Engineman - Eric Brown [214]
"The frame is an early prototype of the Keilor-Vincicoff interface," Bartholomew said. "I bought it for an absolute fortune when I realised it could be put to artistic use. What you see at its centre is a section of the nada-continuum, the timeless, spaceless form that underpins reality. Enginemen posit that the nada-continuum is Nirvana." He laughed. "I contend that it is nothing but a blank canvas, if you like, upon which we can project the contents of our psyches."
He indicated a computer keyboard set into the frame. "I programmed it directly from here-" tapping his head "-and it was the gruelling work of almost a year. It is totally original in form and content, and well worth the agony of creation."
"Is it titled?" I asked.
Bartholomew nodded. "Experience," he said.
I looked from what might have been a woman's face, screaming in terror, to the artist. "I'm impressed," I said.
He barked a laugh. "You Romantics! Unlike your work, this is not merely visual. It was created with the express intention of being participated in. Go ahead, pass through."
I stared again into its pulsing cobalt depths, veined with coruscating light, and stepped onto the plinth.
I glanced back at Bartholomew. "Are you quite sure?"
"Of course, my dear boy! Don't be afraid. I'll follow you in, if you wish."
I nodded uncertainly, wondering if I was doing the right thing. With reluctance, and not a little fear, I took one hesitant pace into the blue light. I was immediately enveloped in the glow, and without points of reference to guide my senses I experienced instant disorientation and nausea. I felt as though I were weightless and spinning out of control, head over heel.
More disconcerting than the physical discomfort, however, was the psychological. Whereas seen from outside the images in the glow were fleeting, nebulous, now they assailed me, or rather appeared in my mind's eye, full-blown and frightening. I beheld human forms bent and twisted in horrifying torques of torture - limbs elasticating to breaking-point, torsos wound like springs of flesh, faces stretched into caricatures of agony. These depredations were merely the physical counterpart of a prevailing mental anguish which permeated, at Bartholomew's perverted behest, this nightmare continuum. And beyond this, as the intellectual sub-text to the work of art, there invaded my head the ethos that humanity is driven by the subconscious devil of rapacity, power and reward - to the total exclusion of the attributes of selflessness, altruism and love.
Then, one pace later - though I seemed to have suffered the nightmare for hours - I was out of the frame and in the blessed sanity of the real world. As the horror of the experience gradually diminished, I took in my surroundings. I had assumed I would come out in the narrow gap between the frame and the wall - but to my amazement I found myself in the adjacent room. I turned and stared. Projecting from the wall - through which I had passed - was a horizontal column of blue light, extending perhaps halfway into the room. As I watched, Bartholomew stepped from the glowing bar of light - the artist emerging from his work - and smiled at me. "Well, Richard, what do you think?" He regarded me intently, a torturer's gleam in his eye.
To my shame I said, "It's incredible," when I should have had the courage to say, "If that's the state of your psyche, then I pity you." I only hoped that the agony I had experienced within the frame was a partial, or exaggerated, reflection of Bartholomew's state of mind.
"The depth of the beam can be increased from one metre to around fifteen. The devices are still used in shipyards and factories to transport heavy goods