Short Story: The Patron
How far will a tech titan go to train his algorithm?
This is a short story I just finished writing about a wealthy tech titan who murders artists so he can feed their pain into an AI algorithm in the hopes that it’ll create better art. I hope you enjoy it.
“It’s a masterpiece.”
William shrugged his shoulders and mumbled a few words of thanks. The curse of having the artists’ temperament was that he would never be completely satisfied with his own work. There was always a slight (or not-so-slight) gap between what he saw in his mind’s eye and what he was actually capable of bringing into the world. The consequence was that he was never going to be the best at accepting accolades.
“No man, I mean it,” his apprentice, James, said. “He’s going to love it.”
William had to concede that point. All his paintings ended up in the collection of exactly one customer.
Tech titan Jonathan Trimbley was almost a throwback to the Gilded Age or even the Renaissance in terms of his tastes and worldview. While other tech founders were busy building bunkers in New Zealand and tweeting about how [insert new technology that they were personally bringing into the world] was going to bring about the apocalypse, Jonathan spend his money on the arts. He donated to museums, he even founded new ones. Like clockwork, he sent money to art schools around the world to help them stay afloat in a world that was careening ever further towards the blandness of practicality.
But most importantly (at least from William’s point of view), he patronized individual artists. He gave William an annual stipend amounting to over three-hundred thousand dollars. That was in addition to paying the rent on his spacious studio right in the heart of Manhattan. The only thing he asked was that he be given first dibs on any paintings that William completed. He always made an offer, and those offers were generous.
William was living the glamorous life artists everywhere dreamed of, rich in his own right while doing nothing more than making art. All thanks to the patronage of Jonathan Trimbley.
The sound of a truck blaring its horn outside snapped him back to the present moment. He noticed that his apprentice was still talking.
“I’m sorry, can you say that again?” William said.
“I said, ‘I think this is going to be your first seven-figure painting,” James said.
Seven figures. One million dollars, and that was on the low side of the seven-figure spectrum of possibilities. It was hard to imagine. So far, no individual painting had earned him more than a quarter-million. He remembered the first time Jonathan had offered him six figures for a painting. The number had quite literally took the breath out of him, made him aware of the present moment and everything in it in a way that only happens during peak moments in life: a first kiss, a near-death experience, the birth of a child. And that was chump change in the grand scheme of things. A million dollars was a number that was so big it didn’t even seem real.
William shrugged his shoulders again and mumbled another thank you.
Living an artistic life of leisure in his Manhattan studio wasn’t the full extent of William’s duties. Mr. Trimbley not only expected to have first dibs on the paintings, he also required that William personally deliver them to him for inspection.
And where he lived wasn’t close.
The drive from Manhattan to the remote rural estate in Vermont took the better part of five-and-a-half hours. If he didn’t hit any traffic and skirted the lines of legality vis-a-vis speed, he could cut that down to five flat.
When you lived in the city, you easily forgot how the rest of the world lived. You got used to the hustle and bustle, the constant hum of people everywhere all the time. To the people living it it felt like the default human experience, but in reality it was anything but. Most of the world was rural. And not just small towns, either. Those were more common than big cities but still only occupied a small portion of the planet’s inhabitable surface. The majority of the world consisted of...nothing. Mile after mile after mile of it. Endless wilderness and farmland punctuated by the occasional house or gas station. Every time he made this drive, William constantly found himself thinking “who the hell lives out here?”
His phone told him that he only had thirty minutes until he arrived at his destination. He reached for the phone (keeping one eye on the road) and exited out of the Maps app. It wasn’t necessary anymore. He had driven this route enough times to know that this final stretch led him directly to Mr. Trimbley’s estate. No more turns required. All he had to do was follow the winding road until it ended at his driveway.
New England in the autumn was breathtaking. His artistic eye took in the colors of the leaves as he drove on the narrow, winding, gradually ascending two-land road. At this point in the season about half the leaves were on the ground; the rest still up above on their branches, waiting to fall. There was something inherently creative about it. The cool air, the way the leaves audibly rustled with each gust of wind, the sheer emptiness of it; it was all so melancholy. It naturally lent itself to the depths of thinking and feeling that always preceded creative frenzies.
Creating a painting was the closest thing to giving birth that he would ever do. It started in moments like this. He could feel the stirring inside his mind. There were no concrete images. Not yet. That would come. A painting never started as an image in his mind’s eye. Not even in rudimentary form. The moment of conception always started as a feeling. At first vague and undefined, he would struggle to even put it into words. But he knew it when he felt it, and he was feeling it right now.
