Ether

The city used to have a heroic name. Now it’s called District 7-West, which is more honest.

You live on the fourth floor of a building constructed in 1987 and never quite finished. Through the window you can see a billboard for Kolony-Bonds, the government bond that financed the Ganymede mines. The billboard dates from 2011. No one has taken it down. No one has paid it back either.

You came here because the countryside had no place for someone like you—too much mud, not enough walls. The city, you thought, would understand. Your last exhibition drew eleven people. Eight were looking for the new bar next door.

This morning someone slipped an envelope under your door. It’s from the League of Independent Cartographers, which you didn’t know existed until now. They seem to take it for granted that you knew.

The envelope contains a sheet of paper folded in three and a card that falls to the floor before you’ve finished opening it.

The sheet of paper: an address crossed out, a time written below it, probably the right one. Sentences start and don’t finish. The word “Ether” appears four times, in four different contexts, as if the author were trying to explain something to you that he doesn’t understand himself.

The card: an invitation. Théâtre de l’Éther. Tonight, 9:00 p.m. Row C, seat 11.

If this is an advertisement, it’s the worst one you’ve ever received.

You’re going to go anyway.

The Théâtre de l’Éther is at the end of a street your map doesn’t show. Maybe that’s why no one goes there.

The place used to be something else. The walls remember it better than the neighborhood residents. It smells of stale tobacco and decisions made in the dark—the kind of decisions that have no name the next morning.

On stage, a young man recites Chekhov with the conviction of someone who has never read Chekhov. The auditorium is nearly empty. Row C, seat 11. To your left, seat 10 is occupied by someone who has been watching the door since you entered.

He wasn’t watching the stage. He was waiting for you.

He’s too well-dressed for the place. Collar buttoned, jacket without a single crease: the kind of outfit you wear when you want to look like you’re in control of something. His face says the opposite. Not in a dramatic way. Just the eyes of a man who’s decided that sleep can wait, and who’s been waiting for too long.

He holds out his hand to greet you. You notice the tattoo before you notice the rest: a seal on the back of his hand, almost faded away. Not laser-removed. Worn away. As if time itself had tried to forget it.

He tells you his name. You’ll forget it before the night is over. It’s probably not his real name anyway.

He talks. A lot. Not always in the right order.

Street names that contradict each other. A date that comes up three times with three different years. The word “Ether” again, used as if you knew what it meant. Maybe he knows himself. Maybe not.

Then he stops.

Completely. Eyes closed, breathing slow: the gesture of someone gathering what’s left of himself.

When he speaks again, it’s different. Clear. Almost mechanical.

A job. Simple, he says. Pick up a painting in District 7-North. Store it in a warehouse near your home—he knows your address, which you decide not to comment on for now. The Guild will take care of the rest.

He doesn’t specify what the painting is. He doesn’t specify what the Guild is. He speaks as if you already knew.

On stage, the actor messes up his monologue for the third time.

District 7-North smells of clean cars and money that needs no justification. The shopping arcades have brightly lit storefronts. The sidewalks are well-maintained. Even the pigeons look better fed.

The address leads you to a junk shop nestled between a library and a parking lot for flying cars, half of which are in for repairs. The window is dark. There’s no sign that the place is open, or that it has been open recently.

You press the intercom.

Silence. Then a breath.

You say you’re from the Guild.

The door opens. Not all the way. Just enough. A hand sets a painting wrapped in brown paper on the threshold and disappears before you can see who it belonged to. The door closes. The bolt clicks into place.

The painting is light. Lighter than expected.

You stand on the sidewalk for a second with an unfamiliar painting under your arm, in a neighborhood you don’t usually visit, for a guild you didn’t even know existed this morning.

Just another day.

The way back runs along Rue des Anciennes Certitudes—that’s its real name, though no one knows why.

The gallery at number 14 is lit up. It’s packed. There’s no line outside, but the kind of crowd inside that fogs up the windows. You slow down without meaning to.

People are looking at paintings. Just that. Standing in front of frames, in silence or near silence, with that focused look you get when something moves you before you understand why.

More than eight people. All there for the paintings.

Not for the new bar next door.

You head back.

Under your arm, the painting wrapped in brown paper feels light. Too light.

The warehouse looks exactly like what it’s supposed to be—that is, nothing. A dilapidated facade, boarded-up windows—the kind of place you don’t even glance at as you walk by because there’s nothing to see.

The inside is a different story.

Clean. Too clean for an abandoned place, not clean enough for a place that’s still in use. Paintbrushes arranged by size on a shelf. Tubes of paint lined up in a row. An easel in the center of the room, facing a window with no glass. The dust is there, thick and honest, but it covers everything evenly, as if time had stopped at a specific moment and never started again.

Someone used to make art here. A long time ago. Then it stopped suddenly.

You place the painting on the easel without opening it. That’s what you were asked to do.

As you turn to leave, you see the word on the door.

It wasn’t there when you came in. You’re certain of it.

Handwritten, at eye level, on a scrap of paper taped directly to the wood.

A single word.

Ether.