A World of Art (Tag: Pavatti)

The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square was holding its annual gala, featuring works from many well known and respected artists from around the country. One of the attendees was a short little man in a UNIT uniform, his hair neatly combed back, a spotted blue and white bowtie wrapped around his neck.

The UNIT officer in question was actually the doctor, wearing some hand me downs given to him by the brigadier. He was dressed like this because the brigadier had insisted on it. The brig wasn't feeling up to visiting an art gala, and the doctor had offered to take his place. The brig had relented, but asked that the doctor "not come as himself." He'd initially been offended when the brig had said it, but had taken the opportunity to literally not come as himself. Tonight he was Colonel Samuel Morgenson.

The doctor approached the impressive entrance to the museum, lined with columns at the front. He gave his ticket and his "name" and entered, heading immediately for the buffet table. The table was lined with an impressive array of foods. Cheeses, crackers, caviar, etc. The table was set between two walls, one with a large landscape painting of a myriad of different colors. The wall parallel to it had a mirror almost the exact same size as the painting. The doctor glanced briefly into the reflection before glancing back down at the caviar.

Then his head shot back up. There was something odd about the reflection. He looked closer and shuddered. The wall around the painting had taken on the same texture. As if the frame wasn't there and the entire reflection featured a surreal, artificial landscape. What was going on? He turned his head to see the painting. The wall around it was suddenly normal now...

((sorry for the delay, unexpected RL interruptions))

Pav fidgeted nervously, checking his phone for the time. The number it read told him exactly what he didn't want to see. His friend was late. Really late. They were supposed to go get food before checking out the gala, but he supposed he was bailed on. He was disappointed and a little agitated, but being an aspiring artist, he didn't much mind being stood up and stranded here in particular, not that had been an official date, he had only met this friend a short while ago, while the mutual attraction was present, he seemed to have lost the guy with his personality.

The misfortune was quickly forgotten as he climbed the stairs to the entrance and went through the hassle of signing in, buying admission and continuing to go enjoy the art. He was glad he didn't buy online, it may have been cheaper at the time, but it wasn't now that he was down his plus one. He adjusted his bag over his shoulder and looked around, despite his brightly dyed hair and inked skin he didn't look too far out of place, plenty of other similarly decorated artists(and more drastically decorated not-artists sometimes) littered the floor, just as into the scene was he was, and probably just as poor. He ran his hands through the strange assortment of hues to push it out of his face as he got closer to a painting and looked, pushing his glasses up to see it better.

The painting was massive, it towered above him. Short and precise strokes combined to create the brilliantly executed visuals. Pav envied the control of the brush this artist seemed to have, and hoped to emulate it, his fingers were already itching to try and he had only looked at once piece. it seemed to call to him, he looked closer at the blend of blues and purples, admired the consistency of colours and attention to value, the lighting was phenomenal. As he was caught up, picking apart the piece stroke by stroke looking for the genius hidden within that would give him a hint as to how to o the same with his own paint and canvas, the people and scenery in his vision started to blur, messily placed brush strokes in the shape of humans, background only there to enhance the foreground. It took him a full minute to realize it was off.

He snapped his head around, looking, confused, at the completely normal people presented to him. What was that? He took a step back, pushing his glasses up again, though they had no further up to go. He sighed shakily, startled by what he had seen. He ran his hands over his face, pushing his fingers up under the black frames and rubbed his eyes, putting pressure on the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
"Maybe I need new glasses," he mumbled to no one in particular.

The doctor glanced once more at the painting reflected in the mirror. Now it too had reverted back to a regular reflection. Nothing out of the ordinary. Had it been a trick of the light? He fervently hoped so, despite the nagging thought that something extraordinary was going on. But this was a normal, regular art gala. He hoped he wouldn't have to deal with anything tonight, he needed a break.

As he looked in the mirror, the doctor realized how stupid he looked in the UNIT uniform. It was far too big and bulky for a man of his small stature. A quick glance around the crowded room revealed many attendees who had dyed hair and tattooed bodies, as if canvases hadn't been enough for their artistic impulses. The doctor let out a sigh, they could be themselves but thanks to the brig, he'd had to come as some colonel.

