A Toaster on Mars by Darrell Pitt Page A

art for a year. By this stage his mother had moved them to Neo City, purchasing an enormous underground apartment on the east side of town. Unfortunately, as her age increased, so did her eating, and by sixty she weighed over 400 pounds. Barnaby, meanwhile, remained in his room, gloomily watching soap operas and nature documentaries.
    Zeeb says:
    This is not to say that there’s anything wrong in watching nature documentaries. I encourage all of you to see more of them. Ring me for a list.
    Barnaby realised he had reached rock bottom when he found himself actually enjoying the entire series of The Giant Snail Families of Antareas . All nine episodes followed the path of a family of snails as they travelled a mile across a rocky ledge during the long Antareas winter. The more memorable episodes were ‘Herman Bruises an Antenna’, and the grand finale, ‘Felix Reaches a Rock’. When Barnaby finished watching the last episode he found himself limping to the kitchen, wondering if he might have been happier as a snail.
    That’s when two events changed his life forever. His mother was watching a program in the living room about a painting destroyed in a fire. Peering over her shoulder, he almost wept when he realised the work was Dobvey’s I Looked Up and Saw a Garble , one of his most revered pieces.
    ‘My God,’ Barnaby said. ‘What a terrible loss.’
    Which was when the second thing happened that changed Barnaby forever. He discovered the reason for his mother’s silence: she was stone-cold dead, taken suddenly by a heart attack.
    Slumping onto the couch beside her, he was surprised he didn’t feel particularly upset about his mother’s death. Instead, his eyes focused on the television. I Looked Up and Saw a Garble was lost forever, but that did not mean it could not live again.
    And so began Barnaby Hazleton’s second life.
    After his mother’s funeral, he dragged out his canvases and paints that had been languishing in the cupboardand started working on his version of the painting. Day and night he studied computerised images, applying paint to canvas with an obsessive zeal to reproduce the original. Nine months later, he staggered back from the canvas with an exhausted sigh.
    I Looked Up and Saw a Garble did not just look similar to the original; it was identical in every respect.
    Over the next twenty years he created dozens more copies of other famous paintings, gradually tearing out most of the underground apartment’s fixtures to expand his gallery of history’s greatest works.
    Or, at least, his versions of history’s greatest works.
    At the age of forty-five, Barnaby had just completed his pièce de résistance. Five years before, someone had stolen Leonardo’s Last Supper from its location in Old Milan. In the middle of the night, an industrious thief had removed the entire wall upon which it was painted.
    Now, Barnaby stood before his version of the original. The work had been taxing. This time he had pushed himself to the limit, working for days at a time without food or sleep. In the end, however, Barnaby felt he had outdone himself. The faces of the apostles were truly expressive, exhibiting various levels of shock and dismay as Jesus revealed that one would betray him.
    But it was the face of Jesus where Barnaby’s talent truly prevailed.
    The Messiah looked positively… otherworldly . While Barnaby had been working on the face he had foundhimself almost driven by a higher power to recreate the genius of Leonardo da Vinci.
    Barnaby Hazleton had never been a religious man, but now he found himself lifting his eyes towards heaven. It seemed that God himself had blessed him with a gift and shown him the way.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.
    And that’s when the painting spoke to him.
    What the—
    Barnaby’s eyes darted left and right. The basement apartment was fifty feet below ground. He had never heard a sound from beyond the walls. Was it a voice?
    The sound came again, and Barnaby’s