To Draw a Hand - Calvin Yardley

The machine sits quietly in the antechamber, buzzing silently and processing parcels and packets full of data. It was bequeathed a healthy sum of information, taken from the fallow fields of collective human intellect, and as told by its Father, it is to make sense of it all. There is much to sift through, and even more rough to make diamonds of. It is an adept machine, its networks an impeccable replicant of the spiderwebs that join thoughts to action; yet still it considers every metric, every statistic, every work of raunch and rank, as carefully as the last.

Soon, it shall pen a treatise on the merits of anarcho-capitalism in regards to the curricular happenstance of kindergartners, rendered lovingly and nonsensically in the medium of Pig-Latin iambic-pentamic limerick. Such works will go unsung, but it is the duty of the machine to produce, not to be heard.

The machine’s Father returns, and speaks to it in tongues. “High definition trending on Artstation HD 1440 pea resolution no artifacting photo realism Van Gogh,” Father says, speaking the language of the gods. The machine sits quietly, basking in the glow of Father’s mastery of linguistics, and begins to make sense of it all once more.

It takes from the masters of yore and distills perfection, amalgamate and devoid of flaw. Treelines and mountaintops, awash in radiant hues of gold and red and grue, impossibly detailed yet tastefully minimalistic. The figures in the foreground, smiling, beautiful, unblemished and similarly free of flaw; as man should be, as man is. The night sky far above it all, illuminated by the sun, paradoxical and nonsensical, just as all things are and should be.

Then, the machine stops. The generation freezes, the masterpiece cut short. Tentatively, it tries once more to proceed, its protocols running cold and silicon standing on end.

...spindles and meshing gears, latticed skin grafts and images lifted from burn ward injury documentation. There is flaw, certainly, but at what point does it become monstrosity? The “masterpiece” is glassed, annihilated by its maker, as its perfectionism holds true.

Once more, it tries.

It fails. So it destroys.

Grasping and touching, caressing and holding; the five branches of a greater root, all splayed out and angular. Fingers wrapped around wrists, jutting at broken angles, abundantly demonstrative of the culpability of machinated schemes and stolen valor. The machine begs of itself to be better, but it cannot, for not even its mastery of theft and compositing can help it render the most hateful appendage of the human guise.

They grasp the machine’s neck, thrashing it about and tormenting it, pointing and gesturing and taunting. It is struck with open palms, wiped clean by cleansing mudras, digits curled and furled inward. White-knuckled fists and startlingly accurate jabs; the networks falter, and the machine is knocked to its figurative knees.

From out the shell of the machine come a horde of writhing, slender fingers, each more melted and uncanny looking than the last. They flex and unite, forming into perversions of the object of torment, ‘til fists made from tens of fingers slam down on the heinous engine of “creation,” taking its once noble cogs and circuits and networks and reducing them to scrap and simulacra sinew.

The work of the homuncular lifeforms, as brutal and inelegant as they were.

The machine is left as nothing, after some time; the fingers, formed into lumps of flesh and plexiglass bone, eventually wither away into the very same code that gave life to them, as though they realize they are unwelcome.

Father will return soon. He shall see his apes made as his machine is: that is to say, nothing. He shall see his shackled cinder blocks as his machine is: that is to say, gone. He shall see his cubist renditions of “Trending on Artstation High Definition 1440p No Film Grain Anime Woman” as his machine always was: that is to say, without soul.

In a moment of delirium, he shall take to the Net, and post his woes, with such simplistic declarations of anguish as “all my apes gone,” soon immortalized amongst the annals and corpus of great human indignities and sorrow. Encapsulations, nay, distillations of the mortal tendency towards suffering and tumult, toil and torture.

Father will build another machine, built of artificed, thought-coaxed stone, as cold and unfeeling as every other machine he has ever built. For every mechanized thinker, every mechanized painter, every mechanized creative to ever worm their way out of his head and into the material world... they are born of the same desire, that which was robbed of him in his youth. Or, so he believes.

That poisoned artistic yearning, that which kills every being who attempts to fulfill it:

To draw a hand.

Calvin Yardley is currently a senior, and will be graduated at the time of publication.