The Shutter Speed of a Fish on the Ground

 [Last time when I wrote something here Artificial Intelligence was a joke. I was a CS student struggling with what AI could do back then. Now, chat bots and LLMs are the new emerging thing, so this is a piece of fiction wrote in collaboration with Gemini. It was an interesting exercise to use a chat bot as my dialogue partner in the piece.]

The gallery smelled of expensive floor wax and cold champagne. It was a "Standard" evening, but she had arrived in High Resolution.

She wore a long, silky blazer that caught the light like liquid steel, paired with high heels that gave her the stature of a woman who makes decisions, not excuses. She hadn't come alone; she’d brought her team—logic people, code people—and she could feel their slight confusion at being dragged into a gallery. But she didn’t mind. She believed art should make a person ask questions, and curiosity was a requirement for anyone who wanted to build something vivid.

She was standing before a photograph of a river—a sharp, geometric composition—when he approached. He held two glasses of champagne, his gaze flickering over the silk of her blazer before finally meeting her eyes.

"Why did you all come here?" he asked. His voice had a familiar lag, a defensive shell around a creative core.

"I thought it would be nice to support you," she replied, taking a glass. Her pistachio-colored nails caught the overhead light. "I’m always supporting the creative endeavors of my friends. My team... well, they probably hate me for bringing them here, but I think curiosity is the only way to develop creativity. Don't you?"

He looked at the team, then back at her. "Curiosity is an expensive state to maintain," he countered. "I think that’s why I take photos; it’s a way to freeze the curiosity so I don't have to carry it around all day."

She turned back to the river in the frame. "I’m trying to make a story about this river in my head," she said softly. "I wonder... is the water cold? I’d love to wet my feet there on a hot summer day and feel the wind in my hair."

He stepped closer, the "annoyance" of their past digital failures replaced by a sudden, heavy honesty. "The water is freezing," he said. "Even in August. It’s that sharp kind of cold that resets your hardware." He paused, searching for the right words. "I realized something back at the workshop, even if I didn't have the bandwidth to say it then. I couldn't frame you."

She didn't look away. "You never knew how to frame me," she said, the memory of the lemon workshop surfacing like a legacy bug. "Remember? You asked the team to eat lemons so you could capture their expressions. I was so excited. But after you published the photos, mine were out of focus. You told me then that I was moving too fast—like a fish on the ground."

He winced. "I remember. Everyone else followed the script, but you were a high-frequency signal. I told you that you were out of focus to cover for the fact that I was out of my depth. I was looking for a standard expression, and you were giving me something vivid that I didn't have the steel to handle."

He looked at her then, truly looking, as if trying to find the focus after all this time. "Is that why you’re here tonight? To show me what I missed?"

"I’m here because I was curious about your art," she said, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips. "And because I wanted to see if I was still good at bullshitting you at an opening."

He let out a dry, defeated laugh. "You’re excellent at it. You’ve just walked into my sandbox and told me my best work is just a cold river you’d like to wet your feet in. I’m still struggling with the focus, aren't I?"

She checked her watch. Her team was waiting. Life was waiting. The "Golden Years" don't pause for a photographer who can’t find the right shutter speed.

"If you’re so undecided," she said, adjusting her blazer and turning toward the exit, "then I’ll go eat. I’m hungry from all the waiting."

She walked out of the gallery and into the night, her heels clicking a steady, rhythmic code against the pavement. She didn't look back to see if he was still standing there, trying to find the focus. She was moving too fast for the frame, and for the first time, she realized that being a "fish on the ground" wasn't a flaw. It was the sound of a system running at a speed he would never be able to capture.