Void

The only thing inside me was nothingness. No happiness. No sadness. Just emptiness, and disappointment over that emptiness. When the pseudonym ‘Leonardo’ was announced as one of the passing candidates, a rush of excitement came over me, sure, and I definitely felt happy when my father and my brothers praised me for my accomplishment, but when the dust settled my emotions faded as quickly as they had come. I had expected to feel prideful of my accomplishments, but no such feeling filled my soul. It was a simple inevitability that after years upon years of studying I’d ace the test. I concluded that all my opponents who failed must’ve simply not had enough time or resources. My prize for winning was simply the right to participate in yet another test, this time testing our artistic skills.

“Where do you think you’re going?” My father asked.

He must have grown a pair of eyeballs on his back, as he was able to notice me leaving through the front door despite my attempts to silently tip-toe behind him.

“I’m just going to get some art-supplies in the city.”

“Be back in two hours!”

“Yes, of course.”

I carefully shut the door behind me and made my way over to Paolo’s house. I stood in front of it, reaching for the doorknob when the door swung open, revealing a smiling Gika.

“Gafino!” She exclaimed.

“It’s Gavino,” I corrected, “not Gafino.”

“Ruma tiru!” She said in an annoyed tone.

“Anyways, how did your test go?”

Her smile intensified.

“D-Did you pass?!” I asked.

“Soni ku! Soni ku!”

“How did you even manage to complete one of the hardest tests in Magranpoli without even speaking the language? How did you answer the questions? More than that, how are you able to even understand the questions without knowing even any basic words?”

“I tu raghasiti.” She said, motioning for me to follow her. I went deeper into the building and was led to the primary studio, where she proudly presented a painting I assumed to be hers due to its style. It was a face, painted in blues, surrounded by dark, warped humanoid figures who possessed disproportionately long limbs, all of them using their hands to cover the mouth of the central head. It jumped out to me how skilled she had gotten at drawing figures, particularly hands, something I had always struggled with, in such a short time.

“What are these entities?” I asked, “I’ve never seen anything like them. Are these from the outside the city? Are you from the outside the city?”

Her excitement turned towards disappointment.

“Tisoni ku.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

She sighed.

“Tisoni ku.”

She gently put away the painting and replaced it with a blank canvas. She looked over her shoulder, gazing expectantly at me.

“You want me to continue teaching you?”

She nodded.

“You do need to know that my painting-style isn’t exactly appreciated by the examiners, so if you just want to learn the ‘proper’ way for the upcoming test, you should be asking the old man instead of me.”

“Are ya callin’ me boring?!” Paolo, who had up until now just been silently working on the other side of the room, said.

“That’s your interpretation!”

“With that kinda attitude I’m gonna be teachin’ neither of ya!”

“Tu Palo tikakari. Tu Gafino kakari!”

She grabbed me by the back of my tunic’s collar and physically dragged me in front of the canvas, before shoving painting-supplies into my hands.

“Gafino!”

“I’m flattered you chose me anyway.” I said, “Let’s begin.”

I closed my eyes and began to think. I embraced the feeling of emptiness, studying it, letting it flow through my body. I had felt this feeling before. When? A long lost memory resurfaced. First I heard the sound, the ticking of people typing, a phone call in the distance, chatter between two co-workers. Then came the smell, overwhelmingly musty. Finally, images: an office, indistinguishable from any other, filled with gray desks, gray chairs, gray computers and gray people. After one of the most stressful periods of my life, I had followed my dream, my passion, and now I finally worked at a high position in a museum. I didn’t have a clear image of what that would look like, but it was certainly not a desk job where most of my days were spent filling in spreadsheets and answering emails from colleagues. It felt like my dream had been robbed from me.

I began to sketch. The screen of a desktop would take up the center of the composition, with post-it notes and crumpled up papers scattered around it.

“This part of the process,” I said, “I can’t really explain in detail. I just kind of… look inside myself and find something, some feeling or memory, that inspires me. After that, the composition starts to form almost automatically, and I can begin sketching.”

At first she seemed interested in my words, but as my painting progressed she began to visibly lose focus.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Na gharatikuna ku?” She asked back.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.”

She pointed to the computer I was drawing.

“Gharatikuna!”

She violently pulled the pencil out of my hand and started writing inside the rectangle that made up the computer’s screen.

“What are you-?” I said, not finishing my sentence. She wrote two types of symbols, representing the numerals zero and one, on my sketch, over and over again, alternating between the two in what at first I assumed to be a random order. It took me a moment, but I recognized it. She was writing in binary.

All this time, I had assumed I was alone. I'd often thought that my past life was a delusion, that I was cracking under the pressure of trying to be an Uomo Universale and going crazy, only convinced otherwise by how real my memories felt. But now, the proof stood right in front of me. She knew what a computer was. She knew what a computer was! I swallowed and took a breath to prepare myself for a question I’d never even dreamt of asking someone:

“Gika,” I asked, “are you from another world as well?”