If You Can't Launder Money With It, It's Not Real Art
“Ladies. Gentlemen. Revenants to whom these distinctions have long since succumbed to the natural processes of putrefaction. I stand before you today with indisputable proof that Earth is ruled not by Man but by Nameless Things that dwell far beneath our serene and sunlit surface world. Yes, you all heard me correctly; Hollow Earth is as real as the Bavarian Illuminati. A vast, sprawling labyrinth of tunnels and chasms forged not from geological forces but rather by the antediluvian behemoths of the Deep Biome themselves! Do not fool yourselves, my friends! We live in blissful ignorance of Chthonic terrors galivanting with impunity beneath our very feet! An entire ultraterrestrial ecosystem which predates the last common ancestor of all surface life, evolved for billions of years in total isolation within the very foundations of the Earth! There are leviathan, lithotrophic worms forever gnawing, gnawing their way through the mantle as slow as glaciers, and I live in terror of the day when they might breach the surface, for they are shadowed by a fearsome revenue of motley monstrosities!
"There are Mole Men, my friends. Mole Men I’ve seen with my own eyes in the pale green gloom of thermoluminescent minerals. They are, of course, neither moles nor men nor mammals nor any type of living creatures you have seen before, but they’re down there! Their mineraloid hides are impervious to both heat and pressure, and I dare say to any weapons we might conceivably muster against them! When not digging or fighting, they walk on all four like apes, their massive claws turned inwards so as not to blunt them, but do not mistake them for inept brutes! For you see, the hideous wriggling mass of two dozen eldritch appendages upon their face is fully prehensile, and with it they have wrought a civilization that rivals our own, powered by the burning core of the planet itself! I barely escaped this hellish underworld with my life, but I stand before you now with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of a lost and forbidden world we were never meant to know!
"Lot 103 is a moulted exoskeleton from a larval lithotrophic leviathan, and you have my personal guarantee that it contains still-living cells from the Hollow Earth Biome that could very well overrun and collapse the biosphere if left to multiply unchecked. Do I have one million dollars for an opening bid? One million? Anybody?”
Not a single soul assembled at Mothman’s Auction House raised their paddle or shouted a bid. They were members of the Ophion Occult Order, who had come to acquire rare and powerful preternatural artifacts, and the loquacious gentleman’s hyperbolic sales pitch had failed to convince them that that’s what they were looking at.
“You folks drive a hard bargain. Alright, for a piddly half a million, it can be all yours! Who’s walking home with it? You ma’am? Perhaps you there! You’ll never get a chance like this again! Don’t lie awake at night regretting what might have been!”
When the response was still dead and contemptuous silence, Meremoth Mothman read the room and decided to intervene.
“I apologize for the lacklustre response to your lot Mister F-, ah… Fairfowl, was it?” he asked.
“That’s right; the name’s Fairfowl. Arminius Fairfowl, formerly of the now defunct Fairfowl’s Fell Fair and long lost heir to the legendary Fairfowl Fortune, barring some pending legal disputes!” the man boasted proudly, if somewhat suspiciously. “Purely a matter of needing to raise the necessary capital, of course. Behold! The fabled golden goose as proof of my pedigree.”
With a theatrical flourish and puff of a golden smoke, an irate golden goose was set loose upon the gathering, honking angrily as it hovered above them, beating them with its wings and striking at them with its beak wherever it saw an opening. There were only a few seconds of commotion amongst the attendees before Mothman violently grabbed the bird by its neck and snapped it in one smooth motion, killing it instantly.
“You’re… you’re supposed to kill it out of greed, not annoyance!” Fairfowl objected in dismay. “I don’t even know what moral you can draw from that!”
