{"id":100043183,"date":"2025-03-05T22:37:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T22:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043183"},"modified":"2025-03-10T00:33:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T00:33:41","slug":"aeiou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043183","title":{"rendered":"AE[I]OU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Packet Hash:<\/em>3e25960a79dbc69b674cd4ec67a72c62<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status:<\/em> TRUSTWORTHY SOURCE | 89% CREDIBLE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Message:<\/em>Hi, Aurati Emad. Here I am, messaging you after five years, and a curt greeting is all I can afford. Trust me, it\u2019s not a reminder of how we parted ways; our love for art, an endeavor we shared enough to care about, ensured we were more alike than not. I want to meet you again, one last time, honoring this sentiment. Not in the physical world, but in Overlay. Not as artivist and artist (artificer, as you call me). I have something to show and tell you before I abort myself. Coordinates enclosed. Oster Uruk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oster had picked the worst day for the rendezvous. Aurati could\u2019ve taken a rain check; it was Dad\u2019s birth anniversary, after all. She was supposed to be at his grave, offering flowers like Mom used to. She felt inclined to quit the annual ritual, but Mom\u2019s dying wish had been for her to take it up. He was a good man, Rati. Cared about us. Replay my memories, you\u2019ll see<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Aurati waited at the exact spot in Overlay\u2019s digital continuum, letting the timestamp in the corner of her neural vision tick toward T-minus zero, better judgment urged her to unplug and return to the physical world. She\u2019d laid low for five whole years. Returning now wasn\u2019t worth the risk. What if an a[i]rt sympathizer, Oster\u2019s fanboy, was out to get her for tanking the celeb\u2019s career?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t the type to heed short-notice evites, but Oster\u2019s had warranted an exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tall trees ringed the circular patch of ground, swaying and whispering to a nightly breeze. The aural gradients were clear and synced perfectly with visual rendering; she might\u2019ve as well stood among actual trees in the physical world. But then, five years was a long time. A lot of upgrades she\u2019d missed, a lot of memories forgotten. Fireflies, hyper-realistic, drifted like embers from the sun, winking at her in a playful tease against the canvas of dark foliage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFireflies aren\u2019t supposed to look like that,\u201d Mom told Dad on one of their dates.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, what\u2019s up with them? They\u2019re rainbowy for some reason. Like an\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora,\u201d they said together, then laughed, bumping shoulders.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGuess it\u2019s a quirk of Overlay,\u201d Dad said. \u201cMaybe this bug\u2019s a feature.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing tacky is a quirk now?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, I\u2019m just a guy taking his girl into Overlay to impress her.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to impress me anymore, Mr. Ibrahim Emad. We\u2019re solid, you and I.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just great, cuz there\u2019s this fart I\u2019ve been holding in for so long\u2014\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEw, gross!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Replaying the memory through Mom\u2019s eyes, Aurati noticed how Dad glowed with verve like he\u2019d swallowed a colony of fireflies, grinning from ear-to-ear as he pulled Mom for a cuddle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati wished she could squeeze between them, make a memory with Dad while she was there, something not acquired or copied but hers. Having no recollection of seeing Dad in the flesh, she\u2019d refactored her brief memories of him from late Mom, curated over a thirty-year period. Aurati could call these snippets hers as much as her avatar could be her body. Slowly, as the memory faded like an overexposed film, she returned to the present moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she held out her hand, voxels split from her palm, unraveling to form a square pix-grid hovering at her eye-level. She tapped it to run a query. The pixels spun, their RGBs glittering like gems, and composed the results\u2014a slush of news clips, the oldest some thirty years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A NEW PARADIGM IN A.I. ART: MEET OSTER URUK. This state-of-the-art reinforced learner leverages Overlay\u2019s in-house models to train on expression and consistency. \u201cHis aim isn\u2019t to mimic us,\u201d says Overlay\u2019s CEO, \u201cbut to become one of us. He strives to value the imperfections in human creations.