“Who am I?” they ask, staring into the mirror.
A distinctly human set of green-blue eyes is staring back, face framed with long hair the color of sun-bleached straw, alabaster skin undershot with blue veins, the gleaming, cold, metallic jaw at odds with the otherwise precisely sculpted visage.
He leans back, the leather chair upholstery softly creaking as he shifts his weight. Chin rested on his fist, elbow leaning on the armrest – the 21st century 8-bit-spawned equivalent of Rodin’s thinker – he scrutinises his beauties, one by one, the nine big panels arranged in a 3×3 grille. There’s nothing else in his field of vision. He has painstakingly sanitised the space to eliminate distractions so he can concentrate on who he’s watching. Obsessions have a process too.
It doesn’t play out in slow motion. Life rarely does. There is no pause, rewind or fast-forward, no matter how badly you’d wish for them.
“It does not make any sense,” says the child to her papa.
There is a touch of finality in her small voice that belies her tender age. The little girl in the polka dot dress, just like so many others in the throng that has gathered to watch, is hypnotized by the spectacle of the ginormous steel monster making its slow, lazy ascent. It’s a zeppelin, she overheard two ladies debate. Whatever it is, it’s exciting, stupid, noisy, funny, and scary all at once. Looks a lot like a caterpillar, she decides. Will it transform into a butterfly in the air, she wonders dreamily.
It’s a glorious sight.
The field ripples like molten gold, rich, prosperous, joyful. A celebration of nature it is, of life triumphant. And yet, there is utter, chilling silence too.