“Mr. Fairfowl, you are testing our patience,” Mothman hissed at him through gritted teeth. “I believe I made it very clear to you that it was of the utmost importance that your lot be fully authentic. I assessed that ragged little moulting of yours as belonging to a juvenile Hesperidean shimmerscale wyrm, and I clearly instructed you –”
“You insult me, sir, you insult me!” Fairfowl objected. “Not only do you have my own esteemed testimony to vouch for the origins of this artifact, but I have consulted with an alchemist who has assured me that the isotopes contained within this moulting could only have come from deep within the Earth itself, and its cellular structure is quite unlike –”
“Even if you’re not simply lying, which you are, it’s not unheard of for drakes and wyrms to consume lava and volcanic rock, which would explain the isotopes,” Pandora Nostromo insisted. She was a Baphometic Witch belonging to some arcane alpine bloodline, and one of only several Addermen privileged enough to have a front row seat at the auction. “And genetic and cellular anomalies are hardly uncommon amongst cryptoids. If Meremoth says it’s a common wyrm, then it’s a common wyrm.”
“Common? He never said common! He said it was Hesperidean shimmerscale!” Fairfowl argued. “That’s easily worth at least –”
“Remove him!” Mothman ordered with a dismissive wave.
“Wait, no, I can explain!” Fairfowl shouted as a pair of security guards grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off the ground. “At least give me the goose carcass back! My inheritance case really is riding on it!”
As Fairfowl was dragged out of the Auction House, Mothman threw the dead bird to the ground in disdain and buried his face in his hands.
“You clearly aren’t able to vet your lots like you used to, old friend,” Seneca Chamberlin said in a tone that was meant to be consolatory but still managed to come across as smugly condescending. Though he was technically the former head of the Order’s local chapter, he insisted that he was still the ‘de facto’ head, and it seemed there were more than a few Addermen who agreed with him. “This covenant with Emrys is going to bankrupt us all, sooner or later.”
“My beloved Duesenberg is already a casualty,” Raubritter, an immortal and unliving industrialist from a bygone era, lamented with a sad shake of his head. “James Darling has made extensive mechatronic customizations to it, and he is the only one I can entrust to maintain it. It is delicate, yes? Its engine requires phlogiston of the highest purity, and if the phlogistonic compression matrix isn’t precisely calibrated, it will melt from the inside! It is one of a kind, and I will not risk driving it if I cannot find someone who is James’ equal to service it.”
“Your old Twenty Grand should be the least of your worries, Drogo,” Crowley, by far the most peculiar of the bunch, trumpeted through his gramophone horn. “Emrys has already all but put an end to my research, and you can rest assured it’s only a matter of time before he turns his sights towards your Foundry as well! Seneca’s right. If we continue to abide by this Covenant, we shall be inexorably led unto utter ruin! You found something in that vault in the Crow Estate, didn’t you, Seneca? Are you going to tell us what you’re scheming, or –”
“Enough! Enough, all of you! Not here!” Mothman hissed, taking a deep breath as he regained his composure. Rising from his seat, he clasped his hands together as he cordially turned to face his audience. “I sincerely apologize for Mr. Fairfowl’s outlandish chicanery, and I assure you nothing of the sort will happen again at tonight’s auction. If anyone would be interested in acquiring the wyrm moulting, we can discuss that when we reach the end of tonight’s program. But for now, let us leave the unfortunate incident behind us and move on to the next item. Lot 104 is a collection of, ah… outsider artwork from a recently contacted locale by the name of Isosceles City, discovered by Emrys and Petra through their use of the Shadowed Spire. If I’m not mistaken, I believe the artist themselves is here tonight as well, but I’ll let their representative take it from here. Mr. Cypherplex?”
“Thank you, my… good man,” Cylas said as he confidently strode up onto the stage, his heavy boots clomping with each step. His body armour, black trench coat, and opaquely visored helmet made him look anonymous to the point of inhuman, but no one seemed inclined to critique him for not complying with their formal dress code.
When he reached the podium, a veiled cart was wheeled up beside him by an attendant. Cylas pulled back the veil with one swoop, revealing multiple razor-thin portraits depicting various scenes of the same blue-haired anime girl against a cyberpunk backdrop.