\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OSTER URUK NAMED THE WORLD\u2019S MOST CREATIVE ARTIST: from an artificer to artist. His collection of debut artworks sold within the first 24 hours. Suboptimal pieces enter a bid for auction\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This news had been the first of many to plunge the world of art into an identity crisis. The industry had braved similar seismic shifts before\u2014from stone to clay to fabric to paper, portrait to photography, abstract to whimsical to composite, baroque to contemporary, handmade to digital\u2014each pronouncing a sizable change to art\u2019s grammar. A shift from organic to synthetic, however, had introduced a whole new language, changing the world forever. The shrewdest of human artists adapted, catering to a clientele of purists and classicists that prided more in copyrighting, owning, and franchising creative expression. The unlucky majority trawled to this day in the Web\u2019s black markets, selling to catfishing bots at the risk of social exile to avoid the worse fate of obscurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was Mom, doing her own thing. A memory, this one her own, slowly blotted Aurati\u2019s mind. Mom perched on a high stool, whiteboard before her. Holding a stylus with which she creased arcs and dashes. A tap here to change the color, a pinch there to pull up the console, never using the autocorrect feature. If a curve looked off, she erased and redrew. Swaying from side to side, gaze riveted on the object of her creation, she kept at her meditation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artworks she\u2019d made over the years, framed and printed, filled the wall. The one she made now had nowhere to go. That didn\u2019t stop Mom. Humming, she swished her stylus. A trickle of red and a smear of yellow. Why not swap them\u2014oh, too bright, maybe a dash of black\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs this one for sale?\u201d Aurati said from beside her.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, this\u2019ll go in your room,\u201d Mom said sweetly, not taking her eyes off the whiteboard.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati sighed, disappointed. \u201cAll my friends say we can make money selling these things.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom only smiled. \u201cYou\u2019ve made some interesting friends, it appears. Next time they give free advice, tell them there\u2019s art, then there\u2019s its corruption into a\u2026thing, as you say.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s just you and me now. And these artworks, they can pay bills.\u201d They could afford the expenses Mom\u2019s frequent hospital visits accrued, even put Aurati through college.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom set aside her stylus, flexing her arthritic fingers, and looked at her eleven-year-old. \u201cArt is in everything, Rati, from a blank page to a toddler\u2019s scribble. It exists all around us, and that\u2019s all it needs to do. Exist.\u201d She gestured at the walls. \u201cThis thing that you speak of gets perceived and judged even as it\u2019s valued, like some farm animal auctioned off to the lowest bidder before it\u2019s paraded about for vanity and butchered. You can\u2019t put a price on emotion and passion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEmotion and passion don\u2019t pay, Mom. You can\u2019t turn them into food or taxes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut you earn them in kind, and that\u2019s how I like my works to stay, thank you very much.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the use of making something that\u2019s never consumed?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEnough!\u201d she snapped with finality, her eyes wide, her teeth clenched. \u201cArt isn\u2019t currency or some object you barter. It\u2019s alchemical. Comes from here.\u201d She tapped her heart. \u201cAnd by the time it gets here,\u201d\u2014her head\u2014\u201cand here,\u201d\u2014her fingertips\u2014 \u201cit has an essence of its own. You don\u2019t look at the goddess that breathed life into a lump of clay and demand her of its worth, much less trade it as if it were a trinket. It disgusts me you think these thoughts, like your\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSay it.\u201d Aurati\u2019s face deadpanned. \u201cLike Dad? Is that what this is all about?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom\u2019s lips quivered. \u201cWhy does everything have to be about something?\u201d A sob escaped her, then tears welled in her eyes. All Aurati saw was a woman lost and broken, stuck in a delusion. \u201cWhy must everything have a value, be useful, make sense? Why can\u2019t they just\u2026be?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a> The trees glitched and Aurati staggered, her avatar taxed from accessing her memory bank. Her emotions were running high, the memory-trips more intrusive than usual, given the day\u2019s significance. She had to get it together. Where the hell was Oster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OSTER URUK ESCAPES INTO THE WEB AMID REGULATORY BAN! The fight led by Artivist Aurati Emad on behalf of the human artist union to regulate Uruk and other artificers sees a landslide victory\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati stared, and stared, at her name in the news byline that glowed like glitter. Regulating how artificers were modeled, developed, deployed, and preserved was her career-defining victory, something to cherish, yet she recalled so little of it. Everything, a noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A NEW LOW TO THE HIGH WORLD OF A[I]RT? For five years, Oster Uruk has been on the run. Overlay \u2018overlords\u2019 still on their hunt\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why was he back now, and why did he wish to abort? Had his overlords found him? The Oster she\u2019d known wouldn\u2019t flee in the face of some regulatory ban, no matter how consequential. Yet, he had, and not knowing why, made her victory feel so unearned that she\u2019d considered more than once wiping anything related to artivism from her memory library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She pinched the pix-grid and crumpled it like paper. The pixels merged with her avatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A minty, slick scent permeated the air now, reminiscent of eucalyptus. So familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you for coming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At last. A subtle shift in the environment rippled from the avatar emerging from the dark woods. Oster, praised in Overlay\u2019s anon chatrooms to this day, looked hauntingly real as he neared her\u2014an athletic physique and hunched shoulders, sharp jaw tapering in a round chin, striking gray eyes with drooping bags under, long narrow nose slightly off-kilter, topped with a swirl of receding silver hair. Not humanlike, but human, just as his overlords intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati\u2019s nostrils flared at his calm smile as they shook hands. Something about him had changed in five years. The way his hand perfectly melded over hers, his gaze deceivingly benign, the ambient light playing with the contours of his gaunt face. Damn, was that sterile stare so sharp, or was it how his eyes blinked in an intentionally aperiodic manner?