Light Music by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Author:Kathleen Ann Goonan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Nanotech Series 4
Published: 2011-11-09T01:34:58+00:00

April 2115

One morning, after a good spell of time, Angelina stepped into the gallery of Van Gogh’s brother.

This was her project. Using literature, in this case Van Gogh’s letters, she was recreating for the sighted this particular historical milieu. She was adding to the city herself, feeding it visions, enhancing its depth.

There had been an interview with a Cultural Committee which wholeheartedly approved the plan after going over various engineering and resource considerations. Apparently, as the woman Illian had told her, she was one of the rare people who had found some measure of control over the Hopscotch program. Now she was testing.

This address had, of course, seen many uses over the centuries, yet Angelina was embedded with a pheromonal code which called forth the physical attributes which, until a few months earlier, she had seen only in her mind.

Inside, the air smelled of oil paintings. It might take years for them to fully dry, and until then the paintings gave off residue, in decreasing, infinitesimal quantities. But she could smell them. She wondered if she could become so sensitive that she could smell the photonic pattern through the residue given off by the different elements which comprised the colors of the oils.

She bought a Van Gogh, was the first to buy one from the grateful widow of Van Gogh’s brother, and had it delivered to her flat.

She had settled her flat at last. After arduous weeks, she had become as used to the visions which flocked around her as she had been to her own large kitchen in Argentina. And, as she stepped out of the shop back into sunshine breaking through the moody clouds and the vision of a thousand writers merged to one via scent and precise location, she realized with satisfaction that she had settled Paris. Without sight, she had colonized the streets with alternate histories which could be accessed not only by her, which she did automatically, setting out weekly to map blank places, but by others who chose to do so. She was The Storyteller, the Cartologist of the Purely Emotional. Some previously unstimulated, hidden part of her had been awakened by the Hopscotch program, which had killed so many. It had only made her strong and sure.

It kept her mind off Louis. This was necessary. Otherwise she would fall into endless grief, amplified by ages of stories.

Manuel. Well. That was another matter. He was definitely off of her mind.

A month ago, she had entered a café and ordered coffee and a brioche. That morning all was white, since she was off the map, and she relaxed into the clank of silverware, the hiss of the espresso machine, the low chatter of diners, which assumed its own rhythms like the rhythms of morning bird calls outside of her open bedroom windows. After her breakfast, she would work on the maps. It was a peculiar mental process, but one which she finally felt she had mastered.

Then one voice stood out from the rest.

Manuel.

She would have risen and called out his name, except for what he was saying.

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