The razor-thin blade of a semicircular pendulum (a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe story, which they would never catch) swung three times before opening the artist’s abdominal cavity with surgical exactitude. The bleeders automatically reversed their function, and not one drop of blood clouded the view of the organs.
In anticipation, the nanomanipulators had injected different colorings into each organ, and Moy’s guts were a living symphony of exposed and pulsing colors. The analgesic drug circulated through his veins, preventing him from losing consciousness or going mad from sheer agony before the climactic moment. But the sensation of lying open, defenseless, strangely empty, was not something that derived from pain. And it was incredibly uncomfortable.
“Dreams are the intangible substance that gives life, depth, and sentient volume to a work of art. What projects it beyond its narrow material frame.” Moy closed his glottis, concentrating on breathing through his nose.
The pressurized hydrogen was injected into his intestine. The loops of the intestine, left clean by the nanos, inflated. Ghostly, semitransparent, rising from their place like the spirals of a horrendous larval snake. A surprising play of light glowed from within them, thanks to the gas.
“Although the light of art is always ephemeral, that light is the artist’s breath of life, his soul, which expires in each work of art.”
A nano punctured an intestinal loop and the superinflammable gas escaped with an audible hiss. Then the spark triggered flames, and for an instant Moy’s body was engulfed in a burning cloud.
Only for one second. Any more would have been dangerous; it might have burnt his skin and flesh. The volume of hydrogen was calculated to the cubic centimeter.
“And every critic, every exegesis, every interpretation of a work of art is a self-reflection, a journey to the inner self of the person who gave birth to it and clothed it in the flesh and skin of concepts.” Whenever he got to this point, Moy always regretted not being a woman. With a shredded uterus, this part of the monologue would have been much more powerful.
Even so, the vision was pretty stunning.
The knives of the nanoskinners sliced his epidermis, and the strips of skin fluttered in the wind like a macabre fringe. Bloodless. The surface capillaries were nearly empty; the bleeders were working at full capacity, concentrating the vital fluid in his essential organs.
Moy felt dizzy and nearly fainted. But the neurostimulant circulating through his system instantly revived him. He smiled, pleased. Ettubrute was one hundred percent alert to his slightest vital signs. And he now heard the dull rumble of the mechanical womb doing its job. Everything was going fine. As always.
“Behind the flesh and blood of emotions, the skeleton of theories and grand schemes is laid bare, the subtle framework of sex and power in mixed substrates.”
In perfect synchrony, both of the artist’s legs—first the muscles, sliced from within, then the bones, breaking with an audible crack—fell onto the stage. There they kicked convulsively for several seconds before falling still.
A few liters of blood flowed from the cut femoral arteries, streaming over the strangely empty trouser legs. Then the nanos stopped the flow. This wasn’t a mistake, but another well-calculated and inconsequential effect. With his body reduced practically to head and trunk, Moy simply did not need so much fluid. Besides, it might overwhelm the bleeders.
Moy followed a Tibetan breathing pattern.
Pain does not exist. Pain is an illusion.
I exist. I am real.
“What remains of art without the hidden alphabet of sex?” he howled.
At that cry, the nanos cut away the bloodied rag to which his trousers had been reduced, and his sex stood erect, as if defying death. Not from artificially high blood pressure in the corpora cavernosa, nor from a timely dose of hormones. Moy was aroused, as always. It was the old irony. Eros and Thanatos.
The proud exhibition only lasted a couple of seconds.
Moy relaxed. Now, the most difficult part…
The erect phallus exploded in a cascade of blue liquid. The nanos dissected the testicles from within and made them fall with a dull thud onto the stage.
When the effects of the analgesic overcame the pain and emptiness that burned in his mutilated groin, Moy breathed more calmly. The worst was over now. The rest would be more impressive than painful.
Kandria was watching him in genuine adoration. He had to take advantage of this mood of the girl’s. They were going to have a great time together, after all…
“It is the artist’s sacrifice, his spirit, that makes his work soar with creativity.” Moy gulped.
The artificial oxygenation system was set in motion, swapping out oxygen for carbon dioxide in his red blood cells without the mediation of his lungs. The nanos penetrated his bronchial tubes, and more hydrogen was injected into his pulmonary tissue. The pendulum again laid him open, this time at the thorax, and his swollen respiratory organs rose like balloons.
They lifted his tortured body even higher above the plaza, as if fighting to break his chains. At last they did so, and he floated freely above the plaza.
More applause, now almost frenzied.
Scornfully, Moy thought they not only knew nothing about human anatomy, they seemed to know nothing of basic physics either. It was totally obvious that the volume of air displaced by his lungs was insufficient to lift his body—even without arms or legs. Only the antigrav field, carefully managed by Ettubrute, made this extraordinary spectacle possible.
He gulped again. With no air in his lungs, only careful pumping by the pneumatic nanomachine attached to his larynx allowed him to keep talking. And he never lost his fear of how ridiculous he would look if the device failed.
“But always, inevitably, after the last brushstroke the artist falls back to hard reality!” Moy closed his eyes, and the chill of another dose of analgesics relieved his veins.
The lungs exploded with another burst of flame, and his body plummeted from up high. Below, the machine awaited him, deploying spikes and ridges, like the jaws of some terrible shark.
Poe’s other terror: the pit. A skillful intertextuality, wasted on all these xenoids, completely ignorant of human culture.
Even so, the audience shrieked.
The fall looked accidental, but it was meticulously managed by the antigrav fields. Several spikes impaled the remains of the artist’s body. One ran through an ear. Another went in through his cheek and came out through an eye socket, popping out his right eye.
“Looking at the external surfaces of this world of illusions is not what matters most to an artist! There’s much more than that!” Moy roared, and he felt his veins relax with the last, huge dose of analgesics. Prelude to the end.
He smiled.
His left eye burst from the pressure, splattering vitreous and aqueous humor, one tinted green, the other purple. Then it dangled from the optic nerve like a faded flower.
“The essence, what no machine can imitate, is the artist’s absorption into the universal, the final annulment of the ego that he suffers in creating art!” Moy relaxed entirely.
“Alea iacta est,” he thought, the die is cast, and he greeted the darkness.
The nanos that had penetrated his brain suddenly cut the supply of blood and glucose to its neurons, while hitting his major synapses with well-calculated electrical shocks. Moy sweetly lost consciousness.
Clinically, he was already dead, though his heart continued to beat. No one in the audience had realized that what the machine was displaying to them was a cadaver. It was essential for the final act. No analgesic drug could even lessen the supreme pain of that finale.
The pneumatic nanomachine injected air at high pressure into Moy’s larynx, modulating the horrific posthumous scream that made the vocal cords vibrate until they broke.