Ch. 2 For all of my life, I felt like I was the only dog on the planet who could see color, and it killed me. My parents loved me as more than just a bonus, but they never did understand what I did, why I did it. Dad said I was crazy, and sometimes I got the back of his hand for wasting fuel. He was trying to do right by me, trying to get me to stop playing and get to work so I wouldn't still be paying off my raising when I was double filed. Mom never understood, but she never made a fuss about the fuel either. She'd give me her almost emptys to siphon from, and that kept me a little bit sane. She let me build the little shack off the back of the shanty where I could work on my “messes” without being watched. One day Boo brought me a full fuel cel. I never knew where he got it, but it saved my life. It may have started with the Educomp, but that was really just the gateway drug. I was searching for falsehoods from the Company, and finding plenty! Until I found the something I hadn't been seeking. The ultimate something. So momentous. So devastating. So beautiful. That was just beautiful. It existed to be gorgeous and to inspire and for no other reason! I had never seen anything like it. It was mathematically perfect, like an ice crystal made of light but colored in blood and food and thought and fuck. It spun my mind like the Grantium dust my work set sometimes used to still the whispers, but the result was as clean as a fusion burn. My soul was harrowed out of my body by the Rose Window of Notre Dame, and I could never be the same again. I searched frantically for other such sights, gleaning them from the dross in the Educomp like the kids gleaning metal shards to sell to the Admin. And I found them, gods help me. I did. I was exposed to a substance as transformative as hard radiation, as mutagenic as genejuice. I had seen god's face staring back at me from that tiny screen, and now, wherever I looked my new eyes saw it still. There was deity in the stars, in the hills, in the dark of the mines, in the heat of a lover's flesh. There were godprints in the grime and I couldn't stop seeing them. I had to express, to represent, to create, or die. There was no alternative. The gods in me refused to be quelled and the first time I took up my cutter to sculpt, knowing that was what I was doing, I was Sisyphus, I was Hephaestus, I was Hecate. I was lost. I would never again be content with mining Durantium. Never at peace with the Company, the Admin, the work. I could see the colors in the air, and hear the voices in the wind, and I didn't want to silence the whispers anymore. My family could tell something had changed, if only by the speed with which I finished basic ed. My folks figured I'd decided I was ready for the mines, but they couldn't figure out what the hell I was doing with all that other junk. I'd decided to try. I would make art. I had to make art. To live, to ease the tightness in my breast so I could breathe. To silence the chiming in my soul, to still the burning in my belly. I had to make art. Makeshift art. There were no art supplies on Cthonia. It wasn't like I could get canvases and paints from the company store. What I could get were chemicals, so I started the same way the old masters did. I experimented. Mom and Dad supported me as best they could, but they didn't see, couldn't hear, would never understand. I was alone with visions of Da Vinci and Van Gogh, impressions of Degas and Manet, devastated by Rodin. I figured it would be easiest to start with glass. There were whole towns emptied by radiation warnings or other toxins. Places where the mines had come too close to the surface and the tiny hamlets had partially collapsed into the tunnels. There was plenty of material, I just had to change it. Reclaim it. Free the art in it. I dreamed in bronze scraps, in flecks of molten steel and glass, in broken shards of scattered light, gleaned from the ruins of countless abandoned houses, melted and colored by infusing the hot stuff with metals, dusts, glazes, and then sheeted out to cool while I waited, hands restless, in hopes that perhaps this time, this combination, this mix would give me Titian red or Degas pink, the purple of Monet's waterlilies. Where was I going to get colored glass on Cthonia? There wasn't enough light to make stained glass even useful, let alone lovely. I made it. I melted it. I colored it myself. I became one part scavenger, one part alchemist, one part witch, and all scorched by celestial fire. My soul was in the crucible with my glass and metal, and finally, one day, I made something beautiful. It was crude. It was brittle. But it was red as the blood I poured out finding it and as clear as my sometimes visions. Through a combination of bloody mindedness and sheer luck over the next year, I developed a palette of colors as broad as the Impressionists and as mathematically derived as Greek