Vance Valentine's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The billboard looped Vance's chin-tilt across the empty flats all morning. No one came. A lizard-thing crossed the dust, glanced at the giant purple letters spelling his name, and kept walking. Vance tapped his claw against his jaw and frowned. A signature move was worthless without eyes to catch it. He needed an audience, and audiences did not arrive by accident. He needed to advertise. He climbed down from his pink-curtained stage and marched into the nearest cluster of low stone huts. He carried a stack of hand-painted flyers under one arm, each one showing his face in violet ink. He pressed a flyer into the hands of a tall local with three fingers. "Tonight," Vance said, tapping the paper. "Live. Me. The Valentine experience." The local turned the flyer sideways, then upside down, then bit a corner off and chewed it. Vance moved on. He handed one to a squat figure hauling water. The figure folded it into a cup and scooped from a puddle. By the tenth hut, Vance understood: paper meant nothing here. These people did not read. They did not gather for shows. They had never been an audience for anything. He stood in the dust and thought. His eyes drifted up to the holographic billboard, still looping his face in the distance. The light bent across the flats for miles. Everyone could see it. No one knew what it meant. That was the problem, and the answer. He walked back and reprogrammed the billboard. He cut the looping ad. Instead, he pointed the projector straight up and set it to fire a giant image of his own face into the sky above the settlement every hour, mouth open, claws raised, name blazing beneath in letters four huts tall. Then he climbed onto his stage and waited. At sundown the billboard fired. Vance's pink face bloomed across the clouds. The locals stopped where they stood. They pointed. They dropped baskets. A crowd began to move toward the light, drawn by the only thing they understood: something huge in the sky that had not been there before. Within an hour, forty of them stood in a loose ring around his stage, staring up, staring at him, waiting. Vance stepped through the pink curtains and tilted his chin. He tapped his claw under his jaw. The crowd made a low sound he could not name. He had his audience. He also noticed, near the back, two figures who were not staring in wonder. One wore a clinician's coat. The other stood with arms crossed, jaw set. They were watching him the way one watches a fire spread.