Chapter 11

Translated by SkyTL Edited by SkyTL

Chapter 11: Studio

“It’s… It’s very authentic.”

“I’m so embarrassed about that. I never thought the day would come when people would see my bad work.”

The first thing I noticed when I entered Thomas’ studio was not so much the painting, but the intense smell of oil paint.

I was the only one allowed into the studio, and they were reluctant to let me in, let alone Lacey and Riza. Apparently they don’t usually show their work to other Simulants, and if I had ordered them to, they would have agreed, but there was no reason to force them, so I left them in the reception room.

However, the paintings that Thomas likes to do are oil paintings and not digital paintings, which is unusual for this age.

It’s a hobby that has become almost obsolete on Earth. I thought it was an outrageously extravagant hobby, but I’ve been told that the resource load in Astoria is amazingly low and that organic pigments and artificially drying oil can be easily made in existing facilities.

I look around his studio.

The space is surrounded by smooth white panels on all the walls and has no windows except for a slit in the ceiling for air conditioning and the door through which we entered. It appears to be a cargo container commonly used around the world as a private studio.

The canvases ranged from large to small, but most were small enough for one person to carry with both hands.

All of the works are dated and arranged in order from far left to far right, with the most recent painting in the foreground on the right. The oldest dated work is almost fifty years old. There is a gap of ten years at some points in the chronological order, probably due to the time Thomas was in cryosleep when he was not painting.

His style is more realistic in the older works but strangely abstract in the newer ones. I don’t know what that means, because I don’t have the knowledge to judge a painting.

“Thomas-san, I would like to send some data to Earth, if you don’t mind my taking some pictures.”

“Yes.”

There is some demand on Earth for robotic drawings as research subjects. They are useful for analyzing the “psychological state” of robots.

Well, I have no idea, but someone on Earth might like it. I don’t know how Thomas feels about presenting his work to people on Earth, but he doesn’t seem to mind, so I guess it’s okay.

Since I left Riza behind, I had to operate the camera myself to scan the 3D image in the non-destructive mode. The camera… or the 3D scanner on my wrist doesn’t have artificial intelligence, but it is very good at automatically capturing the data from the computer as long as I align it and press the button.

As I skim the oldest image, I turn and call out to Thomas.

“I’m sorry. May I ask you to explain everything one by one?”

“With pleasure. In order from oldest to youngest, if you don’t mind.”

“Please.”

What was depicted in the painting looked familiar to me, too. It was something I had seen on the first day I landed in Astoria. In other words, it depicted the subtle flavor of the “green” ration.

Maybe it was because this was Thomas’ first work, but even to me, a complete amateur, it looked very inert.

“Hahaha… This is one of my favorite pieces. There’s not a Simulants in the world who doesn’t like it. There’s nothing to see in it, but I left it here because it’s so memorable.”

“I think it’s good to remember the beginning. Are the two next to it the same?”

“On the left side is a food factory. In the store next to it, that’s where we all eat.”

As I looked at the works in chronological order, I could see that he was progressing quickly.

The second work is a plant, with each stem accurately drawn. To the untrained eye, it already appears to be at a very high technical level.

The third painting is a lively picture of four young men and women sitting around a table talking. I don’t know who these four are, but they seem to be getting along very well.

I learned something from this painting. Clearly, non-robotic emotions are not limited to Lacey and Charlotte.

“However, looking at it again, it seems that my early works are all about food. Perhaps it’s because I had limited entertainment, but it seems that I was very picky when I was young, and I’m ashamed of that.”

As Thomas says with a chuckle, most of his early works seem to be about food or eating.

Finally, in the eighth work, a motif other than food appears. It is a picture of an old man playing the guitar.

“Oh, I miss this. He’s long since broken down, or dead if you want to put it in human terms, but he was a guy who loved to play guitar and make people listen.”

“I am sorry to hear about his death. I would have liked to hear about it.”

“No, that was more luck. In fact, his guitar playing was so bad that it was unbearable to listen to, and he played it so often that he didn’t care what other people thought, which was quite annoying to say the least.”

Thomas’ eyes narrow a bit with nostalgia, though, when he says he’s glad the guitar man didn’t bother people. As annoying as that may sound, it doesn’t have to be a bad memory for him.

From then on, the work goes on for a while, with the Simulants, the residents of Astoria, pursuing their own hobbies.

