Sophia’s Grace

Transparency would have been nice but simply wasn't part of the operating plan. This was an in and out deal ~ take a picture of the picture on the missing person poster, and move along. She got lots of sidelongs from people - some curious enough to ask if she knew the person - but always answered with a shrug and some vagaries.

She stopped taking the pictures - most sourced from power poles and construction boarding around the city - when it felt complete, which was 145 shots. There were surprisingly few duplicates.

The mosaic of the faces didn't take long using some freeware; a simple merge of an AI-generated face and body and her shots.

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Sophia.jpg left the PC regularly after her genesis, and travelled almost continuously until her demise.

she preferred the moonlight, or windy afternoons;
times where the streets weren't as peopled.
(or when they were, by folks whose
connection she could tangibly feel)

metaphors and similes chased her but never found purchase.
how could you label a montage of ghosts?

churches and temples and mosques sang to her
but the spots where the missing had *gone* missing
resonated most deeply

the vapour trails of their aching became her longing,
her longing became her essence,
and her essence seeded itself
through the faces that made up her body
in a spiritual biofeedback loop that would make
a Llama blush

bodhisattva of the lost, born of lens and CPU and imagination,
her steps turned hallways and streets and alleyways into prayerwheels
pulling bottles and accidents and violent interruptions into their cogs
and spitting out sunsets and dewed grass and forgiveness

two days before her 17th birthday - work completed -
she returned to the pc, changed her name to grace.jpg and waited
for the reformat and upcycle