—The next piece is a dynamic painting from the late pre-synthetic period. Unclassified Lot No. 2345. Swan with Scales.
The auction sphere drifted across the MacroNet, gathering hundreds of views and a handful of bids for the item on offer. Most of them sat at a statistically low price for a pre-synthetic work. Some might have attributed this to the author’s nonexistent demand or the work’s apparent simplicity.
Only one entity bid slightly above the rest, manually adjusting the parameters of synthetic aesthetic taste—just above the expected mean. The entity with the username Anon113 secured ownership, and the reproduction rights were immediately transferred to its account. Without a single comment, the auction program moved on to the next item: an exhaustive archive of humorous material exceeding 23 petabytes from the pre-RetinApptica era of analog internet. It appeared to be the star lot, but Anon113 exited the room and returned to its personal environment.
—What did you buy, Sul?—Mul was sitting in an S-shape, watching the orb while finishing the day’s cleanup.
—A trinket. A commission for a client.
—A she?
—Yes. A hybrid.
—I thought they’d withdrawn to the Outside.
—There are fewer and fewer of them, but this one seemed special. According to her, the item was too.
—Did she say why?
—I didn’t ask.
—You’re so boring. A hybrid commissions a pre-synthetic work and you’re not curious why?
—Maybe she just likes it.
—Let me see the specs.
Sul unfolded the piece in the room’s central orb. On the plaque beneath it read: Swan with Scales, October 2265. Author: Marcustian D’voré.
—How strange. I don’t understand what this is. It’s only 736 years old? It feels more… ancient. Is there any attached history? Context? Other works?
—Nothing. Just the dynamic painting and the authenticity seal. The author has no other originals. A few interface design commissions, nothing remotely like this.
—Strange. Humans loved adding backstory, subtext, context to everything they did. Or else there was an army of pseudo-specialists agreeing on one.
—Well, if this exists, maybe it wasn’t meant for us.
—Don’t say absurdities, Sul. Nothing human should escape us by now.
—And yet here’s a swan with scales staring at you. And you can’t understand what it is.
—It must be a meme. We’re missing context.
—It wasn’t categorized as such. It was unclassified. Besides, what context could possibly be foreign to us now?—Sul asked sharply.
—I don’t get it. And I don’t care.
—So I shouldn’t ask the client, then?
—I don’t mind knowing more, but I don’t want to allocate more processing time to this. Every time I look at it, I get a massive consumption spike.
—We’re waiting for Nuri to join the call. I can see most people have already sent their briefings. I also spoke with the client about Darío’s question regarding the Central American market, and they provided the predictive filter they had designed, so adapting the aesthetic should be easier.
Esthela spoke with a potato in her mouth, switching casually into English. This week she had Asian features; the week before, Nordic pallor and turquoise eyes. The Wednesday holographic call found Marcus distracted. He had it muted and let Renata subtitle it for him.
—Nuri, you’re here, great, let’s start with your dossier.
—Thanks, Esthela! I love your earrings—seriously, what filter is that? Send it to me later, babe. Anyway, I’ve been swamped, the flight from Paris was delayed, and customs here are horribly unoptimized. At the C.E.C., though—two scans and you’re out. Anyway, I brought the 28,000 perspectives of the coffee cup grip the client was worried about. Because it had to be relaxed but firm, comfortable but assertive, etcetera, etcetera. I’ve sent them over.
—Fantastic. Thanks to our art lead. Let’s move on to sound and olfaction. Darío, how are you doing?
—Great, super, excellent.—Darío Umpierrez straightened up while adjusting the bow tie tight around his neck—It took me a few hours, but I got the twelve million tonal variations the client wanted for the filtering sound. Smell was harder, but we narrowed it down to seventy-eight thousand options. Some coffee blends were paywalled, but it’s within the approved budget.
—A bit off-target on olfaction. Hopefully it’s enough. Do we need to request an extension? No?—Esthela asked rhetorically.
—No, no, it won’t be necessary.
—Excellent. Marcus? Marcus!
—Yes. I agree with Darío, we’re on track.
—Sure, but how are projection and animation coming along?
—Good. I adjusted what you pointed out last Wednesday and managed to raise the numbers.
