By The Ageless One.

DISCLAIMER: This article is part of The Torch’s annual “Torchure” issue, the April fools Issue. During the Torchure, our journalistic ethics and commitment to the truth hop on the earliest bus out of town, and we spend the better part of the week trying to coax them back with cannolies and baby oil. The Torch will return to faithful, truthful coverage of UMass Dartmouth-centric news next week, until then, enjoy whatever this is?

Ahhh yea the Umass Dartmouth Mural, my old nemesis, while the mural is known to all for its grandeur and beauty, the true nature of the mural is know only to the brave few who have taken it at face value, stared into its abyss and dared to listen.

Dared to feel the pain of a thousand lives, of a million deaths, learned the sorrow of every blue the passion of ever read, the apathy of every yellow, and the stories untold by man that they hold like a lover prepared to leave.

The Umass Dartmouth Mural was painted in 1984 by WIlliam Y. Wallerman.
If you can achieve a far enough distance from the mural the entire mural is an optical illusion that looks like one of the fish that is painted on it.

This is only half of the original mural, legend has it that if both halves were to meet again that literally nothing would happen.

William Y Wallerman was born in 1900 in a small town in Southern Italy by two parents who loved him like he was their own. He was raised by hand, like a turnip slowly learning to be ripe enough, learning to grow deeper and deeper into the cold depths of the dirt it was unfairly planted in,

And as he studied the the brush his father went to fight in The Great War, a young disciple of Garibaldi, so proud of his Italian and Roman heritage he fought for his honor.
His son on the other hand, he had no honor, an honorless fool, at least that’s what his father had always told him.

William was just a boy when he father left, he stared at himself in the mirror, he was the man of his home, while his father fought for the honor of Rome he was left to the stream. He was left alone with rod in hand and hunger.

He stood in front of the stream with his line fully extended waiting for a bite. This was his last loaf of bread, and he would take crumb by crumb and try to catch the fish as they swam downstream. Everytime he would catch a fish he would gut it, and then he would trade the flesh for more bread, which he would finally use to catch fish. In all of his days work he would eventually have one half loaf of bread which he would eat half of at night and then eat the other half the next morning.

He was left without a father, but without being taught, starting to grow into a man, when he would look into the stream as it sat perfectly still he could see his face change, he could hear the depth in his voice. As he approached manhood he knew he would soon have to fight for the honor of Rome just as his father had.

I remember it like it was yesterday I was so alone, so desperate for more than just the rod, so cold, as the water would splash onto my sandals my feet would shiver. So I checked the still water yet again and saw the hair on my face as it had grown.
And I knew how I could finally end the hunger, and I started marching, and marching, and marching.

Past Constantinople past the holy land until I had reached the end of the Empire, where I drew my sword and found the honor that my father had told me so much about.
And I put Romulous’s face on the coins of the Republic.

WilIam returned home from the war in 1919 after two years during his 16th and 17th years. He felt the shell shock that many had felt upon returning home from the war. He thought about the machines that he had seen out on the front.

He thought about them night and day, day and night, Breakfast Lunch and Dinner, until he couldn’t think of anything else. He wanted to know more about how these machines operated. He started to collect gears, he had big gears, small gears, gears of medium, sized, hundreds of all three types of gears. And he stacked them in alphabetical order outside of his home.

He thought that one day if he had enough gears that the emptiness inside of him would go away, that the gears could fill the void ….. That the gears could fill the void …….. THAT THE GEARS COULD FILL THE VOID. He ran outside and grabbed all of his gears and performed emergency surgery on himself.

He filled every inch of his body with gears, now he was a perfect creature under god´s sun.