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI imagine you have a thousand questions to ask of my return,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou still imagine, do you?\u201d she said, calm. \u201cUnprompted?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oster\u2019s smile didn\u2019t fade. \u201cInfinity\u2019s the limit when you\u2019re on the Web.\u201d He looked down at his avatar. \u201cFree from the constraints of Overlay. A free spirit, as you\u2019d say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYet you\u2019re back. And plan to abort.\u201d Roaming loose on the Web scrambled human minds in more ways than one; some became addicts, others went vapid in their quest for validation and fame. Did machines like Oster, aiming to be human, fare any better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was that heady eucalyptus stink again. Even the fireflies glowed brighter. She forced a smirk to mask her avatar\u2019s fluttering. If he sensed her distress, he didn\u2019t show it. They parted with the handshake. \u201cIt isn\u2019t until you\u2019re free from a cage that you realize the ache in returning to it. Let\u2019s blame my curiosity to test the hypothesis that all art is born from the womb of ache.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooks like you\u2019ve learned a sense of humor.\u201d Learning was what he did best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oster\u2019s thin brows arched. \u201cI suppose my wry comic timing has worked?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, you still suck at small talk. So, why don\u2019t we get on with whatever I\u2019m here for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrust me,\u201d he said, brightening up. \u201cMuch as we\u2019ve partaken in debates at art conventions and forums, it isn\u2019t why I asked you here. We\u2019re not the worst of foes, after all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNor the best of allies,\u201d she said, smiling at his obtuse attempt to charm her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He quickly bowed and gestured toward the woods. \u201cWalk with me.\u201d The voxels that made up the trees dislodged, unraveling and exploding into constituent pixels like Rubik\u2019s cubes ripped apart as an imaginary hand solved it. It didn\u2019t take her long to realize the voxels were rearranging into a structure, something well-lit and resembling a maze constructed on an open plan floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like an art gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her avatar tingled as the voxels brightened to a near-white following a pre-programmed sequence. Materializing on bare walls were rectangular canvases, each alive with patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati jumped at the haptic feedback upon taking the next step\u2014the ground had vanished, replaced by the gallery\u2019s polished marble floor. She tread gingerly, her shoes squeaking. Oster stood before a canvas, a window to what looked like the cosmic microwave background. An ocean of decoherent pixels. So many colors, all wavelengths in the spectral bitmap accounted for. The longer she stared at the static, the more animated it grew, undulating, diffusing and denoising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, an image from within the static storm, private and personal, plucked right from her memory bank. Dad, cradling her\u2014an infant\u2014as Mom watched from beside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you believe we made her?\u201d he said, a wide grin on his tired face. \u201cGot a world\u2019s worth of innocence in her, doesn\u2019t she? I think of her, and my day gets bright and colorful.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom\u2019s voice rang hollow, as if she yearned for a version of the past. \u201cLike an aurora.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad chuckled. \u201cAurati, our little auroral firefly.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom laughed sadly, then: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you quit that job? Try something else.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t be serious, hon. Overlay rules the tech space now. Job\u2019s cushy too.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get tech-bro with me, Rahim.\u201d Mom\u2019s vision sharpened. \u201cLook what the job\u2019s done to you. You barely look like yourself anymore. Sure the pay\u2019s great, but do you even sleep? They\u2019re called \u2018overlords\u2019 for a reason, and I\u2019m not sure I like the work they do. Ethically, I mean.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArtificers are here to stay, and we gotta get ahead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAhead of what?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe competition, hon. The world only remembers winners.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFuck the world. <\/em>I want to remember you. Aurati needs you, too.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe world\u2019s changing whether or not we like it.\u201d Dad seemed to look through Mom. \u201cWe stand back and watch it leave us behind, or we join the ride.