Chapter One: The Internet Waits for Me to Fail

He drew the shadow under the brow, the nose reddened by winter wind, the scab at the corner of the mouth. He did not copy the blurred photograph. Behind those pixels, he seemed to see a man squinting at house numbers, drumming impatiently on his handlebars at a red light, hiding his own cold dinner beneath the hot orders in his insulated box. Mockery turned to suspicion. Suspicion turned to silence. Two hours later, the portrait had eyes. They did not face the viewers. They watched an alley that did not yet exist at the right edge of the image. “Wait. That's not the angle in the avatar.” “I've watched every second. He never called a model.” “Why does that lighting feel so wrong?”