buildings. I welded steel and carved stone and framed wood and plasteel, then inlaid it with my glittering treasures, my stolen jewels, my pillaged dreams. I had it then. I had learned something important. I wasn't just a dog that saw color. I was a dog who could MAKE color. With a trembling heart, I showed my first pieces to my parents, anxious, hopeful, high on creating. I wanted them to see me, see it, understand the indescribable us. It was a disaster. I won't go into the details. Just trust me. Dogs that can't see color get pretty vicious when confronted by it. They cajoled, they threatened, Mom even begged, but I stood my ground with Cthonian ferocity, and eventually Dad said I could keep doing this weird thing I did, but I wasn't to show it to ANYONE! And I had to come up with the fuel and materials myself. No one could help me. I had learned that apparently art is something you have to do alone, and I wasn't to unlearn that lesson for many years. It was a Pyhrric victory, an emasculated conception. I had won the right to keep sculpting, but wasn't allowed to share my work. It was the bonding agent for my decision to emigrate off Cthonia. Even if the Impies did eat babies, the Educomp said they did art. They kept art. They loved art. The great basilica of humanity on the Imperial homeworld of Dracis Prime was supposed to be stuffed full of great artworks by grand masters. Works that could be viewed by anyone, everyone. The birthright of all sentients. I wanted my birthright, and I was going to get it. I spent the next few years working like a dog, trying to earn my ratings and pay off the Company so I could scrape up enough to get me off planet. I might have done just that but for one accidental discovery. I met Saint Ignacius. No, not the real one. But he was the important one, at least to me. For them as don't know, the real Saint Ignacius was a holy guy from some old Terran religion called Catholicism. He was supposed to be the patron Saint of artists. Frankly, I think we need one. Maybe he's the reason I never burned myself to death working in molten metals in a trance state. Anyway, I was looking to get some more chemicals to mix with my metals and glass. I wanted to try some other combinations in hopes of getting clearer colors. I'd heard there was an underground source for offworld goods, and I don't mean deep in the mines. There was supposed to be a hacker who could get anything into the order through the Company Manifest and it would come in plain wrapping with the rest of the deliveries, as if it weren't contraband. Some of my work set got better grades of soporifics to rot their brains with that way. More power to them, but what I wanted while seemingly harmless was actually much more dangerous. I needed potters glazes, but since they were a non-essential luxury item, one small jar would cost a months diggings if I ordered through the Company store. A little cred in the right hands got me an email address. A quick note detailing what I wanted and some more cred and my order was placed. I didn't know it, but I had just come to the attention of Saint Ignacius, the underground get it god of Cthonia. He emailed me back, a practice I was to learn was quite out of standard for him. I was sitting in the main room of the family house, only secure because Mom and Dad were sound asleep. Drinking engine cleaner, checking my account balances, and contemplating my time of departure, at that time some 9 years away, even if I worked like a slave. When the little tone went off indicating an incoming call, I figured it was a wrong number, but answered it anyway. He was wearing a big floppy hat, a black cloak, and a Guy Fawkes mask and I snorted my engine cleaner through my nose. It was a digimask, but still. V for Vendetta was NOT on the approved Company Reading list. Just being identified in that getup could set the CorpSec on you yesterday if the PropAdmin censor was well read enough to recognize it. “Yeah what?” I finally managed, trying to breathe through the fumes of my accidental sinus treatment. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Artemisia Grace?” He asked, and I nodded. It had to be a joke from some damn dust head. But what druggie would have done enough digging in an Educomp to know this image? And what dust head talked like this? The image spoke again, further bending the night beyond unreal and into surreal. “You want Glick pottery glaze in Azure Blue, Amethyst, Better Black, Sunset Ocher, and Goldenrod?” His words were like gibberish coming from the smooth, white mask, and the sounds made no sense, as though juggled. His call was disjointed and jarring. And just the sight of him, this study in contrast, made my fingers twitch, tracing the casing of my plane cutter in memory. “Yeah.” I was frowning, paranoid, confused. “Whadda you care?” “What are you going to do with them?” He asked. “Dishes in those colors