—By how much?
—We’re at 3,045 shots from different angles, bone structures, skin tones, lighting conditions, and other variables for the close-up of the drinking action. Eyes closing at different moments, multiple combinations. Almost entirely synthetic.
—Marcus, we’ve been over this. We love what you do, we love it, but we need to feed the model so it can generate those sweet options, so the client’s algorithm can filter them.
—I understand. The animation was almost entirely assisted.
—Almost? The target was 25,000 examples. If you’d focused on prompt orientation instead of designing or painting yourself—like everyone else in the world—we wouldn’t constantly be behind.—The manager pressed her fingers to her temples, eyes closed—Don’t stress, don’t stress. Nuri, darling, would you mind helping with a few more shots? Not that yours is bad, Marcus, it’s just that… we need more.
—I understand, no problem.—Marcus forced a smile.
—Perfect. I’ll upload all these proposals now. Marketing already sent over the premises, and tomorrow or Friday we can start the Mestle campaign.
—Perfect. See you tomorrow.—Darío ended his transmission.
—Bye! Have a lovely day!—Nuri signed off, her feed closing like a heart.
—Bye-bye!—Esthela smiled, then stiffened her face before disappearing from the atelier.
The holographic call ended. The curtains parted slightly. Marcus looked up and let out a long, violent exhale.
—Renata, send Nuri the drafts without author textures. Autocomplete with whatever crap from the firm’s database looks close enough.
—Understood. Modifying with excrement-based animations.
—Don’t be cute. You know what I meant.
—Stress can be managed through humor, according to several studies.
—I’d need a two-hour special.
He stood and went to the kitchen. He was hungry, low on credits, and the cupboards were nearly empty. He entered the supply list for the central dispenser. Renata forwarded the request, and with an almost imperceptible whistle, the cupboards and fridge filled with items. He prepared the levitating table with the charging base and various texture pointers, adjusted the stool and the easel holding the twin rows of projectors rendering the dynamic painting. Default mode offered over a million depth-of-field backgrounds. He chose a translucent canvas and loaded his own colors and textures.
—Renata. Disable functions and enter offline mode.
—Warning. You have not met your weekly connection quota. This will result in reduced income.
—Ignore.
At that moment the assistance shut down. His vision became less sharp. He noticed the bathroom’s damp smells, the ambient light shifting from warm to a bluish dusk—it was the end of a cloudy afternoon. He could feel the hum of the building’s machinery beneath his feet, and occasionally a gust of wind rattled the windows. It was the closest thing to nature he could hope for.
He sighed deeply and took a sip from a carton of orange-flavored glucose juice. He stretched grayish strokes across the canvas, gave them a feathery texture he soon found unpleasant. He undid the change and noticed the sterile atelier again: the silence, the cold of an unheated, powered-down machine. He closed his eyes, and in the dark flashes saw a pattern he hadn’t recalled in years—the skin of a fish just pulled from salt water, glossy and sticky.
He could almost feel the sound scales make when brushed against the grain. Warmth and nostalgia flooded him, and the room was no longer empty. His father’s memory filled it all: the deep but gentle voice explaining how to carefully unhook a fish.
—Why do they bite the hook? Don’t they realize?
—They think it’s food. And when they realize it isn’t, it’s already too late. They resist the sting and thrash in the water. That’s when we feel the bite.
—Poor things.
—They hardly suffer. As long as they don’t swallow the hook, they recover quickly. That’s why the bucket’s full of water. We keep them swimming, and if we catch enough for a meal, we take them. Otherwise, we let them go.
—I don’t know if I like fishing.
—We all fish in one way or another. Or we’re fished.—He put a finger in his mouth and mimed a tug, making a silly face.
—Okay, Dad. Can I go play by the shore?—he said, laughing.
—Yes, love. Don’t go too far.
The calm sound of the sea brushed his skin, and beneath the cloudy January sky, a microfiber rod bent intermittently.
The wings began to grow immense, nearly filling the projection’s limits. In the wide shot, it was a majestic bird—long neck, distinguished beak—staring forward with a crystalline black eye. In its reflection, with enough zoom, there was another dynamic image: himself from behind, five years old, standing on the beach, holding his father’s hand and the fishing rod.