William hit a layer of fog as he ascended higher on the winding road. That was the sign that he was close. Mr. Trimbley’s estate was at such a high elevation that it was shrouded under a perpetual layer of fog. He shivered at the change in temperature and pressed the button to roll the window up. The sound of the wind rushing by became sharper as the window rose higher, and then abruptly ceased the moment it sealed closed. The only sound now was the dull hum of his tires on the road. He quickly glanced at his phone to turn on a Spotify playlist.
William glanced back up at the road.
“Oh shit.” There was a sharp curve in the road ahead and he was going fast. Way too fast. He slammed on the brakes. The feeling of his tires spinning out followed by the realization that he had zero control over what happened to the enormous metal box that he was sitting inside was one of the worst sensations he’d ever felt in his life. Time slowed down while simultaneously feeling like it was moving too fast for him to do... anything. He was going to crash, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The car spun sideways and careened into the treeline. Luckily, it was the passenger side that bore the brunt of the impact. He felt the car crumple, but surprisingly, he wasn’t injured. Rattled? Traumatized? Absolutely. But there was nothing physically wrong with him. He started to laugh. Almost dying was, surprisingly, a feeling that sparked pure unadulterated joy in people. The war against the grim reaper was one you were guaranteed to lose in the long run, which is why winning the occasional battle felt so sweet.
William shook his head and got the last of the laughs out of his system. The naked reality of the situation sunk in. He was hours away from home in a car that was damaged, possibly irreparably, maybe even totally. And all he could do was pray that it would start and that the painting…
“Fucking hell. The painting,” he said, frantically turning around in his seat. He took off his seat belt and opened the door. Stepping outside onto the wet ground felt odd after being cocooned inside his car for so long. Being forced to stand outside of the metal box with wheels on it in any location other than your final destination was an unexpectedly profound moment; the areas that you had previously only thought of as places to be passed through at 65mph suddenly revealing themselves to be just as real and worthy of respect as anywhere else.
He walked around to the back of the car and opened the hatchback trunk. The side of the car was so heavily dented that it looked like it was completely caved-in. Before he even looked down at the painting, he already knew. He had propped it up standing against that side of the trunk when he loaded it in earlier that morning. He forced his eyes downwards at the painting that was no lying flat. There was a massive gash in the middle of it.
It was ruined. He wouldn’t be able to salvage it even if he had the time to make the attempt, which he clearly didn’t. Mr. Trimbley was expecting the painting to be delivered at approximately right now. This was the first true catastrophe of his art career.
Strangely enough, he didn’t feel much of anything. Not anger or sadness. Just...nothing. The realization that there were precisely zero things he could do to fix the horrible situation he was in left him feeling resigned. He definitely wasn’t happy, but it was okay. What had happened had happened. The only thing left to do was to let the inevitable play itself out.
William sat back down in the driver’s seat and pressed the ignition button. The car started. He turned the wheel, surprised to find that it rotated smoothly. He stepped on the gas pedal and drove back onto the road. The damage was merely cosmetic. At least I have something to be grateful for.
For some reason, William felt the need to handle the damaged painting with care. Maybe it was the sentimentalist in him that still viewed works of art (even damaged ones) with reverence. He carefully leaned it against a pillar on the front porch and slowly removed his hands from it to make sure it wouldn’t fall down. He looked at the doorbell, said the words “fuck it” out loud, and pressed it.
Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. Mr. Trimbley would either be pissed or he wouldn’t; there was nothing he could do at this point to change it. Deterministic theory in action.
The sound of the deadbolt turning made him jump. Part of him was hoping that no one would be home. Jonathan Trimbley pulled open the door from the inside. “Dude,” he said, a huge smile on his face. “Long time no see.” He stepped back and off to the side, making room for William to enter. “Don’t be shy, man, come on in. I’m excited to see the new piece.”
William looked at the ground and shrugged. “Yeah, uh, about that,” he said, gesturing at the carefully propped-up painting on the ground with the obvious hole in the middle of it.
Jonathan looked at the painting with a neutral expression. He looked up and leaned off to the side around William to look at the car that was parked in the driveway. “You know, I always said that behind every tragedy is a sick-ass story.” He looked again at the painting and grimaced. He removed his glasses and used the bottom of his shirt to wipe them. “You’re gonna have to start at the beginning of this one.”