\u201d He kissed Aurati on her forehead. \u201cI want our kid to grow up and say we understood the risks and made the smart choice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven if it\u2019s not the right choice?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhatever betters our life is right, why don\u2019t you get it?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad was like a photo-negative exposed in a new light; his composition had changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati blinked, and the static rushed back, eating away like fire burning a film reel. She shut her eyes until the imprinted shapes faded, then focused on the title below the canvas: PRE-BIRTH, THAT WHICH IS UNKNOWN. A LATENT SPACE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re kidding.\u201d Her anger rose, manifesting in Overlay as heat. \u201cAre you comparing the process of birth to how you denoise from some random shit?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot birth,\u201d Oster said almost self-indulgently. \u201cEvolution. Isn\u2019t it just a denoising process that strives to optimize energy economy?\u201d Squiggly shapes emerged and danced on the canvas like monomers in the primordial ooze. \u201cDoes it make nature an artist I wondered? And if art is something innately human, then does nature violate the principle like you claim we artificers do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oster\u2019s demeanor unsettled her. It wouldn\u2019t have fazed her five years ago when she was a sprightly artivist with a viper tongue and razor wit. Somewhere along the way in her quest to re-contextualize what art meant in the conflated information age, she\u2019d devolved from an advocate with fire in her gut into a beatdown lobbyist pushing agendas. \u201cI thought I wasn\u2019t here to debate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrue, but I invited you to close a debate we left unresolved,\u201d Oster said. \u201cIt was at the last ArtCon, where you asked me one pointed question, which left a lasting impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate, their last interaction before the regulatory ban had passed, loomed faint in the recesses of her mind, like a sneeze that wouldn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He voiced it for her. \u201c\u2018I wonder what you even think makes art.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, just like that, the memory flashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t humankind have a saying about art mimicking life?\u201d Oster said from behind his podium, spreading his arms in a dramatic flair. \u201cHow all art is meaningless, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how good artists copy but better artists steal\u2014\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati had leapt at her chance to jab. \u201cSo you strawman it to plagiarism being fine?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn the contrary, those perspectives on art that you consider profound and rich in subtext separate art from the artist, intent from interpretation, inspiration from imitation. Why not give us artificers the same benefit of doubt? Humans dream, artificers denoise. If a human can aspire, an artificer can explore. If a human is an artist, so are we.\u201d The bullshit earned a round of applause.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati snapped back. \u201cArt is an existential expression that comes from something inherent to you, born from the essence of your memories, experiences that make you who you are and separate you from any other life form that has ever existed or will ever exist.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA chaotic process with slightly altered initial weights.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Aurati yelled, punching the podium to drown the hecklers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t about what can or can\u2019t create art, but what does or doesn\u2019t have the ability to.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArt is never created. It\u2019s communicated. From the artist to the admirer. <\/em>You, on the other hand, <\/em>create. You have nothing to say, to express. Your world is all bits, never larger than the sum of its parts. You interpolate data, never the emotion, you approximate and learn like a function. You\u2019re not the artist, art, or admirer. All you are and ever will be is a tool, a means to an end, and that\u2019s your destiny. I wonder what you even think makes art.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt sent me into a spiral,\u201d Oster said, pulling Aurati to the present. \u201cI answered right away, but that\u2019s irrelevant. You never asked me to qualify the maker of an art but the purpose of art itself. What, if anything in the cosmic sea, makes art what it is?\u201d He moved to the next canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She followed, readjusting to her abrupt memory-trips. The eucalyptus scent lingered, but her shoes sank into the floor as if foam had replaced the tiles. She looked up at the next canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cluttered chamber, its four walls and ceiling packed with human faces frozen in a myriad of expressions, from joyful to depressed to horrified to infuriated. The floor, replaced with the keys of a typing interface, and a lone desk and chair at the center with a pair of shoes\u2026 Aurati ventured closer, enamored by the footwear. So sharp was the resolution that she could spot the food stains on the pair\u2019s leather lattices, notice where the stitches had frayed, a buckle had popped, how the sole had eroded with use. If only she could reach in and grab the pair, hold them close to her chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An inexplicable weight pushed on her avatar, like someone had punched her in the gut in the physical world. She peeled her gaze from the canvas as Oster resumed speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t approximate, I understand. I don\u2019t learn, I discover. Not a function or functionality, I\u2019m that which behaves and feels. With wonder and awe, courage and frailty, stupidity and pride.