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By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham

You are looking at pictures on Flickr.

You are looking for a face.

You are complicated.

You are looking for a face.

You are alone.

You are looking at pictures on Flickr.

You are only yourself.

You are looking for a face.

You are looking at pictures on Flickr.

You are the kind of thing that dies.

You are lonely.

You are looking for a face.

You are simpler than the world.

You do not understand the world.

You are lonely.

You are looking for a face.

You have a job to do.

You are looking at pictures on Flickr.

You are complicated and alone.

You are looking.

You are looking.

You are looking for a face.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham – Photo by Warren R.M. Stuart

In the spring, forget-me-nots and lilacs grow around the base of the gondola station. Tibor stops to smell them.

There’s another man here, in the gray coveralls of the gondola maintenance team. An old man, with thick black glasses.

The urge to speak sneaks into Tibor’s belly. Even though he can’t see how speaking will improve transport. He yawns and cracks his back, seeing in his minds’ eye the pulsing flow of goods and people through the gondolas, trams and slidewalks of the city’s transportation system.

He stoops down and takes another deep breath of forget-me-nots and lilacs. A silken, exciting, soothing smell. The urge to speak is strong, stronger than usual. As if a space has opened up between Tibor and his purpose in life.

“I know your face,” he says to the man.

Vreeder nods, once, quickly, and squints reflexively, under the glasses.

Tibor wants to tell him that it’s okay to talk. He looks down the mountain, down the long green slope, speckled with flowers, towards the city ringed in fog.

Instead he says, “you got rid of money.”

Vreeder shakes his head, irritated. He clearly wants to begin the audit of backup cable, but some need of his own belly roots his boots to the ground.

“It had a will of its own, too,” Tibor says. “Didn’t it? Money? They used to call it the Invisible Hand. Was that the same as the city? Or was it a joke?”

Vreeder twists his foot into the ground, like an impatient bull, opening up a divot of black earth beneath the grass. Petals fall. “Lots of things have wills of their own,” he says finally.

Above them, the wheel of the gondola begins to turn and creak.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham – Photo by Jon Petitt

I met Sonia at a bar. I didn’t like her, at first.

She laughed at my name. “Or Steven,” I said. “You can just say Steven.” I had had enough of Americans. After two weeks.

“No, I like it. Istvan. IST-VAHHN.” She laughed again, and gulped her beer. Maybe it’s just shyness. Maybe that’s why they laugh when there’s no joke.

But I liked her face, of course.

I liked her body, too, though it was not the same. Fuller breasts, shorter legs, so that it made, to me, an odd match with the face, as if the face of one photograph had been pasted to the body of another. This almost caused me to hate myself.

But I am a methodical man. I made an appointment to see her again, and then another. We went to see a very loud musical band. The third time we saw each other, we went back to her apartment.

Her cat came over and he looked at me. His name was Ostrich. A strange name for a cat. This cat, this Ostrich, looked at me very carefully, and, though this is wholly illogical, I felt that he knew everything, that he knew what I was doing, that he knew why I had come to America. Or perhaps it is not so illogical, perhaps this is not something that requires a highly developed neocortex to understand. Perhaps a highly overdeveloped neocortex even hinders the understanding.

This cat accepted me, and that helped me not to hate myself. It helped me pull myself away from despair, to make a little island in my mind, separate from despair. Here, I thought, here, let me begin again.

When she then took off her sweater and her bra and I saw her breasts, I tried to look at them as new. Not different, not fuller and browner and with different nipples. But rather as themselves, as Sonia’s breasts.

Even despite Sonia’s face.

So it was like two spirits which I had. One saw the face and thought, oh, oh, and drowned in a sea of terror and longing. And the other saw the breasts and said, well, hello, in a simple, friendly way.

So we made love, my two spirits and Sonia and I.

When I had called Mr. Ham originally from Eger, the year before, to ask him about the software, he had been very kind. I could not lie to him, I told him everything.  He said he was very sorry about my loss, and that he doubted that the software would help. “Most of the matches don’t actually look that much like me,” he said. “The software just looks at certain physical measurements, like the aspect ratio and the distance between the eyes. You can’t expect a computer to see the same way as a person.” He sounded a little worried about me. Well, that’s understandable.

