It took less than a decade for the creative arts to become fully synthetic. No one was particularly surprised by this. A technology so capable of making an amateur seem talented would undoubtedly make those with a real gift and something to say seem no more talented than an amateur.
Mathematics scaled the creative arts to the lowest common denominator.
Those who invested in the back catalogues of the greatest artists would inevitably wonder at the return upon their investment should Bowie have exercised AI with the same skill that Ziggy played guitar.
Corporate stakeholders soon exhumed past performers and compelled them into an automated encore. The visual arts soon followed, as did the writers, actors and directors. This undead would once more tread the boards and enjoy the spotlight.
And everyone was happy. The sheer volume of entertainment available to consumers exploded. Older customers who had exhausted back catalogues long ago could now enjoy new work from their favourite artists. Those too young to remember these classics were happy with the automated amalgam produced by this synthetic corporate content.
As for me, I was excited to see Kirk, Spock and Bones once more embark upon new adventures. A perfectly adequate simulacrum of my old favourites, who at my command would now trek forever.
I was still working at the embassy when I saw him.
For too long I had laboured in the dark heart of this open-plan office, so had toiled to eventually secure a desk near the window on the first floor, in the sun. My attention had been divided between speculating on the lives of the occasional commuter strolling by and watching the hours tick down.
Whilst on the move he was as indistinct as any other pedestrian passing below my window. Once he stopped before the grand doors of the embassy, my attention was assured.
Not unattractive, but unkempt. A little dishevelled in his beaten denim and worn plimsolls. A guitar that had seen better days slung across his back. There was an attractive man under all this, but one who might have recently let himself go. There was still some confidence in his stride as he approached the embassy doors, but confidence overwhelmed.
The young man stopped before the doors and gathered himself. This was avid viewing. Something was sure to happen, and I was hooked. I had a prime seat to binge-watch the whole thing.
He plucked the headphones from his ears and scratched the scraggy new growth on his chin as he considered his next move.
This was to be his spot.
This is where it would happen.
As I settled in for the show the young man reached into his jacket and produced a bottle of clear liquid and a lighter.
In panic, I hauled the window wide open and, unprepared, directed an indistinct shriek at the young man, below.
His attention drawn to my commotion, he casually drew a pitifully crumpled cigarette from behind an ear, which once lit provoked a long calming draw.
The bottle was unscrewed, and after a swig of water to clear his throat, the young man swung the guitar from his back and began to sing.
It wasn’t a great singing voice. Rough, but serviceable. However, he could hold a note. A voice with a raspy, gritty quality. With a little practice, perhaps even soulful. For the time being this was a voice better suited for the terraces of the local stadium, or to join the impromptu choir of male voices at the bar.
He sang about a love that he had lost. He sang about a young woman who had stolen his heart, and with whom he had spent long hours and happy months in besotted infatuation. He sang about how she too loved him, and of their pact that they would stay this way forever. He sang about his admiration for her principles and her campaigning. He sang about her disappearance. He sang of his bereavement over a future lost. He sang about his doubts that he would ever find this love again. He sang of the journey taken and the enquiries made as he sought to find her.
This was clearly a song that he had written himself. A song written not just for her ears, but to provoke those with the responsibility to find her.
The embassy security had, at first, rushed to the young man in concern, but upon hearing his song had faltered. It was no crime to sing before these doors. This may have been a protest of sorts, but perhaps only a personal plea.
Fingers raised to earpieces. Instructions were requested.
Those passing by gave the young man a wide berth, crossing the street to avoid becoming associated with this spectacle. Once safe, only then would they stop to film this overt demonstration as old as love, but now so very rare.
She was a citizen, and she was lost somewhere in the world.
So, he sang what was in his heart before her embassy and hoped for action. Hoped that she would hear. Hoped that someone might pass on the message.
Within minutes this spectacle was broadcast around a well-connected world who sympathetically cringed at this public immolation.
Online automation soon enhanced what indistinct audio it could and invited the public to judge his performance. This personal appeal was painful to watch for an audience so used to entertainment untouched by human hands. On social media and chat rooms across the world, everyone agreed.
Cringe.
At first, I too squirmed in my seat, suffering a second-hand embarrassment that I had not felt for a long time. However, as the tragedy unfolded, whilst I watched the world mock from behind their screens, I witnessed real pain.
At the open window, I listened to a young man who had found something precious, only to have his hopes and dreams crushed. I listened to loss and to hope. I listened to a young man who had run out of options. I listened to a young man willing to bear his soul, simply to provoke some action from an uncaring administration.
Amongst every missed note and rough lyric, I was captivated by his effort to get this one opportunity right. I could witness the very limit of his skills with his guitar and his voice. An uninhibited moment of passion, confined by this young man’s ability to express himself. I listened and was moved by those moments when his ambition met reality.
And for all the inadequacy of his efforts, and for all the tragedy of the story, I felt envy for that girl in this song.