can be had from the Company Store for a fraction of the cost of offworld glazes.” “Who said anything about dishes?” I blinked, frowning again. “Wha'fuck you care, anyway?” “Idle curiosity, my dear, I assure you. I just wanted to know why a coal miner's daughter named after a goddess wanted glazes in such unpatriotic shades.” The guy was making my head hurt, and the caustic chemical bath up the nose hadn't helped. “What are you going to do with them, I wonder.” “None of your biz, chum, and why'fuck you callin'?” I wanted to say, but something in his aspect stopped me. Maybe it was the careful work that had gone into the rendering of the textures in his digimask. You could almost reach out and feel the crispness of the crimson taffeta curtain behind his chair. “It's for nothing. Don't got a real reason.” I said instead, voice as rough as my hands. “I... I'm experimenting. With stained glass.” “Ahhhh.” He exhaled, and it was soft like the orgasm you weren't expecting. “I see. Your order will arrive with the Company drop, day after tomorrow. And since your purpose is without purpose, your purchase is without price!” His image started to fade, and I jumped forward, knocked out of reverie by the urgency I didn't quite get. “Hey! What's your name?” He bowed with a flourish while I stared. “I am Saint Ignacius, at your service, oh artist of Cthonia.” He was telling the truth. The glazes didn't cost me a dime. Over the next few years I ordered lots of stuff through Saint Ignacius, and I never could get him to let me pay for the damn glazes, even years later. I ordered real paints that I could experiment with, soft waxes for sculpting by hand and casting in bronze, datatapes full of more art, and more contraband literature. He sold me the stuff at the prices from the Imperial catalogs, no markup. It took me months to figure out why. Turned out, he was an art fiend. He was the one who eventually told me about the Brotherhood. He said he wasn't officially a member, but that a gifted amateur could be just as effective. He talked like that a lot. Apparently, in the Galactic Empire, there was an organization called the Brotherhood of Saint Ignacius, and they took care of artists. Out there the Brotherhood would feed them, clothe them, house them, almost anything to help them do what they did. Make art. Create. My mental universe expanded again to incorporate this crazy idea, and my heart sang. Even if I couldn't find work as a welder or miner in the Imperium, I could still try to make art and not starve. The Saint Ignacius of Cthonia believed in my work. He believed in me. He could see the colors, too, but he couldn't make them himself. Sometimes I wondered which of us was the more damned. But he kept me sane, and kept my brain fed. There were lots of datatapes and materials I hadn't asked for in my shipments, and he never spoke of them, nor would he accept payment for them. Wouldn't let me speak of them either. Mentioning them was enough to end a comcall, and ensure no emails for a month. He was the first patron I ever had, and to this day, I won't open a show without acknowledging him somehow. I only ever touched him once, and I didn't know it was him until I was so far away I could never have gotten back. My savior, my inspiration, my audience, my priest and confessor. The voice and hands of my gods. I was 25 years old. My equipment had been paid off for 2 years, and I was half-way to passage offworld. No one knew I was planning to leave. No one but Saint Ignacius and my little brother Boo. And Ziggy. Ziggy was a miner in my parents work set. He was a paid off drifter who'd staggered into Shaft 4 the day I turned 17. Having paid off the Company, he worked when he wanted to. He was as old as the rocks and twisted by heavy metal exposure. Crag-faced and rough from coldburns and scarred with the flecked freckles of molten metal that indicate a former smelter. Ziggy was bandy legged with a twisted foot and massively developed in the shoulders and arms. He could carry a loaded ore cart on his shoulders if he wanted, but he couldn't dance with that foot and he couldn't run. He was perfect for deep mine work, and that's what he did and how we met. He'd pulled me out of a cave in once and I'd returned the favor by finding our way out of the abandoned tunnels we'd ended up in. My father's edict on not showing anyone my work hadn't survived the curiosity of the gossips of Shaft 4. Ziggy had seen my sculpture, and he'd shrugged a lot. But he also said that if I was doin' that stuff I shouldn't be on Cthonia. He said I should be out in the Imperium, and I agreed. He was the one that brought me the flyer. That damn flyer. I had just lost a chunk of my previous 6 months profits to the Company in the form of a new plane cutter, my previous one having been shit canned for safety violations that were patently untrue. I was bitter as hell because I knew it was