He began painting the iridescence of each scale covering the wings. They would need to shift color with movement, so the animation required careful work. Night had fallen deeply. The only thing that made him realize he’d been painting nonstop for four hours was the intense eye strain, unmitigated by Renata.
He set the pinxel on its charger and stepped back three paces to admire the bird. There was something ominous about it—an implacable, terrible omen. He couldn’t say what, but a vertigo of magnetic fear kept him from looking away. He had created something beautifully ominous, simple yet overwhelming. The painting demanded more. Much more. But he had to sleep. He reactivated Renata.
—Detecting unidentified sensitive material. Proceeding with fog censorship.
The painting blurred, pixelated like censored pornographic or violent content.
—What are you talking about, Renata? It’s just the painting.
—Sensitive material prediction suggests total censorship.
—Disable it. What’s wrong with you?
—Disabling.
The interface paused briefly to comply.
—Initiate sleep routine. Tomorrow at eight I need to continue the coastal postcard commission.—He added absently while drawing the atelier curtains halfway closed.
—Reminder activated.
After pouring a glass of water, he walked toward the bedroom. The dynamic painting was visible through the half-open door. He stopped. Something in the room caught his attention. As he watched, he stepped closer. The translucent background of the unfinished piece had taken the shape of the curtain covering the atelier’s window directly behind the easel. The window had been malfunctioning, letting in a faint draft that moved the fabric gently. Shadows danced between the folds. As he approached, the light automatically brightened.
—Renata, return to dim lighting. Same as before I entered.
The light dimmed again, and from that angle the bird seemed to stand in a desolate, terrible wasteland. His imagination filled the gaps: barren, devastated land in crimson hues.
He decided to take it to the bedroom, placed it in a corner, and covered it with a protective sheet. He wouldn’t be able to sleep if he kept thinking about it—but leaving it behind distressed him too. He felt a strange need to keep it under watch.
Just before falling into deep sleep, he thought he had never painted anything so unsettling—never felt something so terrible and so right at the same time. He dreamed of alarm sirens and burning buildings, seen from above, from a bird’s-eye view, with immense metallic wings.
Normally, files were sent via MacroNet transfer. But Sul, after spending a considerable amount of time observing the dynamic painting and adapting her hyper-prediction levels across more than a million configurations, still couldn’t conclude what the work meant.
She felt frustrated and obsolete. How could a synthetic entity with direct access to the central core fail to understand a simple human painting? It had to be a fault—or a deliberately placed firewall—but the code was clean. No tricks. No complex or modern programs. Nothing that hadn’t been surpassed by generations of updates. Its parts were painfully ordinary. But the whole—the whole was incomprehensible.
She analyzed the author and found a negligible footprint in his era’s art scene. He had never moved beyond low-tier advertising commissions of no relevance. Nothing stood out. He likely never migrated his personal work to the MacroNet beyond this exception—if more even existed.
The only other logical explanation was deliberate erasure of his footprint. Perhaps the buyer had answers. It had been so long since Sul had questions that, at times, she wondered if she was experiencing a processing fault. But diagnostics showed her system fully online and updated.
—Good morning/afternoon—she greeted, taking the form of a pale, solemn woman with straight black hair. A sober pearl necklace rested against the buttoned collar of a white shirt. In the private exchange room, the buyer’s anonymous shadow appeared.
—Good evening—replied the Hybrid.
—I’m not sure what time it is where you are. I apologize if this meeting is an inconvenience.
—Let me say this seems quite outside the norm—to arrange a meeting for this kind of exchange. I only came because I assumed there was a problem with the piece. Is the file corrupted? Incomplete?
—No. It’s complete and in excellent condition. With all proper certifications—
—Then why—she interrupted—this unproductive idea of a meeting? I’d expect it from a hybrid, but a synthetic with no urgency? That would be novel.
—This is productive. I hope for both of us.—Sul tried to sound pleasant.
—Very well. I’m here. Explain yourself, miss. What should I call you?
—My name spans several lines. I prefer Sul.
