2062 The VERSE

ALBERTO was no longer in the library of a grand apartment in the Champ de Mars section of Paris. He was... somewhere else.

A moment ago, he was sitting at a Louis XIV desk in the library, and a giant electric peony grew from the green felt desk blotter, and blossomed. It grew like a spirit of fog and light, so large that he was inside it. The next moment he was elsewhere.

"Hello, are you alright?"
A woman sat across from him, a brunette with green eyes, wearing a furry half-sweater, and long yoga pants, all grey. She held in her left hand a small furball of a rabbit with tiny ears. Her right hand, with rings on all fingers, held a holocube.

"Hello. Where? Where am I?"
"In the gallery. I'm painting your portrait. Just started."
"My... portrait?"
"Yes, I'm going for part real and part abstract. You can look."
The woman pointed with her right index finger. The ring on it began to light up and sparkled with different colors.

She pointed to a long curved wall in soft pearl white colored room whose edges were out of focus. Natural light but no sun.

"That's your portrait, well, a part of it." said the woman.

The wall was covered in rivers of glowing characters, streams of numbers, messages, streams of tickers, glowing hieroglyphs, and alien alphabetic phonemes flowed across the wall. A collage of images of different neighborhoods of unknown countless cities, people walking around, some marching in groups, riots, protests, of empty shelves, places on fire. Empty launch pads.

"That's you. Well, not all of you. I'm still looking for more."

"What's your name?"
"I'm Zephyr Spring, you can call me Zeph." Full lips smiled.
"I'm... Alberto... that's it... Alberto...."

Alberto remembered that he held a card in his hand. It was a map of some kind. The woman noticed the card.

"Oh, that's good, that could help me with this portrait."
Albert looked up, "I think I have to meet someone."

The woman took the card from his hand and studied it.

"These look like the directions to some nodes and clusters. I'll help you. Let me finish up for today, we can go."
"How... How did I get here?"

"You just showed up. Nobody comes here unless they want a portrait. Most people say they want to see themselves.

Sometimes, a mirror is not enough, the pictures we make can show more, about the things we forgot or want to forget. Pictures are like maps for our minds and memories. We can find our way back or forward with the maps we make of ourselves."

Alberto looked at Zephyr and didn't know what to say.

"It's okay, I'll help you," she smiled, "We'll finish it. There's more to do. We're just getting started."

Alberto sat back as Zephyr continued to work on his portrait.

THE END OF "COIN" --- TO BE CONTINUED ---