bullshit. They pulled my cutter rating because I had made some adjustments on it to make it more versatile for sculpting and discovered it cut smoother in the mines, generating more usable ore instead of shattering good ore into dross and dust. The result of my adjustments was longer, cleaner cuts, which meant more profitable ore for the amount of work done. I thought it was great. Longer cuts meant less ore dust, which would be better for the Company and the miners since we're told from birth that Durantium dust is a dangerous and useless byproduct. I submitted the new cutter design to Company Research and Design hoping for a bonus. After all, the Company always collected the dust for destruction real carefully, a process that was time, manpower and money intensive. I believed the edprogs that said to be careful of dust and report its presence to the Admin. I'd always believed it was to keep the mines safer. I figured anything that cut down on dust was gonna make my family's lives better after I was long gone. Dumbass. Saint Ignacius told me later, after they yanked my cutter's safety rating, that he believed ore dust was used to create some of the expensive refiners and refinements used by the Imperium. His theory, based on the transactions he kept track of while placing his black market orders was that the ore dust was as valuable or more so than the Durantium ore itself. He didn't have any proof, no that it mattered. There was no one to give the proof to but the miners, and no one wanted a repeat of the union incident. I was making too much profit and not enough dust, so they yanked my safety rating, docked my profits for a new cutter, and confiscated the old one. They also stamped a formal reprimand in my Company file, with the stern warning that any more unauthorized tampering with Company machinery would result in the loss of my certifications. I'd been drinking like a fish that night, so angry I was vibrating, half hoping for a bar fight. I'd look away for a few minutes only to return and find my hands in fists, my heart in flames and my guts in knots. The others were keeping their distance. They didn't believe the Admin about my cutter, but they didn't want to set me off either. I was alone again, and eaten up inside when Ziggy limped up and handed me a piece of actual paper. “Good for what ails ya.” He rasped in that voice that might have been a bass and was a grating of stone on stone from exposure and rock. The he stumped away, leaving me staring at the envelope. I finally dragged myself far enough up from the pits of inebriation to open it and stared in astonishment. It was a flyer. It was THE flyer. It was my golden ticket, my one chance, a possibility as terrible as it was glorious, and I knew in an instant I was going to do it. It was the 1000th year of the Emperor's rule, long may He reign and in honor of that, He was hosting a tournament like no other. It was to be a year long spectacle, a festival of epic proportions, and this flyer was the key, the door, the pathway. Every artist in Imperial space was invited to submit files of their works. No matter what you did, if it could be recorded, written down, photographed, or sense-copied, you were invited to send it in to be judged. From these initial submissions, one hundred thousand contestants would be chosen in every field, every millieux, every genre of art conceived of by sentient minds. Anyone chosen in this first round wold be taken to another world where a festival of art competitions would commence. The ten thousand winners of these would then be ferried to the Imperial Homeworld, to compete for a place in the Imperial Art Festival, a year long celebration of one thousand lucky artistic geniuses who would win eternal fame and valuable prizes under the indulgent eyes of the Emperor Himself and all his court. It was an astonishing chance. A staggering thought. To show ones work in the preliminary competition was chance enough, but to be one of the final 1000 artists taken in and lauded on Dracis Prime? I wasn't even thinking of that. My mind had fixed on one point exclusively. If you made the first cut, if your work was chosen from this initial file submission, if you were one in one hundred thousand, your passage off of your homeworld would be provided by the Imperium at no cost to you. I would be off of Cthonia, with all my carefully hoarded funds still in my pocket. I would finally have a chance. A hope. Enough air to breathe. A place where my burn could be clean and free. I was gonna do it. Ziggy had given me my shot. Saint Ignacius would get my files out to the judges. I knew he would. It was the put up or shut up test. The Emperor was going to give artists patronage, and I was going to get some of it, so help me. When I got home that night, my confiscated cutter was on my pillow. There was a red V in a circle painted on the casing. That V is still there.