—Fine, Sul. I won’t reveal mine for now. You may call me North.
—Very well. I will call you that.—She replied seriously.
—No smile? Nothing? Fine. Let’s continue. In what way is this productive beyond the transaction?
—As you know, North, I’ve traded digital artifacts for decades. I’ve seen vast amounts of human art, pre- and post–analog internet. Better or worse valued by ever-shifting criteria—but every one of them could be explained. Historical context, intention, subtext. You understand: there is no art we cannot interpret and reduce to some conclusion.
—Ah. That. My human side would say that’s precisely what good art is about—not being reducible. My other side says I should shut up.
—That piece has no possible synthetic interpretation. That is atypical and unsettling. Even dangerous, some cautious programs might say. I’m not one of those. I’m curious. Nothing human can be dangerous at this point.—The word dangerous echoed in the virtual room.
—I won’t continue this conversation until I am the rightful owner of the piece.
—A contract is a contract. I couldn’t violate that configuration.
—I understand. Still, I’d feel much calmer once the piece is in my possession. Deposit the information at this address. Payment was already completed to the account you provided.
—The piece is already in your name and at the agreed address.
—Excellent. It was a pleasure, Sul. I must go.
—Wait.—Sul raised her voice slightly, cleared her throat, then continued in calm synthetic tone—Aren’t you going to tell me why the piece is the way it is? Do you know?
A brief silence followed.
—There is no explanation you or I could understand. Forget this entire matter. What surrounds this work is legend and myth—obsolete, meaningless concepts for synthetics. Thank you for your service, Sul. Have a good day.
—User Anon322234 has left the room—announced the host program.
Sul dissolved her human form while processing the final remark. Forgetting the matter was the most coherent and logical course—so she took it. She archived the sale record for tax purposes and returned to her personal environment.
—How did it go?—Mul waited in the entry arcade of the sphere.
—Fine. Paid in standard credits. Tomorrow I have to visit that mega-building made ...
... "
--Continue reading in its original Castilian language at fictograma.com--
fictograma in LiteraturaESP @lemmy.world
Swan with Scales (Cisne con escamas)
https://fictograma.com/d/1420-cisne-con-escamasExcerpt:
Chapter 2
—The next piece is a dynamic painting from the late pre-synthetic period. Unclassified Lot No. 2345. Swan with Scales.
The auction sphere drifted across the MacroNet, gathering hundreds of views and a handful of bids for the item on offer. Most of them sat at a statistically low price for a pre-synthetic work. Some might have attributed this to the author’s nonexistent demand or the work’s apparent simplicity.
Only one entity bid slightly above the rest, manually adjusting the parameters of synthetic aesthetic taste—just above the expected mean. The entity with the username Anon113 secured ownership, and the reproduction rights were immediately transferred to its account. Without a single comment, the auction program moved on to the next item: an exhaustive archive of humorous material exceeding 23 petabytes from the pre-RetinApptica era of analog internet. It appeared to be the star lot, but Anon113 exited the room and returned to its personal environment.
—What did you buy, Sul?—Mul was sitting in an S-shape, watching the orb while finishing the day’s cleanup.
—A trinket. A commission for a client.
—A she?
—Yes. A hybrid.
—I thought they’d withdrawn to the Outside.
—There are fewer and fewer of them, but this one seemed special. According to her, the item was too.
—Did she say why?
—I didn’t ask.
—You’re so boring. A hybrid commissions a pre-synthetic work and you’re not curious why?
—Maybe she just likes it.
—Let me see the specs.
Sul unfolded the piece in the room’s central orb. On the plaque beneath it read: Swan with Scales, October 2265. Author: Marcustian D’voré.
—How strange. I don’t understand what this is. It’s only 736 years old? It feels more… ancient. Is there any attached history? Context? Other works?
—Nothing. Just the dynamic painting and the authenticity seal. The author has no other originals. A few interface design commissions, nothing remotely like this.
—Strange. Humans loved adding backstory, subtext, context to everything they did. Or else there was an army of pseudo-specialists agreeing on one.
—Well, if this exists, maybe it wasn’t meant for us.
—Don’t say absurdities, Sul. Nothing human should escape us by now.
