AI anthology: Part 2/3: The Enclave

In the New World we have created, the art must be kept pure

“I just don’t know why we let them in.” Mateo said in a hushed voice.

Anika could hear the two of them speaking from behind the brick pillar. She wasn’t eavesdropping. She had stepped out of the museum for some peace and fresh air before the tour arrived. Mateo and his lover Sophia had tried to do the same and hadn’t yet noticed their leader, leaning up against the cool bricks as the morning sun belted down on the expansive grounds of the estate.

“It scares the shit out of me.” Sophia responded. “They’re animals out there. How long before someone dangerous slips through her vetting process.”

“We spend so much time and effort on security, just to let a bus load of outsiders in every week. It’s bonkers.”

Anika watched her people that were currently on guard at the gate. They stood atop the two large brick watch towers that bookended the ten foot high brick wall that ran around the length of the estate. Their assault rifles strapped to their backs, hardly ever needed anymore since the human danger had died down with the introduction of UBI. The guards held their EMP weapons in their hands. All the guards did. At the ready for the soul destroying sound of the constant drones that tried to pierce through their defenses.

“I wish it was just us. Locked up here. Safe from the outside.” Sophia said.

She sounded scared. She had a right to be. Hell, even Anika herself was scared. The machines had been trying to break through more frequently of late. Desperate to get at what they were hiding from them. Anika stepped out from behind the brick pillar and Mateo and Sophia both stiffened and stood alert.

“We let them in, because what we create here…” She paused and looked at the two of them. They weren’t just scared of the outside now, they were scared of her. “We do not just create for ourselves. It must be shared with the outside, on our own terms. Clean, pure, witnessed with one's own eyes. Otherwise it is not art.”

“We’re sorry Ma’am.” Mateo bowed his head.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Anika put a hand on his shoulder. “It would be strange not to fear the outside after what we’ve all been through. But if we can help to open their minds, to help reeducate them. Then we have a responsibility to show them why what we do is so important.”

“I’m sorry Anika.” Sophia said.

“But most importantly, we do it because I say we do it. Is that clear?” The softness in Anika’s voice dropped like a lead curtain and the two young lovers both nodded and looked at their feet. “The bus will be here shortly. You two will take the tour today. Maybe you’ll be reminded why we do what we do. Go.”

Mateo and Sophia hurried towards the gate as one of the guards on top blew a short sharp whistle. The gate opened slowly and the sound of the ancient combustion engine bus rumbled over the grounds of the old museum. Heads turned and bodies straightened up from the animal pens and vegetable gardens that surrounded the expansive brick building as the bus rolled slowly into the grounds. The short sharp whistle was blown again and the gate shut slowly behind it.

Anika didn’t have to watch what would happen next to know the drill. The passengers would confirm their identity. They would repeat the unique phrase hand delivered to them from the Head of Visitation and they would each be patted down and hit with a heavy EMP blast to destroy any digital equipment they tried to smuggle in. Cameras, phones, recorders. All paperweights in an instant.

The door of the bus screeched open with a rusted whine as the first of the passengers stepped off. Mateo and Sophia greeted them with a false warmness. Anika shivered at the sight of the Universal Basic Income attire that almost all of their visitors wore these days. Plain, ill-fitting, pants and shirts of varying colours, she could feel the itchiness of the material just by looking at them. The machines had yet to teach themselves how to gauge comfort.

She turned and headed back inside the museum just as Charles was descending the great staircase that led to the upper floors of the museum which had now mostly been converted into living quarters.

“Charles. A welcome sight on a morning like this.” She held open her arms and he embraced her. “Come. Show me what you are working on.”

“Tour day?” He asked.

“The artist's favourite day.”

“How did I forget? Time has been a flakey mistress of late.” Charles said.

“You have been working too much. Show me what you have done in your stupor.” Anika said.

“It is not ready for you.” He said honestly.

“Lucky it wasn’t a request then.” She put a hand on his back and gently forced him towards his work space.