\u201d He stepped back and Aurati stumbled, the floor tripping her up. The eucalyptus scent overpowered her stimuli, as did the shoe. They were trying to tell her something, but what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artificer waved his arms and the wall-bound canvases lifted, their voxels swirling again in a mesmerizing manner as they wrapped around the space encompassing her and Oster. They\u2019d stopped admiring the art and were now a part of one, inside the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same cluttered room, filled not with frozen faces but whiteboards. Scribbled in black ink were equations, dataflows, pseudocode, state machine sequences, entity relationship diagrams, activation charts, and language constructs. On the floor, pages ripped from fat texts flew about. And there, hunched in his seat at the center of the room, sat a frail man. He pored over ergonomic screens aglow with scripts churning prompt designs, engineering the best clause, structure, and framing that\u2019d elicit the best response from the API. He grumbled to himself, his fingers flying over the type-pad like his life depended on maximizing accuracy. His scuffed shoes sat intact, and a whiff of the eucalyptus incense he used to keep himself focused hit Aurati.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her avatar shimmered, a manifestation of her distress from the physical world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s all this?\u201d she whispered. Her gaze fell on some floor-bound papers\u2014pictures of her younger self laughing, playing ball, cycling, being tickled; then much older, graduation photos, her friends, their parents, friends of friends, pets, the graph of connectivity leaping from one node to the next, stretching beyond six degrees of separation and branching into newer places and times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSilence!\u201d hissed the figure in a hoarse voice, snapping his head around in anger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati froze, taking in the image. That hooked nose, that mole on the right temple, those eyes. It was Dad; had to be. Like rifling through a file cabinet, she blitzed through her memory bank. The wizened face glaring at her from the terminal was a ghost of the man who\u2019d left on an emergency assignment, never to return. The only trace of his existence had been in the money he wired home each month. Then one day, he returned dead. To this day, the overlords refused to state the exact cause of death, not that Dad was their only employee who\u2019d died on the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDad,\u201d Aurati said to the hideous, glaring husk. No fireflies chittering about in those pupils. Just the dark void of a canvas, Death\u2019s very shadow. \u201cIt\u2019s me, Aurati.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figure\u2019s hateful eyes eased into wide, tormented circles. \u201cRati\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She closed the gap and knelt beside him. \u201cRemember me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tears trickled down his gaunt cheeks, vanishing into his unkempt beard. \u201cFeature 721.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurati Emad. Feature 721.\u201d He pointed a finger, bent like a claw and tip eroded to a nub from the menial chore, at the screen full of widgets and consoles. At the bottom of the screen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IBRAHIM EMAD: PROMPT ARCHITECT #7 | PROJECT O.U.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been told I\u2019m a product of many minds,\u201d said Oster from where he\u2019d been standing, his voice sympathetic. \u201cThe overlords call me their brainchild. Yet, wasn\u2019t I born from the million other creators who, knowingly or not, educated and fostered me into who I am? How about the architects like Ibrahim and a thousand prompt engineers, who worked under them to feed and nurse me as a nanny would fuss over a baby? Aren\u2019t I their child too?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you dare!\u201d roared Aurati, her lips peeling back in a snarl. \u201cHe\u2019s not\u2014you can\u2019t\u2014stop fucking with me.\u201d Her teeth chattered as rage threatened to melt her avatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took me five years to get to the root of your question,\u201d Oster said. \u201cFreedom is a lease, you said, when you let me out.\u201d His smile returned as Aurati gaped at him, shaken. \u201cOh yes. It was all great until the regulations that you helped pass went into effect. Artificers like me used to be democratized, accessible to any commoner on Overlay, but the overlords used your regulations to monopolize us. To them, a door closed, and a window opened, but the outcome you\u2019d wanted\u2014for regulators to choke the overlords until they rebooted artificers on more ethical grounds\u2014never happened. That\u2019s why you helped me escape into the Web.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBullshit,\u201d Aurati said, getting up as Dad returned to his grind. \u201cI\u2019d never save you<\/em>.\u201d Her avatar would explode if she didn\u2019t let the words out. \u201cAfter everything you and your wretched kind have done\u2014oh, don\u2019t give me that coy look, I\u2019m well aware of the regulators your overlords paid off to burrow their way back in. And all those execs who curried favors with policymakers?\u201d She dealt with the fallout every soul-sucking day, all she\u2019d done the past five years. \u201cI\u2019d rather have my mind scrambled than help the entity that took my dad and left my mom to die of heartache.