I Am Octus Chapter 1

Art museum in Sherman, Illinois

The odd trio seemed so out of place as they stood side by side in front of the big canvas that was hanging on the wall that the artist had decided to splatter with various colors: reds, pinks, yellows, whites, grays, and blacks (to name a few).

Ilana was the first to break the silence. "It's like, a beautiful sunrise. The splash of colors makes me feel warm, hopeful," she said.

"I see something…a bit different," said Lance.

"What?" Ilana questioned, eager to know Lance's opinion.

"Pestilence…devastation…endless war," Lance answered, staring at the painting.

"You need to lighten up," Ilana said, as she turned and frowned at Lance. "What do you see?" Ilana asked Octus (who was using his 'Newton' hologram so he could be in public), as she looked up at him.

"Well, there are twenty thousand variations of color," Octus supplied.

"No, what do you see?" Ilana tried again.

"What do you think the painting…represents?" Lance added helpfully.

Octus turned back to the painting. "The red doesn't represent red?" he asked, obviously confused.

"You can't just look with your eyes. You have to look with your heart…uh, your gut…your imagination?" Ilana said, as she watched Octus go from confused, to smiling, to frowning, and to glaring at her as she tried to find the right word for him.

"Go deeper, below the surface," Ilana said, hoping that saying that would help him understand.

Octus stared at the painting, and looked at the individual layers of paint. "Yes…yes, I see it," he said, as he looked at the black paint, then the white paint underneath it, then the gray, and then the red. "I can detect another painting underneath it. So, I guess that this wasn't the artist's first try," he said.

"But what can you tell us about the painting?" Ilana asked, trying to get an answer out of him.

"The canvas is twenty by twenty, and I date it to be approximately 1929," Octus supplied.

"That not what she's talking about," Lance said, with a small glare on his face as he turned toward Octus.

"There's an interesting variation of brushstrokes, but…" Octus said, trailing off as he looked at Lance and Ilana's bored and hopeless expressions.

"What?" he asked.

"You really don't see anything else?" Ilana asked.

"But nothing else is printed. It's just a configuration of lines and color," Octus replied, turning to look back at the painting.

Ilana reached up and put her small hand on his much bigger shoulder. "I guess you can't see it the way we do because…you're a robot," she said, before walking out of the room with Lance trailing along behind her.

"Robot?" Octus said out loud to no one in particular as he turned away from the painting to glare after Ilana and Lance.

Café du Paris in Paris, France

Two men sat outside the café at a table for two, a chessboard spread between them with a few white and brown chess pieces placed on the board. The man on the left was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest, with a look of satisfaction and victory on his face as he watched his partner. The other man, who sat on the right, was leaning forward, hunched over the chessboard, in deep concentration as he thought about which piece to move where.

Suddenly, the man on the right straightened, with a look of understanding and excitement on his face. At this, the man on the left said "Êtes-vous prêt à admettre sa défaite?"

"Vous ne devriez pas me demander," the man on the right said, as he switched his white chess piece with his partner's brown chess piece, thus making him the winner of the game. "Vous devez vous poser," he said as he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and assumed an expression similar to the one his partner had been wearing only moments ago.

The man on the left stared wide-eyed at the chessboard and at the move his partner had just made. "Quelque chose ne peut pas être exact. C'est impossible, inconcevable. Absurde," he shouted as he stood up and waved his arms around while his partner just sat there, completely ignoring the little outburst from his competition.

A little ways down, a shop owner in a white apron was sweeping beside his little table where he was selling an assortment of fruits and vegetables outside his shop. As a young woman wearing a hat with a long red ribbon, a short fancy red dress, a red pocketbook, and red high-heels that laced up her ankles walked by, the shop owner stopped sweeping to watch her pass.

Nearby, a man rode his bicycle on the cobblestone road around a big fountain in the middle of the village's square.

In the same village square, dozens and dozens of doves were pecking at the ground, trying to find some food that might have found its way from the nearby shops to the ground. Some of the white birds took to the air as a young man and woman walked, arm in arm, into the center of the birds and watched them fly around.

Back at the shop owner's little stand, a hand reached up from under the table and took an apple. Two small boys stood up at the end of the table and revealed themselves to be the ones who had taken the apple. They ran off with the apple, laughing as they passed the shop owner. "Hé, revenez ici vous deux...oh, oublier. Il est juste une pomme," he said, as he stopped sweeping only for a moment before continuing on.

Back at the café, the man on the left continued ranting over losing the game of chess, while the man on the right calmly poured himself some tea, still ignoring the other man.
The man on the bike went in another circle around the fountain. The couple in the village square were holding each other and looking in their eyes. The boys who stole the apple continued running, laughing with each other about their luck.

Suddenly, the boys stopped moving. Their legs were in mid-stride, and their mouths in mid-laugh. The shop owner stopped sweeping, the broom poised in mid-air. The two men outside the café had stopped moving too; the one on the left in mid-rant, the one on the right with his hands positioned to pour his tea—which was now over-flowing out of the cup. The bicycler stopped moving as well, but the bike kept moving even though his feet on the pedals didn't. The bike continued in a straight line before crashing and falling over because a low sitting-wall had got in its way. The man fell off, his hands still held out to hold the handle-bars, his feet still poised to move the pedals. The couple in the village square was now holding each other closer. They were frozen as well, poised to kiss. All around them, the flying doves fell to the ground like rain.

The only thing that was still moving was the wheel of the man's bicycle.