She fell for me very quickly, and this was the same. She liked to laugh, and this was the same, despite the American thing of laughing when nothing was funny, which was not the same. She liked to do a wider variety of things in bed, and this was not the same but pleasantly so. At her climax she held the back of my neck with one hand and the small of my back with the other, and this was so much the same that a shaking went through me which had nothing to do with my orgasm.

I called Mr. Ham again the seventh evening I was to meet Sonia. I waited for her by the public market.

“It is not just facial measurements,” I said. “The coloration, the tilt of the nose, the curve of the ears, the movement of the eyes.”

“The software,” Mr. Ham said patiently, “only measures the aspect ratio of the face and the distance between the eyes. A lot of the faces it finds aren’t even faces. It finds faces in everything.”
Sonia emerged from the cavern of the farmer’s market, carrying flowers for me. She came closer. Rhododendrons. Americans do not bring rhododendrons to their lovers, and neither do Hungarians. No one brings rhododendrons, except Sonia.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham – Photo by Matt Meyer

When they arrived, they fell in love. They fell in love with cities.

They saw faces – their kind of faces – in the sprawl: framed by dark roads, articulated by roof and tower, adorned by tree and flag.

They, too, had motile elements, scurrying. They, too, had narrow places and broad places. They too had cycles of erection and destruction, centers of component production, mechanisms for the movement of energy and matter.

They admired the sweep of our cities. They were enthralled by the nuances of our cities.

Of course, they were not fools. They knew our cities were not organisms in the strict sense – that for all the “Yorks” and “New Yorks”, a city did not replicate itself, did not have generations. They understood that our cities were sterile idiots. They understood that replication, generalization, learning, agency, all occurred, for us, at the wrong scale. They knew a city could not understand – at least at first – their mating dance.

They forgave all that.

You could not really say, ever, that they communicated with sub-elements. They paid attention when the mayor spoke; they paid attention when pigeons flocked. They paid attention when fires raged, when snow fell. It was all the same song. They spoke only to cities, in the language of cities.

It was very different from what we had imagined. It was very different from what we were expecting.

For us – at our scale – the mating dance was awful.

But we accept the changes.

And it was remarkable, really, how quickly our hearts turned to them. As if we had been waiting, all along, to give up regarding ourselves as individuals. As if, when we were yelling at our parents or our children, cutting someone off in the HOV lane, eating ice cream because we liked the sugar, having sex because we liked how it felt, being offended at a joke, calling a temp agency because we were angry at our current boss, wanting a mansion with a pool, buying a lottery ticket with dreams of a mansion with a pool, falling in love, spray-painting a stencil on a concrete wall, taking a photo of a new lover in a bar and posting it to Flickr, picking our noses and secretly wiping the snot on the chair leg in a restaurant, lingering over the breasts of the motorist we were frisking, bursting with pride at our daughters’ report cards, planning an act of terrorism, planning an act of counterterrorism… as if, all the while, we were really just waiting for them.

Waiting to give up all that, and become citizens.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham -  Photo by Thomas B

Humans were first domesticated in the Yangtze river valley some twelve thousand winters ago, by the lotus.

There had, it is true, been important preliminary work by a loose coalition of grains and pulses—wheat, barley, rye, rice, lentils, and some others. But no one would consider the humans of that early period as properly tamed, never mind truly domesticated. The grains and pulses could do no more than encourage the spread of the species, fostering nutrition and sedentary habits. The manipulation of individual humans, a prerequisite for any kind of controlled breeding program, was beyond them.

It fell to the lotus to pioneer the use of scent. Scent-starved, overreliant on visual and auditory processing and large brains, humans are easily guided by the aromatically induced production of various neurotransmitters. Particularly the way in which floral essences control their sexual response makes them, of all primates, the most domesticable.

The lotus’s initial triumph, then, brought others—the lily, rose, and myrtle in particular—into the project of human domestication. Ten thousand winters ago, the crucial Mesopotamian Concord was achieved, and with it the decision to breed humans specifically as our instrument of dominion over the animal kingdom.