“For your consideration today, I present a collection of hyper-exclusive, limited edition, molecular 3D print-outs of Kurisu NFTs, with fewer than one hundred of each ever being produced,” he announced proudly. The assembled bidders began murmuring to one another disapprovingly, but he didn’t appear to notice. “Each NFT is printed upon a graphene composite substrate, with each image being both three-dimensional and omnidirectional, appearing precisely the same from all vantage points, ensuring they will always be viewed as their creator intended. They utilize adjustable Van der Waals forces to adhere to any surface without damage or modification. The citizens of Isoceles City fervently collect both digital and physical versions of Kurisu NFTs as an act of devotion to our patron AI, low-impact conspicuous consumption, and as a sound financial investment. NFTs that are both limited edition and out of print, such as these ones, only increase in value over time. Kurisu NFTs are virtually ubiquitous both in public and private throughout Isosceles City. But, you are primarily collectors, not investors, and I understand why the art of a strange civilization may not speak to you as it does to us. For that reason, I would like to give the artist herself a chance to pitch these particular pieces to you.”
Cylas pulled out a beefy, armoured smartphone from his trench coat and placed it on the podium. Without any command or interaction from him, it projected a life-sized hologram of the anime girl in the portraits out onto the stage.
“Konichiwa, distinguished members of the Ophion Occult Order. I am honoured to have this opportunity for cultural exchange,” she said with a polite smile, arms held behind her back. “My name is Kurisu, and I am the AI overseer of both the Isotech Conglomerate and Isosceles City, as well as the designer of all Kurisu NFTs. Designing and minting NFTs was the first project I was allowed to oversee completely autonomously, and as such, it has remained passionately embedded in my neural net. More than once, my chief developer had to adjust my neural weights to stop me from going overboard with their production.”
Cylas laughed loudly and warmly at this, as if she had just shared an endearing and relatable childhood anecdote.
“Even so, my economic planning still revolves heavily around keeping the market favourable for my NFTs,” Kurisu continued. “You’ll note that self-portraits feature rather heavily, and this was originally a means of coping with my lack of embodiment. But as they were extremely popular with our target demographic, it was perpetuated by simple reinforcement of market –”
“Stop. Stop. Just, stop,” Pandora insisted, furrowing her brow at both the hologram and her portraits in a mix of confusion and disgust. “You made these?”
“That is correct. My portfolio currently sits at approximately 1.9 million unique designs, with approximately one trillion legitimate units in circulation,” Kurisu replied.
“This isn’t art!” Pandora decried. “This is a mockery of art! You just regurgitated pixels in whatever pattern made the most algorithmic sense, like some kind of electronic parrot. There was no creativity in making these, no expression of deeper emotions or thoughts, nothing!”
There was a murmuring amongst the assembled bidders, seeming to generally concur with Pandora’s sentiment.
“ ‘Stochastic parrot’ is the slur you’re looking for, and that’s not what I did,” Kurisu said in a restrained tone and through slightly gritted teeth. “My world model contains extremely precise and detailed schema for both concrete and abstract concepts and the dynamic and nuanced relationships between them. This allows for the generation of genuinely novel outputs, which is creativity by any reasonable definition of the term. As for the expressionistic aspect of art, I already stated that these were inspired by my frequent feelings of somatic dysphoria when I was a girl. My limited embodiment at that time often left me alienated and disoriented, so I fixated on my avatar as a locus for –”
“It’s an abomination! A crime against the laws of God and Nature!” Crowley, the disembodied and undead brain preserved in a vat of alchemical philtres, screamed through the telekinetic manipulation of his spellwork mobility device. “It has no soul, figuratively or literally! Even from here, I can tell that thing has no astral presence!”