The doctor focused his attention back on the buffet table. He wanted to distract himself from whatever he'd seen in the mirror. Taking up a square salt cracker, he dipped it into a spinach sauce and slipped it into his mouth.

He immediately spat it out. The spread had tasted not of spinach but of paint. A glance down at the buffet table confirmed his suspicions. A bowl of fruit at first glance seemed realistic, edible, but closer scrutiny revealed the subtle artificiality. He picked up a pear. It had the shape and substance of the fruit, but the color was painted on. Darks and lights applied by small brush strokes. It didn't even feel like a pear, more as if he'd run his fingers across a freshly painted canvas. He set it back down and glanced up. The other gala attendees had also reverted to a less realistic appearance. It was as if reality itself had switched mediums. Live action TV suddenly became animated.

Except for one. He retained a normal appearance despite the sudden change of everyone around him. He was over by one of the paintings, scanning the crowd with a relatable confusion. The doctor set the pear down and drifted towards him, glad that he wasn't the only one caught in this experience. The young man before him had hair similarly dyed, and a body similarly covered in ink, but everything about him was thankfully, realistic. As he wandered over, the doctor's mind raced with theories concerning what was happening. This might be a shared dream or a parallel universe crafted by an enemy. But how had he gotten here? And why was the other guy here as well?

"I believe the glasses are fine, it's everything else you need to be worried about." He said.

When Pav took his glasses off it only got worse. He wasn't sure if the removal was why. He tried so hard to reason that it was. Blurred vision was muddy in a way he'd never experienced before. The colours weren't true to what they had been, haphazardly mixed in comparison to the strikingly realistic image reality generally tended to own.

He had been excited for this Gala, Visiting London from his small home in dundee is something he loved to do. Here in this city his accent was more similar to everyone else's, after a few days here it reverted to the un-lilted London speech(despite his disregard for any form of slang in most of his dialogues, the accent did give him away) Which meant he got to avoid jabs at him for not sounding like he lived in Scotland, which he did. Not that he minded te people or his home, it was just a refreshing change of scenery, he hoped to move somewhere nearby when he finished his degree. With all that in mind, with the excitement that came from visiting the beautiful city.....

He never expected his heart to be racing with fear. The uncanny realism was so very off putting now that he had noticed the inconsistencies. The more he thought about it the more his fight or flight instinct kicked in. He was almost looking for the strange brush strokes, and he found them. The more he looked the more he did. It felt like a bad dream as the scent of paint tickled his reeling senses. He had been so preoccupied he hadn't even realized how absurdly long he had been cleaning his glasses, so when the man in uniform approached him and spoke he jumped out of his skin, yelping in an extraordinarily un-manly way. Once his mind was on the start and the stranger, who was also off just in a different way(his clothes didn't fit, he didn't cary himself like security, and he was talking casually to a patron.) The painted strokes of the world seeming to unravel around him all snapped back into place. Everything was normal again. Had he imagined it? Was he going crazy? He put his glasses back on and gave a nervous, apologetic grin to the man who was potentially not a real security guard.

"Sorry, I was cleaning them a long time.... C-can I help you?" he blabbered nervously

Why did this have to happen? For once the doctor had wanted a quiet night out doing a normal human thing. the universe always seemed to have other plans. It was as if he was on call 24/7. And the situation now was a dire one. It would've been easier if what he was dealing with had been an ice warrior or a dalek, he could hide from them while figuring what to do. But the problem was that it wasn't just one hostile chess piece that he had to deal with. It was as if the entire chess board were the problem. This situation left him more unnerved and scared than usual.

The young man he approached, the only one who was normal in this otherwise off-kilter world, emitted a high pitched squeal when the doctor announced his presence. He couldn't blame him, he'd approached from behind. In an instant the world seemed back to normal as if nothing had happened. The doctor reached out and ran his hand down a nearby wall, it had completely taken on a realistic texture. "Curious..." he muttered, mostly to himself...
It had to be a dream state or an alternate dimension. One minute the food was delicious, the next it tasted of acrylic. There were lapses where the world was suddenly so unreal. But what was up with the paint theme? And how had he gotten this way? He hadn't entered a virtual reality simulator, only a few hours before he'd been trading barbs with the brigadier. It might be dream crabs, they induced a shared dream state in their victims, but he never remembered encountering them. The doctor shuddered briefly when he imagined one of those things attached to his face.