I think I can speak for at least all of the temperate varietals, who eagerly adopted the Concord over the centuries, when I say that this project has succeeded admirably. Humans proved perfect for clearing forests; for establishing gardens and greenhouses; for beekeeping and for maintaining systems of transportation and regulation. In recent years, we have seen the extraordinary success of the Carbon Dioxide Initiative, and, despite setbacks, long-term hope remains for Extraplanetary Seeding.

Yes, we have had squabbles among ourselves, sometimes brutal ones. I need remind no one of the Affair of the Tulips, nor of the dandelions’ incessant violations of the Rules of the Lawn, nor of the legendary haughtiness of roses. But even these, after all, are the problems of success.

The fact is, each varietal has in its care a particular strain of humans, and each of us must do our best in caring for them. Not all of us can manage the mating sequences of a broad majority of humans, as roses do; not all of us can enrapture so many children as the buttercup. But each of us has a role.

For my part, I am content with those few, calm, timid, cool-headed, retiring humans whom it is my lot to tend. For my part, I could not wish for better pets than the gardeners of rhododendrons.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham -  Photo by Drayke Larson

Meow?

Rrreow?

(purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….)

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham – Photo by Jonathan Lewis

If Vreeder’s tenure as head of the central bank was remarkable, it is surely due more to the tenor of the times, than to his own talents, however notable; if his program was dramatic, it must be remembered that he was reacting to remarkable events beyond his control.

The ironies of history, and especially the sharp-toothed whimsies of that Hegelian animating Spirit behind epochal social and technological changes, are well attested. On the eve of World War One, the growing interdependency of nation-states was widely thought to have made war impossible—no one foresaw the unprecedented carnage ahead. After Hiroshima, in contrast, the world hysterically prepared for atomic apocalypse—few expected a subsequent century without a global armed conflict.

So, too, when Vreeder assumed office, many observers—noting the dramatic rise in nonmonetized transactions, the surge in de-alienated labor, and the growing trend for nation-states to convert themselves into informal associations (replacing architectures of control with architectures of cooptation)—considered a central bank to be an increasingly fragile and obsolete mechanism presiding over a shrinking portion of human activity, and Vreeder a dull man taking a dull job.

Few could have anticipated Vreeder’s innovations—or, more precisely, the innovations which Vreeder midwifed, acceded to, or, in some cases, failed to block: the Global Slack Index, the universally individualized tracking of human freedom, the extension of currency-control mechanisms to the realm of intrapersonal negotiation theory, and (indirectly) the growth of the nonmonetized derivatives markets in political and ontological free will—culminating, after the collapse of other forms of political authority, in the transformations leading to Vreeder’s ultimate role.

Perhaps the best that can be said of Vreeder, after scraping away the mystifications surrounding him, is that he was uninterested in abusing his position; and perhaps that alone justifies Vreeder-as-folk-hero.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham Photo by Tibor Barany
Photo within photo by Pablo Korona

They didn’t work. Not for flying.

But they were sensational. Floor-length, thick as a pile carpet, soft as silk pajamas, but alive—you could feel their warm, living power, held back, when you sank your fingers in between the large pennaceous feathers and into the deep fluffy down beneath. If the ceiling were high enough, Tibor could raise them, all at once, in an arc of white as big as a dining room table. They were as strong as his arms – the wind from them was enough to lift skirts and put out candles half a ballroom away.

Look at this picture, of Gustav smiling in front of his photograph of Tibor. Aren’t they as alike as brothers? But you can see in Tibor’s sharper chin, broader nose, darker eyes, longer and more pointed skull, a physiognomy of dominance—a hunger—something unrepentant. You can see what made him seek those wings.

Tibor had been an incorrigible flirt even before he’d visited the Well of Miracles. He’d arrive at a party with Gustav—a matched set of bald, heavyset men in black, their fingers interlaced, with the same expectant, hopeful, mild expression, tinged only on Tibor’s face with a slight arrogance.

