The keeper of images sat in the darkened room, staring at photos he had suctioned out of the Internet. He devoted his attention to each image for a fragment of a second. He saw youth after youth all around the globe forming their fingers into the gangsta signs. He saw cute girls kissing other cute girls, captured instances of a lingering quality. He glossed over gaggles of friends lying in the grass, heads forming a circle, bodies extending like spokes of a wheel. Weddings and birthdays, discos and parties streamed by in pounding regularity. Self-portraited adolescent girls displayed a pierced navel for a boyfriend or for personal study. Boys displayed the self-evidence of their masculinity. All of these were expected and observed in the miniscule time the keeper devoted to each picture, one of which blurred into the next. Uncounted thousands of images flashed before his eyes until one rare moment astonished him. It was a subtle hint of emotion in the eyes in combination with lips turning a thought into words, or a nuance of interaction between persons, two or more, an expression he had never yet seen. These were the images that riveted his attention: seconds, minutes, between dreams. The keeper had found something new. He wrote down the story and added it to his collection of archetypes.

Story #200