Art Along the Aether – Chapter Five – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Duct work and duct tape, coat hangers and copper tubing, Black PVC bowels flexing around thick electrical cable, rainbow-paint reinforced rice paper kites caught in nylon nets as sharp-angled butterflies. Strings hanging dipped in glitter, clips of newsprint glued and drizzling down their length and laminate shredded into strips spread eagle wings, angel wings in mock-wood veneer. Cotton-filler clouds illuminated from within by pale blue string lights with battery boxes tied to cardboard lightning strikes spray painted with the word ‘Zeus’ as the entire pantheon was named in the glory of fine-tipped graffiti.

Overall the ceiling looked to be an immense coiling dragon hovering overhead, by what ingenuity it hung from a thirty-foot ceiling perhaps the true miracle of their new-found heaven. The sheer menagerie of parts that composed the festive beast astounded Ollie, and Sarah too, as her eyes were playing ping-pong with the display.

“How did they get tires up there?” She asked.

Ollie shook his head. “How did they get any of it up there?”

The floor itself was what might truly be called a warehouse. Eclectic, various and sundry items sat in symmetrical piles, seeming that the symmetry was more important than the organization. The piles of items on the floor were just as much a part of the art as the ceiling. Interspersed through the piles were stands that held brown paper sketches done in charcoal, perhaps not the type one would get in an art store, but the type one would get from the butt end of a well-burned hunk of pallet. They were people, faces, caring, loving and cheerful, haunting the space like gravestones or town war banners honoring the fallen. For all Ollie knew, their subjects were still alive, downstairs feeding drum addictions.

The second floor didn’t look as big as the first floor, though by the outside it had to be. Just partitioned differently. But the area they were in seemed divided into two sections, not counting the odd lots. Two areas of light; one of fire, and one of bulb. Bulbs, in fact. Around the fire stood diligent, smock-covered creatives coated in paint and charcoal smear. They seemed, smelled to be smoking pot and pointing at the ceiling like plumbers sizing up jobs. One woman held up the big wheel of a plastic toy tricycle and ran her finger a long it so that the others could see, a coach with the magic Disneyworld play.

What caught their attention as much as the installation on the ceiling was the second area, more distant. They saw a circle sitting down around a set up of lamps, as many as twelve, some incandescent, some LED, but in their collision, brilliance. From where they stood, it was as if the second floor of the warehouse truly was heaven, and they approached what in their estimation were its presiding archangels.

They stepped tenderly, lest they trip over a social faux pas lying on the floor with the string and glitter. Carefully, they made their way to the light, a sign stood between them and that very light when they were close enough to see it.

“The Council,” it read. “Take a number. There are no numbers.”

Ollie and Sarah looked at each other, then at Deke and Harry, who were still entranced by the ceiling. Deke pulled out a joint and Ollie slapped it out of his hand, but it took an off roll and entered into the Council’s lit area. A hand attached to one of the bodies surrounding the light reached for it, and in seconds, lit it up, took a hit, and passed it. They didn’t invite the group in on account of the generosity, but the group, led by an indignant Deke, walked past the sign to get a better look at what his joint had bought them.

There were five of them; five archangels. There seemed to be no leader, no Michael, but they were all adorned in spectacular garb – works of art themselves.

A woman – perhaps a woman, but someone Ollie might have been more comfortable calling them “they,” had on a silver suit with military decoration made of antique bottle tops and the Surgeon General’s warnings from myriad cigarette packs colored over in highlighters. They also had the floor.

“Okay folks,” they said. “They put up three new segmented benches. One in Washington Park, and two others, one on Lincoln, and One on Madison. And after they put their pilot problem of anti-sleeping spikes under the 787 overpass, we said the next bit of anti-homeless architecture was war. So its war.”

A burly man with a beard that held troll dolls and miniature garden gnomes cleared his throat. “So we got a couple things we can do,” he said. “First off, we can tear the benches right out. I scouted today. There are no cameras, and we can draw the cops away with a few of our drunks downstairs. But that’s dicey. We’ll be putting them on the front lines. Let’s not forget there isn’t much penalty for a cop shooting a homeless guy. You need to tell whoever does the diversions that they’re talking a risk.”