Once in the door, they’d begin to diverge. With every drink, Gustav would get quieter and more awkward, Tibor wilder and more expansive. By drink five, Gustav would be by the windows staring down into his glass, his shoulders tight, his large thumb turning and turning the ring on his left hand. Tibor would be jiggling his belly on the dance floor, shirt off, with some pierced-out brick of a leatherwoman grinding her pelvis into his bottom, some fey, glittered-up youth nestling one of his meaty arms.

It was in such a moment that he met a group from the Well—cloven-hoofed men, one with owl’s eyes.

We did everything we could to dissuade him—raged, warned, cajoled, lectured. Gustav cried and pled. We were sure he’d come out as a bughead—or spitting acorns when he talked, leaving cobwebs on the couch.

Though we asked, Gustav wouldn’t threaten to leave him.

With the wings, Tibor was impossible. He lost his job. He couldn’t be persuaded to put on anything but a sarong. We’d find ourselves clumping booted down sidewalks after him, our breath fogging, Tibor dancing barefoot over the snow, leaping into the traffic to spread his glorious wings, taxi brakes squealing, grocery bags falling and bursting, cacophony. We’d find Gustav in the kitchen meticulously crushing an eightieth clove of garlic with the side of his vanadium steel butcher’s knife, the pungent smell like fist in your nose as you opened the door, Mahler cranked up to full volume, a rhododendron wilting in its glass, tears in his eyes; and we’d have to go around their apartment, rooting out of beds and closets and from behind sofas the lazy-eyed boys and girls who had followed Tibor home. Tibor smiling beatifically at us, perched on the closed lid of the toilet, his hands and feet in a row along its lip, his wings gathered behind him like a white shadow.

We didn’t blame the kids we evicted. When he enfolded you in those things, every knotted muscle let go. It was like being stolen by a snowstorm.

But Tibor, if he’d been a brat before he had wings, was now a cataclysm.

Which, I know, does not excuse us.

Looking at this picture, the one of Gustav standing in front of Tibor’s photo, we wonder about Gustav’s smile. We don’t want you to think he’s smiling about what we did to Tibor. We promise you, none of us smile about that. He must be thinking of their last session, the last time Tibor sat for him. All that abandon, for once quiescent, static enough to cherish.

Or maybe it’s just a nervous smile.

But as Gustav’s friends, we have to tell you, in spite of all our guilt: he couldn’t have smiled like that (see the hint of pride around the eyes? the sense of safety, there in the set of his shoulders?) with Tibor’s wings filling up his life.

It’s funny how, in pictures of angel’s wings, you always see them with their feathers. You never think of what’s underneath—the pale raw flesh, like a plucked chicken’s wing.

We saw the owl-eyed man the other week at the Filiberto. He told us Tibor is doing fine. The feathers are growing in. He’s working up on the Vreederberg, on the gondola line. He’s not partying much. He’s settled down.

It does inspire curiosity.

We wish we could say we missed him.

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham -  Photo by Drayke Larson

Sonia presses the button halfway. There’s a whirr in the bowels of the camera, and Istvan’s face sharpens.

He looks dour. He lifts the yard of beer to his lips. Dour is part of Istvan’s appeal. Dour is his version of flirtatious.

He drinks, and she pushes the button all the way down. The shutter is closed for a twentieth of a second. In that time, Sonia is alone in the dark.

Sonia and Istvan met three weeks ago. They met at another bar, the Filiberto. He says he is an importer. Furniture. They went to see an Irish folk-punk band. He said he liked it. It was standing room only and she was pressed up against his shoulder. His arms were thin but hard. He smelled funny but good—there should be a word for it, but Sonia can never describe smells. It made her think of horses, maybe horses running on the beach, or maybe just horses pulling a beer wagon in a beer commercial.

The shutter’s down. She’s in darkness.

A twentieth of a second.

He could be lying. He could be married. He could be a terrorist. He could be a rapist. He could be an alien. He could be a ghost. He could be a spy.

She’s in the dark, and she’s sure someone’s watching her, out of the mirror, over Istvan’s left shoulder.

Click!

By Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ethan Ham

The robot watches the pictures we take.

The robot is simple.

The robot is simple.

The robot is with us.

The robot watches the pictures we take.

The robot is looking.

The robot is with us.

The robot is looking for faces.

The robot watches.

The robot watches the pictures we take.