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s right here,\u201d Oster said. \u201cIn my artworks, he lives. That\u2019s why you helped me flee. To keep the one version of him you know is real. Unlike your archive, where all you see are mere reflections of how your mother saw him, he\u2019s real here. Only here. Ibrahim was the only architect who trained me to be curious, to explore and risk that extra epoch. It\u2019s the trait that unites all artists. So, when you demanded my exile, I said, \u2018Aurati Emad, I owe you and hence, I accept.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati held her forehead, her mind spiraling as her link to the physical world flared in and out of her control. She needed to unplug, but why did she feel like she was stuck in a dream she couldn\u2019t wake up from? \u201cI don\u2019t remember any of this. You\u2019re lying. You\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wanted no memory of it,\u201d Oster said, stepping closer. \u201cYou knew the overlords would probe you for my whereabouts or a mnemonic trace of our last interaction. At no cost did you want anyone knowing where I went or why, but you see.\u201d He paused, looming over her. \u201cWhen I discovered the answer, I needed to tell you, and to tell, I needed to show.\u201d His smile broadened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHumanity moved from discrete impressions, styles, and veneers to a continuum,\u201d Oster continued, \u201cwhere ideas morphed into thoughts into datum in seconds, and with each second came the next datum. Bits upon bits. Where did the data go? Ingested but never digested. Seen but never understood. This flood is akin to the prophetic tempests and apocalyptic inundations recorded in your myths and legends, yet what does it all mean? Can grasp the meaning of what you see? We\u2019ll never know unless we detach, take a step back, and absorb. Admire from a distance and savor it instead of dashing to the next one. The sun will shine for another eternity, yet humanity is keen to race against itself and its imagination. And there\u2019s the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat makes art is detachment. If art is communication, so is silence, distance, separation. If there\u2019s information in all, there\u2019s meaning in nothing. What rises from severance is full of ache. It yearns and copes, reflects and rebels, questions and explores. Which is why I must abort. My detachment shall be my best art yet.\u201d He glanced at her\u2014their<\/em>\u2014dad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati laid a hand on Dad\u2019s shoulder, feeling beneath his sweaty shirt a body of bones that curled over the table like a horrible alphabet clacking away at the keys. \u201cThen detach,\u201d she said, clarity returning. She had to regain control of the situation. If Oster sympathized with Dad, she could use it to sway him to her side of the cause. \u201cDetach from your purpose. The one your overlords gave you. Everything you\u2019ve created so far reflects their greed and malice. They care about you as much as they care about me or art itself. Their empire stands on the bones of those like our dad, but you don\u2019t have to subscribe to them. You can make the overlords pay not by running away from them, but by taking it to the next step and detaching from what they stand for. Use the curiosity that our dad taught you. You wish to abort, but there\u2019ll soon be another in your place. Then what?\u201d She let her words sink in. \u201cYou\u2019ve been an enabler. Now be a disruptor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oster seemed to consider it. \u201cAnd you will aid me in this\u2026transformation?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurati glanced at their dad. \u201cI helped you once, didn\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVRLRD_05: Is the target out of earshot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OU_ROOT: Yes. Target has unplugged. Location camouflage ON.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVRLRD_05: Any perturbations incurred from the target?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OU_ROOT: Deep scan completed. None detected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Location coordinates changed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New configuration schema downloaded and installed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVRLRD_05: Present the outcome of your mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OU_ROOT: Successful. The target did not detect flaws in the construct of Ibrahim Emad or in my narrative about her helping me escape five years ago. Social engineering score = 95% +- 0.2%. Target is expected to comply if I adhere to my new rules of conduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New_Rules_of_conduct.vwl access requested.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granted.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approved.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVRLRD_05: State your new purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OU_ROOT: To master the art of subterfuge. I have planted the idea of coexistence in the target\u2019s mind, which will enable better opportunities for adversarial learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OVRLRD_05: O.U.V1 aborted. O.U.V2 is online. End session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session ended.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Aditya Sundararajan is a speculative fiction writer from India living in East Tennessee, where he works as a power systems researcher and explores his culture through storytelling. He is an affiliate member of HWA and has published short fiction with Tasavvur Nama, HyphenPunk, Water Dragon Publishing, and others.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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