Roberts takes the magical Chihuahua from my arms, removes the hover text style numbers from its head and feeds them into the computer through an input mechanism I can’t quite understand or explain. “Good good,” says the private investigator who also doubles as my lawyer while watching the monitor. “The Red Row is forming again… see?”
I see this in front of me: one red square appears to the upper left, then another directly to the right of it then another to the right of it then another to the right of it until the sequence numbers 13. But the 13th, she explains, is the same as the 1 again.
“What next?” she asks. I tell her I don’t know. “Zero,” she persists. “The interval is zero now,” she prompts. “What’s next?”
“Um… one?” I guess without much conviction.
“Yes!” And with the press of a key, a second row forms in a similar manner directly below the first. All the colors are different now except for the 1st square and the last square again. Beginning at the left we have red once more, then red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, blue-violet, violet, red-violet and then red to end. These were her words for the gradiated colors as she explains what happened.
Then she asks again: “What next?”
“Oh geez, I don’t know. I suppose: two?”
“Right-o!” Same kind of row forms immediately below the first two when another key is pressed. Colors now: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and then — repeating the pattern beginning with the 7th square — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, to end with red again.
“What next?” she then asks. I think I was getting the hang of this.
Eventual what was produced was this, which promptly went into Barry de Boy’s “Does This Look Square to You?” series at the end. Roberts called it “The Atom.” “This is where everything starts,” she said about it. “Can you see?”
“Here, back up a bit,” she suggests. “Squint your eyes,” she said after I still had trouble getting it.
I saw.
Sunklands 