“Shit, man,” Jonathan said, leaning back in his seat. He took a sip from his beer bottle and set it down on the table. “I feel like this is all my fault. I mean, if I didn’t insist on you personally delivering your work to me you wouldn’t have even got in the car this morning, let alone crashed it. The roads up here are slick this time of year, I should have thought of that,” he said.
“No,” William said, shaking his head and awkwardly leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I wasn’t paying attention. It was all me. Trust me, you’ve given me everything. I’m beyond grateful for the opportunities you’ve given me. I mean, I’d literally be nothing if it weren’t for you.”
Jonathan looked at him sideways. “Yeah, that’s probably true.” Then he looked at him deadpan for a beat before laughing.
William fake-laughed in response.
“I’ll make it up to you,” William said, “I swear. I’ll head back down to Manhattan and start the painting over again from scratch. I know the wait is going to be longer than you were expecting, but I can assure you it’ll be worth it.”
“Nah,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t ask that of you. You’ve got the temperament of an artist. Inspiration is ninety-percent of the magic. A rote copy is never as good as the original.”
He’s right, William thought. He felt like he should say something, but the words simply weren’t there.
Jonathan looked off to the side. “There is a way you can make it up to me,” he said. “I have a project that I’ve been working on, and I’m dying to show it to you. You have no idea how badly I want to show it to you. It’s eating me up inside,” he said.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” William said. “I’d be happy to take a look at it. Is it another commission? A public works project? Something for one of the art schools you’re supporting?” he said.
“Not exactly,” Jonathan said. “I could explain it to you, but it’s better if you see it for yourself. It’s one of those ‘seeing is believing’ kind of deals”.
“How about next time I come up?” William said.
“How about right now?” Jonathan said.
William leaned back and spread his hands out. “Sure, why not,” he said.
“Really?” Jonathan said. He let out a sigh. “Thank god, I was worried you wouldn’t be interested.” He stood up. “Right this way.” He walked over towards a set of double doors. “I have to warn you, this is going to be a bit of a shock to your system. Keep your cool and I’ll explain everything.”
William tightened his lips into a smile. “Sure, no problem Mr. Trimbly.”
Jonathan pushed the doors open without taking his eyes off him.
William stepped across the threshold and took a two steps inside. The sight of the dead girl on the couch stopped him in his tracks.
“Oh my god,” William said. “Oh fuck. Is that, is that -”
“I warned you it’d be a shock to the system,” Jonathan said. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
William recognized the body instantly, but it took a second for the name to come to mind. “Fucking hell, that’s Genevieve.”
“Yeah, she did tell me you two were friends. Went to art school together, right?” Jonathan said.
Genevieve was lying on her back on a couch, with a catheter in her arm and a tube that snaked out to a large, clear container filled with her blood.
Seeing something horrible doesn’t bring about the overly-dramatic reactions you see in Hollywood movies. In real life there are no cameras or audiences to perform for. Instead, people often freeze up. This is not your body shutting down as a reaction to intense fear, as most would assume. Instead it’s because you’re so focused on trying to make sense of the situation that the brainpower required to process it consumes literally all of your energy to the point where you physically can’t move. That’s what William was experiencing right now.
Jonathan crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall with one leg bent.
“Now I know this is a lot to take in,” he said. “But there is a method behind the madness.”
William turned away from the body and quickly jerked his head in Jonathan’s direction. “What?” he said.
“You see, my competitors are so busy focusing on how to replace humans with machines that they’re missing the forest for the trees. They’re so busy feeding their AI models examples of good paintings, thinking that if they get enough training data they can work backwards from the finished product and get the computers to create art of a similar caliber. The problem is,” he said, still leaning against the wall with his head tilted back and looking up at the ceiling while he spoke, “it simply doesn’t work that way. You’ve seen AI art before. It’s soulless. Empty. When you look at it you get the sense that it’s missing something. Well I’m looking at that something right now,” he said, turning his gaze to William, then looking down at Genevieve’s body. “You can’t create art without an artist. It’s a tale as old as time. So you can see why I’m doing this and why I brought you here, can’t you?”
“No,” William said. “I don’t see the point of any of this. You killed her, you sick fucking bastard.”
“Well,” Jonathan said, tilting his head side to side as if weighing the options, “that’s one way of looking at it.”
“What other way is there to look at it?” William said.
