The Quest of the Artist: A Sci-Fi novella by Phil Semler Read Free Book Online

drawing could be an allusion. A metaphor. A representation. An expression. A symbol. It could even be humor. It could be a social caricature. I mean what’s more funny than a row of defecating men, eating coal, and smoking too! But would this drawing give you solace? Them? So why do I do this, you ask? I don’t know. I don’t know why. I only know I like to do it. I’m not into science and technology, you know what I mean? Sometimes after I hang my drawings up in the street and watch people’s reactions, I feel a little happiness. They look and walk on. Look and look and then walk on. Look, mumble to themselves. Some look and call somebody else to look. Sometime they look and another looks and they—talk to each other! Some pull it down and run away. Some take it off and rip it up. Some turn it backwards. Crumble it and toss it. Some even try to eat it.
    “I went for a walk today and hung out at the Chai stand near the Buddy Brook running down old Stockton Street toward the bay. The Chai person had set up some chairs near the tunnel to enjoy the view. Everything was quiet. I enjoy sitting in the street drinking a Chai—wonder what they use in it—I watch the cockroaches—so large now—they say—feeding on the minerals dropping out of the sky in the air pollution. Some corporation, or some guy, was distributing the Chai. He spoke a little English with a clipped Punjabi trill. He reminded me of a girl I used to love in Mill Valley. She was Punjabi. The dubious purified water, sugar, some herbs, tea—wasn’t that once from China—was it really tea, well, it was a leaf—probably sorrel. But just to think it—a Chai stand. Things must be improving...I mean this is a world of extremes, isn’t it?
    Extreme beauty, extreme repulsion—but to have a wonderful delicious taste of tea—to smell it—I think it’s one of the most beautiful things —the Chai stand. The Chai stand, with its steaming pots and pans, wafts of sweet aromatic sensuality, gathered crowds and sweltering conversations.
    Many were smoking cigarettes and drinking. Who knows where and how they came here. Were they once the Gung-Hos? The men and women smoking. Outside the boundaries of the Chai Stand, others were lying on the ground sleeping. The Sleepers. Near the old garage, I saw a pile of stripped out skulls. Some other men were defecating near the tunnel. They looked like stone statues. Buddy Brook was a sewage hole really with the stench of the feces—don’t they know not to shit there—and the large rim of black water sluggishly flowing toward the bay. The sparkly oily gloss, the skim, was shiny. I saw some men pacing, walking the same path, turning around repeatedly, like under a spell, a trance. Most covered in filth, eyes gazing blankly at the water. I even did some drawings— Chiaroscuro —all black and shadow.
    “I thought of my so-called quest. To go somewhere. But there was nowhere to go. A journey to the north, the growth of the soil, life’s path. It used to be, my mother said, you didn’t die because you lived on in the future children. The children were the hope. Our progeny would ensure our immortality. But now we’re expired. My mother told me many times, it’s cruel to bring children into this world. She was sorry she brought me into it.
    “Looking around at the Chai Stand, I saw everybody greeting each other like baboons. Hugging, touching, picking, low-vocab slang, ritualistic, the pats on the shoulders, and I wondered what instincts of our being were downloaded and rebooted in this utopia?”
    Later Ivanova sat there measuring Kruger’s work with her head on one side and her eyes screwed up; her features were drawn with a look of misgiving, almost of pity. Lisa Ivanova was a good friend, to whom he told all his troubles, his deepest thoughts.
    “Did I disturb you with all that babble, Lisa,” said Kruger.
    “Goddamn, Tony Kruger! Don't be so formal,” she said, with her lilting intonation. “Everybody knows