The Boiling Frog

Oh god, what did I choose?

In every quiet second since signing with a Patron whose name or face I still didn’t know, the doubts would creep in, followed by a hot weight at the top of my stomach that killed my appetite and left me clamoring for any distracting, calming thought. I’m here because I chose to be here, right?

A week back, I was living in abject poverty, painting with only black and white media, shamelessly blasting my existence across Digital Society, the amalgamation of social networks that consumed our every thought and housed every door of opportunity for a Creator like me. Now, I’m here. I vibrated with anxiety, feeling like a floating cloud of thoughts disconnected from my lanky body. But, as my dear James told me directly in his last Live Content, “This is the start of something better, Charisa. Something great, even.”

That was the last time I or anyone had seen his face. He signed with this very Patron a year before, and up until two weeks ago, had produced exactly what was expected of him. That was the dream – to catch the eye of a modern-day Medici — and since the very first day of Creator Class, we knew he’d pull it off. He was plucked from annonymity by an elusive, highly-followed Patron, and given a bottomless supply of media and space in exchange for ownership of what he created and any semblance of privacy (which was less concerning to us as we already streamed our every creative impulse on Digital Society.)

His wild, lawlessly creative live stream, viewable twenty hours a day from his Patron’s Digital Society feed, full of painting, metallurgy, splatters of pigment from all sides of his fishbowl-like studio, went to black after an impassioned solliloquy about discovering the start of something better, “Something great, even.”

“Hurry up. Onto the pedestal, now.” A plainly dressed Aesthetic Attendant said, gesturing towards a flat, ovate platform about a foot high. I stepped onto it as a daydream washed over me – the distraction I was hoping for. I was 8, smiling at my reflection as I modeled a flower girl dress at a small bridal boutique in downtown Austin. My mom stood behind me in the dressing room, near a chair piled high with our jackets and bags, holding up her phone so my aunt could see me in the purple taffeta flowergirl frock. She had to postpone her wedding before I even got a chance to wear that dress, and now 15 years later, the wedding is still in a perpetual state of “someday”, loosely slated for next spring. Aunt Marnie, the forever optimist.

We have that in common – optimism. That and long, stick-straight black hair. Maybe I was too young and clueless at 8 to feel the gravity of a “supply chain meltdown,” but I did understand that a postponed wedding meant the purple taffeta dress would go unworn. What it really meant was that without any petroleum products, there were no way for wedding guests to get to the event, no plastic chairs for the reception, no way to heat the old, hillside venue, and inexplicably – no lipstick. That shortage would continue when pigment production also came to a screeching halt. That was the shortage I felt, as a young artist. That one hurt. But in my youthful adaptability, I was a frog in a crock pot – the world was nearing a boil, but my coping mechanisms kept me cool.

Until now. Was it too late to jump out?

I could continue hustling on my own – flexing my imagination with limited supplies, zero color, and nearly zero income, but the part of me that longed for my art to look alive with saturation as it only had in my head since I was 8 was a powerful, persuasive force.

Reality fell back into focus as I considered my outfit in the wraparound mirror – the oversized jeans low slung around my visible hip bones and pooling at my feet, a lettuce-edge top in a bright mustard shade striped with brown. Oh god, what did I choose?

The Patron Class was known for crafting time capsules filled with nostalgia for their own personal enjoyment, complete with a Creator (a name for people like me that suggested a power we definitely didn’t possess), made into a breathing piece of decor. From the angular, modern art in electric yellows and blues and the artificial perfume and scent of sugared pretzels wafting through the air, to the music looping sting through low-fi speakers, the Patron was intent on parts of his compound feeling like a portal to the late 90s.

I touched my upper eyelid and winced. I thought of the Aesthetic Attendant barking “hold still” while plucking my brows into oblivion. An angry knot burned in my throat as I peered at them through the mirror, still red and shiny in the fluorescent downlighting.

Slowly, the angry knot untangled and I couldn’t help but smile as I saw mom’s face in mine. I had a picture of her and Aunt Marnie sitting by a water display in a mall food court dated “1996” on the back, both sporting thin, overplucked eyebrows and baggy jeans precisely like the ones I had on now. The Patron’s attendants were nothing if not detail-oriented in their efforts to create the scene my benefactor had requested.

“Mall-ready!” A Content Attendant said in a singsong voice while she gestured for me to do something. Anything. The gesture was almost like a dismissive “shoo”, but I knew to sway, spin or ham it up in some way for the recorder she had aimed at me on the pedestal. Her face turned icy as I failed to immediately put out what she wanted. I pinched the pants outside of both thighs and bounced back and forth, smiling into the mirror, and she seemed pleased enough to lower the device back into her lap, then tapped the screen to add some flourishes before posting it to the Patron’s audience. Being a Creator would be easier, I admitted to myself, now that I wouldn’t have to sell myself to the world from my own recorder. But how long until I started hating this Content Attendant forcing me with less tact than my own conscience to share my creative production to the audience; to earn my keep? She caught me scowling at her through the mirror, lost in thought, so I quickly wiped off my sour-puss sneer.

After one last pass of a flat iron through my already straight hair, the three Attendants and I walked down a bright hallway with a low, tiled ceiling, past a glowing restroom sign, and into a towering atrium. Paneled glass soared from linoleum tile floor to stained glass ceiling, and to my surprise, beyond the glass was a softly hilled field, dreamy green and limitless. My jaw dropped as I tried to mentally construct where we could be. The Patron’s compound was only an hour drive from the city – no way the air could be so clear and the grass so green.