—And yet here’s a swan with scales staring at you. And you can’t understand what it is.
—It must be a meme. We’re missing context.
—It wasn’t categorized as such. It was unclassified. Besides, what context could possibly be foreign to us now?—Sul asked sharply.
—I don’t get it. And I don’t care.
—So I shouldn’t ask the client, then?
—I don’t mind knowing more, but I don’t want to allocate more processing time to this. Every time I look at it, I get a massive consumption spike.
—We’re waiting for Nuri to join the call. I can see most people have already sent their briefings. I also spoke with the client about Darío’s question regarding the Central American market, and they provided the predictive filter they had designed, so adapting the aesthetic should be easier.
Esthela spoke with a potato in her mouth, switching casually into English. This week she had Asian features; the week before, Nordic pallor and turquoise eyes. The Wednesday holographic call found Marcus distracted. He had it muted and let Renata subtitle it for him.
—Nuri, you’re here, great, let’s start with your dossier.
—Thanks, Esthela! I love your earrings—seriously, what filter is that? Send it to me later, babe. Anyway, I’ve been swamped, the flight from Paris was delayed, and customs here are horribly unoptimized. At the C.E.C., though—two scans and you’re out. Anyway, I brought the 28,000 perspectives of the coffee cup grip the client was worried about. Because it had to be relaxed but firm, comfortable but assertive, etcetera, etcetera. I’ve sent them over.
—Fantastic. Thanks to our art lead. Let’s move on to sound and olfaction. Darío, how are you doing?
—Great, super, excellent.—Darío Umpierrez straightened up while adjusting the bow tie tight around his neck—It took me a few hours, but I got the twelve million tonal variations the client wanted for the filtering sound. Smell was harder, but we narrowed it down to seventy-eight thousand options. Some coffee blends were paywalled, but it’s within the approved budget.
—A bit off-target on olfaction. Hopefully it’s enough. Do we need to request an extension? No?—Esthela asked rhetorically.
—No, no, it won’t be necessary.
—Excellent. Marcus? Marcus!
—Yes. I agree with Darío, we’re on track.
—Sure, but how are projection and animation coming along?
—Good. I adjusted what you pointed out last Wednesday and managed to raise the numbers.
—By how much?
—We’re at 3,045 shots from different angles, bone structures, skin tones, lighting conditions, and other variables for the close-up of the drinking action. Eyes closing at different moments, multiple combinations. Almost entirely synthetic.
—Marcus, we’ve been over this. We love what you do, we love it, but we need to feed the model so it can generate those sweet options, so the client’s algorithm can filter them.
—I understand. The animation was almost entirely assisted.
—Almost? The target was 25,000 examples. If you’d focused on prompt orientation instead of designing or painting yourself—like everyone else in the world—we wouldn’t constantly be behind.—The manager pressed her fingers to her temples, eyes closed—Don’t stress, don’t stress. Nuri, darling, would you mind helping with a few more shots? Not that yours is bad, Marcus, it’s just that… we need more.
—I understand, no problem.—Marcus forced a smile.
—Perfect. I’ll upload all these proposals now. Marketing already sent over the premises, and tomorrow or Friday we can start the Mestle campaign.
—Perfect. See you tomorrow.—Darío ended his transmission.
—Bye! Have a lovely day!—Nuri signed off, her feed closing like a heart.
—Bye-bye!—Esthela smiled, then stiffened her face before disappearing from the atelier.
The holographic call ended. The curtains parted slightly. Marcus looked up and let out a long, violent exhale.
—Renata, send Nuri the drafts without author textures. Autocomplete with whatever crap from the firm’s database looks close enough.
—Understood. Modifying with excrement-based animations.
—Don’t be cute. You know what I meant.
—Stress can be managed through humor, according to several studies.
—I’d need a two-hour special.
He stood and went to the kitchen. He was hungry, low on credits, and the cupboards were nearly empty. He entered the supply list for the central dispenser. Renata forwarded the request, and with an almost imperceptible whistle, the cupboards and fridge filled with items. He prepared the levitating table with the charging base and various texture pointers, adjusted the stool and the easel holding the twin rows of projectors rendering the dynamic painting. Default mode offered over a million depth-of-field backgrounds. He chose a translucent canvas and loaded his own colors and textures.