In his fourteenth play, his style suddenly changed dramatically.

At first, I thought it was a mixture of works written by completely different people, a far cry from the realistic and warm works of the past.

In the center of the extremely colored canvas is a white shadow of a person. The figure seems to be stretching out its arms and calling out for something, but I’m not sure what it means.

The backgrounds are colored with geometric patterns that seem to appeal directly to the viewer’s emotions, creating a sense of unease.

“From here on, the painting becomes quite abstract. Have you changed your mind?”

I ask, trying to choose my words carefully.

Thomas is silent for a few seconds and then answers in a whisper.

“I remember that moment very well. I was drawing on a whim outside the control area, and there it was… I mean…”

The answer was quite different from the question I had asked.

He hesitated, speaking slurredly.

But there seemed no need to press him further, and after ten seconds of waiting, he continued as if to say something aloud.

“…I found the body of a human being.”

I gasped.

The look in Thomas’ eyes was completely different from the one I had seen before. It was the same strange, feverish look he had given me earlier in the reception room.

It is common knowledge that the quantum brains of robots that come into contact with human remains often react in unpredictable ways. This is due to the overriding principle of not harming humans, which can be very stressful even if they are not at fault.

In the worst case, the quantum brain can cause secondary accidents by self-destructing, so human remains must be handled carefully before the robot.

I ask back, feeling a little pressured.

“This, Thomas-san…?”

“When I first saw it, it was so horrible that it made my eyes close… But then something even more horrible happened!”

“…What do you mean?”

“What I thought was a completely mummified corpse had moved. I don’t know if it was because of the air current that opened the airlock, or if it was actually a human that had been alive just before. Either way, the person never moved again after that.”

“…Isn’t it because of the air current?”

“Ira already suspected that. But I don’t. I panicked at the possibility that I might have let a dying, salvageable human die before my eyes… And then I shut down – or, to put it in human terms, I passed out – and started up again about 20 hours later.”

—In a word, it’s simple and clear: you’re worrying too much.

But the stress and panic of seeing a human corpse for the first time must have made it difficult for him to make such a simple decision.

He can even count himself lucky if he regains consciousness without incident. A robot subjected to the stress of a first-principles violation without going through a thorough acclimation protocol will, in no small part, irreversibly destroy its quantum brain – the human equivalent of brain death.

Thomas continues feverishly.

“When I woke up, I suffered from a terrible headache and dizziness for a while. But after a few minutes, it suddenly cleared up and the light came on.”

“…Hmm eh! ? Light?”

That’s when I realized that the conversation had suddenly taken an unexpected turn, and I had to scream in a crazed voice.

I stare at Thomas’ face, but he doesn’t seem to be joking.

On the contrary, he looks at me with serious and shining eyes, as if he were a priest in an ancient church on earth.

“Yes, that’s right. I don’t even know what that was. But since then, my world has changed. Everything I saw became more colorful. No, not just the things I see, but the sounds, the smells, just everything. I was really surprised that everything in this world was so beautiful. From that day on, I started painting what I felt, not what I saw.”

Thomas scratched his head a little sheepishly as if he had noticed that I was taken aback.

He looked at the fourteenth painting, a white figure, and then back at me.

“I haven’t even told Ira this story yet. But I wanted to ask you if what I saw on… seen is what humans call a… God?”

I feel dizzy. How can anyone say something like that?

It reminds me of Lacey’s “prayer” from earlier. It seems that for the robots who consider the Three Principles their holy book, God is the humans.

But that’s not the God Thomas is talking about. He is talking about a supernatural, transcendent God that people believe in. I’m not going to dismiss that as superstition, because faith is free, but that doesn’t mean a robot should talk about it.

I found Lacey and Charlotte unrobotic, but Thomas was even more so. I expected him to be the most robotic of the Simulants, since he was supposed to be in charge of organization.

“W-well…”

Thomas seems to be expecting something, but I just give him a vague answer.

And then his expectant look turns to undisguised disappointment.

“I see. I’ve heard that people can sometimes see God, so I thought Lyle-sama could too. I apologize for that. Please forget about it.”

“Ha~a…”

He didn’t force me to talk about God anymore. For my part, I didn’t want to pursue the topic any further.

I had no choice but to stand in front of the fifteenth picture and lightly tap the terminal on my wrist with my fingertips to activate the scanner.

“By the way, may I see your next image?”

“Yes, of course.”

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