For the Sake of Art Read online

  Chapter Two

  He drained his mug and walked over to his latest work in progress “Sir Knight”. The life-sized sculpture was of a medieval knight on his right knee looking up and holding his sword up in his right hand to the heavens as if to ask for approval. It was a powerful piece, and one that Jack was creating for Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was the next one he would finish.

  Ok, now how am I going to fix this balance problem? Maybe I should just use the sword and forget the helmet. No, for the Metro. I have to figure this out.

  . He thought hard about the problem.

  Maybe I can just put a plate under the knee that he’s kneeling on. Yeah, then it won’t tip over as easily and I can make the plate look like the ground.

  He started to take another pull of coffee.

  Brain fart. I already drank the last slurp.

  He went into the kitchen to get his second cup of coffee while he pondered the different ways to balance the sculpture, his brow furrowed. He poured another cup, sweetened and lightened his coffee, and walked back towards “Sir Knight” ; still in thought about his balance problem.

  Maybe I should have him kneeling on his left knee, then the weight of the sword will be more stable on the leg that is not kneeling.

  When he reached the kitchen archway that divided the living quarters and kitchen from the studio, and felt another shudder go through his home. This time it was more severe than the first and the worst tremor that he had ever felt since he bought this home. The glassware in the cabinets and dishes rattled loudly.

  Aw crap!

  The shuddering became increasing worse. He neared “Sir Knight” and the unsteady sculpture began to wobble from the increasingly violent shaking. He immediately put his coffee down on a workbench, and rushed over to the sculpture to try to prevent it from falling off the work bench and possibly damage the piece that he had put so many hours into.

  The sculpture tilted over on its right side just as he neared it. Instinctively he stretched out his arms in a vain attempt to prevent the sculpture from toppling off the workbench or at least to slow its fall, but he just wasn’t quite close enough to effectively grab and stop the sculpture from falling to the studio floor.

  The sculpture tipped over on the sword side and fell off the workbench. The sharp tip of the heavy sword met his outreached left arm and he watched in horror as the sword sliced him from his inside elbow to his wrist in its fall from the workbench. He grimaced then quickly backed up and let the piece tumbled to the floor in a dreadful crash. The violent trembling continued for what seemed like an eternity.

  He caught a fleetingly glimpsed the bloody injury immediately before he hurriedly grabbed a beach towel that was draped across the chair back behind him, and frantically wrapped the towel tightly around his injured arm. He waited for the excruciating pain and the profuse bleeding that he knew would follow.

  A few other art pieces and tools, rattled off worktops and crashed to the floor during the quake. He dropped down into the chair that he took the towel from, and involuntarily tensed up and waited for the pain. The tremors lessened, and then subsided and were over in five seconds as he waited.

  After waiting a few very tense seconds for what should have been very intense pain, so he thought, he relaxed his tensed muscles. He had trouble understanding the feelings in his damaged arm.

  He knew he was sliced from wrist to elbow down his left forearm, because he saw it happen. But the pain he felt was more like heat, and a sting, than it did severe pain. His arm was slightly numb as he thought it should be. With the extent of the wound that he witnessed the towel should be totally saturated with his blood and feel wet to his skin.

  Jack looked around and saw no visible damage to the building. This house had been earthquake proofed when it was built. Its foundation was on earthquake pads that would not transfer the majority of the energy from the earthquake throughout the foundation as a rigid foundation would.

  The damage was limited to a couple of his works in progress and tools being dashed to the floor, but their bulk and rigid construction prevented them from being seriously damaged mainly just dented which could be easily fixed. Some of his furnishings and knick knacks were knocked down, and luckily he insisted his guests used plastic glasses and cups the last night at his party, or there might now be shattered glass everywhere. It could’ve been worse.

  His thoughts turned to his injury. The pain he anticipated did not happen, and the towel was not saturated in blood as he had supposed it should be.

