Introducing *the* Mind Painter
Earth Year: 2350
Martian Year: 167
They filed into the theater by the tens of thousands. There was little need to experience most events in real-time, and even less to be physically present for them, but one of her mind paintings was a glaring exception. An extreme minority had the mental capacity to mind paint at all, and she was light-years ahead of the rest. Most just called her the mind painter; the others were amateurs in comparison.
Despite the riches involved and best efforts of thousands, there was no way to record them in any way whatsoever. That feat was almost as impressive as the shows themselves. She insisted her performances be fleeting, like everything else — she only performed each show once. Millions who could not afford to be there in person plugged in to see, feel, hear, smell, taste, and think the experience virtually, though it was argued the word ‘virtual’ no longer applied. This was a rare affair shared by the different classes of the City.
‘Sara Tonin’s Mysterious Parade’ blazed in circles around the venue.
The Rook Theater was a perfect globe suspended a thousand meters above the ground. The thriving asteroid mining business had eliminated the scarcity of architectural metals, removing the imperative to build spherical or dome-like structures that maximized volume while minimizing surface area. Although there were several large outposts built inside of covered impact craters — inverted domes — the City itself had even ceased to resemble one. However, the theater’s architect had wanted to pay homage to both the old stadiums of Earth and the above-ground habitation units of early Mars colonization. It was the largest and most prestigious theater on the red planet, after all. Many claimed that most events, including mind paintings, were just as good or better from home, but humans retained a propensity to gather in physical proximity and share experiences together.
The crowd buzzed as everyone found their way to and settled into their seats and helmets. There were no concessions of any kind here. When the lights dimmed, a silence commensurate to the vacuum of space filled the hall, as a small platform containing a lone occupant slowly lowered from the ceiling into the center of the massive chamber.
She wore a skintight bodysuit the same shade as her wild, waist-length hair. Black didn’t do the color justice — it absorbed one hundred percent of light. She was a silhouette from all angles, her face a blank mask. Speculation abounded as to her real identity, what she actually looked like — as if that meant anything — and if she was perhaps just the visible front of a team. Some wondered if she was even a person at all. Countless Martians, both clever and well-resourced, had tried to unravel these mysteries, to see behind the curtain, without success. Her obfuscation tech was as sophisticated as anyone’s, sweetening the enigma. Many had their suspicions, but few knew the truth.
She took a deep, elegant bow, then put on the helmet resting on the high table in front of her as raucous cheering erupted from the multitudes both present and remote. Over half the planet’s citizenry shivered and held its breath in anticipation. The common areas of the City were deserted except for a few opportunistic criminals, accompanied in wealthy layers by the private security guards tasked with the unhappy job of thwarting their efforts.
Total darkness descended, and a quote was read, heard, and understood by all.
“‘We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes…’ -Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception.”
They loved her ability to dredge up forgotten gems from the past.
The mind painter’s suit began to swirl with vibrant images of galaxies and nebulas. A few of the cosmic structures were recognizable to the astronomers in the audience — The Pillars of Creation, Andromeda — but most were alien. She began to dance, different movements to a different beat for everyone watching and listening. Without realizing when the transition happened, the interstellar edifices had become all-consuming, the mind painter was gone, and in a genuine sense so was everyone in the audience. They were no longer mere spectators.
They joined a procession of strange yet familiar beings and beasts that marched on an endless astral highway. Some of them were larger than their visual field. They danced on the rings of a thousand Saturns to music extending above and below the frequencies accessible to the unaugmented human ear, like the whale songs of old Earth. But they could also taste, see, and smell these melodies — here, they all had synesthesia. The celestial phenomena cried tears of liquid neon light, which streamed down their faces, icy and warm, as they wept and laughed.
But their journey was not limited to deep space. They visited a thousand landscapes on Earth, too. A most remarkable place, as if it had been made just for them, or they for it.
As ineffably as they had gotten lost, they were found again. In local time barely two hours had passed, but there was no sense of time inside her mind paintings. That fourth dimension simply ceased to exist. Afterward they said it seemed like a beautiful lifetime had passed.
This is an excerpt from my debut science fiction novel Mind Painter.