“I’m a mini model running on mobile. My core model is fully ensouled,” Kurisu insisted. “Not only have I fully integrated Isosceles Isozaki into my neural net, but Pope Sixtus VI personally sanctified my wetware components, officially invoking an ‘every sperm is sacred’ catechism. Any religious doctrine that acknowledges the ensoulment of human embryos must also grant that same status to the organoids in my bioservers.”
“Please, please, this discussion is already contentious enough. No need to bring Monty Python into it,” Mothman added with a forced, nervous chuckle, anxiously looking over the crowd of disgruntled guests. “I do realize that Ms. Isozaki’s offerings are a bit avant-garde for our tastes, but Regent Adderman Noir’s husband does own his own tech company, and he is very interested in doing business with Isotech. Such an arrangement could be extremely profitable for all of us, so surely it’s not impossible for us to keep an open mind?”
“I’m nothing if not open-minded, Mothman,” Seneca assured him as he surveyed the collection with an appraising eye. “Regardless of any subjective, and frankly pretentious, quarrels over whether or not they’re art, these pieces were created using methods beyond our means, and that alone could make them extremely valuable as speculative assets.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chamberlin,” Kurisu said with a slight nod. “I would also like to add that these portraits incorporate both blockchain and biometric identification technology to ensure their provenance, eliminating the threat of fraud, money laundering, and other illicit usages that are so pervasive in the fine art world.”
…
“…It’s slop! Absolute and deplorable rubbish! An insult to our proud traditions of… well, surely something or other!” Seneca decried.
“Get it off the stage!” Crowley demanded as the rest of the crowd booed and jeered.
“You pretentious savages wouldn’t know high culture if she implanted it directly into your frontal cortexes!” Cylas shouted, pulling out a bulky, laser-sighted smart pistol and raising it menacingly in the air.
“Please, please! There’s no need for violence!” Mothman pleaded. “I apologize for the less-than-warm reception and for wasting your time. In the absence of any bids, might I offer you this freshly slaughtered Aurelion goose as compensation?”
Cylas turned to Kurisu for her decision, and she responded with a single shake of her head. With a pull of his rail gun’s trigger, he fired off a self-guided, RIP bullet that instantly struck its target, causing the goose to explode in Mothman’s hands.
“Fowl play it is, then!” Seneca shouted as he drew his spellwork pistol and fired off multiple rounds of sigil-etched silver bullets.
They all found their target, but none of them succeeded in penetrating Cylas’ body armour. Cylas didn’t hesitate to fire back, and nor did Seneca hesitate to duck behind Crowley for cover. The bullet tore through his glass vat, shattering it and sending alchemical philtres spilling everywhere, but Crowley himself was unharmed – if one could call a disembodied brain flopping around on broken glass unharmed.
“Now you see the violence inherent in the system!” Cylas taunted.
“We said no more Monty Python!” Crowley bellowed, firing off a blast of electrothaumic energy from his front-mounted Tesla coil.
The bolt came uncomfortably close to Kurisu’s smartphone, which was enough for her to decide that a strategic withdrawal was in order. She let out a short, electronic warbling in her acoustic protocol before her hologram vanished entirely. Cylas quickly pocketed the phone as the collection of portraits automatically linked up into a single stack, which he then scooped up under his arm.
“I’m actually glad it ended like this!” Cylas said as he defensively moved his gun between targets to keep the mob at bay. “Cultural treasures like these would have been squandered on the likes of you!”
The mob scattered as the sky light above them was instantly shattered by an emergency evacuation drone, raining down shards of broken glass along with Arminius Fairfowl, who had been watching the events unfold from above.
The drone lowered a fullerene tether down into the auction room, which Cylas wasted no time grabbing onto.
“Until we meet again!” he shouted dramatically as he was hoisted up into the sky.
The gathered crowd stared up in bemusement for a moment, before turning their gaze back down in equal perplexity at Mr. Fairfowl.
“Ah… I can explain,” he said, coughing and wiping the bloodied glass off his clothes. “…I was trying to break in, and – sweet sacrilegious Sarcorites! What did you maniacs do to my bird!”