  Maybe, because of the absence of pain, and the absence profuse bleeding, the wound wasn’t as terrible as I first thought I saw. Perhaps the sword merely scratched my arm deeply, but not deep enough to puncture my epidermis entirely. That would account for the lack of pain and blood.

  But he was sure he felt and saw the sword cut all the way through his skin in that heart beat long glimpse before he wrapped the towel tightly around his arm. Maybe that was because of all the commotion that was going on at the time, maybe he misperceived what he saw. Perhaps, but there was only one way he could know for sure how badly he was injured. So he thought.

  The decision to know how bad his injuries was made, and he braced himself in the chair and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, said a little prayer, and prepared himself mentally.

  Slowly he unwrapped the towel from his injured arm and observed the towel layers. He was almost holding his breath as he unwrapped the layers of towel and his mouth was a tight straight line and his brow furrowed in anticipation of the worst. He kept the remaining wrapping tight on his arm as he unwrapped the towel just in case his bleeding was profuse he could then quickly wrap it up again.

  Maybe I don’t feel any pain because my nerves were severed.

  “Please God, NO. Without feeling in my arm, I can’t work.” he screamed out loud.

  Little by little he continued to unwrap his arm and he saw that the towel was not soaked through with blood as it should be from the injury he thought he had sustained. With each layer he unwrapped he expected to see a blood soaked layer but to his surprise he didn’t. Sure there was some spotty blood saturation but not the what he expected. He came down to the last wrap of the towel and hesitated for a moment. He took a deep breath, and completely uncovered his injured arm.

  His arm now fully bared, he was staring into the wound. He recoiled his head in surprise and shock at what he saw. The skin on his arm was sliced from the wrist to his elbow alright, and there was some blood but not enough for the extent of the damage to his arm. The real shock was that his skin was being sealed; closed from the inside of his arm. Jack could see skin slowly come together and the rip become completely healed a millimeter at a time with no scar.

  Pulling back the remaining flap of skin closest to his elbow, he was totally flabbergasted and mesmerized at what he saw. Instead of the tissues, blood vessels, and bones of his arm, there were wires, metal rods, electronics, soft tubing, and other soft and hard parts he couldn’t even begin to know what were their functions. As his arm was being repaired a soft foam like material filled voids to make his arm feel solid to the touch.

  With incredulity he watched as very small, almost too small for the naked eye to see, smaller than ant sized machines repaired the damage to his robotic arm. He watched a fluid sac that was punctured and its contents emptied being repaired and the fluid gathered and assumedly recycled and refilled before his very eyes. His skin was being rapidly repaired, as were the internals of his arm.

  If seeing was believing, then he hoped his eyes were lying to him. He had a robotic arm and it was healing itself. In a matter of minutes his arm was totally repaired, and only the faint blood smeared on his skin's surface showed that he was injured at all. The numbness was gone. He flexed his arm, his wrist, and wiggled his fingers. Everything was fine, and all worked well and there was no pain.

  What the hell was going on.

  If he was a robot or an android or whatever then what of all the memories of his life, his human life?

  The memory of the time that he broke his arm when he was trying to fly like Superman from the garage roof when he was six came to mind. Or the time he got the measles and missed three days from school. Or when he and his brother both vied for the attentions of his brother’s now wife, Victoria.

  Surely he wasn’t a robot then. He wondered if it was only his arm that was robotic. His entire body couldn’t be robotic. He felt, too, too, human. He was going into a panic just thinking about all of the possibilities.

  He went to the kitchen and washed the blood off his arm and examined where the skin was flawlessly repaired.

  It is so bizarre that I can’t see that my arm was injured at all.

  He walked over to the couch and plopped down. Exhaustion set in and his eyes drooped and he felt exhausted and totally emotionally spent. His mind was anesthetized by what he saw, and the events of the day plus he just couldn’t explain what he just witnessed. A woozy feeling came over him and assumed that he was going into shock so he stretched out on the couch to rest a little. As he lay there contemplating the recent events he passed out.