Links from the Show at a Glance:

 

Artist: Susan Proctor Hume

Title of Art: Untitled Abstract Eye

Artist’s Website: https://susanproctorhume.com/

Instagram: @susan_proctor_humeartist

 

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

 

 

Art Ink Podcast Transcript:

 

 

[Intro:]

 

Susan Proctor Hume’s abstract eye was insta-inspiration for today’s episode! Not just because I discovered this piece on Instagram, but also because the story that sprang from it came almost instantly. Listen in to hear a short sci-fi story on the verge of dystopia I called tie-dyed eyes.

 

 

[Art Description:]

 

An abstract gray eye with a black pupil is decorated with tie-dye style splatters of pink, red, orange, and yellow. It’s a monotype print on cotton paper.

 

 

[Story:]

 

“I’m not angry,” she said, but her bright pink and yellow eyes were betraying her. Red exploded in the whites of her eyes like the spray from tiny gunshots, it was if I were spraying her with bullets as I spoke.

 

No one upgraded with TD eyes was capable of lying. If you could successfully lie after the upgrade, you were either criminally insane or a monk, and Sara was neither.

 

The red had completely stained the whites, had begun to envelop the pink, and was bleeding into the yellow, spreading out until the area around her pupils was totally orange; glowing like embers. Her eyes burned into mine. This wasn’t how I wanted to remember her.

 

I tried to hold onto the picture of Sara before, as she had glanced up at me just a few moments ago. She was holding an open book in one hand, and her other was wrapped around a full cup of steaming hot chocolate. As I had entered the café, her eyes left the pages and her face tilted toward me.

 

Those eyes were the ones I wanted to remember: all pink with love and yellow with joy, not the firey orbs that were burning holes into me now.

 

“Sure you are…” I said, “I can see it– ”

 

“In my eyes?!” She glared at me hard, and there was no pink left… no love; just red anger and black fear. “Well at least I have the courage to live in my truth.”

 

I said nothing.

 

I couldn’t say anything that hadn’t been said before. The development of TD eyes had come from a place of love, but that didn’t mean that love was still the main priority. Billie Bobs, the technology’s creator had a vision to reconnect the millennial generation to each other, it was meant to undo the damage that social media and smart phones had done to the development of common social skills.

 

The first group of kids to get injected with the mood bots got a free college education in exchange for their participation in the research. The trend caught on. The kids thought it was cool. Teachers loved the polygraph like qualities built into their student’s eyes with the upgrade and it wasn’t long before the government caught on to the potential for control.

 

Billie Bobs was loving, but he was naïve too, and he was easily bought out.

 

The propaganda was so widespread. The incentive for the poverty stricken to get an education they could never afford was so rose-colored that it reawakened the “American Dream.”

 

Within four years, as the college graduates sporting TD eyes hit the workforce, employers began to favor these applicants over their coworkers. It wasn’t long after that when companies everywhere were paying to get their employees upgraded.

 

Now, you can’t get a job without them, and pretty soon you won’t be able to keep your citizenship without the truth telling eyes… so I was forfeiting mine. No one could convince me that injecting tiny robots that lived in my eyes and gave away all my secrets was about anything other than control. Unfortunately most of the country was blind to that fact, and even more unfortunately, Sara was among them.

 

“It must be nice to know everything about me, it must be nice to keep all your selfish secrets all to yourself!” She started sobbing, burying her face in her hands. Big teardrops pooled on the black surface of the table and soaked into the pages of her closed book, swelling one corner.

 

“Please…” I said, “come with me, we can – “

 

“We’ve had this conversation, I’m not leaving. I can’t just wander around the world with you, no plan, banned from ever coming back, from ever seeing our friends and family again.” Her purpling eyes were wide, pleading, darting back and forth, searching for any answer they could find in my own. That the blue sadness had begun to blend into the red confirmed what I already knew: this was goodbye.

 

“I just don’t understand what’s so goddamned scary about honesty, Tyler…” she said with a sigh, “what are you so afraid of?”

 

It was a question she’d asked many times before, but my answer conflicted with her cultural programming and never satisfied her.

 

“I need my freedom.” I said. I was being honest. I was trying to prove that honesty could exist without force, but it was too little, too late as far as Sara was concerned.

 

Her violet eyes reddened a bit, she threw her hands up in the air, “and you’re telling me this now? You’re telling me this one hour before your appointment?! You let me believe we were going to be ok for so long… how could you?”

 

I wished I could see her sunny yellow eyes one more time before I left, but I was out of time. Once I’d missed my injection appointment, there’d be a warrant out for my arrest. I had to go.

 

As I got up, I leaned over the table, and kissed Sara’s forehead. She looked up at me. Her blue eyes were full to the brim with tears, and I turned away before she could blink them over the edge.

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