“I gave her immortality,” Jonathan said.
William stared at the man who had been his patron for long. The man who had given him everything. And he realized that that man was fucking insane. The warning signs should have been there all along. Who the hell gives away money like that? Most people, especially business-minded ones, wanted to invest and grow their wealth. Not fritter it away on artists.
“Look, I can tell you’re a bit freaked out by this whole thing,” Jonathan said, waving his hand in the direction of Genevieve. “You come up here to this big ass house, thinking that you’re going to deliver a painting. A good one, by the way, despite the damage. I can really see the vision behind it. Anyway, you wanted to deliver a painting and get a paycheck and now you’re here, in this magnificent library, looking at a girl who had the blood drained from her body and listening to the aforementioned rich guy talk about how her death was actually a gift of eternal life. It sounds,” he said, doing the head tilting thing again, “egomaniacal?”
“You could say that,” William said.
“But wait for a second before you start freaking out,” Jonathan said, stepping forward. “Let me show you how it all works.”
William took a step backward.
“Don’t be shy,” Jonathan said, standing in front of a computer next to Genevieve’s dead body. “Come over here and take a look.”
William walked around the couch that held Genevieve’s body. He shook his head, wondering what the hell he was doing. “Okay, show me.”
“You see those electrodes attached to her head?” Jonathan said.
William turned around and look at Genevieve. He hadn’t noticed them before, but sure enough there were electrodes attached to her temples, with wires leading back to the computer. “Uh huh, yeah I see them,” he said, crossing his arms and scrunching his shoulders up towards his ears.
“While the blood was draining out of her body, those electrodes captured signals from her brain and uploaded them to this computer,” Jonathan said.
“Why?” William said. “Why would you do that?”
“Despair is at the root of all great art,” Jonathan said. “Think of Caravaggio. He murdered a man in a fight and was sentenced to death via beheading. I know you know your art history. What did he do while he was on the run?”
“He painted,” William said.
“Go on. What exactly did he paint?” Jonathan said.
“He painted beheadings. He used himself as the model for both the executioner and the victim,” William said.
“That’s fucking wild, right?” Jonathan said. “The dude was worried about losing his head. It was all he could think about. And it resulted in some of the greatest paintings known to man. Paintings that were coincidentally about the exact thing he was freaking out about. And I could go on and on with similar examples” he said. “Van Gogh cutting off his own ear, Edward Munch’s agoraphobia, and on and on and on. Negative feelings are like oxygen for creative genius.”
William simply stared at him.
“Oh come on, man, you’re a smart guy. You see what I’m doing with this project here. I captured the despair of an artist while she was dying and uploaded it to the computer. The problem with AI art is that it lacks the impetus of negative emotion. I’ve solved that problem. I captured the despair of the artistic temperament and turned it into computer code. So now the algorithm can do what could previously only be done by the human hand: create a masterpiece. And not just one. It can keep on creating masterpieces for eternity. I gave Genevieve what every artist is subconsciously seeking from their art: immortality.”
There are moments in life when the person you thought you knew reveals the darkness that has always lived inside of them. It comes out in a moment of candor, often stated in a matter-of-fact way that reveals that what sounds insane to everyone else is just a normal way of thinking for them. It completely and irrevocably changes your opinion of them. You realize that the person you thought you knew for years or decades had been nothing more than a facade, a fake personality carefully constructed as a smokescreen to conceal the depravity within. That’s the realization William came to as he listened to his patron speak.
He glanced at the door. It was shut. But was it locked? If he ran for it, would he be able to leave the house and get in his car and simply drive away, never to return? Maybe it really was that easy.
Maybe.
Jonathan followed his gaze to the door. “I take it you disagree?”
Without saying a word, William ran towards the door and yanked at the handle. Of course it was locked.
Jonathan laughed. “She tried the same thing, you know,” he said, gesturing towards Genevieve’s body on the couch. “It’s a weird quirk of human nature. People don’t want to do what’s in their best interest. They resist it, fight against it, try to run away from it. You have to drag them, kicking and screaming, towards something that will benefit them. The horse and the water and all that. That’s the burden those of us at the top of the pyramid carry on our shoulders.” Jonathan walked over to Genevieve, took a knee next to her, lifted her arm, and started dangling it in the air.
William heard metallic clinking. It was the first time he noticed that she had been handcuffed to a metal ring on the floor.
