saddened face.

Yeah, this works! It’s like a Kiefer piece, but with some touches of... maybe Kossoff? I could say I was inspired by them, but I haven’t been using their work as reference for this one, and it’s not my usual style. I take a picture with my augs, then move back in to add more.

I almost jump out of my skin as the door opens up behind me.

Chuckles steps in, smiling, and next to him, a short woman, all reedy and thin, but with sharp, calculating eyes. She’s dressed in an armoured skin-tight suit, the kind Meshhackers wear, but over it is a more business-like corporate suit.

“This is the one?” the woman asks. “Your pretend artist?”

“Yup,” Chuckles says.

Then they both pause and stare at me... through me, at the small but bright mural on the wall behind me. I take a step to the side, and smile as best I can. “I’m sorry if it’s not great,” I say.

They’re a little quiet, so I go on. A good artist needs to know how to bullshit, at least a little, right?

“But I didn’t exactly have the best materials to work with. But yes, when I approached you, Mister, ah, Chuckles, this kind of art is what I was suggesting. Better quality, of course, but something that’ll catch the eye. It’s got soul! People will flock over to your gang, I’m sure. Heck, I’m tempted to add this one to my portfolio, I’ll call it ‘thank god I’m not going to be disappeared’ haha! Uh, but yeah, it’s got some Kiefer, some Kossoff, maybe a bit of Cecily Brown?”

I grin, and hope that they can’t tell that I’m sweating bullets here.

“Chuckles,” the woman says. “Are you certain that she’s not actually just an idiot artist who came looking for work?”

“Uh... she was a little suspicious,” he said.

The woman sighs. She feels very mature and adult-y, but I have the impression that she’s only a few years older than me, maybe in her early thirties at most.

“So... is this a yes to being hired?” I ask.

“C’mon,” the woman next to Chuckles says.

I bounce across the room and follow her out and back into the corridor. There are two Happy Gang goons here in colourful clothes with bandanas that have big smiles printed onto them. They glance at me as I pass, but don’t say anything.

I follow the woman towards one of the rooms at the back, surprisingly right next to Chuckles’s office. The goons stay outside. Chuckles follows me in.

It’s another office, but one that’s a little more... lavishly decorated than Chuckles’s. It’s bigger too, with a small aquarium to one side of all things, and a couch pressed up against one wall. There’s even a small half-opened door at the back leading into a water closet.

Damn, an actual bathroom, that she doesn’t need to share with anyone?

I feel myself standing a little taller. “Miss, ah... do you mind if I ask you your name? Mine’s Elegy Marie, by the way.”

The woman moves to stand by her desk. She doesn’t sit down, but she does look up and look at me. She has very nice eyes. The augs she’s using, I mean — they’re very good. I don’t recognize the brand, but they look top-end, a deep purplish that glows very faintly as she inspects me.

“You said that your name was Elegy Marie?” she asks.

I nod, then take a deep breath and prepare to try my spiel again. Last time, Chuckles confused me for some sort of spy, which... kind of sucks. I don’t need that.

“So, I know that Mister Chuckles here might have thought that I was a, ah, enemy of yours, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m really a legitimate artist. Well, sorta legitimate.”

I wince as she gives me a questioning look.

“I mean, insofar as any artist is legitimate, you know? Haha?”

I don’t think she finds me funny, or endearing.

“Elegy Marie, resident of Unit 72-G on floor thirteen. Been there for nine months. Prior to that you lived on floor twenty-six for almost a year. Attended a digital college of the arts, work credit at a few fast food places and some volunteer hours at the local library.”

I look around the room, trying to spot anything off. Is this some sort of prank?

But no, there’s nothing that really stands out except that the office is kind of nice. “Uh, yeah, that’s me,” I say. “You know about me?”

“Just now, yes. Your background doesn’t look tampered with, though... someone is fucking with the files for your rent. Want me to fix that?”

“Please no,” I say in a hurry. “They haven’t charged me in a while, and I... like that?”

She snorts, which is a win in my book. A snort is halfway to a laugh. “This one’s innocent, Chuckles.”

