10
Leo
This is my last week off and since I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Ray before I go back to work, we’ve been doing the whole tourist thing together. I actually persuaded him to take time out from looking for a girl so I can show him the sights, as he’s never going to get the chance again. It was easier persuading him than I thought. I simply told him the best way to find the right girl is to stop looking because it always happens when you’re least expecting it. He took me at my word, so I’ve had him all to myself for the past few days. I think maybe he’s just humouring me because I’m letting him stay at my place. I’m sure as soon as I’m back at work, he’ll be out eyeing up the ladies, but for now I’m just happy to accept every precious moment I can get with him.
So far this week, we’ve done the Science Museum, Camden Market, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Borough Market, and yesterday we rounded off by watching the skateboarders under the Southbank Centre.
Today is Friday. I’m back at work on Monday and, if I’m honest, nothing much has changed between me and Ray, except I’ve seen him relax and laugh a lot more. I’m letting Ray pick where we go today. I hand him my phone so he can scroll down a list of free museums and galleries.
“Are any of these places exhibiting any of Leonardo da Vinci’s works?” he asks.
I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Really? Is that what floats your boat? Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“There’s lots about me you have yet to learn,” he informs me with a coy smile that makes my groin tingle.
I take the phone from him and check.
Forty minutes later, we’re standing in one of the display rooms in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, staring at an arch-shaped painting entitled The Virgin of the Rocks.
I watch Ray as he studies it intently, an oddly sentimental smile on his lips.
“There are two versions of this painting,” he tells me without taking his eyes off it. “The earlier version is more muted but I like the blues in this one.”
I switch my gaze from him back to the painting. “Hmm…I have to be honest,” I say, my lip twisting into a disinterested sneer. “It’s not really doing anything for me.”
I feel him pin me with an icy stare, cold enough to freeze honey. “How can you say that?”
I shrug. “It’s a woman sat on a stone with some kids. There’s not much happening.”
“Not much happening! This,” he says, pointing at the six-foot-high painting, “is one of the earliest Italian masterpieces to be created with oils. Can’t you see the way he used the sfumato technique to soften the transitions between the different colours and tones? It takes my breath away. Every stroke of the brush is pure genius.”
“Wow! How come you know all that stuff. The last thing I expected was to find you fanboying over an old master.”
He turns back to face the painting. “I knew him.”
I pause for a moment, attempting to digest his response. I must have missed some part of the conversation.
“Knew who?”
He nods at the painting. “The artist.”
I snort out a laugh. “Who? Leonardo da Vinci? Yeah, right!”
“I studied him for a while. Most of his life, actually.”
My skin prickles as I start to believe he might actually be serious. “You knew Leonardo da fucking Vinci?” I squeal, in a voice that sounds like cats’ claws on a blackboard. “Knew him how? In person?”
“Sort of.” Ray glances around at the weird looks we’re getting. “Can we discuss this someplace else? Over coffee maybe?”
He exits the room, leaving me to catch up. We follow the signs downstairs to the Espresso Bar and, once there, Ray finds a table while I sort out the coffees. As soon as I’m seated I question him further.
“Knew him how? I thought you said you haven’t been to Earth before.”
“I told you, I can commune over long distances if I just want to access the mind, as opposed to stimulating the senses. I can listen into people’s thoughts without them even knowing I’m inside their head. Leo was a favourite of mine for a long time. He was sort of my pet project, back in the day.”
“Leo?” I query, copying Ray’s Italian pronunciation of the name, which sounds more like Lay-o.
“Yes, that was how his close circle of friends referred to him.”
“And you considered yourself one of his close circle?” I ask, an odd feeling of annoyance settling over me. Somehow I don’t like the idea that I’m not the only human Ray has communed with. And what does he mean by pet project? “Did you speak to him through his mind?” I ask, with a slight edge to my voice.
“No, I didn’t go so far as speaking to him. I could have, if I’d wanted him to know I was inside his head, but that would have displeased my father. I shouldn’t really have been communing with him in the first place. There was no official reason for me to do so.”
“So you just did it for the hell of it?”
“I was fascinated by him. I communed with him on a number of occasions, hoping to get an insight into the workings of his mind.”
“Sounds a bit creepy to me,” I sneer.
He huffs. “Maybe. I was younger then and bored. Always so bored. If I’m honest, I might have deposited one or two thoughts in his mind that weren’t his own, but I was careful to ensure he was never aware of my presence. You’re the only human I’ve ever allowed to know me.”
That last comment gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, but I’m still unclear as to the nature of his relationship with Da Vinci.
“Why did you refer to him as your pet project?”