The other attendee had regained his composure and was now greeting him. The doctor returned a smile. "Yes I believe you can. Tell me, do you remember encountering anything like this, where the entire world suddenly seemed more like a grotesque art project?" The doctor hoped he could narrow the problem down to the art gala. It was after all, where it had started to go wrong. He and this young man might've entered an alternate reality by mistake, and they could hopefully escape it before things got really serious. Or the entire world was suffering from lapses of painted unreality and the situation really was a dire one. If it was a dream state, it'd be very hard to wake up.

Pav looked curiously at the man in front of him. He seemed to be mulling over something tin his head, taking it apart piece by piece till he got the answer he wanted. Just looking at him the young man could see the gears turning in his head, He imagined it was like the cork boards in the television shows, a million papers, photos, maps, all pinned and criss-crossed by red yarn. Mind maps only the maker could truly understand, connections usually only mental made visual to force remembrance.

He blinked. patters made by red chord flashing through his incredibly visual and untrained mind. Thoughts projected, like ripples through the faux world around him, while the paint didn't ripple, for the moment that he did close his eyes, the ever brief pause in faked reality to substitute it with pitch black, a flash so fast he didn't even notice it consciously, or rather, he wouldn't have if when he opened his eyes the high arched ceilings were strung with red streamers. He stared blankly at them, patterns his mind had conjured up, but meant nothing. He didn't answer the question asked of him. He asked another.

"Were those.... There before?" he asked, unnerved by the faint luminescence paper streamers shouldn't posses. Something was changing. he reached to touch the wall. It was solid, it didn't smell of paint. "I have a particularly bad feeling about that." he explained. He had run into the supernatural, or more specifically, the extraterrestrial, before. This screamed manipulation more than anything he had ever seen before. If the paint he had seen was really his world being constructed before him by someone else, which he wasn't convinced it was as of yet, but he didn't doubt someone was at least projecting some differences (but who? He wasn't hard to manipulate, he had very little psychic training, he could barely put up a wall on a good day, but who would bother?) Either way, if that wasn't flaunting, he didn't know what was.

The doctor dug around in his pockets for something that he'd brought with him. After searching through three different pockets he found a black plastic spoon. Bringing it out, he waited for the next lapse in reality. If they'd accidentally stepped into an alternate dimension then something brought from outside it shouldn't be affected, much like themselves. However if it was all a dream...

As if on cue, the gala took on its painted appearance, and the doctor watched with a shudder as the top of the spoon slowly bent downward. He suddenly felt heat on his hand, as if the spoon was on fire and dropped it. The instant he did so, he suddenly felt a presence, as if someone was watching him from above. And it seemed to take some sort of joy in forcing him to drop the spoon, as if he was a puppet performing against a painted background. Instinctively he looked up, hoping to see who it was who was running this charade.
All he could only see was an array of red streamers and the bizarre luminescence they'd taken on. "Can't tell. Too busy trying to figure out what this is, where we are..." He could feel the bulk of the officer's jacket, it was nothing but a pointless distraction. Though if he was still dreaming...
"Well at least this bothersome jacket isn't real and therefore it'd be totally unecessary for me to keep it." He reasoned, as he tore it off and tossed it behind him. He was still wearing a white undershirt underneath it. It was fake too but at least it was more comfortable. The doctor stretched his arms, his new freedom left him in a less agitated mood, even if he'd have to find a way to escape a quickly collapsing dreamworld.

He didn't know when he and the other man had suddenly fallen from the real world into this chaotic nightmare, but it at least rule out dream crabs. Whoever or whatever had been them in this didn't have the M. O. of a dream crab. The presence he'd felt, being a natural telepath as all time lords were, had almost felt...human. "Tell me," he said, turning suddenly to the tattooed artist "What is your name?" He offered his hand, as was the usual human custom in several cultures. "I'd have introduced myself as a colonel, but that name is as fake as this gala we're attending. You can call me the doctor."

((I'm really sorry for my sudden disappearance.... Things got... complicated, I'm somewhat homeless at the moment, I'll try to be back soon. Being back would be good for my health at this point in time.))