“Can we do something other than rip them out?” the Silver General said. “Can we just rip out the separator parts?”

“We could. In fact, we could take that part out with Allen wrenches,” he said. “But they’ll just replace the bars, so for a permanent fix we’d be tearing benches apart, and we probably wouldn’t be making them sleepable anymore, so what’s the point?”

A woman in a Scarlet Jumpsuit raised her hand but didn’t wait to be recognized.

“Sustained graffiti campaign,” she said. “We cover them in graffiti, obscene stuff. They have to clean them. We keep doing it, it becomes too much bother. Also, we could coat them in something caustic that eats away at the wood.”

“Stay away from the caustic, but it’s a good idea.” Silver General got up and pulled a rolling chalkboard out of the shadows that had a map of the city tacked to it.

“So Arthur and Semilia, you guys get together and work on the benches. And if you can figure out the spikes, all the better. But we have another thing we have to deal with. The art medallions.”

Silver General held up a brass medal, nearly a badge, shiny, with an outline of the state and an apple and a paint brush behind it. Ollie strained to see that it read ‘registered artist’ on it.

“The city started giving these out for artists to glom over,” they said. “With it, you can get shortlisted for art projects in the city. Without it, SOL. And the galleries are going to look at these as a way to even further exclude artists that aren’t in their social cliques. We need to do something about these, as much as those benches.”

“I think I got this one,” A man in a checkerboard jacket and torn, tailored slacks spoke up. “Moss over on Albion Street has a 3D printer, they do stuff with copper and brass. I can see about having him make copies of that medallion. We give them to whomever needs them. I think they would do it for copper, and we have plenty of that.”

“Not enough,” Troll Beard said. “It’s playing their game. We need to make them, but we need to make a thousand of them, give them to people who aren’t even artists, make them worthless. How do we make a thousand?”

“We have to order them.” Silver General hung their arm on the chalkboard. “It’s time we don’t have. But let’s see about that Moss thing for now. Maybe they can do some quantity. Just having the city know there are good counterfeits can disrupt it.”

The remaining four people sitting around the collection of lamps, “the Council,” stayed quiet mostly, jotting down notes in what looked like leather journals, the mass produced kind one could pick up for less than ten dollars, but they held them like when they weren’t using them, they’d be placed in an Ark. One woman in an olive drab army windbreaker tipped her pencil in the air.

“I saw the murderer downstairs,” she said. “Do we want to talk about that?”

An older man, the oldest there, waved his hand palm flat down. “I don’t think we should call him that,” he said. “Murderer. We had a real murderer hiding out here three months ago, before any of you were on the council. What Lawrence Volk is isn’t a murderer. Traitor, perhaps?”

“Sell out,” a voice pitched in.

“Yes, that too.” The old man leaned back and his back cracked audible, sent a shiver through Ollie as he hated that sound when Sarah cracked her knuckles.

“That story was his child,” Scarlet Jumpsuit said. “It was beautiful and even God read it. God never reads manuscripts and He read it. And Volk gave it to an agent who told him he needed to take out a kidney, and he took out a kidney. And then an editor told him he needed to take out a lung, and he took the book into surgery once again, And again with the marketing department, and again with the legal department. And he best sold a corpse.”

“So what?” Troll Beard said. “His baby to kill.”

“Well God made the sun, right? His to wipe out? Sure. But He’ll still be killing eight billion of us. Lawrence Volk created something amazing. Something he never could’ve written if he hadn’t come here. And then they tell him to hack the ‘here’ off cause ‘here’ isn’t a good fit for the martini lunch crowd in New York. Not good enough for soccer moms with their cursors on all the book club links. We got the Guru down there shell shocked, asking people about their three-act structures. You all know she was in love with Lawrence. You all know he broke her heart.”

Acknowledgment in soft grunts from around the circle. Ollie coughed out a tickle in his throat without realizing it would give them the floor.

Silver General shine a laser pointer at Ollie’s jacket, jagged light bouncing off the buttons and scattering.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. “We’re just looking for a friend of ours named Juli. We heard she was up here.”

Silver General looked around the council. All shrugged save for Troll Beard, who pointed up.

