{"sf1_id":123743,"sf2_id":"YnLy9OB1","title":"The Artist","author":"firefox_b","words":410,"posted_at":"2010-02-03T01:07:00.000Z","tags":["Butterfly","positronic"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/123743-the-artist","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/YnLy9OB1","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/dc/7d/dc7d87ad-5c2b-48de-93f7-d005ec29d831","description":"","content":"The Artist  \nby ff\\_b  \n  \nIt was one of those unseasonably warm days in early January when the butterfly flitted onto my shoulder.\u0026nbsp; Those sixty degree days must have caused it to emerge prematurely, I thought.\u0026nbsp; Still it was strange, and I gently entended my finger for the creature to climb onto, marveling at its delicacy as it did so.\u0026nbsp; The butterfly perched on my finger as I examined it, realizing to my amazement that it was not organic!\u0026nbsp; As the tiny insect fluttered its wings, I saw that the wings were a polymer-type material, and I could see microgears meshing as the articulated legs moved.\u0026nbsp; Traces of microcircuitry could be seen running along the minuscule body.\u0026nbsp; As if aware that its true nature had been detected, the butterfly flew away, and I saw it no longer.  \n  \nThe technology that could create such a thing was still in the process of being created, and for what purpose had such an extraordinary thing, complex but delicate, been designed?\u0026nbsp; Apparently it had been devised just because its creator could do so, and he or she had engineered it for the joy of creating it.\u0026nbsp; Such a person lived in this time, yet ahead of it.\u0026nbsp; In all of human experience there had only been a handful of such individuals.  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp; As a student of history, I knew that in the Hellenistic Age of Greece, there had lived an extraordinary man who demonstrated a knowledge of mechanics, hydraulics, and other technologies that was many centuries ahead of its time.\u0026nbsp; So great were this man's capabilities that his understandings would not be approached until the Renaissance, and even then imperfectly so.\u0026nbsp; The great Leonardo DaVinci, himself a genius, could not get one of his predecessor's machines to function, although in the present day they would, as Leonardo had incorrectly used square rather than pointed teeth in a gear design.\u0026nbsp; What if this remarkable intelligence had somehow managed to engineer around the problem of death, so that his consciousness in this world survived his physical body?\u0026nbsp; And what if that individual had continued to learn, grow, and evolve beyond a single human lifespan?  \n  \nA few miles away, a most extraordinary butterfly flew through an open window.\u0026nbsp; Servomechanisms hummed and whirred as the consciousness of Archimedes smoothly extended his robotic arm to provide a roost for his returning winged creation...and a positronic brain turned to ponder other marvels that it was even then just conceiving... \u0026nbsp;  \n  \n\n\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n  \n\n"}