Boots of an Intruder
A solitary human figure appears in my eye-mind. Text on the cyclorama screen reads:
Samuel Thomas Gill 1818–1888.
The figure transforms onto the screen. Let’s say this is our artist, Samuel. He’s on a carriage and appears to be chatting with the driver sitting beside him.
Interior view. Narrative immersion. There’s a father figure reading from a cumbersome and slightly tattered volume. It has a gold cross embossed on the cover. There’s also a book of poetry and set of paint brushes on the seat between our designated father and another person. Let’s call this a brother figure. He’s chasing clouds across the landscape from under his hat. There’s a mother figure in the carriage with us. She’s comforting someone. A daughter, let’s say, resting on her mother’s shoulder. The carriage swerves, jerks, sashays. A road sign looms ‘Somerset’ and sweeps away behind the green hills unwinding in the background. Another sign draws Samuel – and me – onwards. It says: Melbourne GPO.
*
The dash between 1818 and 1888 augments and distorts on the screen. Exterior. Samuel is on the deck of a ship. The vessel clings to an undulating oceanic fabric like a misplaced sequin. The coastal cliffs of England have long pulled away from the ship’s stern and they are disappearing into the horizon. Samuel clutches a satchel. It has ‘draughtsman’ written all over it. We see the name Caroline surge-dump-surge in the churlish high-seas. The year 1839 tumbles with the seaweed.So, Samuel must be around 21 years of age. The only world he knows sails with him on the passenger list, in the cargo-hold, and in his prowling artist-heart.
*
At last Samuel‘s field-view makes landfall. Text on the screen: the artist arrives in the boots of an intruder. His outline loses definition in shadows cast by mountains and ghost gulls overhead. My aspect is elevated. I am gliding over rivers, forests and plains. The harshness of the land-light dazzles me, but the fragrances are soft. Their lemon notes fresh. Unalloyed.
*
Landscapes dissolve on the screen and reconfigure as text that says…
1600 generations of life, love, knowledge, stories and songlines!
*
Always Will Be echoes through my auditory-mind. I pause for thought. I discern the voices of Benefactors that have carried traditional wisdom into my own era. They hold our nano-innovations to account and enhance them. Always Was for more than a thousand years – through colonisation, inundation and visitation. And another 60,000+ years before that – through ice-ages, eruptions, and tectonic shifts. I wonder if my human aspects have ancestors amongst them?
*
Hang on. There’s a message running across the screen. I can’t remember the last time I saw a chryon 1 deployed in here. It says:
Is this your story to tell?
Now it’s displaying hyperlinks to what looks like 21st century websites: here and here. This is getting weird. Nobody has accessed internet sites from that era since the first alliance between Arboreals and Mechanists in the 2200s. We’ve always been told that AAMSOs were the first archivists – in a thousand years – to access obsolete 21st century network data. Only an operative from the 34th century could access, curate and transmit these digital artefacts. Surely! Maybe my partial knowledge is more partial than I know? Maybe I’m outmoded already? Or maybe hacktivist Eli is right after all? I can only hope.
*
Exterior view. Looks like a hundred or so encumbered free settlers disembarking onto the lands of the Kaurna People. They straggle from ocean to shore. They appear, to me, as an evolving species. Do my human aspects have ancestors amongst them? Samuel is surveying the coastal climes. Does he feel the eyes of local people upon him? Or has he sensed the lens of human history zooming in? He follows the free settlers into the hinterland. They step-it-out as if the dirt pathway was red carpet laid out for royalty, and not a way-finder forged over centuries by local people.
1. An electonically caption superimposed ona television or cinema screen
Transcript #2: Writing With Stone
Transcript #3: Tumbling Figures
Unquiet Voices 