Jonathan removed a key ring from his pocket and looked at them one-by-one, sliding each one aside until he found the one he was looking for. He unlocked the handcuffs.
“Come on,” he said, leaning over Genevieve and putting his hands underneath her arms. “Grab her legs. We have to move her to make room for you.”
“I’m not going to help you kill me,” William said. “If you’re going to do it then do it. But I’m not doing a single fucking thing you say.”
Jonathan let out a sigh. “This is how they repay me after all these years,” he said, seemingly to himself. He grunted as he lifted Genevieve’s body off the couch. He walked backwards, letting her feet drag as he pulled her across the floor. He set her down next to the door. He stood up, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and put his hands on his hips. “Alright,” he said, taking a deep breath and blowing it out audibly. “So you’re not gonna make this easy for me, are you?”
William said nothing.
“I didn’t think so. So here’s what’s going to happen. First, this is going to happen.”. Jonathan pulled a needle out of his pants pocket and plunged it into William’s arm.
The immediate thought William had was: fight. The thought surprised him and gave him a small sense of satisfaction. He had never been much of a fighter. A lifetime spent in front of the easel, consumed by his emotions and trying to find ways to transfer them to a canvas didn’t exactly lend itself to physical aggression. Yet out of the different ways a human being could react to being attacked (fight, flight, or freeze), fighting somehow felt like the most respectable. It was the reaction that would cause the least amount of shame and self-loathing later on when you replayed the event in your mind. Freezing up, of course, made you feel pathetic and running felt cowardly. But fighting? No one could shame a guy for that, not even himself.
The thought (and the flash of satisfaction) were quickly overcome by a level of fatigue he had never felt before. He tried to raise his fist to throw a punch but it was physically impossible. The world starting spinning the way it does when you’re lying in bed after a night out drinking. His vision started to go black at the margins. The darkness then crept steadily inwards until he felt like he was viewing the world through a pinhole.
William was unconscious before his head even hit the ground.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Sound was the first of the five senses that came back to William and the first indication he had that he was still alive. Part of him (the one prone to wishful thinking) thought that he was in a hospital, and that the high-pitched beeping sound was coming from a machine the doctors had hooked him up to to save his life.
Forgetting leads to optimism. The less connected you are to reality, the more likely you are to think that everything will turn out OK. Snapping back to reality means embracing the terror of existence. William’s memory started peeking in through the fog in his brain, and the fear came with it.
I’m still at Jonathan Trimbley’s house. Shit.
He sharply inhaled the way people do when they wake up from a deep sleep. Simultaneously, he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings.. He was on his back, looking up at intricate art deco-ish pattern on the ceiling.
Not only did he know exactly where he was, he knew exactly what was happening to him. He was dying. Jonathan was killing him in an attempt to upload his pain to the computer so he could train an AI model to create his art. In short, he was fucked.
“Welcome back,” Jonathan said.
William shook his head side-to-side to get the cobwebs out. He looked down at his arm. There was a catheter in the vein in the crook of his elbow, attached to a clear tube that was draining blood out of his system.
“You don’t have to do this,” William said. The words came out weakly, like he had a frog in his throat. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.
“I heard you the first time,” William said. “The reason I didn’t respond is because your statement was inherently absurd. You’re an artist. You know damn well that the urge to create is a profound need. Nothing else compares. Food, water, oxygen, sex, love; it all pales in comparison to the need to bring to life the thing you see in your mind’s eye. And this right here,” he said, patting the top of the computer monitor, “is my masterpiece. I’ve never been much of a creative guy. I’m the patron. I’m the guy who makes it easy for artists to do what they do best. A modern day Medici. And this machine right here is the culmination of my life’s work.”
He put his hands behind his back, looked up at the ceiling, and began walking around the room. “Most people fear death because they fear the loss of perception. They think it’s the end of existence. But that’s nonsense. The true horror of death is that it puts a stop to creation. Think of Michelangelo or Picasso. They didn’t die when their heart stopped beating, because who they were wasn’t something that could be measured and analyzed by a doctor or a technician in a lab. They were something more than that. We can all feel it in our bones. An artist is more than their body. Their biological death only truly killed them because it stopped them from creating. I can’t bring them back. I wish I could, but it’s simply not possible. But what I can do is preserve their modern day equivalents.”
William looked around the room. He yanked on the handcuff that was attached to his wrist. The tubes that were draining his blood went from his arms down to a clear plastic container on the floor. It was more full than he hoped it would be. He had assumed he had only been unconscious for a minute or two, but it had clearly been much longer. The life was draining out of his body and time was almost up.
