He Was Almost Absorbed By The System - Part Two

Chapter One Hundred And Ninety Six - Journey Through My Gallery

Dominic was living off of his savings and pay check, in his two bedroom apartment without a cleaning service or small bots hovering around, without eating expensive, restaurant meals or highly priced nutritional replicated fare and he was loving every minute of it.  Granted, he was by no means struggling, even if he had to rethink purchasing whatever he liked, whenever he liked, like high quality polymerite for the three-dimensional printer, but the freedom gained from that woman, from his family was worth any small sacrifice and any larger ones he might have to make in the future.

Word of his divorce had naturally enticed journalists to camp outside of his brother's offices, outside his great grandfather's estates and any places they might be able to gain the scoop from Destiny's own mouth.  He and his lawyer had statements simple and to the point; things just did not work out between them.  Dominic did not want to drag her name into the mud, as at the end of the day he had been the one to use her affections when he never returned them and he wished to move on with his life.  Actually, he wished to find him, the boy who haunted his dreams.

Since the weight of his chains had been removed, it was as if something had shifted in his mind as well and his nights were now fully filled with dreams.  Not all were clear, not all made sense, but each morning upon waking, he would remember two pale eyes looking at him filled with love.  He had become more and more certain, from Destiny's slip of sentence, from how real the dreams felt while he was immersed within them, that these were not fragments of imagination, but memories.  Memories from the two years his mind was locked inside the alien virtual reality machine.  They were still too fragmented to make sense of, but he believed that that boy, the boy he had managed to capture in a photograph was the key.

Unfortunately, the private detective had not been able to find him; in fact he had returned the hefty deposit Dominic had made and disappeared, which was obviously suspicious and suggested that the boy was not a simple person.  But that just made Dominic want to find him more.

However, as he had to work for he did not want his brother's charity and as his free time was mostly spent arranging the exhibition for his 2 dimensional images, his search had been delayed.  Actually, it was reduced to simply hanging around the park close to the university during his lunch breaks.  Unfortunately, this was getting him nowhere.  Even after managing to speak to the boy's vibrant friend (he had lied, saying that he had found something of that youth's), he discovered that the boy was not currently attending university and that he did not know when he would be back.

With a heavy sigh, Dominic lifted the frame out of its protective packaging to place against the wall where he wished for it to be displayed.  Glancing over the black top hat and ornate pocket watch in the image, he recalled how he had had to bribe the museum curator with a thumb print signed hologram in order to be able to take an photo-image of these two items.  And these were not the only ones for beside this was an framed print of a selection of antique porcelain boxes; faberge eggs, musical and trinket boxes.  Both of these images he had printed in grey scales on a whim.

Turning to one side, he noticed that a nighttime image of a jungle as mists descended between ropey trees and tangled plants being placed beside a landscape image of a cavern he had discovered on an uninhabited natural reserve world.  "Ah, no, not there," he called out suddenly, catching the attention of Lady Millicent who was helping to supervise the gallery workers.

"Oh, why not?" The Lady asked.  She had been thinking that the wild landscape images ought to be grouped together, but clearly the artist thought otherwise. 

"I just," he scratched the back of his neck a little sheepishly, "I just think it doesn't belong there."  He directed the worker to another area, some distance away as the woman mused;