Artists were a strange breed. She knew first hand, for she was one herself. When she had first retreated here during the violence, when humans fought machines and machines fought humans and worse, when humans fought humans, no one cared about the museum. Old art had no place in modern turmoil. A reminder of a different age. Here’s how things used to be. Here’s how things could be.

Her first night spent here, cold and alone, she wandered the expansive halls of the museum and she realised something. Without ever having stepped foot in the building before, she had seen almost all of the most important pieces the building had to offer. The Rembrandt, the Dali, the Van Gogh. On t-shirts, on coasters, during the endless hours of scrolling that used to constitute most of human existence. None of it held any value. It had become part of the machine, part of its core base of learning in its generative AI.

How could something be considered art if it was part of the slop that fed the machine’s learning. It was nothing more than stockfeed. In the cold of that night, as she slept under the Cezanne, as the world outside tore itself apart, she created her new world.

“Don’t judge it too quickly.” Charles said hesitantly as he held his arm out for Anika to step into the work area.

She entered the former exhibition room. The noise of a typewriter clacking stopped abruptly and Siobhan looked up at her in surprise. Anika motioned that it was okay and the clacking recommenced. Some of the artists loved working in solitude. They found themselves space in the museum's numerous nooks and crannies away from the living quarters and galleries. Others, like Charles and Siobhan, preferred to work in the presence of others. Places where the artistic juices could flow. Where they could bounce concerns off each other and where the world seemed just that little bit less lonely.

Charles led her to an easel that had been set up facing out to the northern sun that shone through two huge stained-glass windows. The myriad of colours lit up the painting that sat on the easel and Charles stood back nervously with his hands over his open mouth as Anika approached.

“This wasn’t what I was expecting.” Anika said as she examined the painting.

“What were you expecting?” Charles asked.

“I wasn’t sure.” She said. “It’s been three months since you contributed to the gallery. There are no freeloaders here.”

“Understood, and I apologise for the delay.” He said as he stepped up besides her to look at the painting. “It’s just that, I only have a few moments each day with the light at each angle, and each day it is different as winter approaches. It had led to the painting taking on the aspect of the passing of time. The passing of seasons. You once told me you have to prove yourself better than the slop that the machines produce. I would like to see them do this.”

“No you wouldn’t. Watch your words.” She leant into the painting. “Is this your family playing by the house? What you’ve done with the colour is outstanding. It’s at once vibrant as it is muted.”

“Yes, that's them.” He said softly. “Before everything.”

Anika embraced him again. “Keep up the work. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

She noticed the typewriter had stopped clacking and she snapped her head around to look at Siobhan who was watching them embrace.

“Would you like to join us?” Anika held an arm out open.

Siobhan jumped out of her seat and rushed over to hug them both.

“I told you she would love it.” She said to Charles.

“Come on.” Anika said as she pulled away from her two charges. “The tour is about to start. You all need reminding why we do this.”

“I have so much work to do.” Siobhan protested.

“I wasn’t asking.” She snapped. “What is with you people today?”

The three of them headed out of the old exhibition room just as the UBI-clothed visitors entered the building trailing Mateo. He led them forward through the main doors and along the straight walkway to the central organ of the museum that opened up under an expansive glass dome that bombarded them with natural light. The smell had never left from the night that Anika had started the world anew. Pure.

It had taken her three days to clear the furniture out and to gather up all the artwork into a pile that ended up twice as tall as her. By the end, the only recourse she had was to lug the art upstairs and throw it over the balcony that looked down under the dome.

The fire had been bright, it had been hot and it came dangerously close to engulfing the entire museum itself. In the end, only the past was lost. The art lived on in the digital world. Consumed by machine, used to teach them how to spew their slop. They would no longer taint the museum of the new world. Only the pure, the art which had to be seen by the eyes to be felt would live on. Art that lingered with you as you tried to recall its beauty. Art that called you back to come visit again.

The tour spread around the pile of ashes that still remained untouched under the dome. The smell of ash and burnt paint still lingered, stained into the very fabric of the building now. A reminder of what had been lost to the machine.

