A man and a woman embraced fiercely in the art piece. They gazed at each other, her face pleading as she clutched the ends of a white band wrapped around his arm. He cupped her face tenderly with one hand, but the other pulled against the band. The title readA Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day.Was the white band an identification of some kind? Did they use colors to declare status before the Last War?
“Do you think they are saying hello or goodbye?” Hal asked, moving beside me, bracing his arms upon my desk for a better look.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I have never had a hello or a goodbye resemble whatever that is. Have you?”
“I have,” he told me, his voice tight. “I think they are saying goodbye.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because there is a desperation in their embrace. See how she clings to him, how he’s holding her face? When you embrace hello, there’s hope. There’s a future. You don’t cling because you know there will be more to come. The finality in a goodbye embrace—when you let go, it might never happen again. So you cling to the person, the feeling, the moment. You hold on longer because it’s doomed to be nothing but a memory.”
I looked up at Hal, but he was lost in the painting or some goodbye. I had been down here for ten years, dissecting works of art by myself. I had always thought my rumination made me an outlier. Finally, I was not alone.
“What are the Illum doing with it?” Hal asked, breaking my thoughts.
“They’re destroying it,” I told him, hitting thedeletebutton. The image disappeared—now just a memory. I clicked for the next one, a landscape. I shook my head.
“What?” Hal asked, but it came out like a hiss. His hand flew to his side as he leaned closer to the screen.
“They’ll keep this one,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. The Elite are running me ragged.” Hal grimaced slightly before glancing to my screen, and sure enough, the verdict saidreassigned.“How did you know that?”
“I have a theory,” I said, catching my lip between my teeth. My heart raced at my boldness. It was one thing to have these thoughts. Telling them to another person terrified me, but Hal had just confided in me. Maybe I could do the same.
He tugged at the collar of his dark blue jumpsuit. “Major Defect, remember. You’re safe.”
I took a deep breath. “I think they get rid of all the ones with people to erase what life was like before the war. I think anything that makes the viewer feel is—is a threat. Like we might want more, and that would be the end of everything. Or maybe the beginning.” I bit my lip harder.
Hal looked at me. He smiled slyly like he saw something more.
“I underestimated you,” Hal confided. “Until our next meeting, Emeline.”
He made to leave. “Wait.” I stood, walking up to him. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, not at all. It’s just late.” Some of his smugness seemed to falter. His smile didn’t meet his eyes this time. I hadn’t noticed the blue smudges under his eyes before. He looked exhausted.
“Okay,” I said, turning back to my screen. Hal walked to the door, then stopped.
“Emeline,” Hal said over his shoulder. “Can I come back tomorrow? You know, to see the art.”
Our eyes met, starburst meeting blue and brown.
“I’d like that,” I responded, surprising myself.
Hal smiled at me, a genuine smile. I’d be damned if it wasn’t one of the most stunning things I’d ever seen. A work of art in its own way.
“Until tomorrow,” he said.
I smiled back, and his eyes roved over every inch of my face. “Okay, until tomorrow.”
I watched him go.
I got through several more items, wishing I could talk to Hal about a painting of several warped melting clocks and see if he had any insight into its meaning.The Persistence of Memorywas reassigned. Maybe it would come back around again, which happened sometimes. We could discuss it then, if we had the time. I was convinced a lot of the items circulated endlessly.
My Comm Device dinged. I grabbed it, assuming it would be Lo.
It wasn’t. I had two messages, the first from an unknown device.