“I’ve communed with several individuals over the centuries, but all the others have been under the instruction of my father. That’s why I call him my pet project. It wasn’t work. It was pleasure.” His brow furrows and he looks off into the distance, as if he’s trying to figure something out.
“What is it?” I ask, curious as to what’s running through his mind.
“Surely to do something for pleasure, you have to have feelings about it? My father has never shown any such tendencies. Why am I so different to him?”
“Maybe he has feelings but he just doesn’t show them. Being asexual doesn’t preclude you from having feelings. I had a friend in college who described himself as an asexual homoromantic.”
“In human form I am bombarded with so many conflicting emotions and constant physical urges, it is hard for me to remain focused.”
I sit bolt upright, my attention piqued. “You have physical urges?”
He nods.
“But not when you were with the girl.”
“No. I was petrified when I was with her. I’ve never done it before. I think that was the problem.”
“So when do you get these urges?”
He smiles coyly and looks away, his cheeks colouring up. “When I’m excited.”
“And when—?”
“No, Blake.” He cuts off my line of questioning with a determined shake of his head. “I don’t wish to discuss my arousals with you.”
I chuckle. “They’re nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Can we change the subject, please?”
I slump back in my seat and wait while he downs the remainder of his coffee.
“You say you’ve communed with other humans under your father’s instruction, but for what purpose?”
“It’s necessary, on occasion, to give mankind a prod in the right direction, to help speed up progress. Sometimes humans gets stuck in a rut and so I…help out.”
“Help out how?”
“When the right person comes along, someone who is exceptionally gifted in their particular field of study, I put a suggestion in their mind to enable them to solve a significant problem that man has been struggling with for too long.”
“Isn’t that cheating? Aren’t we supposed to figure stuff out for ourselves?”
“Even the geniuses I have communed with find all that stuff hard to comprehend. Stuff is pretty tricky to get your head around.”
“What sort of stuff? Who are these geniuses you’re talking about? Anyone famous?”
“They all became famous after the insights I gave them.”
“So, name-drop a few.”
“One of my first was Democritus.”
“Who?”
He arches a brow at me. “You really are a philistine, aren’t you? Okay, well, you must have heard of Archimedes?”
I screw up my nose. “Meh, sort of heard of him.”
“Copernicus?”
I shake my head. “Anyone who didn’t die like a million years ago?”
He scoffs. “I think they’d have to be in a boy band before you’d have heard of them.”
“But what was so special about Da Vinci? He was just a painter.”
“Oh no, you’re wrong. He wasn’t ‘just’ anything. Forget his skills as an artist, he remains the greatest polyhistor that ever lived. The term was invented for him.”
“What’s a polyhistor?”
“The more modern term is a polymath. A knower of all things. He’s the original Renaissance Man. He wasn’t just ahead of his time, he was ahead of the rest of his species. His knowledge was so far reaching and so evolved that you could almost call him superhuman. I once flashed an image of a helicopter in his mind, 500 years before such a thing had been invented, and from that fleeting insight, he actually tried to sketch a working model. If he had lived in a digital era, when the power of his brain could have been harnessed by the computer, you would be living in a very different world today.”
“You told him about the helicopter 500 years before it was invented?”
“Yes.”
I gawk at him. “Well how the fuck did you know about it if it hadn’t been invented yet?”
“Oh!” he hangs his head. “Maybe I should have left that part out.”
“Are you a time traveller?”
He giggles. “No!”
“Then how come you know about stuff that’s in the future?”
He sighs. “Please don’t get me started on time! We simply don’t have the time to cover that topic.”
“Well, you can’t just drop that in the conversation and then leave it hanging like a loose thread.”
“All I will say is this. Just because you can’t see Africa from where you’re sitting doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t only start existing when you get on a plane and fly to it. All it means is that you only interact with it at that point, but it was there all along.”
“So you’re saying the future already exists?”
“I can view the whole of the timeline, as it exists at present. The only reason you are not able to is because man’s brain can’t process that amount of data simultaneously. And even if you could, you are not properly equipped to handle the emotional fallout of knowing your own future.”
“As it exists at present? So are you saying the future can be changed?”
“Yes, but only by a factor that is outside the scope of the original blueprint.”
“Outside the scope?”
“Yes, an external triggering factor, such as alien intervention. When I create a new breed of human, I’ll be changing mankind’s future from its current course. I’ll be creating an alternative version of the future which you’ll follow from that moment on.”
I shake my head in awe. “How do you cope with that kind of pressure, knowing the fate of mankind is in your hands?”
He gives me one of his sexy smiles. “It’s not my hands I’m worried about. It’s another part of my anatomy I need to function correctly when the time comes.”