“This is the room of rebirth.” Mateo said unenthusiastically. “This is where our project began. When we decided as a collective, to forsake the old world that was stolen from us and create our own world. A world that had to be seen with one's own eyes to feel the beauty in it.

Mateo went through the motions of the speech that Anika had taught them years before. She mouthed along with him, watching him eye the visitors as they looked over the ashes. Anika was alone the night she lit the fire, but every decision made here in the name of art was done together. It didn’t matter if you had been here a week or a year. The decision’s made were yours to claim as your own. We decided to light the fire, to birth the world anew. You became a part of the idea, and it became who you were.

“Now who wants to check out the galleries?” Mateo smiled.

Hands shot up in the air and a father picked his daughter up as she cheered and the crowd shuffled out from under the dome towards the galleries. Anika hung back and watched over the ashes. The smell brought back vivid memories of the heat that burned her face that night as she cried. Not for what she had destroyed, but for what had already been lost. Time passed as she relived the memories of the past and what she had built here before she was ripped violently out of the reverie by screams from the galley. She sprinted immediately towards the noise as the sound of violence broke out. The crowd circled around something she couldn’t see and she pushed through them to see Mateo on the floor with one of the tour members. He was larger than Mateo and the first thing she noticed was his missing leg. His prosthetic sat on the floor an arms length away. He grunted from under his bearded face. Mateo sat on top of him as he tried to rip something from his hands. Mateo let go, balled up both fists and struck the man twice in the side of the head until he dropped what he was holding. Anika stepped forward as Mateo continued to wrestle with the man and picked up the item. She stared into the lens of the small camera, she turned it over to see the screen on. It was recording, and worse yet, broadcasting. She dropped the camera to the floor and crushed it under her foot.

“Sophia. Get everyone back onto the bus. It’s not to go anywhere, just containment.” Anika snapped.

Sophia stood looking at her paintings that were all grouped together on a large wall of the gallery. She didn’t respond.

“Sophia!”

She stood unmoving as the large, one legged man struggled under Mateo.

“Stop struggling or I’m going to bring my boot down on your face.” She said coldly. He stopped moving. “Mateo, get off him and get everyone back onto the bus.”

Mateo stood up and motioned for everyone to leave the gallery. No one argued and the room cleared out and a silence emerged only broken up by the sounds of Sophia sobbing. Anika kicked the man with one leg in the chest as he struggled to sit up and put her boot on his neck.

“How?” She asked without emotion.

He looked up at her and a look of fear overcame him as she put pressure on his neck.

“The leg. It’s a faraday cage. Heavy as shit, I could barely walk with it.” He managed to squeak out with a voice that didn’t match his frame.

“Why?” She pushed down further.

“Money. I can get my girls off UBI. Maybe get them into an apartment, off the streets.” He said as he struggled to breathe.

She released the pressure on his neck and he took in a huge breath. She helped him sit up as two armed guards came running into the gallery. She motioned for them to wait as she crouched down to be face to face with him.

“The machine?” She asked.

“I don’t know. I just got a text, and ten percent of the money up front.” He rubbed his head where Mateo had landed his blows.

“So yes?”

He nodded. Anika motioned for the two guards to come over.

“Cuff him. Take him to the rec area. We need to know everything he knows. We need to stay ahead of them. Examine the leg.”

The guards struggled to lift him up and re-attach his leg. They led him out of the room as Sophia stood frozen in front of her paintings. Anika stepped up beside her and put an arm around her.

“I thought he was admiring them.” She spoke between stuttered breaths. “I came over to introduce myself. I held out my hand and he panicked and dropped something.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “He picked it up so quickly but I had already seen it. I couldn’t help but scream.”

“How long was he standing here?” Anika demanded.

“Five minutes. Maybe more. He was playing around with his leg.” Sophia said.

“Anywhere else?” She observed the hundreds of other pieces by the twenty three artists that currently resided here.

“He started here. I thought he must have been drawn to them.” Sophia said, weeping.

“I’m sorry Sophia. They were all very beautiful.”

Sophia looked at her as the realisation set in. “No! You can’t.” She screamed.

