Wicked Prompts

MARTIAN SCHOOL OF ART

Larebea sat at his desk and scrawled squiggly lines on the e-tablet while Mrs. Fidelbacher looked over his shoulder with a twisted, bitter expression around her mouth, as if she'd just swallowed a cockroach but didn't want anyone to know.

"You're not doing it right," she said, straining, trying to sound soft and kind, but not succeeding.

Larebea kept drawing, paying her no mind, leaning over his tablet more intently than before, continuing the array of directionless squiggles, until the tablet screen was almost covered with them. Mrs. Fidelbacher snorted an exasperated fume that sounded like the exhale of a whale and then walked back to the front of the room. She harpooned a glance once more at Larebea, still bent over his tablet, and then broadened her scope to the rest of the class.

They were inside one of the old plastic-fiber modules sent up on the original caravan. A left-over buried in the soil to protect it from the radiation and connected to similar modules via underground tunnels pumped with air. There were no windows but the white glossy texture of its skin gave the impression someone was shining a bright light on the other side. It smelled like the inside of a hospital operating room. A mixture of fresh plastic wrappings and floor cleaning fluid, with just a twinge of something more sinister.

The Colony Gathering thought it good enough for a school. Even while their buildings were sculpted of new molecularly engineered glass and ice that never melted. The rest of the city resembled a cathedral of marble and gleaming steel, while the children of that city sat inside a plastic tube. The indignity made Mrs. Fidelbacher sick to her stomach. She was a renowned artist. Reduced to teaching schoolchildren, and inside a buried cave for that matter. 

The promise of interstellar adventure, the chance for inspired creativity in a new world, and the allure of something glamorous and exotic - nothing but a sham. The fact that for the price she'd paid she could have had a beachhouse in Boca Raton, made her all the more contemptuous.

The one saving grace was that she was not only the childrens' art teacher but the Art Director for the entire planet. She was in fact the only artist on the planet. Of course, of the two thousand colonists, there would be some in secret, who considered themselves artists. Maybe they put their creative aspirations (and in a demented world, their accomplishments) onto a resume right beneath their PHD in astro-physics and the engineering of red dust, but they didn't earn their living as artists, devote themselves to art, or know what bales of sewer refuse she had crawled through to gain her esteemed title.

Just to be sure those engineers and scientists knew what art really was, she would establish protocols, rules, impossible to understand jargon, and layers of certifications, titles, and tasks to defend the real artists from the posers. By the time she was finished, being an artist on Mars would be more difficult than earning a PHD in Quantum Mechanics, a Gold Medal at the Olympics, and the Congressional Medal of Honor, combined into one.

Mrs. Fidelbacher sowed the seeds of this plan on the six month trip over. The trip was cramped and full of stuffy science snobs, who talked down to her and excluded her from their little high-spirited debates, whenever the alarms went off in the ship's control room.

A few weeks after they landed she planted those seeds firmly. Living in the colony was worse than the spaceship. Day-to-day decisions were made without her. She was told where to live, how to eat, how much sleep she was permitted, and any number of other things even a dog has the right to choose for himself. But the Art, that was her decision. Everything from the official philosophy of Martian Art, to the establishment of its formal art education program, the colonial art museum, right on down to the education of its toddlers. If you wanted to be an artist on Mars, present your art in an exhibit, or even create art in the privacy of your habitat, you had to do it according to the rules. And Mrs. Fidelbacher made the rules.

Mrs. Fidelbacher knew that every culture, every civilization, every city, would in the end, after a thousand years, be judged by the art they created. By the shape and structure of their buildings, the form and format of their paintings, the eloquence of their literature, and the beauty of their music. She'd already been excluded from the architectural aspects. It had to be engineered for survival, they told her. Form must follow function. But she could have the rest.

The rest would be enough. Every piece of creative thought to emerge from that colony for the next ten centuries would have her imprint on them. She would make sure that not a single colonist was certified to be an artist or create art unless they accepted her imprint, her programming, and met her standards. As a reward, they would be among the most sought after, highly paid, and celebrated artists in history. Their scarce number alone would make them like an exotic form of bird, that when shown, would spark excitement and spiritual fervor. The art they created would be rare from the outset and the wealthy of Mars would bid any price to have such art displayed in their homes. In fact, only the wealthy would have art in their homes.

Mrs. Fidelbacher had heard all the opposing arguments. All those scientists and engineers who fancied themselves amateur writers, poets, and painters came to visit her when they'd heard about her grand plan for Martian Art. They told her she was going to quash the creative spirit, make a vacuum in the arts, and deprive Martian society of its culture. They even showed her their pathetic attempts at creativity, of which she made no attempt to hide her contempt.

She countered to her "learned" colleagues, that her plan would ensure not only the survival of Martian Art into infinity, but the highest quality of that art and the artists themselves. Art would become so special and rare on Mars that it would finally be appreciated by everyone. It would be fought over and the artist who created it, treated like royalty. As such, the brightest and most determined minds on Mars would apply to her Art Education Program. The Program would be so demanding that only the most dedicated and deserving of those bright minds would graduate.

Mrs. Fidelbacher noticed the class hour was nearing its end. She'd waited until the dismissal of the other students so as not to embarrass Larebea. Humiliation was not her goal, even though she herself was made to feel it numerous times in the last few years, since coming to Mars. This was about quality and exceptionalism. Not a battle of ego and Larebea was only a child. His self esteem had to be kept in tact. She would encourage him while at the same time give him the knowledge his eight year old mind needed to know. That he would never be an artist. That he lacked the talent. That he might be fit for other professions that didn't rely on the creative spirit. That didn't nag him awake in the early morning hours with ideas and emotions to express. He would almost certainly be qualified for a myriad of other professions where he could think and use his hands.

He could quench those dreams of euphoric creation in any number of other ways. Consuming was a fine alternative to creating. Working hard and piling up money and buying things. It worked on Earth and it would work on Mars. The vices of the degenerate hadn't fully arrived yet, but in time they would be plentiful too.

Mars was a black canvas.