“She’s with God now,” he said.

Sarah let out a ragged breath. “Oh Jesus.”

“Upstairs. She’s upstairs with God,” Troll Beard said. “It’s her day to tend to Him.”

“Oh, okay,” Sarah said. “Can we just go up and see her? Is that allowed?”

“You don’t need our permission,” Silver General said. “We never gatekeep here. First law: no gates.”

“We hit a pretty hard gate getting in the first floor. Shitheels searched us.”

“No gates past there. And that gate is a necessary evil, trust us.”

“You four look familiar,” Scarlet Jumpsuit said. She got up and encircled the group, body language shifting to catch their faces in the clearest angles of the electric light.

“You’re in a band. You played a basement on Martin Street three months ago. I almost didn’t recognize you, not the two of you.” She pointed to Ollie and Sarah. “You two get clean or something?” Ollie nodded.

“Good shit,” she said. “Not easy to do.”

“We have a meeting, Joanie,” Silver General said. She pointed to Ollie and Sarah. “You all should stay. We haven’t been out in a bit. We could use your perspective.”

Troll Beard found four folding chairs and made the offer, taken by Ollie, Sarah, Deke and Harry.

“So next order of business is the raid.” Silver General pointed to the dead center of their city map with their laser. “The Mayor just went to a cop’s funeral, shot in the line of duty by some scumbag we have no business with. So, obviously, she is going to send the SWAT team here to clear the place out. No biggie for us, but we’ve had some time on account of the weather to get accommodated. We have more supplies than normal. And of course heaven here has gotten more… developed. We’re going to need to get things stashed and moved out. Any ideas? Let’s do a little brainstorming.”

The old man cleared his throat. “I looked up a storage space down under the highway. A hundred and fifty for a ten foot by fifteen-foot space. It’s enough for the dry goods and blankets, some of the fold-up tents. We don’t have to lose those like we did last time.”

“We need someone with a credit card,” Scarlet Jumpsuit said. “Someone trustworthy. I don’t know if I would trust half the people downstairs with that responsibility, even though I love them to pieces.”

“We’ll put a pin in that.” Silver General said.

“I have an empty garage,” Deke said. “It’s about that size, maybe even a little bit bigger. I mean, you can trust me. I have enough of my own shit clogging my house, I don’t need to steal anybody else’s.”

Scarlet Jumpsuit pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I mean, how dependable are you? I remember that show. You were phoning it in on bass.”

“Hey! It’s a punk band. What do you want, Les Claypool?”

“Can you play some good bass in the garage before we decide?”

“Joanie, that was rude,” Silver General said. “We’d be happy to use your garage if you’ll let us.”

“I don’t know now,” Deke said. “There might not be much room in it once I set up the audition stage.”

Silver General sighed. “Joanie. Apologize. That was rude.”

“I will not. I was being honest. And I didn’t say he was a bad player. The bass on the CD was phenomenal. I just don’t think I saw his A-game that night.”

“So wait,” Deke said. “You liked my bass playing on the CD?”

“Of course. Best part of it.” She glanced over at Ollie and Sarah. “No offense.” Ollie waved off the implied insult.

“We need to go on,” Silver General bounced the laser around the map. “We have a full on art installation up here that I’ll be damned if we lose it. Now we made it a point to build it in sections that could stand alone. So we can disassemble it. But where do we put the pieces?”

“Just dump it out back with all the other trash,” Troll Beard said. “Cover it with trash bags here and there. They’ll think it’s garbage.”

“No.” Silver General said. “We’re not doing that. We’re not hiding it. They wage war on us, it’s war. We launch a poetic offensive, with all of your support. We take these pieces, these stand-alone pieces, and we distribute them throughout the city, art in every place art isn’t permitted to be. We,” they cleared their throat, “acquired some placards from the museum. We install these sculptures and put famous names on the placards and let the city decide how long they have to figure out it’s not supposed to be there and trash it. How many people will see it all before then?”

“But then it will be thrown away,” the old man said. “Just destroyed.”

The Silver General put their hands to their hips, arms akimbo.

“Not destroyed,” they said. “Sacrificed.”

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