Wednesday, July 23rd, 2076
“Yeah, that’s what I was hopin’,” Al said as he looked around at the flash in the first shop. “Don’t wanna be no stranger or nothin’, jist a feller needs his own space, yer talkin’ ‘bout few weeks’ time.”
One of the names crossed off Al’s left upper arm had been done here in London, on this street, but that had been almost two decades earlier, and the place was gone now. Al’s other work had mainly been in New Orleans, Accra, Hamburg, and Seattle. So he needed to look carefully, make sure he found the right artist. Shouldn’t be a problem - there were probably a baker’s dozen quality joints on this street. Just had to sift them out from triple that number of tourist traps.
The first place was a non-starter, so they went on to the next, arm in arm. “Ya know, toots,” he said looking up at her, “they got UK tours too. Quick sprawl run down to Southampton, then a leisurely week ‘round the Western Habitable Zone - real nice in summer - night in Bristol - birthplace o’ psychobilly, that - ‘nother week inna Welsh Habitable - then they zip through Merseysprawl overnight so you don’t gotta look at it - after that ya got the Lake District, followed by Edinburgh, an’ finish up with a few days in the Scottish Habitable. But honest truth is, that Orient thing sounds great, too, so you pick. Or decide by which ya can git tix first.”
They were on their third shop now. Al was looking at the flash for someone with the right spirit, and for a place that had the sort of software he wanted. Finally he found some stuff on a wall that was suitably dark and out-of-the-box for his idea, and they had the gear he wanted. Next he looked at the artists. There was a beautiful girl in there with the sides of her head shaved, a brilliant shock of white hair falling to her waist, and a lean body wearing nothing but tight cut-off jeans, the better to display the intricate work gracing her torso. There was a dimensionality and otherworldliness that Al matched to the flash on the walls.
“Yo missy, who did yer work?”
She looked up from the woman’s calf she was working on and smiled. “That’d be Fletcher over there,” she answered in a heavy Eastern European accent. Hearing his name, a thick, hairy man in a denim vest and leather trousers waved from where he also was at work on a young woman -the two customers appeared to be friends.
“Well, Fletcher-amigo, reckon yer my man. Like yer style.”
“About an hour, mate.”
“Groovy. I gotta modify some previous - I see ya got the right imaging gear an’ so forth, mind if I git started?”
The man nodded and Al directed Robyn to a couple of seats. As he removed his boots and socks, he said to her, “Reckon that awesome work o’ yers is all one integrated piece, so s’pose you’ll wanna be careful ‘bout addin’ or detractin’ from it. Cool either way.”
Once his shoes were off, he placed them together and used a wand to scan the soles. Next thing they were displayed on a screen. They had some sort of writing on them that was so poorly executed that Alyce barely recognized it as Khmer, along with numerous small round scars she easily recognized as cigarette burns. “I ain’t got no talent fer drawrin’, but this stuff is aces…” And using a combination of hand movements and vocal commands, he spent thirty minutes illustrating some sort of monster. A chill ran down her spine when she realized - by accessing the programs input in her headware - that it was an approximation (as least as much as two or even three dimensions would allow) of the thing they had stopped entering the Lyonesse metaplane.
When the man came over, Al said, “That’s roughly what I want - done incorporated the crap already there. Now I need you to give it life - like in them dark pieces on the wall.”
“Yeah, mate, I see what you’re going for. You do those letters yourself? Looks like you used bamboo and charcoal?”
“Sure. Basically means ‘fuck you’ in Cambodia-talk. Can you do that critter like I drew it, only yer way?”
“No worries. So you’ll be stamping on evil. Great metaphor.”
“Ain’t no damned metaphor. An’ once yer done, I need a speech bubble up here inna corner with the thing sayin’, ‘I suck cock like a skeezy bitch.’”