Eventually, the young man’s voice cracked. Spent, he bent to lay his guitar on the ground with a discordant jangle. Doubled over in grief, hands upon his knees and head bowed, the young man ended his song.
In the silence, and not knowing what else to do, I leaned from my window above and gave a lonely patter of polite applause.
The young man looked up, and in that moment of acknowledgement was surrounded by security and offered an insincere but polite invitation into the embassy. The young man swept up his guitar and was gone.
The viewing public moved on. Excited by the moment, but relieved that to bear the embarrassing weight of someone else’s pain was so brief.
In the following weeks, I thought about this song often and frequently requested the track from my suite of services. My best opportunity was the footage gathered by those passing by this exhibition.
And yet, with his back turned the audio was indistinct. Traffic rumbled by, obscuring both the sights and the sounds of this performance. No clear footage of this event could be found anywhere online, despite the crowd he had gathered.
I described my experience, and those lyrics I could remember, and a vast automaton attempted to reproduce this song for me, carefully crafted in high resolution. The AI mined news stories to fill any gaps that my memory could not supply. A melody was surmised and developed from the indistinct footage posted online. I hummed some parts for the machine to follow. The mechanism offered its best version of this song for my entertainment.
And yet, no matter how much I consumed, I was never satisfied. No matter how many variations this machine could offer, none quite expressed what that young man had tried to say on the steps of the embassy.
I couldn’t recover that discomfort provoked by the raw emotion of another. I couldn’t experience an unselfconscious moment of passion from this automation, because this machine was not conscious at all.
It was not the song that I craved, but simply to once more bear witness to this young man’s pain.
I needed the real thing.
I was driven to email the young man, who had been instantly identified by the system. I thanked him for his performance and reminded him of that moment we connected at the end of his song, but he never replied.
The woman to whom he had sung was never found.
Perhaps forever trapped by this tragedy, the young man sought obscurity. No more was heard from him. The world lost interest and forgot all about his song.
I remained unsatisfied.
It was months before I noticed the tiny, perforated metal grating on the door of the embassy. Beneath the doorbell available to summon security when the great doors were closed, a small intercom could be used to explain your business. It was installed when the building was constructed, and in this connected age, I doubt anyone had used it for years.
It was connected only to a dusty drive in the security office behind this door. This rudimentary intercom had listened patiently for decades, committing everything to its memory and wiping over the oldest records as it filled with sounds.
No one cared much for its contents, and I had no problem retrieving these insignificant records. No questions asked. An oversight, with no forms to file in triplicate. And there, almost scheduled for deletion, a tinny, distorted but complete recording of the performance that pursued me.
I had found it, and so I felt entitled to it.
A sound quality as if broadcast from the moon retained what I craved. Every word was grainy but distinct. Filled with that unique texture of the moment. The footprints that the young man had left behind in his work.
Without this person, there was no performance at all.
Finally satisfied, and pleased with my sleuthing, I posted this recording on my own insignificant corner of the internet. Now I could let it go, long after the main characters had left the stage.
I could have let it go, if this young man’s song had not immediately gone viral.
This young man was once more curated onto the media feed. Video of the event flashed around the world. Grainy smartphone footage of a young man, standing before the embassy singing his song. I had never seen this particular shot, taken from behind the singer with the great grey embassy looming before him. I was immediately transported back to that moment, to once more witness his plea and his pain.
Shot from behind, my window on the first floor was in view. Perhaps our moment of contact at the end of this song had indeed been captured.
But my window was firmly closed, and I was nowhere to be seen.
The voracious AI had acted.
An AI designed to consume every human experience and sell it right back to us.
On the day that this song was performed, the synthetic arts had moved to capitalise upon the opportunity that this trend had provoked. However, a synthetic, high-resolution, all-singing, all-dancing interpretation of this song did not provoke the engagement desired.
The numerous AI in competition with one another for an audience had analysed vast volumes of analytics and recognised that the human touch was key.
The AI needed the young man’s song, so had waited patiently.
To illustrate the edge of human performance was critical. To reproduce that limit was necessary to once more capture people’s attention. Errors were introduced. Notes were missed and the lyrics were rough. His voice cracked at the end, with the effort. The young man bent double in exhaustion, dropping his guitar to the ground with a clang.
Those compelling errors were present by design and for a time the online audience was once more hooked. The absence of real human pain made this easy listening.
Other examples soon proliferated. The young man’s song drowned in a sea of similar stories. Young men and women in grainy footage sang songs of love before embassies, corporate offices and government buildings all over the world. They sang about carefully curated topics likely to resonate with the widest audience, rendered in convincing low quality from plausible angles.
Views increased.
Impressions grew.
The click-through rate was satisfactory.
Engagement must be maintained.
Sentinel
The little boat’s weary electric motor whined in protest. Its long duty only to a propeller that had tasted all the waters of this coastline. Mechanisms onboard had monitored the heart of this machine for a century, and knew well that it could beat these waters for only a few hours more.