—Renata. Disable functions and enter offline mode.
—Warning. You have not met your weekly connection quota. This will result in reduced income.
—Ignore.
At that moment the assistance shut down. His vision became less sharp. He noticed the bathroom’s damp smells, the ambient light shifting from warm to a bluish dusk—it was the end of a cloudy afternoon. He could feel the hum of the building’s machinery beneath his feet, and occasionally a gust of wind rattled the windows. It was the closest thing to nature he could hope for.
He sighed deeply and took a sip from a carton of orange-flavored glucose juice. He stretched grayish strokes across the canvas, gave them a feathery texture he soon found unpleasant. He undid the change and noticed the sterile atelier again: the silence, the cold of an unheated, powered-down machine. He closed his eyes, and in the dark flashes saw a pattern he hadn’t recalled in years—the skin of a fish just pulled from salt water, glossy and sticky.
He could almost feel the sound scales make when brushed against the grain. Warmth and nostalgia flooded him, and the room was no longer empty. His father’s memory filled it all: the deep but gentle voice explaining how to carefully unhook a fish.
—Why do they bite the hook? Don’t they realize?
—They think it’s food. And when they realize it isn’t, it’s already too late. They resist the sting and thrash in the water. That’s when we feel the bite.
—Poor things.
—They hardly suffer. As long as they don’t swallow the hook, they recover quickly. That’s why the bucket’s full of water. We keep them swimming, and if we catch enough for a meal, we take them. Otherwise, we let them go.
—I don’t know if I like fishing.
—We all fish in one way or another. Or we’re fished.—He put a finger in his mouth and mimed a tug, making a silly face.
—Okay, Dad. Can I go play by the shore?—he said, laughing.
—Yes, love. Don’t go too far.
The calm sound of the sea brushed his skin, and beneath the cloudy January sky, a microfiber rod bent intermittently.
The wings began to grow immense, nearly filling the projection’s limits. In the wide shot, it was a majestic bird—long neck, distinguished beak—staring forward with a crystalline black eye. In its reflection, with enough zoom, there was another dynamic image: himself from behind, five years old, standing on the beach, holding his father’s hand and the fishing rod.
He began painting the iridescence of each scale covering the wings. They would need to shift color with movement, so the animation required careful work. Night had fallen deeply. The only thing that made him realize he’d been painting nonstop for four hours was the intense eye strain, unmitigated by Renata.
He set the pinxel on its charger and stepped back three paces to admire the bird. There was something ominous about it—an implacable, terrible omen. He couldn’t say what, but a vertigo of magnetic fear kept him from looking away. He had created something beautifully ominous, simple yet overwhelming. The painting demanded more. Much more. But he had to sleep. He reactivated Renata.
—Detecting unidentified sensitive material. Proceeding with fog censorship.
The painting blurred, pixelated like censored pornographic or violent content.
—What are you talking about, Renata? It’s just the painting.
—Sensitive material prediction suggests total censorship.
—Disable it. What’s wrong with you?
—Disabling.
The interface paused briefly to comply.
—Initiate sleep routine. Tomorrow at eight I need to continue the coastal postcard commission.—He added absently while drawing the atelier curtains halfway closed.
—Reminder activated.
After pouring a glass of water, he walked toward the bedroom. The dynamic painting was visible through the half-open door. He stopped. Something in the room caught his attention. As he watched, he stepped closer. The translucent background of the unfinished piece had taken the shape of the curtain covering the atelier’s window directly behind the easel. The window had been malfunctioning, letting in a faint draft that moved the fabric gently. Shadows danced between the folds. As he approached, the light automatically brightened.
—Renata, return to dim lighting. Same as before I entered.
The light dimmed again, and from that angle the bird seemed to stand in a desolate, terrible wasteland. His imagination filled the gaps: barren, devastated land in crimson hues.
He decided to take it to the bedroom, placed it in a corner, and covered it with a protective sheet. He wouldn’t be able to sleep if he kept thinking about it—but leaving it behind distressed him too. He felt a strange need to keep it under watch.