“Oh. Screensaver.” an Attendant said, palming a screen on a nearby pillar that turned into a display of buttons.

The field hadn’t been a field. The glass panes exposed themselves as digital screens as they dimmed to black, then lit back up with an image of the other half of the atrium. I blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the people standing beyond the barrier of panels. I walked close to the nearest one, hand outstretched, half convinced I’d touch the ratty sweater of the woman in front of me, but instead I felt the cool, satin surface of the limitless-pixel screen.

“They can see you too if they want. It’s new, this thing”, the Main Attendant said, gesturing in a half circle at the enclosure. “You’ll hear the mall muzak notification if any of them tune into the Patron’s Digital Society feed. Clever notification isn’t it? I thought of that.” She nearly smiled.

“You can talk at them and see if they’re into this ‘Charisa show’, like you could from your personal recorder, but it’s not two-way communication. I’ll be here for the curated moments, or if your live feed goes to shit.” The Content Attendant said.

“They were always into James. I know you two were working on the same project in Creator Class – that’s why the Patron wanted you. We’ll see if you have the kind of showpersonship he had.” The Main Attendant added. Judging by her tone, she didn’t think she’d see that at all. “There’s no use telling you where all the cameras are. They’re everywhere other than the bathroom.”

Seconds later, a screen popped toward us and quickly swept over the one to its left with a whirr. A man drove in on a motorized cart, with a metal cage hitched to it. He advanced into the room and curved to his left, a second metal cage emerged from the opening. I stepped closer towards the vehicle and peered into the opening as he continued to wind into the room. 3, 4, 5 metal caged containers in tow.

My heart lept, realizing what was in them. Canvases, brushes, something that looked like fur fabric, a blowtorch, beads of precious metals. An entire cage dedicated to paints and painting mediums. In a daze I opened a cage door, grabbed the nearest bottle and poured the content out into my hand. Intense ultramarine pigment powder spilled out, sending a blue starburst up my palm. I watched the saturated powder floating down to the floor, and I dragged my pure white platform shoe through the dust, creating a vibrant smear across the linoleum.

Whether the shortages were real or manipulated, they kept me from seeing materials like these for over a decade. It’s why my Creator Class fantasized about being chosen, about being granted access. All of this was… mine?

Mall muzak started up, then replayed from the beginning, and again at quicker and quicker intervals. It morphed into a one-note repetition as I heard another whirr from the sea of pixels behind me. Multiple panels containing hundreds of faces (the source of the muzak notifications, I assume) popped forward and slid to the side, revealing a soaring canvas, partially covered with complex vermillion and shades of intense yellow ochre over a gray and black background.

James and I had started in on that piece our last Creator Class year together. Delirious with dreams and lack of sleep, we’d planned the application of rich pigments over our muted base layer as we went along. It will have real copper and gold elements marching off the page, intricately welded and bent into an affronting experience for the user, we thought. During that pre-Patron exploration of the idea, we’d garnered a few Digital Society followers, mostly due to James’ charm, his willingness to lay his thoughts out raw for the content-hungry strangers. The more eyeballs we had, the more unsure we were in our choices, but we marched on creating our Patronpiece as if moved by a mutual subconscious. It went with him when he came to this compound, but here it was, partly alive, partly in need of a colorful imagination.

I stared at the canvas. The viewers stared at me.

I shifted my gaze to the woman in the worn sweater staring directly at me and wondered if she had preferred James. Did she share my Patron’s warm nostalgia triggered by my 90s enclosure? Surely not. I looked closer and she seemed to be my age. What class was she in?

Focusing again on the mountainous canvas in front of me, I felt a familiar hot weight gaining size at the top of my stomach. The twists of ruby red seemed to crawl upward into the desaturated background and I wanted to grab it like a bundle of veins, cut off its growth, rip it away from our pre-Patron draft. I felt myself backing away, backing into the hallway while the mall muzak repeated so quickly it was a held note.

I ran past the glowing restroom sign and into a sea of tan aluminum stalls. I dragged my hands down my flushed cheeks, feeling less watched but more trapped than I had in the atrium. I slide my back down the cold wall tile, reaching the floor, relieving my jelly legs. My palm was still covered with deep blue pigment. I’ll have to remember to wash that off of my face before I re-emerge, I thought. The ultramarine streaks on my cheeks would reveal my panic and unhandled expectations. Not the picture I wanted to paint for my Patron’s audience. Was the mascara the Aesthetic Attendant applied on me waterproof?

I peered under the stall in front of me, noticing a red swoop drawn on a panel behind the toilet. I crawled forward and pushed the stall inward to see a full outline of a stock pot in bright cherry oil pastel, blue pigment smeared to show a jagged, bubbling waterline, and a deep red frog drawn upside down, floating belly up, in the boiling hot pot. I touched the “j’ scribbled in the lower left of the wall panel, and to my surprise it shifted the panel on a diagonal axis, knocking it out of the cheaply constructed frame and onto the floor. Without knowing why, I kept crawling forward, into the opening and towards the sunlight pouring into the space behind the wall a few feet to my right. I blinked, adjusting to the light, my relieved mind finding blue between the gray clouds. I kept crawling forward, heading into a start of something better. Something great, even.