Much of the fun, of course, lies in how these paintings suggest such rich stories that one can’t help but imagine what happened before, and what might happen next.
I assumed the robot belonged to the kid, just because the backpack and glove fit him so well. Maybe it’s an ordinary household appliance (as the paint scheme would seem to suggest; it looks for all the world like it might have a diagonal Volvo logo on the front) that Dad uses to bale hay, repair fences, and (in AutoDefend mode) guard the livestock from nightly raids by roving bands of Deathclaws. Mom might use it as a lift so she can clean the jets under the Volvo hovercraft, and I daresay she’d get a fair bit of gardening assistance from it. And young Sven there has a control glove of his own, ostensibly a “youth training” model in which the more dangerous gross motor functions and defense mechanisms are disabled, allowing the kid to learn how to control what is intended for him to be merely a large pantograph and harmless playmate. And maybe Sven, smarter than Volvo might have suspected, may have hacked his own glove into a fully-functioning adult model, and he and his pal Lars have been on a wee rampage all afternoon, knocking over grain silos and frightening everyone’s mutant herds of beefalo.
Me too. I remember George Carlin saying, “I play ‘Spy’ at the airport,” and I would totally do that too, surreptitiously peeking around to see who might be tailing me, etc. And a lot of times, though I’m a grown-ass man of 43, when I’m walking down streets I’ll pretend that some approaching bus or garbage truck or whatever is a malevolent entity seeking me out, either as a self-aware murderous vehicle like the trucks in Maximum Overdrive or just the Authorities out to find and apprehend me, like the “gleaming alloy aircar” in Rush’s Red Barchetta. And I will amuse myself by eluding these ordinary bus drivers and garbagemen who couldn’t care less who I am or what I’m dodging.
I do it with “imagined futuristic artifacts” sometimes, and sometimes with positively retro monsters.
I may never outgrow playing this game. Our mundane world can be awfully dull sometimes, especially when you don’t get to travel much and you’re lucky enough (as I am) to live in relative peace, safety, and prosperity.