“Damn,” Chuckles says.

“Did you not want me to be?” I ask.

“No,” Chuckles says, but he doesn’t elaborate, which really just makes it worse. I’m trying real hard not to lose my shit here, or sweat too hard, or have a panic attack. I’ve been in a few tight spots before, though, I can survive this... probably even with most of my organs unsold.

The woman leans back against her desk, hip riding up so that she’s half-sitting on it. She still hasn’t offered me a seat. “Alright, so you’re looking for work, I take it?”

“Yes,” I say with a quick nod.

She squints, and I get a package alert in my augs. A folder’s been sent to me and slipped right past my firewalls. Not that that’s exactly complicated to do, but still.

“Open it,” she says.

I swallow. If it’s malware, this could mess up my augs and cyberware pretty hard.

But Chuckles could also just shank me, and that would require less effort. In for a credit and all that. I open the file, then blink and rearrange the contents across my vision. They’re images, taken from someone’s augs.

Mostly graffiti, but some pieces look like professional ads. One of the images is a looping animation of a billboard.

“Tell me about that art,” the woman says.

“These are... nice,” I say. “The art is a bit morbid, but not that bad.”

The art has a few common themes. Skulls are common, often with signs of cyberware being installed into them. There are lots of surgical knives as well, and those blue masks that doctors wear.

“I’d say this is a very... 2040s style of advertising, semi-corporate, when they moved away from Memphis Nouveau.”

“Hmph,” the woman says. She doesn’t sound impressed by my analysis. “Those are the gang tags of a new group that’s been becoming a thorn in our side for a while. Have you heard of the Sons of the Scalpel?”

“No, sorry,” I say honestly.

“They’ve started near floor twenty-five and have been racing upwards. They have a clinic on this floor, and they’ve been moving more people in. We need someone to keep an eye on them. Multiple someones.”

I make the link right away. “You want me to spy on them? I... really can’t do that.”

“I noticed,” she says. “You’d get caught in seconds and fold like a wet towel. Which is too bad, you’ve got a good excuse to be around.”

I nod, and it looks like she’s ready to dismiss me which is...

On the one hand, great, I get to go home in one piece! Fantastic stuff, that.

On the other, this whole thing would be a massive flop.

So, I try one last, desperate attempt to save the situation.

“I can still help,” I say quickly, and the woman pauses. “Look, miss, ah, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Laughter,” she says. “Elizabeth Laughter. And yes, that was my name before the Happy Gang ever existed.”

“Okay, good. Miss Laughter, I’m not a spy, obviously. I’m just a really poor artist, but I can help you.” I have no idea where I’m going with this, so I mostly let my mouth work for me. “What if I ‘hire’ you?”

“You want to hire me?” she asks.

“Yeah. Well, it would be a pretense, obviously. The transaction would actually go in the other direction. There are big segments of floor thirty that could definitely use some artwork on them. Now, if we go out and slap graffiti on them, they’ll be washed out.”

Like that wall I used to look at when I was young.

“But... if we make a big show of painting something big and gang-neutral, then it might look like something sanctioned by the mega building. That kind of work needs cones and guards, and can take a while. I can paint very slowly. Obviously, a well-commissioned artist would hire helpers and guards, probably from the local pool of, ah, enforcers...”

“And that would let us station our people close by,” Miss Laughter says. She considers it for a moment. “How long does a mural take to paint?”

“As long as you need,” I say. “And I can fit one in all sorts of places. Passing corridors, the front of shops, next to clinics open to the public...”

She nods slowly. “And you wouldn’t be the spy, which is good, because I don’t trust you to be competent at that. I like your idea.”

“You do? I mean, haha! Yeah, thank you. I wouldn’t charge much, obviously.”

“Obviously,” she says. “We’ll give you five hundred credits a day. You cover the material cost yourself.”

My augs ping. There was a five-hundred credit deposit in my account just now. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Picasso be praised, I’ll be able to afford food!

“When do you want me to start?” I ask.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “Show up in the atrium by the elevators with whatever equipment you need. Chuckles will have someone waiting for you there.”

***