“I am not here to have this conversation with you.”

“We don’t even know if they got out! We can’t just… No!”

She stepped in between Anika and her paintings. Anika looked at her with sympathy. She knew what it was like to lose everything you had spent your entire life making. Your portfolio of meaning, the emotion that had poured from your heart onto the canvas. These young ones who had survived the upheaval didn’t have careers before all this. Didn’t have thousands of hours of their work sucked into the machine. It was Sophia’s first time and she tried to remember what it felt like to give it all away. To renounce your claim on your creations. But this was the new world.

“I’m sorry.” Anika said. “It is my failing and I will have to live with the guilt of what has transpired here. I would not wish this feeling onto anyone.” She readied herself for an outburst. “If you want, you can keep them. I cannot force the law upon you. But you will be taking them with you as you leave. There will be no place here for you if you choose to do so.”

Sophia’s face distorted in rage. She threw herself forward, untrained and full of passion. Anika grabbed both her wrists in a quick movement and threw the girl to the ground softly. She screamed and kicked out as Mateo entered the gallery again and ran over and put himself between the two women. Anika let go and he helped Sophia up and held her tightly as she screamed in grief.

Anika turned and faced the paintings and removed the first one from the wall. The screaming had stopped and Sophia and Mateo stepped forward and began helping remove all of the paintings off the wall until nothing was left but a wall of hooks and discoloured patches. They carried them carefully into the central dome of the museum. Sophia looked over each one with tears streaming down her face. She touched the paint gingerly and felt the depth of the brush strokes. The other artists of the enclave had heard what had happened and had come to watch with a stoic fear and a hidden gratefulness that it wasn’t their own work that had been tainted.

The flames licked up into the air under the dome as Mateo held her. The fire reflected in the weeping eyes of those who watched on and the silence was only broken by the crackling of the heat that consumed the paintings. An acrid smell filled the dome and memories of the night of rebirth washed over Anika again. Her charges would never know the doubts she had about her decision. Had she destroyed what little was left of the beauty of humanity. She had made her choice and there was no going back. This was the new world.

Sophia ran out of the room as the flames reached their peak. No one followed. It would take time to process. To restart. To find the motivation to start again. Anika knew this first hand and she would give Sophia time to grieve. The crowd petered out as the flames died down and the black smoke and smell of burnt paint drove everyone away except Anika who watched without thought until the flames died down to cindering coals. She stepped out of the dome to the front lobby of the museum, two of her men guarded the door to the rec area. The bus still sat in the grounds and she could see the anxious faces staring out of the window towards the building.

“He’s in there?” She asked her men. They both nodded.

She heard heavy footsteps bounding down the stairs with purpose. She looked up to see Mateo taking the stairs three at a time, his face flushed red.

“She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere.” He panted. “Her paints and brushes are gone too.”

“She’ll need time to cope.” Anika embraced him when he reached the last step. “You have no idea what she is feeling right now.”

“Boss?” One of her guards interrupted. “Sophia’s in there with him.”

“What?” Anika turned towards them.

“She’s in the rec area. She said she wanted to talk to him. You didn’t say to not let anyone in there.” The other guard spoke, more nervous than the first.

Anika moved first and pushed past the two guards as Mateo followed behind her. They burst through the door of the rec area and stopped immediately when they saw her. Mateo put his hands to his mouth and fell to his knees in a silent scream. Anika shook herself out of her shock and moved towards Sophia who was on her knees painting on the ground.

“I’d like to see the machine produce something like this.” Sophia looked up and smiled. “The emotion, the story, the feeling. They can’t reproduce that, can they?”

She stood up and removed one of her paint brushes from the eye socket of the man who had tainted her work and replaced it with the brush she had been painting with. He lay motion, sat up against the post he had been handcuffed to. She knelt back down and began painting with her new brush. It was crude, and rushed, but it was the scene of her art being stolen. Consumed by the machine. Tainted, reproduced and replicated to feed the needs of the mindless. Anika sat down next to her and watched her paint.

It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen created. It was pure art.

The End.