Jonathan followed Williams gaze to the blood bucket. “Yes, that’s good. Notice what’s happening to you and then feel it. I mean really feel it. Let the reality of what’s happening to you penetrate to the core of your being. We’ll transmute that pain into something great. This computer will create a new version of that damaged painting outside, and that’s just the beginning of what we’ll accomplish.” He walked back to the computer monitor and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. “You’re almost there. Just another couple minutes and it’ll all be over.”
“Hey Jonathan,” William said. His vision was going black again, this time due to blood loss.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“I’m not afraid,” William said. He started laughing. “I’ve actually never been happier. My life sucked. I’m glad it’s coming to an end.” He laughed so hard that he coughed and had to clear his throat a few times before he could continue talking. “And you know what the best part is? You’re not going to get any fear, pain, or any other negative emotions out of me and into that machine. Because that’s not what I’m feeling at all. I feel great.”
Jonathan leaned over William and put a finger on his forehead. “Listen here, you little shit. That thing you have contained inside the narrow confines of this skull doesn’t need to stay there,” he pressed his finger down harder. “Whatever it is in there that helps you create your art shouldn’t belong to you. Keeping it there would be an act of supreme selfishness. Actually you know what? Fuck it. Maybe you are selfish. So what. There’s no point in me trying to convince you with talk of the greater good. Embrace it. Because when we finish today you’ll cease to be a man and will become a digital god, capable of creating something from nothing for eternity. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand that I’m helping you?”
William glanced down at the blood that was still pouring out of his veins. He had to make a move now. “I think you’re full of shit,” he said. “I think you always secretly wished you were one of the creatives, and that being a patron was always just playing second fiddle. Watching us do what we do and realizing that you couldn’t do it in a million lifetimes filled you with resentment and rage. You’re not capable of being one of us and you hate us for it. That’s why you’re killing us.”
It was interesting how easy it was to be confrontational (even for the most timid of people) when you knew the person you were antagonizing was already committed to doing you harm. The worst thing that could happen had already happened. Jonathan was trying to kill him. What difference did it make if he got more angry during the process? It’s not like he could kill him twice.
Jonathan’s lips tightened into a grimace. If the eyes were the windows to the soul his revealed that he had none. The rage was visibly all-consuming. He grabbed William’s face and leaned closer, his other hand balled up into a fist.
That was the opening William needed.
He grabbed the back of Jonathan’s head with one hand. With the other, he removed the needle from his arm and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck before moving on to his eyes. Jonathan howled in pain and tried to pull away, but William’s grip on the back of his head was too strong. William stabbed him a few more times, then reached into his pocket and removed the key ring, which he used it to remove the handcuff from his wrist. He stood up, about as lightheaded as a person could get without passing out, but the adrenaline kept him going.
He was free.
Almost.
Jonathan was on his knees, hunched over the couch with his hands on his face, alternating between whimpering quietly and screaming at the top of his lungs. Blood was spurting from the small holes in his neck.
William grabbed his wrist and attached the handcuff to it. Then he ripped the electrodes off his own head and quickly stuck them onto Jonathan’s.
“I’m leaving now,” William said. “It’s important that you don’t get distracted. Try to really feel the pain. It’s what the computer needs. This is your purpose in life now. Which, based on the amount of blood you’re losing, should only last a few more minutes.”
He pushed Jonathan’s face away with contempt, then used the keys to unlock the door and exit to the main portion of the house. The front door was just...there, only a few short steps from the entrance to the library where his life had almost come to an end. He thought about how much his perspective had changed since the last time he had walked through that door. He had walked into this house thinking that the easy way he had been living was a sign that he had it made; but in reality he had been weak, dependent on the largess of another man instead of being self-confident enough to forge his own path in life. Going forward, no matter what happened, everything he would accomplish or fail to accomplish would rest on his shoulders and his shoulders alone. No one else to degrade him with free money and empty praise. No patrons other than the individual customers he would win over on a case-by-case basis with the quality of his work. It was a truly liberating feeling.
Just before he stepped out, he noticed his torn painting on the floor, propped up against the wall. He picked it up with one hand, turned the doorknob with the other, and walked out into the open world as a free man. The cool autumn air never felt so good.
If you enjoy my writing you can also read my novel Your Life Does Not Exist, available in both physical and ebook editions.