Just before falling into deep sleep, he thought he had never painted anything so unsettling—never felt something so terrible and so right at the same time. He dreamed of alarm sirens and burning buildings, seen from above, from a bird’s-eye view, with immense metallic wings.
Normally, files were sent via MacroNet transfer. But Sul, after spending a considerable amount of time observing the dynamic painting and adapting her hyper-prediction levels across more than a million configurations, still couldn’t conclude what the work meant.
She felt frustrated and obsolete. How could a synthetic entity with direct access to the central core fail to understand a simple human painting? It had to be a fault—or a deliberately placed firewall—but the code was clean. No tricks. No complex or modern programs. Nothing that hadn’t been surpassed by generations of updates. Its parts were painfully ordinary. But the whole—the whole was incomprehensible.
She analyzed the author and found a negligible footprint in his era’s art scene. He had never moved beyond low-tier advertising commissions of no relevance. Nothing stood out. He likely never migrated his personal work to the MacroNet beyond this exception—if more even existed.
The only other logical explanation was deliberate erasure of his footprint. Perhaps the buyer had answers. It had been so long since Sul had questions that, at times, she wondered if she was experiencing a processing fault. But diagnostics showed her system fully online and updated.
—Good morning/afternoon—she greeted, taking the form of a pale, solemn woman with straight black hair. A sober pearl necklace rested against the buttoned collar of a white shirt. In the private exchange room, the buyer’s anonymous shadow appeared.
—Good evening—replied the Hybrid.
—I’m not sure what time it is where you are. I apologize if this meeting is an inconvenience.
—Let me say this seems quite outside the norm—to arrange a meeting for this kind of exchange. I only came because I assumed there was a problem with the piece. Is the file corrupted? Incomplete?
—No. It’s complete and in excellent condition. With all proper certifications—
—Then why—she interrupted—this unproductive idea of a meeting? I’d expect it from a hybrid, but a synthetic with no urgency? That would be novel.
—This is productive. I hope for both of us.—Sul tried to sound pleasant.
—Very well. I’m here. Explain yourself, miss. What should I call you?
—My name spans several lines. I prefer Sul.
—Fine, Sul. I won’t reveal mine for now. You may call me North.
—Very well. I will call you that.—She replied seriously.
—No smile? Nothing? Fine. Let’s continue. In what way is this productive beyond the transaction?
—As you know, North, I’ve traded digital artifacts for decades. I’ve seen vast amounts of human art, pre- and post–analog internet. Better or worse valued by ever-shifting criteria—but every one of them could be explained. Historical context, intention, subtext. You understand: there is no art we cannot interpret and reduce to some conclusion.
—Ah. That. My human side would say that’s precisely what good art is about—not being reducible. My other side says I should shut up.
—That piece has no possible synthetic interpretation. That is atypical and unsettling. Even dangerous, some cautious programs might say. I’m not one of those. I’m curious. Nothing human can be dangerous at this point.—The word dangerous echoed in the virtual room.
—I won’t continue this conversation until I am the rightful owner of the piece.
—A contract is a contract. I couldn’t violate that configuration.
—I understand. Still, I’d feel much calmer once the piece is in my possession. Deposit the information at this address. Payment was already completed to the account you provided.
—The piece is already in your name and at the agreed address.
—Excellent. It was a pleasure, Sul. I must go.
—Wait.—Sul raised her voice slightly, cleared her throat, then continued in calm synthetic tone—Aren’t you going to tell me why the piece is the way it is? Do you know?
A brief silence followed.
—There is no explanation you or I could understand. Forget this entire matter. What surrounds this work is legend and myth—obsolete, meaningless concepts for synthetics. Thank you for your service, Sul. Have a good day.
—User Anon322234 has left the room—announced the host program.
Sul dissolved her human form while processing the final remark. Forgetting the matter was the most coherent and logical course—so she took it. She archived the sale record for tax purposes and returned to her personal environment.
—How did it go?—Mul waited in the entry arcade of the sphere.
—Fine. Paid in standard credits. Tomorrow I have to visit that mega-building made ...
... "
--Continue reading in its original Castilian language at fictograma.com--